Marlena Sarunac

About

With a Master of Engineering from Lehigh University and a B.A. in Political Science and English, this professional has a diverse educational background. They have held various marketing roles, including Vice President of Marketing at Particle Health and Director of Marketing at Ideon. Their experience also includes roles such as Creative Strategist at mllnnl and Director of Marketing at the Advertising Research Foundation. Currently, they serve as a Fractional CMO at The Company Advice, where they provide strategic marketing leadership to clients. This individual's expertise spans across different industries and companies, showcasing their adaptability and skill in driving marketing initiatives.

Experience

• Fractional CMO · The Company Advice03-01-2024

  As a Fractional CMO, responsible for providing strategic marketing leadership and guidance to clients. - Providing strategic guidance, innovative solutions, and expert insights to early-stage tech startups. - Developed an award-winning marketing playbook that jumpstarts a company's marketing efforts within one quarter. - Specialized in enhancing market credibility, fostering influence, and delivering customer value at all interaction points. - Critical understanding of key inflection points and marketing opportunities in an early stage startup's lifecycle

• Vice President Marketing · Particle Health07-01-2020 – 12-01-2023

  - Health-Tech API startup; Series A — raised $25M Series B round; Founding marketing team member focused on distilling complex platform business for multiple market segments, consistently driving healthy pipeline - 45% of all customers directly attributed to marketing - Designed, executed, and monitored a data-driven, analytics-first growth marketing strategy focused on revenue outcomes. Provided regular reporting to CEO, CRO and Board on marketing initiatives and related revenue KPIs. - Defined and manage the growth marketing budget, ensuring projects deliver a positive ROI, while allowing room for innovative tests and initiatives. - Established market credibility by creating a leading, humanized brand that merchants and customers trust and new employees want to be a part of via web design, conferences, content, and more - Managed cross-functional teams to design, implement, and analyze end-to-end experiments across all channels, including A/B testing, market segment analysis, and creative variations to optimize campaigns and maximize ROI. - Built new inbound demand generation engine to reach SMB and enterprise companies, and drove leads through content (articles, news, podcasts, videos, webinars, etc.), digital marketing + strategic partnerships. - Led the ongoing usage and effectiveness of current CRM (HubSpot) and other marketing tools + automations. - Owned all branding, positioning, website development, social media, sales enablement - Managed marketing team, PR team, and multiple third party vendors + freelancers (designers, animators, writers, etc.)

• Director of Marketing · Ideon07-01-2018 – 06-01-2020

  - Led all marketing operations including content creation, lead generation, acquisition strategy, PR, and event planning. - Accountable for 40% of website inbound traffic from marketing efforts and 40% from SEO; drove major rebranding and website launch. - Initiated and oversaw annual customer success event to gather feedback and identify upsell opportunities.

• Creative Strategist · mllnnl10-01-2015 – 03-01-2017

  - Managed largest clients, strategies, analytics, and creative development for digital and experiential brand campaigns at the agency. - Designed custom products tailored to meet client needs, assisted in launching startups, and guided an e-commerce app through acquisition. - Planned industry events, led company-wide learning and skills development programs, and supported the growth of new talent.

• Director of Marketing · Advertising Research Foundation04-01-2015 – 10-01-2015

  - Immersed in 80 years of advertising and market research, I traveled to Cannes Lions and back to interview C-Suite thought leaders on "How Advertising Works." - Designed and executed upon The ARF's digital platform, managed email marketing and website design, rolled out cohesive branding strategy across company initiatives, created, updated and improved internal company processes utilizing cloud-based solutions, planned events and conferences and worked closely with Board of Directors to ensure the team was aligned with key objectives. - Developed and managed digestible digital content by traveling to Cannes Lions, Advertising Week, and more, to film and interview C-Suite thought leaders on "How Advertising Works." This was a unique opportunity to mingle with the best minds in advertising, to see real time thought leadership and debates within a rapidly changing industry.

• Senior Marketing Consultant · MasterCard09-01-2008 – 07-01-2012

  - I traveled across the United States to manage cross-functional teams, clients and campaigns on large consulting projects. My efficiencies and process-driven work paved the way for a highly lucrative company-wide speciality in turnkey marketing, which churned out dozens of deeply analytical monthly marketing campaigns. - Daily responsibilities included client relationship management, managing teams to conduct industry research, regulatory requirements and actionable analytics for Fortune 100 companies, specifically in financial services and growing e-commerce vertical. - As a Global Marketing Consultant at MasterCard Advisors, I conducted B2B Marketing, market analysis, market research, creative brand strategy, competitive research, benchmarking, client relations, customer retention, and strategy development for banks, credit unions and credit card issuing financial institutions. - I also identified the need for and developed the groundwork to establish MasterCard's first "Young Professionals" Business Resource Group, to satisfy a companywide need for young professional networking and early-stage millennial market research— a largely ignored customer segment at the time. - First job out of college as an Associate Global Marketing Consulted; double-promoted in 2010 to Senior Marketing Consultant.

• Director of Marketing · PoachIt01-01-2013 – 04-01-2015

  - Employee #3 - Developed the marketing strategy from the ground up, and designed and executed email + social media campaigns - Analyzed user e-commerce analytics and category spend for customer segmentation. In two years, | helped grow our userbase from 6K private beta users to nearly half a million online shoppers, by hustling to get us featured on Forbes, Bloomberg, Good Morning America, TechCrunch, Katie Couric, Wired, and more.

Education

• Lehigh UniversityMaster of Engineering - MEng, Technical Entrepreneurship
• Lehigh UniversityB.A., Political Science, English

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