How to Build Marketing Systems That Actually Work with Erika Storli, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Trello | Ep. 359

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The Marketing Millennials

Episode: How to Build Marketing Systems That Actually Work with Erika Storli, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Trello | Ep. 359

Date: October 22, 2025
Guest Host: Tamara Kaminski
Guest: Erika Storli, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Trello

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Overview

This episode is a tactical masterclass for marketers feeling overwhelmed by scattered to-do lists, endless Slack pings, and fire drills from all angles. Guest host Tamara Kaminski welcomes Erika Storli, Senior PMM at Trello, to uncover how marketers—especially in lean product marketing teams—can move from reactive chaos to operating with true strategic intent. The conversation covers Erika’s hard-won systems for prioritizing work, setting boundaries, building stakeholder alignment, and saying "strategic no’s" without burning bridges. Erika draws from her real-life experience weathering a drastic team downsizing while keeping impact high.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Rethinking Productivity and Boundaries

• Old vs. New Perspectives

  • Erika used to believe productivity meant immediate responsiveness to every notification and task ([01:52]):
    • “I used to have the mindset of needing to always be on and constantly being on top of every Slack ping, every JIRA ticket...” —Erika Storli ([01:55])
  • A major shift was learning to set boundaries and communicate realistic timelines with stakeholders.

• The Importance of the Strategic 'No'

  • Being strategic means not saying yes to everything ([02:48]):
    • “If you're always saying yes to everything, like you're not being strategic.” —Tamara Kaminski ([02:48])
  • Erika highlights the extra challenge women can face around people-pleasing and the need to cultivate comfort with boundaries ([03:14]):
    • “As women we have a bias… of not having the ability to say no because you want to just be there for the other person... but that can lean into people pleaser tendencies.” —Erika Storli ([03:14])

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The Realities of a PMM Day-to-Day

• Juggling Multiple Stakeholders

  • Erika outlines her daily reality: rapidly context-switching between product, sales, PR, social, community—and handling “whatever Slack channel needs me most” ([04:06]).
  • Increasing responsibility for PMMs, highlighted by industry reports.

• The Breaking Point

  • Major organizational change: PMM team shrinks from 10 to 2, workload remains ([05:55]).
    • “My team that I had originally joined was over 10 PMMs and then it downsized to just myself and my teammate…” —Erika Storli ([05:59])

• First Steps Toward Sustainable Systems

  • Erika and her teammate audited all in-flight projects, used Trello to visually organize and prioritize, and had candid discussions on what truly needed their attention vs. what to (strategically) say no to ([07:49]).

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Prioritization Models and Alignment

• OKRs over Ad Hoc Prioritization

  • While informal matrices (like Eisenhower) help, the team moved to OKRs for more rigorous alignment with broader company and product goals ([09:22]):
    • “Every project we work on aligns or maps to that appropriate goal… PMMs are being a little bit more strategic in the last year.” —Erika Storli ([10:34])

• Outcome-Orientation vs. Task Lists

  • Discussion on balancing being “task-oriented” with outcome-focused work:
    • The danger of over-scheduling tasks at the expense of time for strategic thinking ([11:13])
    • Erika’s new Head of PMM is encouraging more space for strategic work and creative rituals ([11:57], [13:30])

• Building Team Rituals for Creativity

  • Weekly team syncs, “rose and thorn” check-ins, and kudos rituals foster intentionality and keep space open for both personal connection and strategic brainstorms ([13:52]).

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Building and Adapting Systems

• Start with Tools that Serve the Team

  • Choose platforms (Trello, Notion, Google Docs, etc.) that work for your team, and don’t force-fit tools that create friction ([15:23], [17:20]).
    • Notable moment: “You don’t want to get to the point where you make somebody so frustrated that they cry because they don’t enjoy using the platform…” —Erika Storli ([16:19])

• Internal System vs. Cross-Team Tool Alignment

  • It’s more important to have an internal system that works for your team before worrying about broader tooling alignment ([17:20]).

