Meet A WEXer: Lissa Andrews

The WEX world view for Lissa Andrews recently expanded when she was named the leader of the global marketing team for our enterprise payments group. Part of Corporate Payments, this group handles virtual payments in the travel, media and insurance industries, as well as bank partners. Lissa joined WEX nearly five years ago – moving up from her initial role as a senior marketing manager to team lead, then to manager for North America and most recently to her current global position.

A virtual payment is a B-to-B electronic payment made from one business to another. Lissa explains this complex process with a simple example. When you book a hotel room through Expedia, they collect your credit card information, but do not pass it along to the hotel. Rather, Expedia uses WEX to issue a virtual payment to the hotel to pay for your booking. Lissa notes that companies like Expedia issue thousands of virtual payments every day to pay their hotel suppliers.

“We’ve always had global marketing capabilities, and in the past I’ve worked closely with my colleagues at WEX Europe since we’re essentially marketing the same products and services,” says Lissa. “With this newly structured global team, we now have the opportunity to more efficiently share resources, which will make our work more effective and impactful.”

Building Awareness, Driving Sales

The overall goal for enterprise marketing – to drive leads and revenue – hasn’t really changed since Lissa joined the company. What has evolved, though, are the tools and platforms the marketing team uses to achieve this goal. Content marketing is the most important element of marketing’s work, says Lissa, and it can vary from email campaigns and brochures used at trade shows to blogs, social media content and websites.

Next up in priority for her team is digital marketing – essentially the distribution of content using a variety of platforms. “We’re in a digital age, with people consuming a lot of content online, but at the same time, they’re often overstimulated,” observes Lissa. “Marketing’s job is to break through the clutter using the appropriate delivery channel to engage the prospect – getting the right message to the right person and getting them over to sales when they’re ready for that conversation.”

Lissa manages a global marketing team of five, with two people in the US and three in our London office. Additionally, she works with external PR, creative and digital agencies that help develop and execute marketing programs. Internally, Lissa liaises frequently with our corporate communications group on high-level strategic initiatives such as rebranding and messaging. The entire global marketing team also works in partnership with enterprise payments product and sales colleagues, who provide insight into product development, industry trends and the aspirations and concerns of current and prospective customers.

An Eye to the Future

The new centralized organization for enterprise payments marketing means Lissa will be focused on building her team and getting them to operate in a truly global fashion. She’s already working on a model that allows her team to build expertise in key functions while expanding their delivery across geographies. Lissa is excited to test and tweak that model as they roll it out, with a focus in 2018 on measurement that can help her refine the process and invest in the initiatives that deliver strong results.

“I worked in financial marketing in New York City for close to 15 years before coming here, and what I love about WEX is that you can really feel like you’re delivering value and making a difference,” says Lissa. “At other big payment companies, what you do is not even going to be a drop in the bucket. Here, there’s a huge opportunity to make a difference, and I’m excited by the chance to take marketing to the next level.”