Vanessa Zambrano Polania, a Field Marketer at fintech startup Cobre, draws on her experience transitioning from sales to marketing at SAP. She shares her strategy for creating high-value events by “connecting the dots,” why marketers must take accountability for business impact, and why AI is an opportunity for today, not tomorrow.
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Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
- Create High-Value Events by “Connecting the Dots.” Listen to the market and your sales team, then align their needs with your company’s value proposition to create an irresistible agenda.
- A Marketer’s Core Responsibility is Accountability. Go beyond the creative work and ensure every action you take is tied to a clear and measurable business impact.
- The Future is AI-Driven, and It Starts Now. Embrace AI not as a future trend but as a present-day tool, integrating it into every part of your daily workflow to be more effective.
Could you please tell us a little bit about yourself and your role at Cobre?
My name is Vanessa, I’m from Colombia, and I currently work in field marketing at Cobre. Cobre is a Colombian fintech startup focused on B2B payments, providing local and international instant payment solutions.
Can you tell us a bit more about your ICP at Cobre?
We have three main Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs). First, we want to be the fintech for the fintechs, so they are our main target. We also work with banks, as they are necessary partners for building our financial technology in every country we operate in. Finally, we work with enterprises, aiming to be the go-to B2B payments platform for them in Colombia and across Latin America.
Can you tell us about your background and how you got into marketing?
My degree is in International Business Management, and I started my career in sales, working in India for the Latin American and Spanish markets. When I came back to Colombia, I joined SAP. My dream was to get back into a pure sales role, but at SAP, I was given the opportunity to move into marketing, leading key accounts for the Colombian market.
I loved it and began building my career in marketing there, eventually moving to manage Central America and the Caribbean. After my time at a huge company like SAP, I joined Cobre, a startup, which has been a very different and exciting journey. That’s how I jumped from sales to marketing.
What marketing tactics have worked best so far for engaging audiences and generating leads?
We use many tactics, but the main ones are our own and third-party events, strategic partnerships that help us position our brand in specific industries, and various customer engagement strategies.
Can you share an example of a particularly successful event or engagement piece you’ve hosted?
We recently launched a 360-degree campaign around “Bre-B,” a new instant P2P payment system being launched by Colombia’s central bank. Cobre will be the first fintech to work with this system, so we built a major announcement around it.
The campaign started with a teaser phase, followed by a large launch event with over 100 attendees, including key industry figures and directors from our clients. During the event, we made the big announcement. This was supported by a major press strategy, with appearances on national TV news and in newspapers. For our international clients who couldn’t attend, we hosted a webinar in Spanish and English, followed by a detailed blog post.
It was a huge success because we covered so many channels and had strong internal alignment between our technical, sales, and marketing teams. We generated over 10 hot leads from the event, and now we have hundreds of clients and prospects asking about how “Bre-B” will work with Cobre.
How do you measure an event’s ROI at Cobre?
It’s a challenge, because sometimes the impact is instant—a client closes a deal right after an event—and sometimes it takes multiple touchpoints over time.
We start by setting pre-event objectives, it could be a specific number of leads or brand positioning. During the invitation process, we align closely with the sales team to ensure we are bringing the right people to the table. After the event, it requires a lot of follow-up—sometimes it can be a bit annoying to chase the sales team for updates on each client, but it’s the only way to ensure our events are creating a real business impact.
What are the most significant challenges you face when hosting events?
The most important and challenging thing is to create a good agenda that adds value. Our clients receive invitations to so many events, so they are very selective. They will only attend if they know your event will be valuable.
To do this, I focus on connecting the dots. I listen to the market to understand their needs, I listen to my sales team to understand their challenges, and I know our company’s value proposition. For example, everyone in Colombia is talking about “Bre-B” right now. Our sales team has an offer related to it. So, I connect these dots and create an event around that topic. This provides value to clients, supports the sales team, and generates new business opportunities.
As an experienced field marketer, what career advice would you give to anyone starting in the marketing industry?
My advice is short: take accountability. The creative parts of marketing—creating campaigns, ads, videos, podcasts—are fun, and we love to do them. But we need to go beyond that. We must ensure that every action we take in marketing has a measurable impact on the business. This is a challenge, but it’s what we need to be taken seriously from the moment we start creating.
What do you believe is the biggest opportunity for field marketers today that may not have been available in the past?
The biggest opportunity is to learn and implement AI. I believe the future of marketing is 100% AI-driven. This is not just a future trend; the tools are available right now. We need to start adding AI to every single part of our daily routine—from creating summaries of our meetings and writing great copy to managing all the operational work we have. I think that will be a game-changer for us.
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