• Transparency and Stakeholder Management

  • Use “altitude” to tailor status sharing: Trello for internal tracking, Confluence/Google Docs for reporting out to stakeholders ([19:51]).
  • Adjust communication depth by stakeholder group: “Sales just wants when, Product may want detail” ([22:08]).

• Asynchronous Updates & Flexibility

  • Embracing async tools (Slack, Loom) reduces unnecessary meetings and status report calls—especially crucial for distributed remote teams ([19:51]).

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Intake, Boundaries, and Managing Requests

• Public Intake Channels

  • Move from private/DM-based requests to a public Slack channel for triage, delegation, and transparency ([23:39]):
    • “I had to say no to a lot of individual DMs… making sure people would start going into a public Slack channel and putting in their ask...” —Erika Storli ([24:00])

• Formalizing Intake Process & SLAs

  • Set up intake forms or ticketing processes, and negotiate service-level agreements (SLAs) with stakeholders (“co-create” the process) ([25:10], [27:46]):
    • “Co-create that SLA so it doesn’t feel like you’re just pushing back… each team might require a different SLA...” —Tamara Kaminski ([27:46])
  • Recognize that timelines for requests differ drastically depending on complexity (e.g., an email vs. a video asset).

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Practical Tips for Overwhelmed Marketers

• Start Small: Own Your To-Do System

  • Find where you have control; choose a system that works for you now ([29:51]).
  • Erika’s current hack: Trello’s “Quick Capture” with AI pulls in tasks from Slack/email and organizes them automatically ([29:51]).
    • “If you don’t have [a to-do system], that’s where you need to start… It starts with yourself.” —Erika Storli ([30:26])

• Model the Behavior

  • “Model the behavior you want to see in others.” —Tamara Kaminski ([31:31])

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Erika’s Marketing Hill to Die On

• Precision Beats Scale
  • In lean teams with limited resources, clarity and precision in user and message always outperform scattershot approaches ([31:45]):
    • “Make sure you have precision, making sure that precision beats scale every time…that will outperform the noise to your competitors.” —Erika Storli ([31:45])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Boundaries:

  • “Despite being on a lean team, I think it's being aware of where your most needs are at the moment and just being authentic and real with people...” —Erika Storli ([01:55])

• On Saying No:

  • “As women we have a bias…of not having the ability to say no…But that can lean into people pleaser tendencies.” —Erika Storli ([03:14])

• On Team Shrinkage:

  • “My team…was over 10PMMs and then it downsized to just myself and my teammate.” —Erika Storli ([06:06])

• On Systems:

  • “You don’t want to get to the point where you make somebody so frustrated that they cry because they don’t enjoy using the platform...” —Erika Storli ([16:19])

• On Tools:

  • “Life is short. No one needs to be crying over software.” —Tamara Kaminski ([19:19])

• On Intake:

  • “[Requests] started coming my way, so I had to be very clear with like where are we going to intake the requests or the asks...” —Erika Storli ([23:43])

• On Co-Creating SLAs:

  • “Co-create that SLA so it doesn’t feel like you're just pushing back all the time…” —Tamara Kaminski ([27:46])

• On the Hill to Die On:

  • “Precision beats scale every time. That one's going to be on a loop in my brain for a while.” —Tamara Kaminski ([32:44])
  • “Making sure you have precision… will outperform the noise to your competitors every time.” —Erika Storli ([31:45])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 01:40: Erika’s old view of productivity vs. new view (boundaries, responsiveness)
• 03:14: Gendered dynamics of saying “no” and people-pleasing
• 05:55: The PMM team downsizing and the “wake-up call” for systems
• 07:49: Building a system from scratch—mapping active projects and workload
• 09:22: How Erika prioritized without initial OKRs, then moved to more formal models
• 11:57: Scheduling for strategic space, team rituals, and creative thinking
• 13:52: Examples of team rituals, wins, and kudos
• 15:23: Why the right tool for your team matters more than top-down mandates
• 17:20: Adapting systems for team needs vs. forcing cross-team tool conformity
• 19:51: Transparency, sharing project status at varying “altitudes”
• 23:39: Stopping individual DMs; moving to public intake and shared triage
• 27:46: The value and process of co-creating SLAs with internal partners
• 29:51: Erika’s top productivity tip: start with a personal to-do system that you control
• 31:45: The “marketing hill” Erika would die on: precision > scale

