A day in the life of a product marketing manager at Duffel
We sat down with Ellen Scales to discuss her international work experience, journey in product marketing, and how she’s helping to disrupt the travel industry.
Ellen Scales is a Product Marketing Manager at Duffel – she has been on the team since April 2021. We recently sat down with Ellen where we discussed her international work experience, journey in product marketing, and how she’s helping to disrupt the travel industry.
What are three things you enjoy outside of work?
Travelling: This is a no-brainer when working at Duffel. I love visiting Italy and the next destination on my travel list is South America but I haven’t landed on which country to visit first.
Finding new places to eat in London: You can’t live in a city like London and not explore all the time. I’m always on the lookout for a great Italian restaurant, or a new brunch and coffee spot.
Self-care: I like to relax and treat myself by trying out the latest skincare products, squeezing in a few meditations or pilates classes in the week, and going on shopping trips on the weekend.
What has been your journey into product marketing?
I studied Business Economics and Social Studies at Trinity College Dublin. I was initially drawn to the broadness of the degree covering everything from statistics to the history of political thought. I really enjoyed the marketing modules and went on to complete a couple of internships to get a taste for marketing in the real world. These internships were at a jewellery company and Enterprise Ireland, a government body tasked with promoting Irish investment abroad – this role took me to Malaysia for a summer.
I started working in sales and business development at Twilio in San Francisco – a communications API. In this role, I worked closely with our customers and it gave me a robust set of skills and built my confidence dealing with lots of stakeholders which set me up well for a career in Product Marketing.
I heard about the concept of Product Marketing in my early 20s and I was interested in the intersection between product, sales, and marketing. It seemed like a great fit based on my education and experience. It also meant I could lean into areas of business that I was interested in: customer empathy, developing strategies, and product insights.
What does day-to-day life in your role look like?
The scope of my day-to-day work ranges from producing sales enablement material and figuring out the positioning and pricing of new product features to building landing pages and carrying out customer and competitor research.
I work closely with teams and individuals across the business including product and brand designers, product managers, engineers, and our CEO Steve Domin.
At Duffel, we use Slack for communicating with colleagues and customers, Figma for designing assets and collaborative reviews, and Notion for documenting everything. The Marketing team is empowered to use GitHub for small website edits and we work with engineers for larger projects.
What do you like about the culture at Duffel?
It has to be the people! I work with genuinely kind, helpful, and transparent colleagues. When we’re kicking off a new project, it’s great to have team members who are keen to volunteer and get stuck in to help.
I also love our mission to transform and democratise the travel industry. Empowering sellers to put customers at the forefront of any travel booking experience is an exciting challenge and it's wonderful to be part of that.
Which project/achievement/campaign are you most proud of delivering at Duffel?
Working on our new pricing has been a challenging but rewarding project. We’ve thought about lots of ways that we bring value to our customers and what makes sense from a revenue perspective. It’ll always be an ongoing initiative that we monitor and iterate on over time but I’ve loved working across lots of teams in the business (finance, engineering, project) while making sure our customers stay as our point of focus.
Describe your working life at Duffel in three words?
Varied. Fast. Exciting!
Duffel is always looking for talented new team members. Check out open opportunities for you to get involved in transforming the travel industry at duffel.com/careers.