In today’s increasingly automated and data-saturated marketing landscape, customer empathy remains one of the most powerful tools a business can leverage. On a recent episode of Performance Delivered, Symphonic Digital’s podcast on modern marketing strategy, Elizabeth Eberle, SVP of Marketing at Spoiler Alert, shared how her team centers the customer experience to drive both product growth and mission alignment.
Spoiler Alert is a B2B SaaS company that helps CPG brands manage excess and short-dated inventory by turning potential write-offs into revenue. Its mission is clear: reduce waste in the supply chain while enabling brands to recover value. But as Eberle explained, fulfilling that mission starts with understanding the people behind the businesses they serve.
Prioritizing the Human Perspective in B2B Marketing
Eberle approaches customer understanding with structure and intent. Upon joining a company, she conducts a listening tour—reviewing sales calls, meeting with customer success teams, and connecting directly with customers to hear, in their own words, what challenges they’re facing.
Rather than rely solely on data dashboards, Eberle looks for what she calls “pattern recognition” in customer feedback. She seeks to understand not just what customers do, but why they do it—and how their experiences with the product influence their satisfaction and loyalty. These insights inform campaign development, product messaging, and brand positioning across the board.
Co-Creating Value Through Case Studies
One example Eberle highlighted was a recent case study collaboration with a buyer at ConAgra. While the deliverable was a traditional success story, the process became much more: a deeper discovery into what motivated the client and how Spoiler Alert’s solution helped them succeed.
Case studies like this serve dual purposes—they build marketing assets while simultaneously strengthening the client relationship and surfacing new strategic insights.
Marketing as a Cross-Functional Connector
At Spoiler Alert, marketing plays a central role in aligning customer expectations with product development. When a new feature underperformed, Eberle’s team worked across departments to uncover the reason—ultimately discovering that the user journey involved too many steps. With this feedback in hand, product teams streamlined the experience, improving adoption.
These efforts illustrate the importance of internal collaboration. Eberle sees marketing as both “translator and glue,” responsible for ensuring that what’s being built reflects what the customer actually needs—and that what’s being marketed resonates clearly and authentically in the market.
When Mission and Customer Goals Intersect
Spoiler Alert operates at the intersection of commerce and sustainability, helping clients recover value from excess inventory while reducing landfill waste. But Eberle emphasizes that the company’s mission never overshadows the needs of its customers.
Instead, Spoiler Alert begins each client engagement by aligning around their liquidation strategy: preferred channels, brand-specific guardrails, pricing thresholds, and buyer alignment. From there, the company works to ensure that its mission—reducing waste and increasing operational efficiency—supports those specific business goals.
Strategic Takeaways for Modern Marketers
Elizabeth Eberle’s approach offers a powerful reminder for marketing and product leaders alike: in both SaaS and traditional industries, human insight should guide strategic execution. Her method combines empathy with data, narrative with structure, and vision with operational precision.
Key insights from the conversation include:
- Listening directly to customers yields more actionable insights than assumptions or models
- Case studies can strengthen relationships and uncover strategic truths
- Marketing should act as an internal unifier, not a siloed function
- Product feedback loops must be built into marketing strategy
- Purpose-driven companies succeed when they align mission with client success
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Intro: This is Performance Delivered Insider Secrets for Digital Marketing Success with Steffen Horst.
[00:00:10] Steffen Horst: In today's episode, we will talk about understanding your customer while being mission-driven. Here to speak with me is a Elizabeth Eberle. She's the SVP Marketing at Spoil Alert. A CPG tech startup that helps CPG companies manage access and short dated inventory for its B2B SaaS platform.
[00:00:29] Elizabeth is a marketing leader with a proven track record of growing revenue, profit, and brands for Fortune 500 companies, B2B, SaaS technology startups, and advertising and design agencies. Currently, she leads the marketing function at spoiler alert and is responsible for driving the man generation.
[00:00:46] Brand strategy and customer engagement for the company's A BM Go to market motion. Prior to joining, spoiler alert, Elizabeth helped marketing leadership roles at several high growth B2B SaaS companies, including VTS. Dear [00:01:00] Path and Doc Fox. Elizabeth, welcome to the show,
[00:01:03] Elizabeth Eberle: Steffen, it's great to be here
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[00:01:05] Thank you for that warm introduction.
[00:01:07] Steffen Horst: Now, before we dive into today's topic. Tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself. How did you get started in your career and what led you to Spoiler alert?
[00:01:17] Elizabeth Eberle: Oh, great. Well, I've always loved marketing from a, I was a little girl growing up in Chicago, and Chicago has a very vibrant advertising community.