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Takeaways

• Boundaries and the strategic 'no' are critical to real productivity and sustainability in marketing roles—with extra nuance for women in the field.
• Building the right system is about honest audits, clear communication with stakeholders, and choosing tools that your team will actually use.
• Prioritize outcome orientation, stakeholder alignment (especially via OKRs), and always tailor communication to your audience’s altitude.
• Intake processes, public triage, and (co-created) SLAs are invaluable for managing the constant inflow of requests—and building empathy.
• Start modeling the behavior you want to see—own your system, share your process, and improve incrementally.
• Precision and clarity in user targeting and messaging vastly outweigh brute-force or scattershot volume, especially for lean teams.

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Transcript

[A]

Hey, besties. Welcome back to another episode of the Marketing Millennials. I'm Tamara Kaminski and I'm stepping in as your guest host while Daniel's out on paternity leave. I'm a career product marketing leader and the former VP of PMM at Kajabi and Unbounce. Now I'm the founder of PMM Camp, a community and newsletter for product marketing leaders. And while Daniel is off doing dad things, I'll be here bringing you fun combos with some of the smartest marketers I know. Today's episode is for anyone who's ever looked at their calendar, their notion task list, their their slack pings and thought, how am I supposed to do all of this and be strategic? I'm joined by Erica Storley, a senior product marketing manager at Trello who knows what it's like to own multiple go to market plans, partner, cross functionally drive execution and still deliver real impact. We talk about what it takes to stop reacting and start operating like a strategic marketer, even when you're the only one doing the work. Erica shares how she builds and organizes her to do list, how to match the right level of detail to different stakeholders, and how to say a strategic no without burning bridges.

[B]

Welcome to the Marketing Millennials, the no BS Marketing podcast. I'm Daniel Murray and join me for unfiltered conversations with the brains behind marketing's coolest companies. The one request I tell our guests stories or it didn't happen. Get ready to turn the off.

[A]

Erica, welcome to the show.

[C]

Hi. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. Me too.

[A]

So I would love to start with an initial question around what is something you used to believe about being productive that you've completely changed your mind about now?

[C]

Such a great question. I think being on a very lean team currently for Trello, I used to have the mindset of needing to always be on and constantly being on top of every slack ping, every JIRA ticket that would go my way, every Trello card that I would be tagged in, constantly needing to be responsive. And now looking back in the last couple months on go to market campaigns I've been working through with the team, I realize it's not always necessary. Despite being on a lean team, I think it's being aware of where your most needs are at the moment and just being authentic and real with people saying, hey, I see your tag, I see your slack, I promise I will get back to you either by end of day or just setting clear boundaries is what I've Realized has helped me identify what it means to be productive.

[A]

Now I love that and I love that you mentioned boundaries. I actually wrote a newsletter post about this this weekend called the Strategic and the whole concept was around if you're always saying yes to everything, like you're not being strategic, you actually are not supposed to be doing everything. It's like, is this connected to my goals? Am I the best person to be doing that? And I do think a whole part of getting to the Strategic note is setting a boundary.

[C]

Yes, I completely agree. I think sometimes also as women we have a little bit of a bias or tendency and stereotype of not having the ability to say no because you want to just be there for the other person. You have a very maybe caring personality, but that can lean into people pleaser tendencies. And I know I've had to battle with that in my own professional journey. I'm still working through that. But it's really important. As a pmm, we're stretched thin in so many different places that it's important to send those, set those boundaries with your team.

