It may be cliché but doing great work can pay off. It might not be instantly, it might be in a big way or in a little way. It could honestly just be self-satisfying.
I have seen what can happen when good work gets noticed and want to share some of my experience.
I started a job relatively soon after college for a company and industry I knew nothing about taking a role I wasn’t even sure about. It was a role that offered a potentially better career than the current role I had, writing product descriptions for a large craft retailer.
While the job description and most of the job duties didn’t interest me much, I did my best to get invested. About seven months or so into my role, my duties increased and I took on the role of coordinating the promotional calendar. What offers or products would we feature and when for the ecommerce store. This part of my job was challenging. I had to do my best to get 20 mostly males on the same page for what promotions we would run each month and agree to it.
Overtime, I got the hang of it and our meetings went from arguments to a streamlined and organized approach. A meeting that once would last sometimes two hours, started to take just one hour and at times, only 30 minutes.
With coordinating promotions, I had access to our email marketing automation platform as I would provide details on the performance of the promotions we ran at each meeting and would include some email metrics. Mind you, I had an interest in working in email marketing. I worked on a few small campaigns in a previous role while I was contracting for an insurance company but nothing at scale.
On a random day, the email marketing manager at the time was out for a family emergency and there was no one else available to send out an important marketing email that would drive significant revenue for the company.
When I heard some of the chatter from leadership, I gathered up the courage and went to talk to my boss to tell him that I had access to our email marketing automation platform and could look into what we may be able to do.
Having never used this platform before, I poked around for a while until I somehow managed to duplicate a previous email that was fitting. From there, my boss and I worked to make some slight copy tweaks to get it to what we thought was good enough. Next, was to hit ‘Send’. That was a very nerve-wracking time as I honestly was not sure what would result after hitting send. Did we follow all the necessary steps and was the email going to go to the right people? That was a question we had to just wait and see.
It was quite the day and the email went on to be a success! Outside of not updating the campaign name to include the right date of the send, all was just fine. We saw a stellar day of sales and I felt relieved.
Fast forward to a few weeks later. The email marketing manager I mentioned, well he ended up giving his two weeks notice and I was tapped to take on the email program. My role changed and I spent a few hours with him training. Then, I was left on my own. I spent more hours than I care to remember troubleshooting, guessing, and hoping for the best as I continued the program.
Eventually, I mastered my new role and was able to take on team members to lead as we built out the program to retention and lifecycle marketing! And over the course of my time at the company, my role would expand, my title would change, I made more money and I would leave the company as Lifecycle Marketing Manager after starting off in a specialist role.
Even though I went through some challenging times and many tears along the way as I learned new software and roles & responsibilities, I know it helped shape me into the person I am today. I continue to put my best foot forward in pretty much all things I do. I find most challenges now to be exciting and fun. So if you are wanting to push yourself and grow, put your head down, get uncomfortable, try your best and know that it won’t be easy but it will be worth it!
As I mentioned in my blog ‘I Got A 50% Pay Increase!’ it’s important to do good work to help set yourself apart. You never know who is watching!
Up Close & Polished 