Hootsuite has appointed Elina Vilk as Chief Marketing Officer Vilk was previously Chief Marketing Officer at WooCommerce. Vilk fills the position vacated by Maggie Lower, who left the company in April.
Vilk previously worked in marketing leadership positions at Facebook, PayPal, eBay and Yahoo. Vilk joined an executive leadership team that comprises 75% of women, an exception within the industry. She will report direct to CEO Irina Novoselsky.
Novoselsky commented, “As I looked for our next CMO, Elina stood out for her expertise in harnessing the power of social to glean insights into the needs, wants and pain points throughout the customer’s journey. With that she builds authentic relationships that drive revenue and through her role will help guide our customers to do the same.
“Our audience is 35 times larger than that of our competitors — marketers trust Hootsuite to be their guide to the wild world of social. I am thrilled to welcome Elina to the nest to continue to provide our customers with what they need to innovate on social.”
Vilk commented, “The future of marketing is relationships – and in our increasingly digital world, where better to forge those relationships than on social. I’m truly invigorated to be joining Hootsuite at this unique time when the true value of social for businesses and brands has only just started to be realised. I look forward to driving even more value and strengthening those relationships for and with our customers.”
Vilk has over two decades of marketing experience and will bring a customer approach to the role. According to the release, she takes a design thinking approach “using proven methodologies that harness the brainpower of the collective, bringing to the forefront deep empathy, insights and customer driven innovation.”
Vilk was also recently quoted in a blog where she noted, “Having a deep knowledge and understanding of who customers are, where they are coming from, and their behavior on and off the site all help inform how and where to best serve customers.”
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Hootsuite has gone through several leadership changes in 2023. The company appointed Jessica Hartigan as Chief Revenue Officer and Ellen Terchila as Chief Customer Officer in April following the appointment of Irina Novoselsky as CEO in January. Novoselsky is building out a leadership team.
With Vilk in place, Hootsuite should now start to reveal more details of the strategy that its new CEO is putting in place. As Novoselsky joined the company and went through a third round of layoffs, it will be interesting to see how the company reinvigorates itself.