[A]

I completely agree. And I think as a PMM we have more stakeholders than the average person. And you know, obviously not every listener of the POD is a product marketer. And so maybe could you set the stage for like what does your average day to day look like as a PMM at Trello? How many things are you involved with? What are these different trade offs that you're constantly making?

[C]

Oh my gosh, yes. Well it really does depend on the day and I think you probably relate to that as a PMM as well. But on a day to day it will depend on what roadmap we have going out of the pipeline for product releases. Working with maybe my sales team on figuring out any pitch decks or collateral that needs to get updated, any paid ads or campaigns that I'm working on with our performance marketing team or our PR comms team figuring out, making sure that we are all aligned on what the story is that we're sending out in the market and informing our end users and our customers of what's new in Trello. But a lot of it is just working in tandem with our different stakeholders. As a PMM like products, sales, pr, social community, you name it, I'm on it. Depending on what Slack Channel needs me most that day, that could be super overwhelming.

[A]

I was just reading the Product Marketing Alliance State of PMM report. I'm not sure if you read that a few weeks ago, but it was listing all of the responsibilities that a product Marketer has and pretty much every single category of responsibility has increased this year over last year and there are net new responsibilities being added to our plate. And I feel like I hear this all the time from product marketers I talk to. Like we've never been busier than we are now. And so getting to that strategic no is more important than ever before. And I know you and I were talking before the show about how, you know, creating systems is so important to you and before we dive into like the systems that you have created, can you walk us through the moment that you kind of realized like, I can't keep working like this, I need to fix this somehow?

[C]

Yeah, no, great question. I definitely empathize any marketer, whether you're a product marketer or non product marketer. The level of demand that is just coming out from every direction and it just feels like we have less resourcing and we're just working with a lot less but being demanded more out of less. So I think where I knew that the system that I was in place not working was essentially, unfortunately, two years ago, our PMM team was impacted by the macroeconomic features of what every tech company has gone through, which is layoffs and reorgs and changes. My team that I had originally joined was over 10PMMs and then it downsized to just myself and my teammate. So it was a lot to just kind of, it was just like a wake up call for me to understand, okay, there's still projects and expectations from our cross functional stakeholders that they need product marketing to still support. So I needed to evaluate really what systems were in place or not in place, what projects are in flight that I needed to take on and start mapping that out appropriately on that year, our fiscal year of what we can tackle or not tackle on a very lean team. So yeah, that's kind of my journey on that.

[A]

That's a massive change, like going from 10 to 2. And I'm sure the amount of work didn't decrease and certainly not by that multiplier. How did you start thinking about the day that that happened and you realize it's just you and your coworker. How did you start thinking about how am I going to get all of these things done? Like what started to change in your day to day? What systems did you put in place?

[C]

Well, first I needed to understand all the projects that were in flight. And I mapped that out to, I use Trello religiously, our own product, just to understand visually, like where is everything in place? Is it in progress? Is it Almost done. Is it finished? Maybe this isn't something I have to worry about right now. And then mapping it to every quarter, depending on how much bandwidth we had, that we were already committed to for that quarter of projects, and just really working in tandem with my teammate that, okay, this is the bandwidth we have and this is the urgency and priority level of this project, and we work together in that Trello board to create that system together. And obviously you can do this in any system that might work for your team. It could be in Google Sheets, it could be in Jira, it could be in Notion Asana, but it's having that authentic conversation with your teammate that what can you handle? What can I handle? And what do we need to, what you mentioned strategically say no to right now and maybe revisit and circle back to it later if we have the time to do that.

[A]

So you mentioned that you're thinking about some of those tacks across that framework. I think it's like the Eisenhower matrix, where it's like, okay, is it important? Is it urgent? What's the combination on that two by two? Is that how you're thinking about prioritization? Or is there a different model that you're using to really prioritize where you and your team is spending your time?

