Transcription:
How to Herd Cats. A Chat with a Marketing Firm's Project Manager

Bill Klaproth (Host): When you've been searching for the right insight, advice and information on financial marketing, you know where to go. The Speakeasy. The exclusive source for financial marketing insights, with a shot of human. Starring Kelly Hellickson and Hillary Reed from EmpowerFi, strategy infused, data-driven marketing solutions for financial institutions nationwide.

I'm your host, Bill Klaproth and on this episode, we talk with Erin Lutz, who is the marketing project manager for EmpowerFi as she shares her magic tips and tricks for project management. And she'll talk about how she manages herding the creative cats at EmpowerFi. Erin, welcome to the Speakeasy podcast.

Erin Lutz: Hi, it's great to be here.

Bill Klaproth (Host): Yeah. So if you could, tell us, what do you exactly do for EmpowerFi and why are you the glue that holds EmpowerFi together?

Erin Lutz: Well, project management by default, needs to have their hands a little bit in everything so that we can keep an eye on all parts and pieces. So, creating a really strong relationship with mutual respect and understanding between all the team members helps me do my job. And I think that's why they call me the glue. But really, at the end of the day, I just help make sure everybody does what they're supposed to do, when they're supposed to do it.

Hilary Reed: That's right. I don't know if I would say help. I'm pretty sure you're the one who makes sure. You don't just help, you do it. So we are so glad to have Erin with us. How long have you been with us now? Like a year and a half, two years, maybe almost.

Erin Lutz: Yes. January will make two years.

Hilary Reed: Wow. That is so crazy how time flies like that. So, Erin came to EmpowerFi actually not having much experience in project management and sort of built out our project management, our marketing project management platform, all of our workflows, everything, from A to Z for our credit union clients and for ourselves internally. And what a ride it has been, right, Erin?

Erin Lutz: Yeah, it's changed a lot.

Hilary Reed: Tell us about the major platforms that you work in on a daily basis. So, keep in mind, Erin is the marketing project manager for, we don't like to call ourselves an agency, but, EmpowerFi is a marketing hub for credit unions and we have, well, I guess you'd be able to tell us, but any given day, a hundred different projects going on for different credit unions. So, tell us about the major platforms that you use and a day in the life of Erin looks like.

Erin Lutz: Well, when I open my computer in the morning, I start out with like five different programs open and sometimes, the windows keep growing. The biggest one of course is Wrike. It is our project management software. I spend most of my day in there, whether it's checking for updates from clients or sending a reminder to a team member. But it really is my biggest and best tool. Email of course, I have to be able to communicate and most of our clients do so through email.

Although we do have a few in other ways as well. Slack, which is our internal team communication tool. We love to instant message back and forth. We send each other pictures and videos and then of course I have Chrome open. A lot of our work is done through web interfaces. We work with Design Pickle. So I often open that up first thing so that I can pull any proofs down. RingCentral so that I can communicate with clients by phone, if necessary. Google Drive. I may use definitely Google Calendar, those meetings stack up, Excel, Word, Adobe, I open just about every program on my computer every day.

Hilary Reed: The life of a project manager and poor Erin gets information from all kinds of sources. I mean, our team members are emailing her, Slacking her, little information here and there. And Erin just acts as that hub to take all of the information that's provided elsewhere and get it into our project management platform.

So you can only imagine if we didn't have someone, like Erin and her role, how crazy things would be. Erin is also responsible for, our client weekly check-in so we have weekly meetings with our regular EmpowerFi clients where we handle all of their marketing so that we can be on the same page when it comes to projects. And I know our clients love that. So, there's quite a bit of actual, client management involved too, with your role, I guess now, huh?

Erin Lutz: That is really true. I would say I wear many hats and it's just part of being a project manager that you have to be able to do a little bit of everything and understand a little bit of everything to do that effectively.

Hilary Reed: Some advice here, since you're now the project management expert, and don't tell me you're not, because you are. So, some advice for some credit unions going into 2021, for credit unions who may not have a project management team or a project management person; what are some things that you could recommend to marketing teams to take a closer look at streamlining their project management next year?

Erin Lutz: Well, I'd say, even if you don't think you're doing project management, you already are, you have to find a way to control the flow, right? But you may see it as an Excel sheet or maybe you just stick post-it notes on a whiteboard and you rearrange them every day. One thing I would recommend is taking a new perspective on what you're using. If you're using that, whiteboard with post-it notes on it, maybe try a spreadsheet.

Or if you use a spreadsheet, maybe try a calendar. You can switch up what you're doing and see what works for you a little bit better. Once you've done that, and you know what works, try to upgrade your system. If you're using something a little bit low tech, maybe it just a spreadsheet or, sticky notes, try   an app that maybe would give you some other features and help make it a little bit more automatic for you.

So you could turn those post-it notes into a Kanban board and be able to track everything digitally and just move it around the same way on your screen. Or you can upload a spreadsheet and turn that into custom calendars or charts and reports that really take it to the next level. Most important thing is that you make sure that you scale it to your business. You've probably done some changing over the last year, and you're going to want to make sure that you upgrade what you're doing to match your needs now. And how you’re going to keep that working for you in the future.

