Responsys Hires From Competitors

E-mail marketing firm Responsys has hired away three executives from competitors in a bid to strengthen its ISP marketing capabilities and relationships.

The most senior of the hires is Chief Marketing Officer Scott Olrich, previously a senior VP at Topica. The CMO job is a newly created position. Previously, Responsys had a VP of marketing position, held by Kathy Gogan, who left about four months ago. Olrich’s role will be larger than Gogan’s. He’ll oversee product marketing, lead generation, and corporate communications, working with everyone from the development team to the sales force. Gogan had mostly focused on corporate communications.

“It’s a broader definition for the role than we ever had before,” said Dan Springer, Responsys’ CEO.

Sean Meehan, formerly the VP of sales at Bigfoot Interactive, is the second hire. In his new gig, Meehan will serve as general manager of channel marketing, helping Responsys to forge relationships with agencies. This is another newly created position. Responsys estimates about 15 percent of its business comes from agencies and third-party resellers, and executives hope to grow that number.

Meehan will be based in New York as part of Responsys’ plans to build a greater presence there. Currently, the company only has a couple people based in New York, but it’s hiring salespeople, marketing services employees, and professional services employees.

The third key hire is Heather Palmer, who becomes Responsys’ director of ISP relations and deliverability. Palmer previously worked at Yesmail/infoUSA in a similar capacity.

“We’ve made very strong investments on the technical side to make sure we had excellent deliverability, but we felt that there was an area around ISP relations where we hadn’t done as much,” said Springer.