Personalization, Profit & the CFO: Scaling Martech Engines with Eloise Gillespie
About this episode
Eloise Gillespie discusses the balance of personalization and business viability in martech.
"Personalization is finding that balance — you can give customers everything they want, but it doesn't make the business happy. True personalization is finding the perfect balance." – Eloise Personalization only works when the infrastructure beneath it is built for business reality, not hype. In this episode, Jacqueline sits down with Eloise Gillespie, Associate Director of Personalization and Martech at Optus, to unpack what it actually takes to make AI and personalization deliver at scale. Eloise brings hard-won experience from telecom, wagering, and hospitality, including managing a nine-figure bet budget and building customer-level optimization engines that won CFO approval by anchoring every decision in margin, ROI, and commercial viability. They cover the infrastructure work that must happen before AI can deliver value, why treating data as a product changes everything, and how to make personalization credible to finance teams. If you're done with quick fixes, this one is for you. Timestamps 01:19 — The biggest bet: betting on yourself 04:14 — How Salesforce Marketing Cloud changed everything 08:45 — Why LTV is dead (or at least overrated) and what metric actually matters…
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