How to Transition to a Marketing-Qualified Account Model and Drive Regional Relevance — Karen Strugnell, UiPath

Karen Strugnell’s strategic perspective was honed across nearly 30 years of navigating the shifting currents of B2B technology marketing. Having mastered account-based marketing (ABM), industry positioning, and field operations for global tech firms, she now directs marketing execution across France and Southwest Europe for UiPath, the leading enterprise automation and agentic AI platform. At UiPath, Karen bridges the gap between global corporate vision and regional market realities. She believes that creativity must always be backstopped by analytical data proficiency, ensuring that every customer experience directly optimises the sales pipeline.

Why must marketing shift from “running activities” to pipeline ownership?

Karen outlines her core focus on transforming marketing into a high-precision strategic partner to sales.

“I’ve been in B2B tech marketing for almost 30 years, across various roles including account-based marketing, industry marketing, and field marketing. Today, my main marketing focus is really about pipeline and revenue ownership for marketing. Marketing is obviously accountable for creating pipeline, but also for influencing and accelerating it. I want to move the marketing function away from running activities, or being seen as running activities, and towards becoming a true partner to the sales team. Relevance in our messaging and how we engage with customers is top of mind. Marketing can only be successful if sales are successful, so you have to understand the pipeline metrics and sales strategies inside out.”

How does the Marketing-Qualified Account (MQA) Model outplay traditional MQLs?

Addressing the challenge of anonymous buyer journeys, Karen explains how to interpret intent data effectively.

“The biggest challenge we face today is relevancy and cutting through the noise. Buyers’ expectations and behaviours have completely changed, with much more self-direction, independent learning, and anonymous research taking place before there is any direct engagement with vendors. Outbound tactics are becoming less effective at creating high-value pipeline.

To solve this, we are moving away from traditional MQLs towards a marketing-qualified account (MQA) model. This allows us to look more broadly at how entire target accounts are interacting and researching specific topics. By leveraging intent data and becoming more sophisticated in how we interpret it, we can precisely determine which accounts we should engage with. Ultimately, this data-led model helps us drive a better return on investment.”

How do you design an event as a single moment within a broader customer journey?

Reflecting on UiPath’s flagship Fusion experience, Karen details her playbook for pre-event hackathons and custom follow-up tracks.

“We do a lot of face-to-face events at UiPath, and there is real value in those physical interactions. One experience that stands out is our flagship event series, Fusion, which starts in the US and is rolled out regionally across Paris and Madrid. But an event is just one key moment within a broader journey. To maximise impact, we place strong emphasis on engaging audiences ahead of the main date. For example, we are currently working on a pre-event hackathon for Paris to engage our technical developer community, making it part of the overall experience.

Furthermore, we are very deliberate about designing the most appropriate, personalised follow-up experiences, such as technical workshops or specific business clinics, for each audience type. We build a range of different regional experiences that align with local market needs, cultural differences, and specific sales strategies.”

Why do Enterprise Buying Committees require separate technical and business streams?

Karen explains how to engage developers and C-suite executives simultaneously within the same event ecosystem.

“Within the Fusion experience, we are intentionally moving into entirely different types of content streams to serve multiple personas. We are developing highly technical content and community-focused elements for technical audiences, alongside a separate, business-focused stream tailored for decision-makers. In the business stream, the main topics are return on investment, agentic AI, and automation AI. Many global organisations are investing heavily in these automated solutions, but the real question the executive layer wants answered is how they actually achieve a tangible return on investment. Designing multi-track agendas allows you to engage these distinct buyers effectively in one space.”

Why is Regional Relevancy the ultimate marketing priority?

In a final call to action, Karen passes on career-defining advice regarding customer advocacy, team environments, and data mastery.

“My main priority for the year ahead can be summed up in two words: regional relevancy. That means getting back to thinking critically about the exact audiences we want to target. Rather than executing broad-based campaigns, it’s about maintaining a strict level of focus through industry-specific and region-specific messaging. On a team level, it’s about ensuring everyone thrives, brings their unique skills to the table, and continues to build a high-performing, modern marketing team.

If you are starting out in this industry, do not get so caught up in routine operational work that you isolate yourself from the market. Be data savvy, master your pipeline metrics, and prioritise customer advocacy. Have direct contact with your users to understand their challenges firsthand. I describe the role of a senior marketing leader in a single word: engagement. It is about creating, sustaining, and deepening the relationships we have with our customers, our internal functions, and our sales teams.”

Join the Conversation: The Ortus Club’s Executive Network

Across Karen’s insights on claiming revenue ownership, abandoning legacy MQL loops for intent-driven MQA frameworks, and architecting regional relevancy, one pattern is clear: these enterprise field challenges cannot be solved in isolation. They require a peer-level perspective and high-trust dialogue that transcends standardised, top-down corporate templates.

Her vision of the “Engagement Director” reflects a broader operational reality: today’s marketing and regional growth heads cannot rely on broad-based outreach to capture a self-directed corporate buyer. The most effective executives, especially those scaling enterprise automation, machine learning, and agentic AI tools across France and South West Europe, actively seek out peer dialogue as a strategic necessity to test their data-led models against reality.

At The Ortus Club, we host curated executive roundtables that bring together senior leaders facing these exact challenges. Step away from the noise of broad, generic campaigns and engage in the kind of open, high-value conversations that align your field execution with measurable sales velocity.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is a Marketing-Qualified Account (MQA) model?

A: An MQA is a B2B operational model that measures engagement and intent at the account level rather than tracking an isolated individual (MQL). By aggregating the digital footprints, content consumption, and web traffic of multiple stakeholders within a single target company, marketing can identify when an entire buying committee is ready for sales engagement.

Q: How does intent data improve B2B marketing efficiency?

A: Intent data monitors online behavioural signals, such as web research patterns, white paper downloads, and event registrations, across the internet. This insight allows field marketers to identify which companies are actively researching specific business challenges, enabling precise account prioritisation and reducing capital waste on cold accounts.

Q: What is the difference between Agentic AI and standard automation?

A: Standard automation follows rigid, predefined rule-based paths (“if-then” workflows) to execute repetitive tasks. Agentic AI features autonomous decision-making capabilities, utilising advanced model reasoning to adapt to complex workflows, parse unstructured data, and handle dynamic enterprise edge cases independently.

Q: Why is pre-event engagement critical for enterprise technology conferences?

A: Because high-level enterprise buyers face severe event fatigue and tight schedules. Launching pre-event initiatives, such as developer hackathons, technical challenges, or closed digital forums, builds organic brand trust and primes target cohorts to engage deeply before they step onto the conference floor.

Q: How do field marketers balance global messaging with local market needs?

A: By exercising regional autonomy over corporate templates. Field leaders leverage local customer advocacy data, regional economic trends, and cultural buying nuances to customise global assets, transforming generic corporate taglines into industry-specific, hyper-focused regional value propositions.