Building a New Acquia.com

Hi there. I’m Lynne Capozzi, Chief Marketing Officer here at Acquia. I may be a fresh face on Acquia’s blog, but I’ve been a company veteran for some time. I was Acquia’s first serving CMO in 2009 before leaving in 2011 to pursue my passion for nonprofit work full time.

I returned to Acquia in late 2016 to lead our marketing organization into the next stage of growth. I oversee all global marketing functions, which gives me the opportunity to work with an incredibly talented and motivated team that spans from our headquarters in Boston, to Europe, and even Australia. My colleagues affectionately call my return to Acquia a “boomerang story”.

Around the time I rejoined the company, Acquia updated its mission to deliver “the universal platform for the greatest digital experiences”. Acquia is building the technology that supports business transformation strategy for organizations across the board.

From Nasdaq to Wilson Sporting Goods and Princess Cruises, it’s inspiring to see how our customers are shaping the world with digital. As CMO, I want our own team to live that dream. That’s why I’m excited to announce that we are moving Acquia.com to Drupal 8!

The evolution of Acquia.com

During my first go around as CMO in 2009, the website was primarily used to convert leads and to move them through the funnel. This meant our team spent a lot of time driving webinar registrations and building out nurture campaigns to keep people coming back for more. Like any other emerging startup, we had to be strategic with our resources, and for Acquia this meant being scrappy when it came to our website. As the company grew, so did our investment in our website. Throughout Acquia’s first decade, Acquia.com has seen a few different iterations:

In 2012, Acquia partnered with a marketing agency to develop business-level messaging for the organization. What came out of that rebranding dictated everything from PowerPoint presentations to the redesign of Acquia.com on Drupal 7.

You can see that we made changes to the site over the years, but beyond that, the last time Acquia tackled a replatform was nearly six years ago.The redesign is significant because Acquia.com is one of our company's most valuable marketing tools. Not only is our website the entryway to our products, but it also continues to serve as an important demand generation tool. We know we can create a bigger, better showcase for our products and services, and moving to Drupal 8 is going to get us there.

How are we going to do this?

Some call it eating your own dog food, others prefer to drink their own champagne. No matter how you spin it, the move to Drupal 8 gives us the unique opportunity to live the life of our own customers.

Acquia’s Professional Services team will be owning the project throughout every stage of development, build, and launch. From a marketing standpoint, my team will undergo a full customer journey where we’ll get to experience what it’s like to work with Acquia and Drupal at every touch point. Walking in the shoes of our customers will allow us to better serve their needs.

We are also excited to announce that we’ve tapped partnering digital agency Huge to lead the design of our new Drupal 8 site. Huge supports brands like Pfizer and NBC, and brings the energy and expertise to push us in the right direction. We are very excited to collaborate with their team. Acquia’s Professional Services team will translate Huge’s design work into front-end development. Additionally, Acquia’s PS team will spearhead all development in the back end. For me, it was extremely important that we took advantage of Acquia’s own resources, internal expertise, and products. Today, we have 10 years of experience and improved resources under our belt. It’s a unique combination.

We will be documenting the website redesign on our blog, so consider this post the first of many. You’ll get to meet key players from the Acquia Professional Services, Marketing, and Web teams and hear about their experiences first-hand. This won’t be the last you hear from me, and I’m excited to share more on why a project like this must be top-of-mind for a CMO. We will be reporting from the trenches, and I could not be more excited.

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