Ford Motor Company

Responsible for consolidating global marketing technology selection and management activities, overseeing marketing operations data capability intake, prioritization and compliance, and driving a long-term technology roadmap.

Marketing Technology and Governance Lead

Association of National Advertisers

Member, MarTech Leadership Council

Smartsheet

Led a large centralized marketing automation team providing global campaign operations, data orchestration, solution design, support and governance. Applied system architecture and technical expertise directly to projects. Mentored team members on effective practices and skill development.

Director, Marketing Automation

Poly

Plantronics + Polycom. Now together as Poly.

Leadership role expanded to manage MarTech stack of over 120 technologies and drive excellence in central webinar/virtual event operations.

Sr. Manager, Marketing Technology and Automation

Sr. Manager, Marketing Automation Operations

Manager, Marketing Automation Operations

Polycom

Promoted from individual contributor to marketing automation team manager at Polycom. After acquisition by Plantronics in July 2018, leadership role was expanded to lead the combined team and build the integrated function.

Sr. Manager, Marketing Automation

Technical and creative lead for marketing automation campaign and platform operations, mentorship of distributed producers, and development of innovations in capabilities and processes.

Senior Marketing Automation Manager

Marketing Automation Manager

Thermo Fisher Scientific

Functional lead for team of email and web editors and designers. Served as interim manager.

Senior E-mail and Web Designer/Marketing Automation Specialist, Customer Channels

Web and E-mail Designer, Enterprise e-Business

Sedlak Design Co.

Print, web, identity/brand and e-marketing design services

Independent Consultant

Universal Technologies, Inc.

Managed design and development team and external resources, delivering small and medium web projects, provided creative direction and technical guidance. Expanded services with business model and operational plan for email marketing services. Led major initiative to re-imagine flagship SaaS product, including new creative direction, technical architecture and business model.

Manager, Design and Development

McCue Design Consultants

Handled print graphic design for direct mail, advertisements, packaging and large format graphics. Led web design and development, adding database-driven technology to agency’s capabilities. Managed extensive packaging portfolio for leading refractories company through two re-brandings.

Web and Graphic Designer, Lead Developer

Thinking back, my career in marketing operations can be blamed mostly on my dad.

Before we owned a home computer, I’d accompany him when he had to go to the office on a Saturday. He wrote code for steel production systems, I played on a Mac nearby. He thought I’d enjoy the paint program since I had a lot of interest in art. I immediately used this new power to publish school news and sports in “The 6th Grade Post” newsletter for my classmates.

He spared no detail about how things worked, whether discussing a piece of machinery or a basic process of life. He always explained WHY something was. I was fascinated. He gave me old appliances and vacuums to take apart. I discovered how parts connected and worked together. The gears, belts and wheels told a story of design and engineering for a purpose.

Now with a family PC, we bonded over hardware and software. A good friend, a quintessential “computer nerd”, gave me my first glimpse into the online universe. I dialed in daily to local BBS’s and a university with real internet access, blocking the family phone line for hours.

I discovered Netscape when I got to college and I was hooked. There were no classes for web design, so I taught myself HTML the old-fashioned way—viewing web page source code and writing my own markup in Notepad. I learned the basics of JavaScript and one summer my dad taught me to program in C++. I learned how to be efficient in coding and to write for future flexibility and ease of maintenance.

Uninspired by the available courses of study, I elected to design my curriculum, borrowing classes from many disciplines. I turned web design into a career, which led to email marketing, which evolved into marketing automation and technology.

So here I am, still blending creativity and technical work. Here I am, still seeing all of the metaphorical gears behind a system. Here I am, still figuring out how to efficiently connect components to achieve a goal. Here I am, still trying to make work easier, scalable and maintainable. Here I am, taking what I’ve learned and sharing it with others through mentorship, community involvement and conference talks. Here I am, still learning.

Despite no artistic interest himself, my dad never dissuaded me from the arts. He knew computers and code and saw a chance to connect those dots. I realize now that he was very creative in how he approached coding and systems and I've found my own satisfaction in the concept.

He’s never said so, but I suspect he didn’t actually need all of those Saturdays at the office.

AJ Sedlak

World Education Services

Associate Director, Marketing Operations

Teamwork

• Hired, coached, and developed a high performing team of operational experts including a project manager, marketing analyst, and marketing operations manager
• Partnered with sales, product, finance to analyze and present insights and recommendations on full-funnel business performance
• Oversaw the marketing tech stack and led an evaluation of the marketing automation tool, Marketo.
• Collaborated with the data team to deliver a strategic marketing dashboard, including requirement scoping, project timelines and stakeholder management.

