DataBlend Spotlight: Have you met Laura Merola yet? She's bringing automation to our channel partners.

Have you met Laura Merola yet? She holds the position of Director, Channel Marketing at DataBlend and was recently recognized on the Women of the Channel list for the year 2023. To commemorate this achievement, we interviewed Laura to discuss her experience at DataBlend.

Where are you from?

I grew up in Southwest Florida, but I was born in San Juan, PR and lived there until I was 6.

What's your background?

The reason I was born in San Juan is because my parents met each other while vacationing separately in St. Thomas, U.S Virgin Islands and decided after a couple of years they wanted to flee their corporate jobs in NYC and Washington DC to move to Puerto Rico, get married, and start a family. We eventually moved to Florida because a massive hurricane came through and destroyed the little island of Vieques where they had built our home. Why moving to Florida made sense to them, I won't ever understand since it's just as tropical with its weather! I grew up in Fort Myers, graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University before moving to Boston, then to Connecticut, and after 9 years in New England, I moved back to Florida and now reside in the Tampa Bay area with my husband and son.

Professionally, I've worked in Marketing for over 15 years, even before I graduated from college. I have a B.S. in Marketing and have always had a passion for the field. I love learning about what motivates people to act in certain ways and apply those findings to build go-to-market strategies. The psychology element is really interesting to me (I was, in fact, a psych major through my sophomore year until I changed to marketing!)

What are three fun facts about you?

1. I have travelled to 31 states and 12 countries. Italy, France, and Australia are my favorites.
2. I am writing a novel based on a true story
3. I took a cooking class with a famous Food Network chef

Tell me about your role.

I am currently the Director, Channel Marketing. In this role, I work closely with our global ecosystem of VARs and Software Publishers to enable them to sell more DataBlend. This includes providing opportunities for sales and implementation training, developing assets for use in marketing campaigns, and building relationships with practice leaders to ensure they are kept up to speed on all the wonderful things DataBlend is working on to their benefit.

Why did you join DataBlend?

I joined for so many reasons, the biggest being the opportunity to build something from the ground up. Being a start-up, DataBlend did not have a formal marketing strategy in place back in early 2021 when I joined. Working closely with our CEO David, he and I spent several months building the foundation of how we would bring DataBlend to market. I can confidently say that the business has evolved from a tiny seed to a flowering plant and it's truly amazing watching it grow bigger every day.

How has automation changed the way you work?

Automation in the world of marketing is critical. Without it, every single task will be done manually, potentially on a delayed schedule due to bandwidth, or done incorrectly just by the nature of repetition creating room for errors. Our team leverages several forms of automation to deliver emails, post to social accounts, generate reports, touch base with clients, create reminders, update databases....it's an essential part of our process within marketing and I couldn't see us working successfully without it.

Connect with Laura

If you want to say hello or book an appointment, here are a couple of ways to chat:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauramerola/

Email: lmerola@datablend.com