Winning Digital Commerce with Smarter Product Experiences | Julie Marobella, CPO at Salsify

AI is rewriting the rules of digital commerce—how people browse, buy, and engage. What does it take for your brand to stand out and move fast without falling through the cracks?

In this thought-provoking interview, Julie Marobella, Chief Product Officer at Salsify, shares exclusive insights on how brands can deliver stellar AI shopping experiences powered by high-quality product content.

Please walk us through your experience in product marketing and the top highlights as Salsify’s Chief Product Officer.

I’ve been leading Product teams—product management, UX, and product marketing—for almost 15 years now. Before that, I was a product manager and held a bunch of GTM roles, including sales and pre-sales. These days, I also lead Engineering (and have in the past), but at my core, I still think of myself as a GTM-focused product leader. That lens has always shaped how I approach building products.

We can build the best feature in the world, but if it doesn’t solve a real problem or create value for customers, it doesn’t mean much. What I’m most proud of is how our Product and Engineering teams have really developed deep empathy for our users, understanding what they need to be more efficient in their day-to-day operations and ultimately hit their business goals.

Why should brands using separate PIM and DAM solutions opt for Salsify’s Product Experience Management (PXM) platform?

Brands operate in a multi-channel world where every retailer, marketplace, and direct-to-consumer site has its own set of demands, and those demands are only growing with the rise of AI-driven commerce and shopper expectations for personalized, contextual experiences. To keep up, brands need to create and optimize product content that’s fast, flexible, and tailored to each channel, while still keeping core data like ingredients, dimensions, and materials accurate and well-governed.

If brands are using separate PIM and DAM systems, it’s hard to keep everything in sync, and even harder to move fast. Salsify PXM brings product information, digital assets, and channel syndication into a single platform, so teams can respond to changing market needs fast without sacrificing control or consistency.

How does Salsify enable brands to tackle today’s high-volume, high-competition digital commerce ecosystem?

Salsify helps brands thrive in today’s high-volume, high-competition digital commerce world by giving them the tools to move fast, stay consistent, and win across every channel. Brands can centralize product content, streamline updates, and push accurate, enriched content to all their selling destinations – from a single platform. As commerce grows more complex with constant content changes, evolving retailer requirements, and rising shopper expectations, Salsify enables brands to keep pace.

A key part of that is our automation and workflow engine – it’s fully integrated and brands use it to drive the simplest to the most complex processes across their business. We are integrating AI throughout the platform, so all of these capabilities will only be accelerated.

How is AI ramping up e-commerce competition? What features does Salsify offer to help brands scale effectively?

AI is reshaping the way people discover and buy products—and it’s happening faster than we think. Just the other day, my 17-year-old son sat next to me, opened ChatGPT, and had a full conversation about what shoes to wear with his navy pinstripe suit. He talked color, style, and sole types—debating options like he was chatting with a personal stylist. That moment captured the shift we’re all living through: shopping is becoming conversational, personalized, and powered by AI.

We’re seeing this everywhere—from Amazon’s and Walmart’s AI shopping assistants to OpenAI and Perplexity’s agentic shopping. The common thread? The way we as consumers discover products is changing. It’s moving beyond static search to much more dynamic product experiences. At Salsify, our mission is to “make every product experience matter” and in this AI-powered commerce landscape, that means helping brands deliver accurate, high-quality content at every touchpoint. Because all of these AI shopping experiences are reliant on great product data.

In what ways does Salsify PXM help emerging retailers create platform differentiation against e-commerce giants?

Salsify helps emerging retailers stand out by making it easy to onboard high-quality, brand-approved content, enabling them to rapidly expand their product catalog without the manual overhead of supplier follow-ups or content quality checks. It also gives them access to rich product data and context they can feed into their own AI models to power personalized shopping experiences. This allows them to compete on experience and agility, not just price.

What values does the Salsify platform provide to sales and revenue teams?

The biggest way Salsify helps sales and revenue teams is that we drive growth by making it faster and easier to get products to market, expand into new channels, and keep everything retail-ready from day one. The platform ensures high-quality, consistent product content needed to boost conversion and reduces returns by setting clear shopper expectations. It also simplifies compliance with major retailers like Amazon and Walmart, so you're not losing sales due to content issues. The built-in analytics and insights also help teams prioritize where to focus and identify revenue-driving opportunities.

How do you accommodate the needs of different functions—marketing, sales, product, and revenue—into your product development approach?

We accommodate the needs of different functions by starting with empathy for our customers, their users, and the real business challenges they’re trying to solve. It’s not just about roles like marketing or sales; we also consider things like digital maturity and technical comfort. That helps us get really clear up front on who we’re building for and what problem we’re solving. From there, ongoing feedback is key. We involve customers early—during discovery, in prototyping, and throughout development—so we’re constantly validating and adjusting. Our beta and pilot programs help us get new capabilities into customers’ hands quickly, and we’re lucky to have an incredible group of users who give us honest, thoughtful input that shapes the product every step of the way.

What groundbreaking digital shifts do you see happening in the next five years? How do you plan to advance Salsify’s product capabilities to address the same?

As I mentioned earlier, AI is going to completely transform how people discover, evaluate, and buy products. At Salsify, we’re aligning our entire product strategy around this shift, with a focus on AI, automation, and data analytics. We’re building capabilities that not only help our customers move faster and work smarter but also power more dynamic, personalized, and intelligent product experiences across every channel.