Stefanie Rice, VP of SMB Marketing at OpenText, shares how an operations-focused career shaped her disciplined and data-driven approach to marketing leadership. She explores translating complexity into clarity, aligning GTM teams around shared outcomes, balancing brand and demand, and applying AI thoughtfully, while keeping people, purpose, accountability, and sustainable growth at the center.
Welcome to the interview series, Stefanie. Could you tell us more about yourself and your journey as a marketing leader?
My career has been anything but linear. I started in operations, moved into marketing, and ultimately moved into leading the Cybersecurity SMB Marketing practice at OpenText. That operations foundation has stayed with me and continues to shape my focus on data-driven decision-making, efficiency, and disciplined execution.
A consistent thread throughout my journey has been growing through ambiguity. I’m happiest translating complexity into something simple and actionable. Earlier in my career, that meant leading large-scale digital transformation initiatives. At OpenText, it means navigating a fast-evolving cybersecurity landscape, a complex partner-led ecosystem, and a broad product portfolio. One of the most meaningful opportunities for my team and me has been distilling that breadth into a clear differentiation that resonates with the SMB market.
My leadership philosophy centers on one belief: my job is to make the team successful. Clarity of purpose comes first. With a talented, tenured team, we constantly challenge ourselves. Are we pushing far enough, exploring every opportunity, and leaving no stone unturned in unlocking new growth?
That blend of operational rigor, comfort with complexity, and a people-first leadership approach has shaped the marketer and leader I am today.
What have you found to be the most significant impact of tighter alignment across marketing, sales, product, RevOps, and customer success teams?
Tighter alignment across GTM teams has been one of the biggest drivers of performance. It starts with shared goals and KPIs. When Marketing, Sales, Product, and Customer Success measure success differently, true growth can’t happen. Shared metrics give us a unified direction.
We also look at the entire customer lifecycle, not just our individual swim lanes. Marketing tracks through to deal closure. Product success is measured by adoption and revenue impact, and every team plays a role in retention and expansion. Growth happens when everyone owns the outcome.
Finally, alignment creates speed and accountability. We don’t debate who owns what because we all do. That shared responsibility lets us move faster, remove friction, and deliver a stronger customer experience.
How do you balance long-term brand building with short-term demand generation priorities in your marketing strategy?
Balancing long-term brand building with short-term demand is one of the most nuanced parts of modern marketing. Brand acts as a multiplier. You can’t outspend a weak brand with performance marketing. For us, a brand starts with identity. After years of acquisitions, we’re evolving from a collection of legacy product names into a single, cohesive presence in the market. We need to clearly articulate who we are and why we matter before we ever talk about what we sell, especially with a broad SMB cybersecurity portfolio that requires differentiated storytelling across multiple layers of protection.
At the same time, demand generation fuels the business quarter to quarter. The balance between brand and demand isn’t fixed. It shifts based on revenue pacing, pipeline health, and market conditions. The brand must always remain on, even when demand takes precedence.
How has the rise of AI shaped your overall marketing strategy and how you execute campaigns?
AI hasn’t changed what good marketing looks like, but it’s absolutely changing how fast we can get there. It’s increased our content velocity, particularly when it comes to more personalized messaging, and it’s helping us experiment in ways that weren’t possible before. In cybersecurity, many MSPs are still early on the AI learning curve, so we’re focused not only on building AI into our products but also on supporting them through education and practical enablement.
On a personal level, AI has streamlined many of my most time-consuming tasks, from competitive research and insight synthesis to general communications. It’s also helping me uncover trends and performance insights in new ways. The value, however, still depends on having the right strategic lens. While AI can speed up the work, it can’t choose the right work.
“Marketing tracks through to deal closure. Product success is measured by adoption and revenue impact, and every team plays a role in retention and expansion.”
Can you tell us about your most memorable experience as a marketer?
There hasn’t been a single landmark moment for me. Instead, it’s what our team has collectively accomplished over the past year, a period defined by many meaningful shifts rather than one big transformation.
We rebalanced our focus across brand, demand, and expansion; elevated our digital and web experience; began the journey toward a differentiated, best-in-class partner program; and evolved our brand identity and portfolio messaging for MSPs, all within a fast-moving, complex market.
What I’m most proud of is how the team consistently showed up in a series of micro-moments. Taking on new challenges, executing with discipline, experimenting thoughtfully, pivoting when needed, and continuously improving.
That’s the kind of work that stays with you. It reinforces what I believe most about marketing: great outcomes are built over time, and they’re always a team sport.
As a growth marketer, how do you strike the right balance between hard data and creative gut instinct?
As an operator at heart, I’m tempted to say that data tells you everything you need to know. The reality is that data can take you far, but only up to a point. You can validate a hypothesis through a pilot, gather external feedback, or assemble all the first-party data and partner telemetry you want, but creativity is where marketing truly comes to life.
Data sets the boundaries; creativity fills the space. Data can help you prioritize, sharpen your focus, and pinpoint where optimization is needed. Creativity is what makes storytelling resonate. It’s the difference between being memorable and just being part of the scroll.
Beyond the usual KPIs, which performance indicators do you rely on to uncover deeper insights into marketing impact?
We’re increasingly focused on the KPIs that tell us what will happen, not just what has already happened.
For new business, trial activation and conversion rates stand out, along with SEO health signals like crawl performance and rankings. These are strong indicators of product-market fit. Together, they tell us whether we’re findable in the market and whether our demand efforts are attracting genuine, high-interest intent.
Time to first and second order is also critical. It’s a direct measure of how easy we are to do business with, which is a major decision driver in the SMB partner ecosystem.
Further along the lifecycle, attach rates, product engagement trends, and early churn signals, such as declining usage or missed version updates, help us assess untapped potential and retention risk before it shows up in the financials.
What advice would you give budding marketers preparing to grow in a world shaped by AI, data, and constant innovation?
My biggest advice for new marketers is to start by learning how the business actually works, especially revenue mechanics, partner economics, sales cycles, and conversion math. You can’t shape growth until you understand what drives it.
Second, build breadth before depth. Marketing is an interconnected system, and exposure to brand, demand, ops, product, and channel work gives you the perspective needed to become a truly integrated marketer.
Finally, stay curious and be adaptable. AI is accelerating the pace of innovation, and the best marketers will be the ones who experiment, learn quickly, and apply new tools with sound judgment. AI can help you move faster, but it can’t replace discernment.
About Stefanie Rice
Stefanie Rice is a marketing executive in the SaaS and cybersecurity space, leading SMB marketing at the intersection of operations, strategy, and creativity. With a foundation in Operations and PMO, she brings structure, clarity, and accountability to complex GTM environments. Stefanie is known for translating ambiguity into actionable plans, building scalable systems, aligning cross-functional teams, and driving sustainable growth across brand, demand, and lifecycle marketing.