[00:01:28] You know, I used to watch advertising on tv. I'm a child of the eighties. And you'd see things like, you know, Wendy's, where's the beef commercials or Coke? This is it. Or you know, it just some wonderful advertising and I just loved talking about it with my parents over the dining room table. My mother was a copywriter for Marshall Fields.
[00:01:50] And I just really grew to love marketing and coming out of Northwestern in Chicago, I went into the vibrant ad community in [00:02:00] Chicago and fell in love right away. So, you know, I think what I love at the root of all marketing is that it starts with the consumer or the customer, and it takes a lot of listening and empathy to understand what makes them tick and ultimately what propels them to buy.
[00:02:16] So using both that human empathy and understanding to then translate it into marketing and business strategies is really what, what drew me in and keeps me here.
[00:02:27] Steffen Horst: Interesting. So on today's topic, how do you keep the human front of mind at a tech driven company?
[00:02:34] Elizabeth Eberle: Well, I love that you bring up the term human and not just consumer or customer, because at the end of the day, particularly in B2B marketing, where I really spend most of my time now.
[00:02:44] You are talking to a human and it's easy to forget that. And it's easy to think, oh, I have this list of customers and I'm gonna go after dumpy dump customer and talk to, you know, it sounds like you're talking to a building almost. We really have to think [00:03:00] about what makes us tick. You know, what is it that's gonna really be insightful?
[00:03:05] You know, beyond just who your ideal customer profile is with their firmographics. It's like how do you get into the psychographics and you know, understand the actual human you're selling to and who will be using the technology is key. So. What I like to do is keep that end human, consumer, or customer in mind.
[00:03:25] And the first thing I do when I start at a company is I ask customer success to hook me up with, you know, three customers who are willing to speak with me, and preferably I'd like to get in person and when I can talk to them and see how they're using our solution. What's working, what's not? What pain is it really solving, you know, or a jump on Gong.
[00:03:47] Gong is an amazing tool that records all of our sales conversations, our customer success implementations, and just try to look for that pattern recognition over and over of how, in the customer's words, in the [00:04:00] terms. What is it that is in their day to day, what is it that can make their day that much more efficient or easier?
[00:04:08] And really listen and understand that and make sure we know that at the end of the day we're talking to a person, not just a company.
[00:04:16] Steffen Horst: Yeah. So what do you do with that information that you collect from these kind of interviews?
[00:04:22] Elizabeth Eberle: Yeah, I think it's really important to sit down on these listening tours and say.
[00:04:28] Okay, what were the insights we gathered? And when I think about insights, it's like using their words. So how did customer, you know, bill, if you're talking to Bill, how did Bill articulate the problem and really get, you know, write that down, but also bounce that off of other people within the company.
[00:04:45] Like, have you heard this over and over again? Is this really an insight or is this really a pain point that comes up over and over? And then making sure that those insights are brought into campaign briefs. They're brought into, you know, a document that I like [00:05:00] to bring to every organization is what is our corporate brand strategy and positioning, not just product, but corporation.
[00:05:08] And, you know, making sure that that comes across in all of our strategic documents so that when we go to build messaging and positioning, it comes out in the articulation of who we are, what we do, and how we bring value to the customer.
[00:05:23] Steffen Horst: Interesting. And do you add onto that? Because these conversations are obviously kind of about the problems, how they perceive their product and everything else.
[00:05:31] As you are a SaaS company, there's a platform there that customers use. It's part of the conversation also to look at how they move through your solution and whether there are certain barriers or hurdles they might have in using the platform correctly or to its fullest extent.
[00:05:48] Elizabeth Eberle: Oh, for sure. I mean, I love getting in touch with users to see how they're actually using it, because we, in theory, can come up with this is the customer journey and here's how the consumer, or here's how the [00:06:00] customer or the user is using it.
[00:06:02] But then even when you look at your own numbers, you can oftentimes see that certain features or functionality that you thought were just off the charts gonna be the best next thing since sliced bread aren't actually getting utilized. And so that's another place where marketing comes in is first to understand.
[00:06:17] What are the barriers? Actually, I just got off a phone call with our product and engineering team doing Zoom out. We do these on monthly, which is super helpful. And they were saying, Hey, you know, we launched this feature, but the adoption's been, you know, only at 10%. We've gotta get this up, and we're digging into why.