Head of Marketing Revenue Operations & Analytics 

ITHAKA

•	Drove continuous improvement by developing, managing, and maintaining the marketing automation roadmap including integrations with the CRM, vendor management and negotiation, and custom solutions. 
•	Partnered closely with technical teams to streamline business operations, prioritize data needs, integrate data and systems, and measure marketing campaign effectiveness; including the production of a suite of cross-channel business intelligence dashboards that measure against campaign goals and organizational OKRs.
•	Defined and implemented a marketing data strategy that ensured database hygiene and list growth in compliance with privacy regulations like GDPR and CASL to ensure campaigns target the right audience at the right time. 
•	Led multi-channel awareness and retention campaign operations across email, ads, websites, and webinars ensuring alignment and collaboration.

Assistant Director, Marketing Operations

•	Led the evaluation, selection, and implementation of the marketing automation platform to advance marketing processes and capabilities.
•	Developed and implemented the lead management process including MQL and SQL definitions, hand-off criteria, and provided quarterly reporting on results, in collaboration with the Sales Operation lead.
•	Automated and streamlined email related processes, including the automation of platform triggered emails that resulted in a reduction of time on task.

Senior Manager, Marketing Operations

•	Designed the email marketing strategy including target setting, design layout, A/B testing strategies, behavioral segmentation and more.
•	Acted as a strategic partner for the marketing team by making recommendations and conducting quarterly business reviews on email performance and best practices, including the reporting and analysis of campaign specific and email performance metrics.
•	Optimized email campaigns for open and click rates, and mobile rendering, while incorporating campaign goals, success metrics, and milestones.

Senior Email Campaign Manager

•	Managed and executed  B2B awareness and lead generating email campaigns annually across four brands, including international campaigns with non-English text. 
•	Collaborated with sales, marketing, and creative teams to ensure email templates adhered to branding guidelines and flexible enough to accommodate customizations while ensuring deliverability.
•	Developed and implemented a meticulous email request and production process that scaled to accommodate 200% growth in email volume and ensured flawless execution, including the development and maintenance of a structured but flexible email campaign calendar that coordinated stakeholders and ensured timelines were met.

Email Campaign Manager

Experian CheetahMail

•	Advanced to Senior Email Account Manager after optimizing campaign execution for primary clients and mentoring junior team members.
•	Developed, executed, reported, and analyzed B2C acquisition and retention email campaigns for Fortune 500 clients. 
•	Acted as strategic partners by offering recommendations, best practices, and insights during quarterly business reviews to senior client executives.

Senior Account Manager

Account Manager

IQPC

•	Developed and implemented 365-day multi-channel marketing plans for business conferences, incorporating direct mail, email, banner, social media & paid search campaigns.
•	Generated external promotion by securing long-term marketing partnerships with external partners, publications & industry associations. 
•        Developed the first social mediinfluencer strategy, engaging industry bloggers in pre and post-conference promotion.

Marketing Manager

•	Drove flawless execution of 365-day multi-channel campaigns for national B2B business conferences including email, websites, direct mail, and social media campaigns.
•	Performed campaign analysis to set future KPIs and goals.
•	Owned media partnerships and vendor relationships including the creative agenda.

Marketing Coordinator

Business Operations | Technology | Process | Marketing Strategy | Marketing Operations Director

I strive to make things better. At home, that means finding ways to infuse some fun into each day. At work, that means improving things - developing scalable processes, collaborating cross-functionally to merge business data, or implementing methodologies that enable more creativity and speed. Organization, documentation, process - the list goes on.

In my 15+ year career, I’ve been fortunate enough to work in agency and client-side roles within B2B and B2C. Experienced across a range of industries including non-profit, SaaS and commercial, I’m grateful to have found my place in operations and strategic enablement, where I can deliver customer value by leading flawless execution, process management, and technology ownership. While working alongside some of the smartest, most passionate colleagues, I’ve led interesting projects like:

Marketing automation selection – Improving productivity through the selection and implementation of a marketing automation tool, integrated with other marketing systems.
Lead management – Driving revenue by collaborating cross functionally to track and improve leads by 200% YoY.
Cross-channel marketing – Leading a team of digital marketing experts to forge an integrated marketing  approach, resulting in reduced silos and improved collaboration.
Scaling email programs to support 400% growth in volume in 3 years.

Problem solving is my anchor and at the core of everything I do. I love learning and I love using new tools to solve problems. Although implementing the right solution always feels great, I’ve learned success is not just about results, but about lessons learned along the way. With speed, humility, and a drive to learn, I pursue everything with excellence in mind.

taplio

The Battle

AJ Sedlak

Nisha Prasad, MBA

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