[C]

Yeah, I think that's more of maybe a prioritization model that we'll use informally as we have these conversations. I think we're at last seen how we prioritize is just based on the OKR model. If we have goals set up for that half of the fiscal year, how do we make sure every project we work on aligns or maps to that appropriate goal? And so at the time, though, when I was taking on this new team, this new world of a very lean PMM team, we didn't really have aligned okrs quite yet. So we needed to do more of the informal modeling that you were mentioning just now.

[A]

Sure, that makes sense. I love to hear that you guys have okrs. Honestly, it's crazy how few organizations actually have this. Or even in organizations that have OKRs, it doesn't always cascade down to product marketing. And one of the challenges I'll heal constantly is like, I don't really know how my work ladders back up to what the company's doing, or, wow, I keep getting asked to do all these tasks, and I don't really have a framework to say whether one is more important than the other. So that's great. It sounds like you're already ahead of a lot of product marketing teams.

[C]

Yeah, it is interesting because I think okrs for marketing, I mean Atlassian has been doing a version of that for many years. But I've noticed PMMs are being a little bit more strategic in the last year of actually having aligned OKRs that also align with product. I'm not saying every OKR for PMM has to align with product, but product always has okrs that in some shape or form we help contribute towards. So that has been helpful in our conversations on what projects or go to market campaigns can we take on strategically together as our product partners release new features.

[A]

That's great. I agree. We definitely need that alignment. One thing I'd love to pick your brain on is how you think about balancing reactive mode and strategic mode. Because I think when people implement systems, especially to do list systems and calendaring systems, we often default to calendaring every little thing, planning every little thing and we become very task oriented versus maybe outcome oriented oriented. And so what are some tactics or strategies that you're using to make sure that you're baking in space in your calendar to be strategic, to think maybe deeper or more high level. Just go beyond those daily to dos that you have.

[C]

Yeah, I definitely relate to the tediousness that sometimes gets to having to put like your to dos and your tasks in the calendar. And I think we're still figuring that out as a team on how we can leave more space, more time to be more strategic. I just got a new head of PMM for Trello, my new manager and she's actually pushing for that more which has been great. And I think that's part of just making sure we're aligned on okay, this is the commitment level we already have and we've said yes to a lot right now between the three of us. So then before we go back to our key stakeholders and informing them of our go to market campaign or our commitments that we're doing for OKRs this year, where can we start saying no to so we can leave some space to be more strategic with each other? I think it's part of that conversation. And then also leaving rooms for cultural rituals. I remember when we were a larger team and we're all remote and spread out in different places across the world and we still are. My teammate's based in Spain. We still have weekly syncs and check ins with each other that leave time for us to think more strategically about ideas and then kind of just blasting ideas maybe on a Trello board, making sure it's documented somewhere so it's not just like you Think about it, you say it and then you forget about it. So it's a combination of organic conversations, I think from that, I think that's fair.

[A]

I love the ritual idea and I think again, I feel like because product marketers are so good at getting stuff done, we like often default to being like, okay, we have a team meeting. Here's the agenda, let's stick to it. But I love this idea of in your weekly ritual, bake in time to be creative, Bake in unplanned time to think outside the box. I feel like that's a good reminder. All of us need.

[C]

Yeah, when we were a slightly bigger team and we still do this on our small team, but we have our Trello board as our place where we have a informal agenda. But then we also had baked in time of like, okay, what are our wins? What are our lows this week? Week or rose and thorns and then left some time at the end. Kudos to people. We have a ritual at Atlassian where you can send kudos to other teammates for going above and beyond their role. But then within the team meeting that I'm mentioning, we also would say verbally to another teammate like, kudos or shout out to this person for helping me send that email last minute. I know that was a little bit of a fire drill moment, but I appreciate you spending time to help me with that. So being intentional, I think is the key here of like, what kind of culture do you want to set up within your team as marketers or as PMMs?