[00:06:32] And there were just too many clicks to get to the actual utilization. So. You know, we've seen that talking to our customers, watching them use it and say, wow, that does take too many clicks to get to the end result. Is there a way we can streamline and take the friction out of the process? Yeah. And so having that, both the data that shows that we're not getting the utilization we need, but also that in-person or you know, day in the life type, or one-to-one relationship that we have with our customers, we [00:07:00] can get to those root causes so that we can ultimately get to.
[00:07:03] A product that's used more on a day-to-day basis?
[00:07:06] Steffen Horst: No. You gave already kind of two examples of how you gain insights. What are other ways you gain insights, empathy, and understanding of your customer?
[00:07:15] Elizabeth Eberle: One of the ways that I've built rapport and also greater understanding with my customers is to do case studies, and it's actually a win-win for both Spoiler Alert or the SaaS companies that I've worked had the privilege of working with before, you know, is really get to know that customer, but say, Hey, would you be on the record open to having a conversation with me?
[00:07:36] Having us turn it into a case study. I actually just finished up one with a wonderful user at ConAgra, uh, Terry Rizla, and you know, by the end we were not only close friends, but she was taking me through all of, you know, why she wanted to. Go into this line of work and what drives her from a, you know, values and mission perspective and you [00:08:00] know, that really getting to understand her as a holistic person, but also having this great case study for both spoiler alert and for her is another way that you can really, you know, get to know your customer and get to share the wins together.
[00:08:14] Steffen Horst: Interesting. So how do you incorporate the insights you glean from your customer and match their needs to your company's mission?
[00:08:22] Elizabeth Eberle: Yep. You know, I'll first start with spoiler alert and what we do. So really we turn write offs into revenue. And our mission is not only to help our customers earn more revenue and decrease the cost of excess inventory, but we really wanna keep waste out of landfills and help companies meet and exceed their sustainability goals.
[00:08:41] So when speaking with customers, it's just really important to understand where they're coming from, what their needs are. And so the coolest part is that we often, I'd say 90 to a hundred percent of the time, share the same goals. We want to take this some great product, so consumer packaged goods, if you're [00:09:00] innovating or if you're making sure your service levels are high enough so that your retailers can get your product, you're gonna have access.
[00:09:07] It's just a fact of doing business, but a lot of this excess is great, wonderful product. It just needs to find a home. And so. Really what we all wanna keep it out of dump and donate, which is what we call it in the industry. And so for, we both together are mutually looking for the same mission and goal, which is preventing waste.
[00:09:29] And so we do it by using our technology that powers and optimizes B2B commerce. Of this opportunistic CPG inventory. And the cool part is we have this network of 300 buyers in the value and discount channel that are really excited about this excess inventory. And then I can tell you on the consumer side, in shopping a lot of these value chains myself, it's really fun.
[00:09:53] It's like a treasure hunt experience. And so you get to go. Yeah, I mean, actually my 13-year-old daughter and I, [00:10:00] we absolutely love going to Ollie's. And it's so much fun. We find all kinds of great products that haven't reached their full shelf life. And so it's like, why not go there and find a new product that you love?
[00:10:13] And what's great I think, for our customers is you can get exposed to a whole new buyer, not only our buyer network, but a whole new consumer that can also look for your brand again in other retail channels.
[00:10:26] Steffen Horst: Yeah. Interesting question. How do. The insights that you get from your customer and match that with the company's mission?
[00:10:36] Elizabeth Eberle: Well, I'll go back to my case study with Terry Rizla from ConAgra during our chat, and I asked her about, Hey, you know, how did you get in? How did you become the sales operation manager for distressed foods? And she said, you know, I sort of fell into it and I've done it for 20 years because I found my calling and.
[00:10:54] You know what I found there is the mutual insight of this work is so important, [00:11:00] both from spoiler alerts angle, but our customer angle. Because you know, our hope is that we would never actually need to use spoiler alert, if you think about it. We don't wanna have excess waste. We don't wanna put stuff into landfill.
[00:11:13] And so by taking that insight. I can take that back and we can bring that story to life to find those mutual wins between our company and our customer's mission and their insight of what makes them tick and what makes them, what motivates them, which is to have these shared goals.
[00:11:33] Steffen Horst: Okay. Interesting. Are there any areas where the mission outweighs the customer needs or vice versa?
[00:11:39] Elizabeth Eberle: I truly believe at the end of the day, our number one priority with our customers is to align with their internal strategies and needs. And so I don't think our mission should ever outweigh the customer needs. I. The good news here is that their needs and our mission are very much aligned, so it's [00:12:00] really important.