Hilary Reed: Oh, that's a big one. I've heard Trello. I don't use Trello, but I've heard Trello is really great. So, that would be a good one from like moving from actual post-it notes into an app environment. Trello might be a good one. I think I was that person. I think when I was VP of Marketing, I was that person using the whiteboard and stuff. And it was hard to switch over because I didn't have a project manager. I was the project manager. So I love that you said we might not all be doing it well, but we're all doing it in some way or another. From the credit union perspective, I can speak to this a little bit. And that working on your project workflows internally is really going to help.

So you could have someone like EmpowerFi handling all of your marketing and all of your marketing projects and have Erin on that side, managing all of that. But what does it look like on your side? So, when a proof comes back from EmpowerFi? What happens on your end? Is it just you looking at it? Is it three people looking at it? You know, streamlining your workflow and your proofing workflow is really, really big, especially for us on our end to make sure that we're being as efficient as we can be. What does your workflow look like? So, does it go from. Vice-President of marketing to the Marketing Coordinator, to the CEO and then back to the marketing coordinator? So, we found that when our clients streamlined that side of it and that they let us in on the process, that's where we work best. I would say, do you agree, Erin?

Erin Lutz: Yes, definitely. I think you get too many cooks in the kitchen sometimes, and even though you want to get all of those opinions, having it bounced back and forth and all of those trade-offs really, take up the time that you don't have in this industry.

Hilary Reed: Absolutely. So, let's talk about short-term planning versus long-term project planning. And what I mean by that is, in the credit union world, we sometimes live and die by a cyclical marketing calendar. So, short-term planning would mean, okay, it's spring, we need to do a HELOC campaign. Here's the HELOC campaign and go that's short-term planning.

And Erin, maybe you could talk a little bit about what that looks like when a client needs a short-term campaign versus here's my marketing plan for the entire year. And how do we take that in and adjust that information for the whole year and plan accordingly. So if you want to talk about comparing those two.

Erin Lutz: Sure. I think that, long-term planning is really just short-term planning over and over and over again with a little bit of a twist. So when you do short term planning, you just need to look immediately at what needs you currently have and how that's going to fit in with this new need, right? And then who is going to be the best fit to do it. Sometimes that person may be available. They may be working on another project. And how do you rearrange to make the new pieces fit in with the best person for the job? When it comes to long-term planning, you're just breaking it up into smaller pieces, but you have to be careful not to fall into the procrastination pit. Right?

If you don't set some standards, things inevitably get pushed. And at the end you're scrambling, like you just got it dropped in your lap that day. So, I would say you need to have some flexibility in your long-term plans, but you still want to have structural integrity. You got to have those pillars, those milestones and deadlines along the way to keep you on track.

But sometimes it's best to maybe keep the assignments open. Don't decide who's going to do what until you get up closer to those dates and you can see how the workflows have changed and also, the world is changing every day right now. The project may change. And how does that get impacted with your schedule?

Hilary Reed: Yeah, my new hashtag is now going to be procrastination pit. So thank you for that, Erin. I love it. I'm going to always use that. I'm going to hope I don't fall into procrastination pit, but I often do. I love that you said milestones. I think that's another big one. Talk to me a little bit about milestones and what that means to you in terms of project management. Because to me as a VP of marketing or a CMO, the milestone might look different, but what's that look like to you? Give me an example.

Erin Lutz: For me, I consider milestones things to be, what you need to hit in order to keep your plan in place. So, for our projects, a lot of times that's going to be the first proof. If we delay a first proof, then we're going to be scrambling. If we get that first proof early enough, we have plenty of time to go through the proofing process and not worry about it. That to me is the big first milestone. Does something need to go to press on a particular day in order to make a deadline? That would be something that needs to be part of your structural integrity.

Hilary Reed: So, you could look at it like mini goals. Do we get to celebrate after every milestone? Are there drinks involved? Cause I will set a lot of milestones.

Erin Lutz: I kind of like that idea.

Hilary Reed: I do too. We should implement that. Yeah. Every milestone we hit, I like that. I liked that. Awesome. Well thank you, Erin, and is there anything else that you think is really, really important for credit unions to consider in 2021? Whether 2020 happened or not, in 2021, when it comes to project planning, things like that, any other tips?

Erin Lutz: Well, my big thing right now is just to trust your system, but also to verify. So, get your system in place, but don't forget to keep an eye on it. We all need to go back and check to make sure that the technology is working the way that it's supposed to along the way.

Hilary Reed: love that. Trust, but verify. I love it. Thank you so much, Erin for coming on. I know I get to talk to you every day, but thank you for coming on and talking to me on the podcast.

Erin Lutz: This was so much fun. Thank you.

Host: And our, thanks to Erin and thanks for joining us. And to simplify your credit union marketing needs with EmpowerFi's full-service marketing and design support, so your credit union will stand out from the crowd, just visit, empowerfi.org. This is the Speakeasy Financial Marketing Podcast.

Thanks for listening.