One day in the life of a marketing technologist
In a homage to my favourite ever book, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, I’ve jotted down the mundane activities, thoughts and insights that make up one of my average days in September.
My intention is to provide a matter-of-fact recollection of my daily routine and capture the technical zeitgeist in the 2nd half of 2023.
I hope this will be useful for anyone interested in starting a career in marketing technology, or anyone who is just interested in my days in general (Hi mum!).
So here it is – One Day in the Life of a Marketing Technologist.
The first part of the day
The alarm sounds at 07:50. The familiar ringtone always hits me with a small pang of anxiety. After all, it’s time to leave the comfort of the bed and face the outside world. I should really change the ringtone and avoid that feeling, but it always seems to slip my mind after the first few seconds of the day pass.
I take a quick shower and get breakfast – 2 pieces of toast with honey and a cup of instant coffee. I’m in the habit of checking my Slack messages and emails during breakfast to get a bit of a head start before I head to the office. Taking a hesitant sip of the still too-hot coffee, I turn on the laptop and log into my work Google account.
Alongside the normal barrage of noise emails, I have 2 ones of particular interest: a response from a support request I made with Adjust (our attribution partner) and a Jira notification sent late yesterday evening that one of my Engineering tickets has been added to the next sprint. That’s good news! Now I can begin work with a spring in my step.
After brushing my teeth, I leave home just before 9am as per routine. I go to the office most days of the week. I really enjoy the easy communication and personal interactions that you just don’t experience when working remotely.
I get my bike from the basement and head out. It’s a warm and bright September morning in Pankow and it should take around 30 minutes to make my way to the office in Moabit, North-West Berlin. On the way, I notice a man (also cycling) wearing white Converse, shorts and a tie half-hanging out of his pocket. Why wear a tie with shorts?
Nearing the end of my ride, I turn onto Stromstraße and cycle carefully a short distance down the pavement to the office entrance. A bit naughty, but it really makes no sense to cross all the way to the other side of the road, only to cross back over a 100 metres later. In any case, I’m always extra careful on this bit since I got stopped by the police in the same place some months back for pavement cycling (I managed to talk my way out of that one).
Morning work
Arriving in the office at 09:27, I greet my marketing colleagues with my standard “good morn-ning”, put the kettle on and set up my laptop. Before starting my working day, I make myself another cup of instant coffee. Most of my colleagues laugh at this, as “instant coffee is so disgusting”. Little do they know that instant coffee is better, because it’s faster!
I log into Asana and check the priority tasks on our Martech board. I have 2 things on the agenda for today: QA 2 custom conversion events I set up a couple of weeks ago, and preparing for an upcoming A/B test.
Before I can get started on these tasks however, something else pops up. A colleague from the Organic Acquisition team reports that there is a problem with our core web vitals in Google Search Console; specifically that we have a high Cumulative Layout Shift score, coinciding with a smart banner (a small banner shown on mobile web to drive users to download the app) we launched a few weeks ago.
With my colleague from the marketing technology team, we look into the smart banner and try to analyse the problem. In doing so, I discover a new part of the Google Chrome developer tools that I haven’t used before: performance insights. This tool allows you to model a page load and as the name suggests, presents you with a breakdown of core web vital metrics and suggestions on how to improve the performance of your page.
This type of ad-hoc task highlights one of the things I love most about my job and marketing technology . Namely, the opportunity to work on varied technical tasks and learn by doing.
After the troubleshooting, it’s already time for a 1-2-1 with my marketing technology colleague. We decamp to our regular booked meeting room. The previous occupant has left the air conditioning on the minimum setting, making the first moments of our meeting akin to working on a glacier.
Amongst other things, we discuss the launch of iOS17 and a specific security feature: Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting Protection. In the Safari browser, Apple now gives users the option to strip all URL parameters that contain a user-unique tracking code. A new high priority task is added to our Asana board: to investigate what impact this has (if any) on our tracking and plan possible mitigation measures (if any).