[00:12:00] What I've seen with our customers is that alignment when we're onboarding them at the early stages, is to get to know what their liquidation strategies are. So, you know, we start off with what are the configurations and guardrails you wanna put up? How often do you wanna sell inventory into the value or discount channel?
[00:12:19] What items are you comfortable? Which brands make sense to go where so that we can make sure that we are delivering what their goals are and what their values are for their brands. And which buyers do you think align strategically with what your liquidation strategy needs are? Finally, pricing. Is there a place where you wanna, you know, where should we stop on price?
[00:12:42] And so once we are able to align on that strategy and we make sure that we put the customer needs and desires first, it still aligns with our mission and what we're trying to do because we know they're gonna be more successful. And when they win, we win the value channel and customer wins. [00:13:00] You know, that's really to me, the trifecta of how we put that strategy together and then how we can deliver on it.
[00:13:06] Steffen Horst: Yeah. So how can we as marketers, bring our customers on board with the mission? Because quite often it's like something we generate as a business, right? Right. What our mission is, and then we hope it resonates with our target audience. So how do you go about that?
[00:13:23] Elizabeth Eberle: Yeah, I mean marketing, no matter what company you work for, what mission you're driving for, what outcome it really is storytelling.
[00:13:32] And so that's where I get a lot of, first of all, it's the best part of my job is getting to talk to customers and tell their stories on how they've been successful using our platform and our solution. But I think it's how we tell the real stories with empathy by creating just authentic and engaging content.
[00:13:51] That aligns the customer's values, but also stays true to who we are. And so I'll give you an example. Not one that I've ever worked on, but Patagonia, I think, does [00:14:00] this just masterfully, who doesn't love Patagonia? It's almost cliche to bring them up as a marketer, but it's hard not to, particularly since.
[00:14:07] If they're in the business to save our home planet, which resonates obviously with us back at spoiler alert. But it's really woven into every aspect of their brand, right? And so like I used to get, when my children were young, I used to get lots of great Patagonia gifts, but they'd outgrow the clothing soap too quickly.
[00:14:23] But how beautiful that on their, there's a little tag they put in the clothing that says, this belongs to, and you can write your name, but then there's a second line and it says, hand me down. I mean that really is about the reuse, recycle, renew piece of their mission of how we can continue to use these products over and over and not just put them into the landfill.
[00:14:44] But you know, that's where, you know, I think the storytelling of how people use your product, the value they get, I. When you tell the story correctly, the mission will come through the stories, and that's another way to bring your customers on board, you know, [00:15:00] with your own mission, is when they see the value they're getting, not only by working with you in a for-profit situation, however it is doing good in the world at the same time.
[00:15:10] Steffen Horst: Yeah. Can you share a time when truly understanding the customers changed the strategic direction of a product or campaign?
[00:15:18] Elizabeth Eberle: Yeah. I was thinking back to some, I had a couple great stories for my career, but one that really sticks out was when I had the opportunity to work at General Mills on the Fiber One Snacks brand.
[00:15:30] If you think about Fiber One, when it was just the cereal, it was kind of your grandpa's cereal for digestive health. And then the snacks team came out with some really great tasting, you know, chocolate bars and brownies and cheesecake. I was actually lucky enough to launch Fiber One Cheesecake And Boy was that delicious.
[00:15:49] But the evolution there, and really the insight is that Fiber One evolved into more of a weight management brand. And it was no longer for digestive [00:16:00] health. And when we were doing a lot of in-home work and listening tours with our consumers, what we heard is a lot of dieters, just really bored and sick of eating carrots and celery and rice cakes and just how boring that was.
[00:16:12] And I don't want to eat. That was the insight. But with Fiber one, what came out was that, wow, this is something, you know, the fiber one brownie at 90 calories, that's something I really want to eat. It tastes great, it fills me up and it's my, the dieter's secret weapon. And so that completely changed our campaign.
[00:16:31] We actually brought men into the mix, so we were marketing to men and came out with some great over the top. Wonderful advertising that really brought that insight to life.
[00:16:41] Steffen Horst: So what role does internal alignment play in ensuring customer understanding and mission stay central across the team?
[00:16:50] Elizabeth Eberle: Internal alignment is key.
[00:16:51] I mean, when you think about a tech startup or even a large CPG company, it's so important to make sure you continue to have that [00:17:00] consumer, that customer, and that human at the center of everything you do. Because it's really easy to get enamored or in love with a piece of technology, and you get into the feature and functionality of it.
[00:17:10] Just to give an example, but what's so important, and I think where marketing plays an incredibly important role is really that glue cross-functionally among so many different organizations. You know, I often calls the glue and also the translator to the market. And the glue is really among sales, the product team, customer success.