[A]

That's kind of what I'm getting through. A lot of the things we've talked about already is, okay, we have a lot of stuff coming at us from a lot of different stakeholders that we're constantly triaging. But how do we go from being reactive to being proactive instead and having that layer of intentionality and even how we think about planning our work. So if there are product marketers who are out there or marketers in general and feeling the way that you felt that day when your team got eliminated and it was just the two of you, what are some actionable things they could start doing today to start to build a system like the system you've built to make things easier, I think.

[C]

Part of it is finding the right platform that works for your team and being on Trello. Of course we're going to use Trello and I say that also because it's a very easy visual tool to use for any non technical team. But if your team doesn't have Trello, if They prefer using a system like Notion or if they have Jira or if they have something a little bit less platformy like just Google Docs or it's just something that will help bring the team together like a whiteboard space. I know teams and different companies like to use Miro or Miro a lot of. Or Figma. It just depends on what you can align with that's easy for everyone to access as a team. I've seen tiers form on people who haven't been able to adapt tools that we were trying to push for in terms of organizing on the team. You don't want to get to the point where you make somebody so frustrated that they cry because they don't enjoy using the platform or process that your team is trying to have, have that conversation, survey or talk to your teammates of, okay, what platform are you comfortable with? Just so we can get some organization and project management in here. And so we're all just somewhat aligned on everything that's happening at once.

[A]

I agree. Honestly, choosing the right tool can be very contentious. One thing that I've seen and almost kind of struggled with in different companies I've worked at is does this tool carry across multiple teams? Because in my experience, product marketing, pmm, we often prefer different tools. And so how important is it to you that we all use the same tool? Like, do you want all of those teams to be using this tool so that everyone can access this? Or is it more important for product marketing to build the system for themselves first? And it's okay if it's a bit isolated or insulated?

[C]

That's an interesting question. And I do think it depends on how your marketing teams are set up at your company. For me, I think what I've noticed is sometimes a little bit of a hurdle is if there's a little bit of a misalignment between how your PMMs want to function and prioritize work and organize it versus what your maybe marketing program managers expect. That's kind of where I know that every company probably has their own way of how they might have a program manager or might not have a program manager. But I think that's just making sure you're aligned with your key stakeholders that are overseeing your projects and your goals. What platform makes sense. But if you don't have a program manager, which I didn't have for the last two years, it's really between me and my teammate. What's going to work for us in this moment? At that point, it was Trello being our command center for A lot of stuff. And it was a great way for us to also project test all the new features that we were rolling out this year.

[A]

Yeah, for you it makes obvious sense because you're dogfooding your old product. I think in my experience it's best not to get too hung up on the platform. Like I have worked with so many different marketing teams where they're like, well, I don't like Monday or I don't like Asana. And I really think the best way is just to make the tool work for you. Like, accept that. Like, yes, let's use the tool that's available to us. Let's use the tool that the most amount of people have access to and then work within the confines of that tool versus trying to fight the tool. Because I feel like if you fight the tool and you're kind of angry that you have to use the tool, you're never going to make the system work for you.

[C]

Exactly. Like, and then you get those tears from somebody who can't make the tool work for them. Like, don't force it. If it's not working, then figure out what the happy middle ground is there. I'm all about compromise and having some compassion around that.

[A]

So yeah, life is short. No one needs to be crying over software. Like, let's be serious.

[C]

Exactly. Okay.

[A]

So I think when we think about systems, or at least I should say when I think about systems, I often think about systems from like an official efficiency perspective. But I'd love to understand if you saw any performance out of this as well. Like did having a system in place allow you to improve your performance as a product marketer? Was it allow you to maybe have more credibility in the organization? I'd love to just hear a little bit about what you noticed before and after, how that shifted.

