• 22 Apr 2022

My first 3 months at Glass Digital: Adam Gray, Affiliate Marketing Executive

• by Adam Gray

Adam Gray joined Glass Digital as an Affiliate Marketing Executive back in December last year. Here, he shares what he’s learned during his first three months in the role.

I first developed a keen interest in the world of business and marketing at college — mainly due to the TV show Mad Men! After gaining my A-levels, I decided to study Business with Marketing Management at Northumbria University, graduating with a 2:1 in 2019.

A few months later, a good friend of mine started a tech company, and was looking for a marketing executive. After securing the role, I worked on a few different marketing campaigns, while largely focusing on lead generation and sales. Although I appreciated the opportunity and learned a lot in that job, I decided to expand my skills by seeking another role elsewhere. This is when I came across Glass Digital. I applied for the Affiliate Marketing Executive role, and within an hour of my interview I was offered the job.

When I first joined Glass, affiliate marketing was completely new to me, so I spent the first few months learning about the industry and the different processes involved. This could be anything from simply building relationships with clients, to more technical sides of the role, such as pixel integration and setting up new campaigns.

Affiliate marketing is a relatively new area of marketing, and so it wasn’t really covered during my degree. Digital marketing was of course covered, but not in great detail. However, after three months of intensive training under my manager, Virginia Rizzi, I now feel like I have a good understanding of affiliate and digital marketing. Virginia is very knowledgeable and experienced — she was even shortlisted for a Marketer of the Year award in 2021 — so I do feel like I’m learning from the best. But, it’s one of those fields where you never really stop learning.

More recently, I’ve also worked on maximising our clients’ revenue by exploiting key opportunities and measuring the progress of the campaigns. This has involved familiarising myself with new software to track, monitor and amend affiliate campaigns.

I’m currently in the process of starting to manage accounts independently, with Virginia’s guidance and supervision. I often find myself asking for advice, but do my best to never ask the same question twice.

Seeing your hard work translated into great exposure for clients is always rewarding. And, there are a few milestones that I am proud of achieving. In just a few months, I have contributed to securing 4 new campaigns in foreign territories with one of our largest clients. I also joined the rest of the team at an awards ceremony, where one of the main campaigns I worked on was shortlisted.

The remote and flexible working policy offered by Glass has been amazing. As I am not local to the area, it has allowed me to work from home, and given me the flexibility to commute to the office in my own time.

That said, while I love the flexibility, I’ve always enjoyed meeting new people and making new friends. So, I’ve really enjoyed getting stuck in with the office social events, too. I actually attended the Christmas party back in December, despite only being part of the company for a couple of weeks — it was the first time that I’d met my co-workers in person (thank God for Zoom!) Now I am settling into my role, I’ve even started to organise social events myself and hope to do a lot more in the future.

My advice to someone looking to get into the industry would be to always keep a list of contacts. It’s a small world and maintaining relationships with the people you meet and work with can go a long way, even if it is just someone you have previously dealt with through email — you never know when that contact could be useful in the future.

My last bit of advice is a bit of classic northern wisdom that has been passed down to me: ‘shy bairns get nowt’! Having the confidence (and sometimes cheek) to put yourself out there can distinguish you from the pack and massively help you and your clients.

Are you looking to carve out a career in affiliate marketing? Take a look at our careers page to view our latest opportunities.