Today the Ambergreen Blog is talking to our latest recruit, Emma Lauchlan, who is joining us as an Account Director. It’s actually Emma’s second time working with Ambergreen, having worked with us seven years ago. Grant caught up with her as she was settling in.
GW: As the latest recruit, how does it feel being back at Ambergreen?
EL: Welcoming. Although the personnel has changed since I was first here 7 years ago (with the exception of the old rear guard in the form of Tino & Grant), the office still has a pleasantness about it that makes you feel at home and I think a lot of that has to do with the personality of the individuals.
GW: Not everyone has had the pleasure of meeting you and spending time with you like we have, could you tell us a little about yourself
EL: This is like one of those awkward interview questions when you’re asked to talk about yourself. Ok, here goes. As you know, I started my career in digital marketing with Ambergreen where I was part of the team for 3 years. I then decided to make the leap to client side to learn more about what happens in business, how marketing strategies are put together and how targets are set and budgets allocated.
After a year in a role with a very prestigious Edinburgh investment house I got the opportunity to move to London which I grabbed with both hands and there I stayed for almost 6 years. My first job was for a small travel firm, then I moved onto a SAAS PR solution provider both based in Shoreditch where I was responsible for running their online marketing activity. I then moved on to hosting giant Rackspace where I was responsible for driving their digital acquisition marketing across all channels including social. Some time into my tenure with Rackspace I got engaged, married then had a baby and in January of 2014 we decided to move back to Edinburgh.
GW: What do you think you can bring to the party?
EL: Having spent the last 7 years of my digital career client side, I have a deep understanding of how businesses work and what clients expect from the agencies they work with. It’s always the aim of agencies to be the client’s external digital team and I know what it takes to make that happen.
GW: What do you think are going to be the biggest challenges and opportunities for our clients in 2014?
EL: I think a key challenge for our clients is how to do better with flat or reducing budgets.
It may sound obvious but it still astounds me how bad some businesses are at understanding their own data and analytics and I think there is massive opportunity here. Making sure you can track all marketing activity be that online/offline or onsite/offsite right through to fulfilment is key to getting smarter with investing spend. Making use of techniques such as call tracking to make sure you are capturing the entire customer journey is still something businesses aren’t doing.
There are always opportunities to do better. Whether that be through the optimising of current activities or by introducing new tactics such as Real Time Bidding and Remarketing.
GW: How can you help the clients reach their goals this year?
EL: By getting to know them and getting to know their business.
GW: How does being client side compare to being back at an agency
EL: Agency life is hectic. You have so many other workloads to balance as well as your own and on top of that, you need to keep abreast of clients businesses and new advances in the industry. There also seems to be a lot of chocolate in this office!
GW: Any words of wisdom?
EL: Transparency. Integrity. Ownership. I think if we all think about the things we do in relation to these keywords then we can deliver a service to our clients that’s second to none.
