Life at WeBuild-AI: meet Caitriona Snell, from marketing to mushrooms

What’s your role here at WeBuild-AI?

I’m the Marketing Lead at WeBuild-AI. My role is to support the team to gain new business and promote ourselves, whether that’s working on branding, creating interesting content, social media, emails, events, digital ads and more. I think one surprising element of marketing is how technical it can be - I work a lot with lots of different tools and integrate AI into lots of aspects of my job too. I’m currently using AI to personalise outreach into target accounts and personas, which involves learning some interesting new tools.

What does a typical day look like for you?

I structure my time by quarter, and then break it down into tasks with timelines that I allocate to different weeks. On Friday, I’ll work through what I’ve completed for that week and add my entire to-do list for next week into a checklist. When I sit down on Monday, I typically start with some standing meetings e.g. with our Graphic Designer or Web Developer (so we can prioritise their tasks for the week), and then I’ll work on something like social media scheduling. Once I’ve done my standing daily/weekly tasks, I’ll work through my to-do list and keep an eye on emails and Slack to respond to ad hoc requests. Sometimes I get through a lot of strategic work - planning, scheduling, budgeting - and sometimes much more tactical work - like deciding what food items to order for an event. It all depends on the week and the time in the quarter.

I try to get around to checking in on marketing metrics and analytics at least once a day, especially to optimise campaigns and make sure we are allocating budget to the right kinds of activities. I also report these back into the team so we can all make informed decisions moving forward.

My struggle is that I always have lots of ideas, from big creative projects to small fixes, and never enough time to get around to everything. I have to be quite disciplined and focused on what’s a priority now, and flexible to shift that around if something last minute happens that’s a higher priority. It’s a balance I’m always working on. It helps to make sure I complete my quarterly plan in advance and have that to fall back on, but as with all start-ups, lots of changes can happen fast so being adaptable is essential. The start-up experience is definitely dynamic and I enjoy it a lot.

What’s your career journey been like so far?

I started my career at IBM and worked in Product Marketing within the hardware division in the UK. While it was a great learning experience, both from a technical perspective and learning about Product Marketing, I found myself frustrated at the lack of autonomy I had in such a large company. 

I had the opportunity to move into a partner of IBM’s - Cloudera - and spent 6 years there in marketing. This was a really fun role for me, with lots of chances to work creatively across large-scale, global campaigns, with lots of different partners, solutions and industries. Later on in my time there, I switched into a more strategic and analytical role, and worked on optimisation projects, including one trial project that led to a very large pipeline and allowed us to scale regionally much faster than normal. I loved the team I worked with, but after several years, I was ready to move roles. I took about 18 months off to travel and study, and returned to job searching looking for a tech start-up, where I could work across the entirety of marketing and closely with a UK-based team - the perfect description for WeBuild-AI!

What do you enjoy the most about your job here?

My last role was remote and with a team working entirely out of other countries, which suited me at the time, but it’s refreshing to work again with a UK/London-based team and come into the office. I really enjoy the team and office environment here, where egos aren’t big and everyone is friendly and helpful. We’re a busy company, with everyone working hard, but everyone also respects work-life balance. 

In this role, I get to work creatively and flexibly across lots of projects, and have the chance to learn new things every day - whether that’s a tool, the way a tech works within a customer, messaging or something else. I also have the opportunity to bring in my strategy skills from my previous role, so I am laying lots of groundwork now that will pay off in 18+ months in terms of marketing growth. I’m excited by the prospect of new possibilities and challenges the role will bring in the future.

Quick fire

Dark mode or light mode?

Dark mode!

Coffee or tea?

Coffee, and I’m fussy - aeropress at home, and I have a select few spots I’ll take a coffee from around the office. Always black.

Are you a nerd (and if so, what topics are you nerdiest in)?

Definitely a nerd and a little known fact about me is that I love mushrooms and have a huge collection of mushroom photos on my phone.

Passionate about innovation?

Join a team that’s pushing boundaries together.