PLUS · Marketing Ownership & Systems

Building the infrastructure marketing never had

The Situation

Three separate systems problems were quietly limiting what my team could do. First, marketing requests came in through email, Word documents, Teams chat, or hallway conversation — many going straight to my marketing coordinator without me copied, so I had little visibility into my own team's workload without micromanaging. Second, in-person PLUS events were run almost entirely by the VP of Events, who handled event design and branding, signage vendors, and PowerPoint templates — much of it I never saw, or saw too late to shape. Third, marketing wasn't the system of record for the website either; administrative staff across the org, including event staff, could update pages directly, while marketing was mostly just asked to supply graphics on request.

Fixing Intake First

I decided a real project management system was needed and researched options, choosing Asana in part because it offered a one-month free trial. I started small — just myself and my marketing coordinator logging and manually inputting incoming requests — before taking it further.

After that internal trial, I made the case to the CEO to adopt Asana organization-wide for marcomm requests. I partnered with another director at PLUS who handled project management to build out a proper request form in Asana. She liked the system and became an internal champion — together we pushed the rollout across the organization, with her leading training and helping other teams set up their own projects.

Earning a Seat in Events

For the international conference held each November, the only way I initially learned what was happening on the branding and event side was by proactively asking the VP of Events and the CEO, or picking things up in team meetings. I set up standing weekly meetings with the VP of Events, which finally gave me real input into planning. When offered the chance to take over all event creative immediately, I chose instead to go through one full event cycle first to properly assess my team's bandwidth, since the VP already had vendors in place. Each year after that, my team took on more — joining strategic planning committees, attending site visits, and eventually owning large-scale signage, digital signage, and PowerPoint templates so everything stayed on brand and on message.

Bringing the Website In-House

Marketing eventually gained full ownership of the website. After learning how the site was actually managed through PLUS's CRM, I first worked directly with the vendor on a website refresh before pursuing a full redesign. I sent out RFPs and led the redesign process, partnering again with the project-management-savvy director from the Asana rollout — all while PLUS was simultaneously migrating to a new association management system and adding a new learning management system. I had only one staff person through most of this, which was genuinely difficult given ongoing needs across events, chapters, and educational products. I brought on a contractor for email and social media who later converted to full-time, and near the end of my time at PLUS added another marketing coordinator, growing the team to four.

Results

Marcomm requests tracked through Asana grew from 650 to 750 year-over-year — a 15% increase — with 10 team members across the organization onboarded to the system. Turnaround and feedback cycles improved, fewer requests got lost in email threads, and the team could finally identify recurring annual requests to work on proactively during downtime instead of reacting. Asana adoption expanded well beyond marketing, into event planning and educational products like webinars, improving cross-team transparency org-wide.

The throughline: diagnosing inefficiencies across intake, events, and the website — then building the systems to fix them — saved time and money while the organization kept growing.