How I Trusted the Process - Featuring Shianne Smalling

How did you build a career in marketing, from college through your Senior Manager, Growth Marketing role at Levain Bakery?

My first job when I graduated college back in 2017 was at Fresh Direct as the marketing coordinator for the B2B business supporting the Sales Team, Director of Integrated Marketing, and Director of Merchandising. In that role, I got exposure to all parts of working at an ecommerce brand, with email standing out as the channel I most enjoyed.

My second job was as the CRM Specialist at Andie Swim supporting customer retention through email, SMS, and building out the loyalty program. After Andie, I started working at Levain as the CRM Manager primarily supporting customer retention for the ecommerce business. A couple of years in, we had some internal changes and I gained exposure working on the acquisition side of the business, participating on calls with our paid social agency, working more on paid advertising, and so on. My role officially expanded to Growth Marketing Manager and then last year I got promoted to Senior Manager of Growth Marketing, managing customer acquisition and retention for Levain.

What is your biggest accomplishment at Levain?

My biggest accomplishment has been building out a successful email program for the ecommerce business. Prior to the creation of my role, Levain wasn’t formally leveraging email as an engagement and retention channel, which provided me the unique opportunity of being able to build the automated email flows from scratch and establish a campaign send cadence that resonated with our audience without being “spammy”.

Looking back, what would you tell yourself on your first day at Levain Bakery? What about your first day at Fresh Direct?

I’ll start with Fresh Direct. I would tell myself to trust the process. Even though it seems like you’re entry level and everything you’re doing is getting you pulled in many different directions, you’re getting a lot of exposure. You feel like you’re not seeing the rewards, but the rewards will come and all the exposure you’re going to get in this role is going to set you up for the success you’re going to see in the future.

When I first came to Levain, I was very comfortable with retention because it’s what I’d been doing for the past couple of years. I had very little exposure to customer acquisition prior to this role, and transparently, I was initially a bit nervous. However, once I started digging into the reporting and working closer with our paid social agency, I was like “Wow this is fascinating, I’m excited to do this!”. I say that to say, my advice to myself on my first day at Levain would be to embrace the opportunities as they come and don’t doubt your abilities.

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