It’s now almost lunchtime. How time flies! It’s a bit early, but I’ll head out now for food and start my next task in the afternoon.
Lunch
For my lunchtime repast, I normally go to Rewe, a supermarket with a salad bar. My colleagues also laugh at me for this, because I go there 3-4 times a week – but I like it! It’s not too heavy and at least somewhat healthy.
I take my bike downstairs in the lift and cross Stromstrasse, before turning right onto Turmstrasse. For a mid-September day, the sun is strong and the temperature is pushing 25 degrees. The M10 tram has just been extended to Turmstrasse and as part of the road remodelling, a nice wide bike path has been installed. Along the way, 2 vehicles are parked in it: a delivery van unloading boxes to an adjacent greengrocer, and an unoccupied car with the hazard warning lights on.
I collect my salad – pasta, spicy tofu, green beans, goats cheese and assorted veggies – and go back to the office. Today will be a quick lunch, as I have so much to do in the afternoon. I have a quick chat with my colleagues who are also eating on the tables in our Marketing hall. Most have brought home cooked food, which makes me somewhat envious and feel quite lazy. We talk about the unseasonable warmth, Oktoberfest and the possibility of getting tickets to Euro 2024 next summer.
Afternoon work
Back at my desk, I’m finally getting started on my key tasks for today. I put on my headphones and play the Sounds like Boards of Canada playlist on Spotify to help me concentrate.
First up, I will do a QA of the new conversion events I set up a couple of weeks ago using Segment (our CDP partner).
Most of the events we use (talent signup, talent onboarded) are set up by the Engineering team, but occasionally the Marketing team needs an additional event. In this case, the Paid Acquisition team wanted a ‘shift worked’ and ‘first shift worked’ event sent to Adjust and from there, to Google Ads and Meta – so they can optimise their campaigns more efficiently.
I created the events with a feature of Segment called Functions. With some relatively simple Javascript, you can build events based on the properties of existing ones or data you have previously collected about the user. Super useful!
To analyse if they are working correctly, I need to compare the event count in both Adjust and our internal reporting system. I need to dust off my SQL skills! I haven’t worked with SQL much recently and I get a bit stuck with one part of the query.
At this point, I could ask one of my many analyst colleagues for help. However, overcoming these blockers myself is one of my core principles. I don’t like simply asking for the answer – as I don’t learn anything that way!
In the end, I ask ChatGPT for help. You can debate whether or not this contradicts what I just wrote above, but at least I have to work out the question to ask, which is half of the work and supposedly, writing AI prompts will be a legitimate career in the near future. With the blocker cleared, I’m able to compare the event counts and discover one of the events is buggy due to an issue with the underlying data. That will be a ticket for Engineering!
Fortunately, in the meantime I am able to find a workaround and can define the event using a different combination of data in Segment. I set the revised script live and make a task for myself in Asana to QA the updated event next week.
Time for a quick drinks break (by this time of afternoon, I drink peppermint tea) and onto my 2nd key task for today: making a plan for an AB test. Like any data-driven marketing team, we run tests continuously to optimise our efforts. This one is extra important!
At the moment, we offer our Talents (temporary workers) the option of signing up on the website or via the app. We see that Talents who sign up on the app have a greater chance of working a shift and hence, a greater lifetime value. The test is to determine if we can route all Talents to sign up in the app and not lose conversions overall.
We have consistent templates for planning tests, so I duplicate the last one and change the details. The most important thing to get right in advance is setting a success metric and ensuring that I have reliable data for proving my hypothesis. There will be 4 of us involved in the test in some way or other, so I set about making a task breakdown and tagging the relevant people.
This takes me through to the end of the day.
It’s just after 6pm as I make my way out of the office and into the street. I get onto my bike and start the cycle home. It’s been a good day. I’ve crossed some tasks off my agenda and most importantly, learnt some new things.
