An interview with tech marketing innovator, Olivia de Palleja, ABM & Vertical Digital and Event Specialist at Red Hat
Olivia de Palleja is the ABM & Vertical Digital and Event Specialist at Red Hat. She oversees vertical-specific campaigns across EMEA, with a focus on delivering personalized, industry-relevant content to key accounts.
Tell us about your approach to vertical marketing and ABM strategy.
Our approach is built on three key pillars: focus, relevance, and smart targeting. We’re very intentional about building campaigns around specific verticals and the audiences we want to reach within those industries. Each vertical is completely different and unique in its own way – whether it’s financial services, public sector, or telecommunications. Each has its own priorities, challenges, and opportunities.
We don’t want our campaigns to feel generic. Instead, we create highly relevant and personalized messaging that speaks directly to the challenges that matter most for each industry. For instance, rather than running a generic AI campaign, we focus on AI specifically for financial services, or virtualization for telecommunications, or digital sovereignty for public sector.
At the beginning of each quarter, we plan the audience we want to reach, identify key personas within those audiences, determine the business topics we want to focus on, and select the content that best supports those conversations. We also prioritize localizing content to different languages and markets across EMEA, ensuring our message is understandable and easily accessible for everyone.
Can you walk us through your content journey approach for vertical campaigns?
We take accounts on a journey through different stages: awareness, consideration, and action. We make sure we’re putting the right content in front of the right people at each stage. Once they reach one level, we move them to the next stage with appropriate content and messaging.
We test with different content formats: e-books, case studies, webinars – and don’t rely on the same assets repeatedly. It’s important to stay relevant because we’re living in a time when things are moving very quickly.
It’s all about testing and optimizing – there’s always room for improvement. Every quarter, we review the topics that have performed best, what people are interested in, and which accounts are most engaged. We put all of that together to move forward to the next campaign.
How does Informa TechTarget support your vertical campaign strategy?
Informa TechTarget plays a crucial role in our smart targeting approach. We work together to promote our content in front of high-quality audiences, and they help us understand what those audiences are actively researching and looking for. This partnership is extremely valuable because Informa TechTarget has a well-established relationship with audiences that are actively searching for different topics, learning, and comparing solutions.
The engagements that come from these relationships are intentional. We’re connecting with people who are already showing interest from the start – they’re already engaged with certain topics that align with what we can help with. We’re not just throwing our content into the market; we’re connecting with people who are already interested in relevant topics.
We use Informa TechTarget’s Portal to understand what accounts are actively looking for and what they’re interested in. This is crucial because it allows us to not wait until the campaign is finished to make adjustments. Throughout the campaign, we can see what’s working, what’s not, and what we can change, giving us insights on how to make it better in real-time.
We use Informa TechTarget’s Portal to understand what accounts are actively looking for and what they’re interested in. This is crucial because it allows us to not wait until the campaign is finished to make adjustments. Throughout the campaign, we can see what’s working, what’s not, and what we can change, giving us insights on how to make it better in real-time.”
How has this approach scaled across different verticals?
We’re not only working with financial services – we’re running campaigns across different industries such as public sector and telecommunications, and they all follow the same approach. The framework is repeatable because it’s based on understanding each vertical’s unique needs rather than forcing a generic template.
For instance, we focus on AI specifically for financial services, virtualization for telecommunications, and digital sovereignty for public sector. The three-pillar approach works across all of them because it’s about being intentional and relevant to each industry’s specific challenges.
What results have you seen from this vertical campaign approach with Informa TechTarget?
The mix of focus, relevance, and smart targeting has enabled us to deliver the right content at the right time to the right audience. We’ve been able to create campaigns that truly speak to the challenges that matter most for each industry, using our portfolio of different solutions and messages to match the best content with the best audience.
The partnership with Informa TechTarget has been instrumental in helping us achieve this success. Their audience insights and targeting capabilities have allowed us to connect with high-quality prospects who are already engaged and interested in topics relevant to their industries.
