How a Global Enterprise Software Company Built a Scrappy, Persona-Driven Marketing Engine

In today’s noisy B2B marketing landscape, success isn’t just about big budgets—it’s about being smart, strategic, and scrappy. One global provider of enterprise legal management software recently proved this point through a creative, high-impact campaign that was super-efficient.

Despite being part of a multi-billion-dollar organization, the team at Wolters Kluwer ELM Solutions operated with agility and ingenuity. They launched a complex campaign initiative with limited resources that delivered outsized results.

The campaign focused on reaching non-legal operations professionals—think procurement managers or risk and compliance officers—that influenced their customers’ buying journey. In a matter of months, the team conducted client interviews, built personas, created tailored collateral, hosted events, launched targeted emails, and more, all with minimal financial outlay.

We spoke with Karen Sekley-D’Andrea, Wolters Kluwer’s longtime marketing executive behind the campaign. She unpacked their approach to tackle this major initiative and how they got such great results.

Q: What sparked the idea to focus on non-legal personas?

Karen Sekley-D’Andrea

Honestly, it came down to relevance. There’s so much noise out there, and we realized we wanted to reach our audience in a way that truly resonated. 

We needed to personalize our messaging down to individual personas within various buying groups. That meant looking beyond just Legal Ops professionals and general counsels to include finance, procurement, and other stakeholders who influence the decision-making process.

Q: How did you get started?

Karen Sekley-D’Andrea

First, we looked at the structure of our sales team, which was focusing on selling to different buyers within industry verticals. That gave us a blueprint. 

Then, we did a mix of online research and in-depth client interviews. The goal was to understand hyper-specific pain points and align messaging with how legal challenges manifest in different sectors to identify opportunities with buyers who weren’t our traditional targets.

Q: Sounds like a big lift. How did you add this to your marketing mix so quickly and in the midst of all of your other planned campaigns?

Karen Sekley-D’Andrea

That was the scrappy part! We leaned heavily on repurposing our huge trove of existing assets, customizing them for each persona. REQ helped us tailor some of our best performing existing collateral, like white papers and other pieces, to specific personas. 

We were able to leverage cool meeting spaces for events at our offices or client locations, and we embedded our initiatives into planned events like our annual user conference.  The majority of this campaign was completed start to finish in about three months.

“We leaned heavily on repurposing existing assets, customizing them for each persona.”

Q: What tools helped you manage such a large project?

Karen Sekley-D’Andrea

Internally, we started using our GenAI platform to analyze A/B testing results for things like email subject lines. It saved us tons of time. 

We also partnered externally with a third-party organization for persona-based content syndication, which allowed us to get our content in front of new audiences. That really opened doors to personas in the buying group we hadn’t focused on in the past.

Q: What were the results?

Karen Sekley-D’Andrea

The persona campaign generated twice the pipeline compared to our standard marketing campaigns in a shorter time period. More importantly, it helped us get in front of net-new accounts and engage multiple personas within the same organization. That served as an indicator of deeper buying interest. 

We also gained valuable data on which personas showed the most promise. That helped us determine who to focus our attention on.

Q: What advice would you give to a marketer tackling a similar project?

Karen Sekley-D’Andrea

Start by auditing what you already have, especially your best performing pieces. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel—just refine it and get more value out of every piece. Repurpose and personalize existing content to get moving quickly, and experiment with interesting derivative pieces. 

Most importantly, don’t be afraid to learn as you go. We cast a wide net initially, and now we’re doubling down on what works.

"Start by auditing what you already have. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel—just refine it."

Q: What's next for this initiative?

Karen Sekley-D’Andrea

We're exploring new ways to dive deeper into key verticals and continuing to refine our messaging and channels. The learning never stops, but neither does the momentum.

Would your organization like to get results like the ones Karen's team secured by uncovering new opportunities within key verticals? Schedule time with us to talk about how to take your existing content and leverage it in a persona-driven campaign. Mid-year is a great time to test out new ideas!