Iria Brey Vilas on the power of flexibility, autonomy and speed as a Senior CRM Manager
New year, new stories, same passion to achieve our purpose! Today, we’d like you to meet Iria Brey Vilas. She is responsible for driving our learner’s engagement CRM strategy to support them in staying engaged and reaching their goals. Let’s find out how she does that!
My name is Iria and I’ve been at Preply for a year, helping to shape the CRM team and driving learner’s engagement in my role as a Senior CRM Manager.
I am originally from Galicia, but before relocating to Barcelona, I was living in Amsterdam for 7 years, building up my CRM career by dipping my toes into the startup water and exploring the world of e-commerce. Even though we have a hybrid working model, in February 2021 I made the decision to relocate to Barcelona, because I wanted to be closer to my team and have the chance to meet other Preplers on a regular basis when I’m in the city. I’m a big fan of this flexibility as it helps me to do and feel my best.
How has your time at Preply been so far?
The past 12 months have been a very exciting ride. I’ve seen the CRM team doubling in size (we’re 15 now!) alongside the company, met hundreds of new colleagues from all over the world, and worked on numerous exciting projects within marketing and product development.
What are your day to day responsibilities within the CRM team?
I am responsible for the engagement strategy for Learners, meaning that my main objective is to ensure that our customers understand the product and receive the most relevant transactional and marketing messages along their journey, so they can successfully reach their goals and stay longer at Preply.
Our CRM team is a cross-functional squad, which is great because we’re able to strategize and develop most of our initiatives autonomously. We are marketers, copywriters, designers, engineers and analysts in charge of driving the CRM strategy and maintaining the CRM infrastructure. But beyond that, we’re developing all transactional and lifecycle communications for our learners and tutors, ideating cross-channel personalized marketing campaigns, and working on product initiatives related to loyalty, personalization and new feature launches.
What has been the most exciting challenge for you so far?
Preply is growing incredibly fast, which makes it challenging (but also very exciting!) to keep up with the pace at which the product is being developed. We are testing new features and exploring new business opportunities every other week, so we have to stay flexible when it comes to our rolling strategy and deploying at high-speed, but making sure our campaigns are high quality, relevant and efficient.
What has been your most impressive learning?
You can ideate, build and market a completely new product in a quarter. It will be far from perfect, but it will allow you to learn and iterate quickly.
What do you enjoy about working at Preply?
Preply checks a lot of boxes that are important for me in a job:
🟦 First, the product mission to create a complete solution for effective language learning is very inspiring.
🟦 Second, I get to work surrounded by a bunch of multicultural, talented, passionate people.
🟦 And last but not least, every working day at the office is different because we have the freedom and the resources to experiment, and we make it fun.
How do you feel Preply empowers you to be your best at work?
Preply has a strong experimentation culture where we’re all encouraged to test ideas that we believe might have a positive impact on our customers and the business. We can go from the drawing board to deployment very fast, as well as openly discuss our learnings with everyone. Teams are encouraged to create their roadmaps, fully own end-to-end development and decision-making process, as well be in charge of the outcomes.
How does Preply impact diversity and inclusion within the organization and Marketing team?
Creating a truly diverse and inclusive culture is challenging and, while we have a long road ahead at Preply, it is a focus area and a lot of resources are being invested in trying to get it right across all levels of the organization.
What are your hobbies outside of work?
I love cinema and TV series so I spend quite some time watching Netflix and going to the movies with my friends, a plan that we often combine with some nice food and wine. I also practise Barre, which helps me to clear my mind after a long working-day and stay fit. One more thing: I love to always have a plane ticket in my wallet because I find it difficult to stand still for a long time.
And finally, any tips for anyone looking to join Preply’s CRM team?
If you are Hungry, Humble, Curious (these are just some of our values) and your head is full of creative ideas on how to improve Preply’s learner’s experience just hit the apply button. 😉
We hope you’ve enjoyed getting to know Iria and learning more about our CRM team. Now you also know that we’ve been growing our team in the last year, but we’re just getting started. There’s still room for talented people to join us. So if you think you should be one of them, we’d like to hear from you 👉 Apply now!