[C]

Yeah, I definitely work on the mindset of one of our values at Atlassian, which is open company, no bullshit. And so having a system where I would be very transparent on Confluence, that's kind of our if most marketers don't have Confluence like your Google Docs or your Word Doc of where you're having your go to market strategy set up and writing out what you are going to be working on throughout the quarter as you launch different comms plans. So being transparent there has helped me a lot in setting up systems across different teams. And then when it came to getting the daily to do lists and tasks done those teams didn't need to know about like this specific thing got done or this email got sent or whatnot. Or we had to pull it from this data center. They don't need to know those nitty gritty details. They want to know the results of that. So that's kind of where I went back to that main Confluence space and had transparency given out to the teams that needed the results or the update of that project. And the Trello board would be kind of like the command center between me and my teammate of just tracking if we're getting all the tasks done for our go to market comms and strategies. So definitely getting the system in place is a work in progress. I think as you're going through the campaigns and seeing how people react to the information you give and being open to incorporating new tools and new systems as you go. Because one thing I realized is not everybody wanted to meet every single week to give a status update. That's a huge thing too at our company, where it's very tedious to just expect people to meet every single week for 30 to 45 minutes and give a status update when they probably could have just done it on Slack. So we use Slack a lot. And Loom Loom is a big tool too for us to just give a quick update asynchronously, especially when we work in different time zones. So just being open to hearing and noticing what the reaction is from your other stakeholders and teammates of if the system's working or not and being open to improving it as you go.

[A]

I love that. So what I'm kind of hearing is part of developing this system is understanding the altitude with which your stakeholders want to operate within this system. Right. So I'm imagining sales probably. It's just like, just tell me what's happening, when am I going to get the new value Props. When is this coming through? Versus I imagine a team like product probably wants to be a little lower in the altitude. They probably are more detail oriented. They want to know and your work is a little bit more interconnected there as well. So I think that's important to recognize. It's like not everyone needs the same information. And sometimes when we try to give everyone the same amount of information through things like weekly meetings where we force 12 people to show up, it's a waste of everyone's time actually.

[C]

Absolutely. I think tailoring it, I mean as a pmm you always have to think about your audience for any campaign that you do. You also need to think about your internal audience if you're setting up these systems as you launch campaigns. Like you said, not every PM or salesperson needs to know the same information that you're giving at this meeting. So what's the best way to give that information tailored to those specific teams that's tailoring to your audience too, and that's unsafe.

[A]

As you were building out this new way of working, were there any things that you needed to stop doing that perhaps you guys were doing before that were getting in the way or you needed to get rid of to clear space for this new mindset? Because it sounds like it's a new mindset in addition to a new system.

[C]

One of the things that I was trying to make clear to a lot of people when we had team changes was I was here to support in any way possible. And whatever projects are happening, please be transparent with me. Let me know and I'll check back and see how I can reprioritize my to dos. But that came with getting a lot of individual Slack messages sent to me. Like, Erica, can you work on this? Erica actually have this coming out? Can you help us with this? Erica, Apple just emailed me and they need this update for their conference that they're doing with customers for Trello. Can you help me with this? Like, a lot of things started coming my way, so I had to be very clear with like, okay, where are we going to intake the requests or the asks or the support needed? And that came down to just making sure people would start going into a public Slack channel and putting in their ask or questions or concerns in there. So at least my teammate can also see it and he could be tagged in case I couldn't take on that task or question. And then also our manager, or whoever our interim manager was at the time could see it and also assist or bring in somebody else in case there needs to be extra hands on this. So I had to say no to a lot of individual DMs or Slack being urgent people that I recognize. And also just trying to make sure I brought my team, my teammates into that conversation as well.

