A Day in the Life of a CRM Executive

Recent Graduate, Sophie Ogle, has given us some insight into what it’s like to work as a CRM Executive at Manchester retail giant N Brown. In this fast-paced role, she has learnt a number of new skills and is kindly sharing this invaluable knowledge with us which any budding CRM Executive will find beneficial!

What attracted you to your new role?
I would say the main thing that attracted me to my new role was the company. I had heard a lot about N Brown due to them owning a lot of famous brands which are very diverse in nature. I knew there would be a lot of opportunity to progress and gain experience in such a large and varied company. The main thing that attracted me to CRM is that it involves both creative and technical elements. It’s fast-paced due to being involved in trading, but also provides a fun, creative outlet.

What aspects of your job do you enjoy the most?
My favourite part of my job is definitely working on homeware. I am part of the Jacamo CRM team, but I also work on Home Essentials and High & Mighty. I enjoy working on home as it is fun to work with different teams and, as it is a smaller brand, I have more choice as to what I want to push on email and have the opportunity to pull together the email plan myself. Plus, I love home shopping!

What is the day-to-day for a CRM Executive?
In CRM, every day can be different. A massive part of my role is producing emails, which includes:

Briefing – getting your idea down on paper of how you want the email to look, what you want it to say and what images you want to use, then submitting it to our designers.

Getting prepared - When waiting for the email to be designed, we will start pulling together any dynamic content needed, links to go in the email, set up the campaign on our email software and do anything we can to get prepared for when we get the creative work back.

Amendments - When we see the first concept, there is an amendments process where we will edit until we are happy, then my manager will give it the final ok and I’ll ask the designer to code it.

Building - When we have the email back, we will add the links into the code, upload the content into the email software, then add any dynamic content (e.g. offers for credit customers, etc).

Scheduling - We will then proof the email until we are happy it’s perfect (we can be quite picky!) Then we’ll schedule to send it at the optimum time for the most opens and highest conversion.

This is the main part of my job, but alongside this, I have a whole host of other responsibilities. As I mentioned, I undergo this process for Home Essentials and High & Mighty too. We have to manage the email plan, attend selling meetings so we are aware of what is going on on-site and with product releases. We are also in charge of setting up push notifications for the Jacamo app and creating discount codes. We are responsible for reporting on all of this too.

Things are changing all the time which is the nature of trading, and sometimes we can be asked to get an email out within a couple of hours or set up discount codes immediately to help drive performance if we’re not having a great day on the site. Our email plan gets changed almost daily, and sometimes we are sending emails every day of the week. It can be hard to keep up sometimes!

What do you find the most challenging at work?
I think the most difficult part of my roles is juggling 3 brands at once. As much as I enjoy how fast-paced my job is, sometimes it can be a little overwhelming. Trying to keep up with what’s happening on-site, changes to the selling plan, meetings about different brands and managing the email plans for Home Essentials and High & Mighty, when Jacamo should be my main focus can be intense!  Things can get stressful at peak times too, Black Friday and Cyber Monday were crazy!

What type of person is best suited to this role?
I would say the ideal candidate for a CRM role is someone with strong technical and analytical skills, but with a creative flair. Also, good communication skills and enjoying working with others is vital, you need to communicate between all different areas of marketing. We work mostly with our eCommerce team, but we have to collaborate with brand, design, social and PR, graphic designers and CRM teams from other brands too.

How did you know this would be the right position for you?
I think I possess a similar skill set to the one highlighted above. Some days I really enjoy getting into the numbers and looking into how best to optimise our emails, and some days it’s nice to just make things look pretty! I really enjoy working in CRM and can definitely see myself continuing to follow this career path.

Top tips for someone trying to get into a Marketing role:
If you are interested in pursuing a marketing role, I would definitely suggest:

1. Really thinking about what your skill set is and what marketing roles your skills lend themselves to.

2. Looking at job roles which you’re interested in, and ensure you’re including examples of what they’re asking for in your cover letter and interviews.

3. If you’re looking for an entry-level role, don’t just apply for specific jobs, drop your CV into talent pools for companies you’re interested in working for, that’s how I got my role!

4. Make sure to get as much work experience as you can if you’re looking for an entry-level role too. I would say, in my interview for N Brown, I talked 80% about my experience in the industry and 20% about my qualifications. Experience really is key in a competitive job market.

A huge thanks to Sophie for sharing this with us! Are you looking to find a role in CRM? See what we've got here! 

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