[00:17:30] Then ultimately the market. I think the function of product marketing is so critical, particularly in a SaaS startup because their role is really to bring the market to the product, but also the product to the market. And so you have to have this alignment and you have to ensure this customer empathy and alignment is there so that what ultimately bring to the market, whether it's new products, new features, or talking more about values and out.
[00:17:56] The value that the customer and the consumer is getting and the outcomes, [00:18:00] not just what it is and what it does and how cool it's, and so really needing to make sure that you have those insights brought back to your cross-functional teams. And that really lands and is squarely on marketing and a huge role in making sure that the company is successful.
[00:18:18] Steffen Horst: So when you launch a SaaS product, right, and then you know you have a mission that you're following and the the product is supposed to kind of support that mission and you start to collect feedback from your customers and you realize that either you are not shooting the right direction or it needs to kind of be adjusted in a certain way, how do you go about those situation and ensuring that you're still staying true to your mission?
[00:18:47] Elizabeth Eberle: So it's, you're getting feedback from the market. It's not quite hitting and so how do you go back? How do you go back and ensure
[00:18:54] Steffen Horst: Yeah, exactly.
[00:18:55] Elizabeth Eberle: Yeah.
[00:18:56] Steffen Horst: And then basically adjust the product and because sometimes that might take you [00:19:00] a little bit away from your mission potentially.
[00:19:02] Elizabeth Eberle: Yeah. Well first of all, I think it happens all the time.
[00:19:06] I think this is not a rare thing, and oftentimes, you know, I was very lucky early in my career I worked at a company called ideo Product Development, and one of our theories or one of our missions was. Fail quickly to succeed sooner. And you know, a lot of times you do wanna get things into market and learn, but then you have to be able, you know, have the humility to come back and redirect when your customer or your consumer says, look, this isn't quite right.
[00:19:32] And so it's really important that you have those feedback mechanisms. So, you know, example here at Spoiler alert is. We set the strategy, we start to go into market and start selling some of the excess inventory. But there's a huge important third stage to this, which is the ongoing feedback loop and data that we get to see what's actually working or not working.
[00:19:52] 'cause maybe some of the guardrails are a little bit off, or maybe there are certain features or functionality you're not using to their full degree. So it's [00:20:00] just really important to keep those feedback loops, particularly with the function of customer success and working with product and being open to the feedback so that you can go and course correct as necessary.
[00:20:11] Steffen Horst: Yeah.
[00:20:11] Elizabeth Eberle: A lot of great innovation comes from customer feedback, particularly in early stage SaaS startups. I've absolutely seen it where either new use cases come on, so there's an opportunity for that market, but yet the product doesn't quite fit yet. And so it's really important as the marketing leader or marketing team to be able to listen to those customer needs and insights part and see if it's a big enough opportunity.
[00:20:36] And then really come with the requirements that they need back to the product team to see if it's worth the investment to build that and then go after that market.
[00:20:44] Steffen Horst: Is there a timeframe you wait before you start making adjustment to your product?
[00:20:50] Elizabeth Eberle: I think you can tell within the first three to four weeks.
[00:20:54] How that product is doing. If it's a pure launch, you can see pretty quickly within one [00:21:00] to two weeks if you're getting any traction on the marketing. And then I think if it's a feature add-on, you can see with your current customer base within three to four weeks if they're starting to either adopt or use it.
[00:21:11] Or if they're having any trouble, it'll come pretty quickly and loud and clear from current customers if it's not working or if it's too difficult to use or if it's not value add. So I think within the first month, you're pretty much, you're gonna know whether you've got a winner or if you need to make some adjustments in order to really hit the nail on the head for your market.
[00:21:33] Steffen Horst: Okay. Well, Elizabeth, thank you for joining me on the performance of our podcast and sharing your knowledge on understanding your customers while being mission driven. If people want to find out more about you, about Spoiler alert, how can they get in touch?
[00:21:48] Elizabeth Eberle: Well, I'd love for you to visit spoiler alert.com, or you can look up Elizabeth Eberly on LinkedIn or our Spoiler Alert Company page on LinkedIn.
[00:21:59] Steffen Horst: Perfect. [00:22:00] Well, as always, we'll leave that in the show notes. Thanks everyone for listening. If you like the performance, the word podcast, please subscribe to us. And leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast application. If you wanna find out more about Symphonic Digital, you can visit us@symphonicdigital.com or follow us on X at Symphonic hq.
[00:22:18] Thanks again and see you next time.
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