Ask a Marketer series: Inspired Energy’s Danielle Wrench

At The Marketing Pod, we work with in-house marketers across a wide range of industries, and we’re always intrigued by how their roles are so similar in some ways, and yet so different in others. We believe there’s lots we can learn from our fellow marketers, so with our ‘Ask a Marketer’ series we’re hoping to gain some insights that everyone can benefit from.

The first person on our list was Danielle Wrench, Marketing Manager at Inspired Energy. We’ve been working with Danielle for several years now –  across two organisations – so we know her very well, but we still picked up some useful tips from talking to her!

Here’s what Danielle had to say…

Describe your job - what do you do?

I am responsible for the group’s marketing activity with the objective to drive lead generation and customer retention from a multitude of channels. I own the marketing plan and oversee its implementation across campaigns, events, digital and PR. I also manage the marketing team plus agency and media relationships.

What kind of skills do you need to be effective in your role?

I would say it’s important to be organised, able to motivate your team and have a good balance of analytical and creative abilities.

What's been your career highlight so far?

Throughout my career I have been fortunate enough to win several awards and accolades both as an individual and as part of a team, which is great. But I think my ‘career highlights’ are down to the people I work with every day, as they really are a great bunch!

Tell us about a typical working day…

I start my day whenever my newborn decides – usually between 6.30am and 7am! It’s then a battle to get out of the door, drop her off and be at my desk for 8.30am.

First, I check in with the team to make sure everyone is working on the right projects and gauge whether they need any support from me or the wider business. I check for any urgent requests (being a central group function, we get a fair few of these!) and prioritise those, then scan the daily news to check if there’s something we should be commenting on.

I’m usually mid-campaign prep so I spend a good amount of time raking through customer data, proofing copy or briefing designs. I’m also involved in a number of key projects to improve certain processes across the organisation, so I usually attend a meeting to contribute to one of those at some point. At the minute, I’m also helping the team to create new marketing collateral and plan our events and webinar programme.

How do you measure your success?

I measure the success of our activity over a range of metrics that feed into our CRM – reach, new contacts, how far along the sales process a prospect has travelled, deals won, total revenue obtained etc. I measure our teams’ success based on productivity levels, feedback from the wider business, and their overall contribution to the team and commitment to their individually-set KPIs.

What do you love about working in marketing? What do you less enjoy?

I love that every day is different and you can be working on a real variety of projects all at one time. I sometimes get frustrated that colleagues outside the team don’t really ‘get’ marketing and try to use us for admin and fulfilment tasks, rather than more strategic activity.

What are your favourite tools to help you to get the job done?

I use Toggl for measuring my productivity - I’m quite competitive so I love to see how efficient I can be (is that sad?). We also use Trello for managing our collaborative agency projects and Microsoft Teams to manage our own internal projects and communicate with each other across various offices.

What has been the biggest change in marketing that you've witnessed during your career?

There have been so many, but I would say my favourite change is how important content has become! I’m a huge fan of conducting fresh research, delving into data, writing high-quality pieces, promoting them, repurposing content and then disseminating it all over again.

What do you think will be the next big change that marketers should be looking out for?

Although some companies already employ it, I think Artificial Intelligence (AI) will become even bigger. It will help organisations to analyse consumer behaviour and search patterns, as they can use data from social media platforms to understand how customers find their products and services.

What's your top marketing tip for 2020?

Get to grips with your customer! Understand them, know how what and where to sell to them, but make sure you are adding value. Don’t just push anything at them, be clever and make the effort to get to know them so you can tailor and personalise your marketing to them.

Do you have any advice for other marketers who want to work in your sector? 

Don’t do it! Just kidding. The industry I work in is constantly changing and new legislation is always coming in – which is great because it means we always have something to talk about! My advice would be to take note of the influences that are changing around you and be proactive and organised to be the first one with the news.

We’re really grateful to Danielle for sharing her thoughts with us – and as competitive Toggl users ourselves, we don’t think she’s sad in the slightest.

Now we want to know what you think – what industry changes are you most excited about, and how do you measure your success? If Danielle’s answers have given you food for thought, we’d love to hear from you – email us at hello@themarketingpod.co.uk to have your say!