Next up we’re introducing our CRO Specialist, Carolanne Mangles.
Carolanne “Annie” started her marketing career as a PR and communications intern at the British Red Cross. As much as she loved it, she knew she wanted something more, where she could really get her hands on a website and help drive change.
In this endeavor, Annie moved to a large national marketing e-learning company as a content writer and SEO exec where she was able to learn new skills whilst also applying her existing experience with some of the biggest marketing gurus in the industry. “I was able to get content ranking in top positions for some competitive keywords, even against some other big names such as Hubspot and E-consultancy.” As Annie went from strength to strength her role began to change from being channel-focused to being product-focused as she worked across all touchpoints of the customer lifecycle. This developed a keen interest in campaign/project management, business strategy, and research.
With Annie’s strong determination she pushed herself further and enrolled onto the IDM Diploma in Digital Marketing. This gave her the opportunity to learn more about GDPR changes that were coming and gave her a headstart in completing her Award in GDPR, all in the same year.
Annie relocated to Warwickshire and moved into a new role in a large Birmingham-based tech business as a SaaS marketer that worked, again, across a lot of different channels but with the main focus being on web optimisation and conversion including site speed, user experience, and design.
As Annie progressed through her career, she gained some invaluable experience in all marketing channels and had the realisation that she no longer wanted to be a generalist across all areas and instead specialise in the areas she loved the most – Data, CRO, and Research. “I love psychology and conducting research to find out what makes customers tick, how to get them to change their behaviour and increase conversions.” Although report writing may bore some people, Annie loves going into detail and really understanding a topic so that a business marketing strategy can be created and implemented off data-driven research.
This is where Annie’s journey at Miromedia began as a CRO specialist, as she wanted more diverse work and challenges than what an in-house role had to offer. “I’ve enjoyed expanding Miro’s CRO and research services and I’m excited to work on new clients and industries in the future.”
During lockdown, Annie also decided to develop her skills even further and enroll onto the CXL scholarship program and spend three months learning about theory and practical applications of CRO including Statistics and R. After an intense 3 months of hard work, dedication and pushing herself out of her comfort zone, Annie became an official CXL Certified Optimiser!
“CRO for small business and startups is my passion and one of my main goals is to break the stigma that only large scale businesses with £££s and 100k of monthly traffic are the only sites that can have testing and optimisation plans within their marketing strategy.”
One of Annie’s proudest moments in her professional career so far was giving a live masterclass in marketing at the B2B Marketing Expo.
Hobbies
Annie enjoys reading, writing, and listening to the hilarious “Shagged Married Annoyed” podcast by Chris and Rosie Ramsey. Complimenting her degree, Annie has always been a literature fanatic and sees it as the cheapest way to travel the world and understand different cultures. She enjoys reading a lot of foreign (translated) fiction, fiction that explores current world moral and ethical issues, and of course the classics.
Annie is a big walker and hiker and enjoys walking until her feet hurt and zoning out in nature. She has covered all the major walking trails in West Yorkshire and is now starting to tick off trails in Oxfordshire and Warwickshire. She loves exploring castles and manor houses across the country and wants to work up her stamina to complete the three peaks challenge. She also has a 3-year-old Border Beagle, Freddie, who takes up a lot of her spare time and even has more Instagram followers!
Annie also loves participating in life drawing classes (as a drawer, not a model), something she’s kept up with since practicing fine art at school.
Fun Fact
Annie is a fully qualified TEFL teacher. She spent a summer living in a communal house in Fish Hoek, Cape Town, and travelled to Simonstown to volunteer to teach English to local students. Trying to get Afrikaans first-speaking students to understand Shakespeare and why they needed to learn it was a highlight. She loved taking in the local culture, the people, and the sense of community and belonging so much that one day she hopes to permanently relocate to Cape Town and do some more volunteering.
