Adoption Is a Team Sport: Aligning Product, Marketing, and Revenue

Welcome to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence.On today’s episode, we’re joined by Wendy Cutting, VP and CTO of Product, Data, and Engineering at HealtheMed, to dig into one of the most important and nuanced challenges in healthcare: the often-fraught relationship between product and marketing. As someone who has navigated this dynamic for more than 20 years in both retail and healthcare organizations, Wendy offers a seasoned, practical perspective on why friction arises between product and marketing—and, crucially, what it takes to break down silos and truly drive adoption and impact.Wendy’s expertise lies in transforming business strategy into scalable healthcare technology, embedding security, compliance, and operational rigor at every stage. She partners deeply with marketing and executive teams, ensuring that every product built aligns with the way it’s positioned and understood in the market. As Sara Payne and Wendy Cutting unpack the tension between product validation and iteration versus marketing’s drive for activation and scale, they explore how data, executive alignment, and cross-functional collaboration are essential to maximizing both innovation and adoption.Together, they look at real-world lessons from retail, practical approaches from healthcare, and actionable strategies for any organization striving to improve collaboration and move as one unified team.Key Takeaways:Data as the Critical Bridge: The recurring theme throughout the discussion is the value of data—particularly the role of dedicated analytics teams as the connective tissue between product and marketing. Rather than relying on product or marketing to own and interpret the data independently, organizations see the most alignment and trust when an objective analytics group manages the data, making it accessible and transparent for all teams ([00:05:30 - 00:06:26]).Roadmap Transparency Drives Alignment: Successful organizations foster collaboration by involving both product and marketing in roadmap planning early and often. This includes openly sharing roadmaps, planning work well in advance (ideally giving marketing a six-month window for larger organizations), and engaging in collaborative quarterly business reviews. Such practices help both sides anticipate needs, plan resources, and adjust tactics to better serve shared goals ([00:08:30 - 00:11:16]).Lessons from Retail: True Customer Focus: Drawing on her background at Best Buy and Target, Wendy Cutting argues that healthcare has much to learn from retail’s customer obsession. In retail, understanding and personalizing to the end user is essential—otherwise, there is no sale. In healthcare, complexity and segmentation often obscure that focus, but those organizations that embrace human-centered design (as in retail) achieve stronger engagement and better results ([00:12:05 - 00:12:44]).Building Trust Through Regular Cross-Functional Meetings: Beyond just process, success also comes down to relationships. Regular, bi-weekly touchpoints between product and marketing leaders—even when there’s little on the agenda—foster trust, friendship, and mutual understanding. This consistency sets the tone for fast pivots, shared wins, and more empathetic collaboration across the board ([00:24:17 - 00:24:39]).Executive Support and a Shared Purpose: Executive alignment is critical: when leadership frames business objectives clearly and everyone is on the same page about ultimate goals, it becomes much easier to resolve tensions and unite product and marketing behind outcomes that matter for both business and customer. Wendy Cutting emphasizes that technology and marketing should always serve people first—not just revenue—by solving what’s genuinely missing in people’s lives ([00:22:14 - 00:22:50]).Thank you for being part of the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. The future of healthcare depends on it.Mentioned in this episode:Health Marketing Collective is Powered by InprelaThe Health Marketing Collective is powered by Inprela: a communications firm built for health brands determined to lead, not follow. We partner with marketing innovators who aren't just chasing attention—they're building movements. Connect with the audiences shaping the future of care and lead the conversations that move your market. Ready to rise above the noise? Visit inprela.com. Let's create something that moves the market.Inprela Communications