[A]

So it's almost like a full circle moment because we started talking about the strategic no. And it kind of comes back to that here as well because I think that's something that a lot of people don't understand about product marketing is that we did like requests all day long from all teams across the business. And your team might not think that you're asking a lot of us, but that compounds when there's four or five other departments with with several requests a week. And so I love this idea of yes, we need our own internal triaging system to be able to say Is this valuable for me to work on or not? But how do we make this public to even just build some empathy, right? If everyone can see what's coming my way A maybe there's opportunities to surface collaboration like oh, we actually both want to know the same thing. That's interesting. Maybe we should work together on that or just, just again building that empathy of like wow, Erica seems really busy. She's already got 10 requests today. So I love that I haven't used a public intake like that before. I have built a formal intake process though because I have found that to be critical to the success of a marketing team. And even this idea, as you mentioned of like your internal audience is the same way that we would have like service level agreements with customers. I'll have service level agreements with my my own internal team. So hey, if a request comes in through this very specific process, file a ticket, whatever it might be, here's when you can expect for us to get back to you. Or here's when you can expect for this to be completed. And of course there's always exceptions and if something is truly urgent we will support. But there needs to be some boundary setting and some SLAs put in place.

[C]

I love that you mentioned SLAs because I, I don't think that's a consistent practice for PMMs to have SLAs. But I've noticed at my time at Atlassian and then before when I worked at Indeed PMMs didn't have SLAs. But then the key stakeholders that we work with are other cross functional teams for web, for design, for you name it, like a PR, they would all have SLAs in their ticketing system. And I have felt like some ways product marketers can be at mercy to those differing SLAs and stuff. And then we' had to adjust our campaign timelines based on SLAs other teams have. So I plus one to your suggestion like figuring out what's a reasonable SLA if we get a request from product or sales on something that they need help with, depending on that and then setting up that from there.

[A]

Exactly. And my hot tip to go along with this is co create that SLA so it doesn't feel like you're just pushing back all the time, but sit down with each team because each team might even require a different SLA and say A what is the altitude of information and content that you need from me as we work together as you mentioned already. And then B when tasks and items come up, what would be a reasonable time frame. You know, half the time if you have that conversation with people, people are reasonable and they're gonna be like, you know, I think 48 hours or I think, you know, one week, unless it's really urgent. And then you come to an agreement together, you implement and document that sla. And then in the future, if which will happen, I'm just going to pick on product, but it's going to happen. Product's going to be like, I need a comms for this. Tomorrow you can go back to the SLA you co created and been like, actually we built this together. And because of that, typically it would be seven days. What got in the way of that sla? Is there a way, a system that we can put in place to make this easier for us to work together? But that co agreement goes a long way.

[C]

Absolutely. Yeah, it does. And I think we do have T shirt sizing or tiering as part of our go to market strategies at Atlassian. But SLAs I don't think have been quite as discussed of what's the reasonable amount of time to give when it takes to write an email of an announcement versus creating, creating an entire new pitch deck. Like those are very different time frames to do that. Or updating a webpage. Right. Or creating a new video. Creating videos take longer than a lot of people think. So it's like, like things like that that I agree it would be helpful to co create.

[A]

Absolutely. I would love to know for the marketer who's feeling just completely underwater right now, they're listening to this and they're like, yes, of course I want to build a system, but I don't even have time to do my work, let alone build a system. What's one small productivity tip that they could do this week to make their life just a little bit easier?

[C]

That's a great question. And something that I think has helped me was just figuring out where can I have the most control in my system of work that I'm currently assigned and what process or tools work for me right now in this moment. Where are you even keeping track of all your to do lists or pings coming your way? And for me, I am using our new feature and this is a little bit of a shameless plug moment for Trello. I'm using the new feature Quick Capture and every time I save something from Slack or save something from email, it's creating a nice beautiful Trello card for me and AI is parsing that information and then I can move it onto my work calendar or on my Trello board, depending on where I'm tracking those to do lists. That has helped give me a little bit of a relief in managing the overwhelm that can happen as a PMM where everyone is just demanding so much out of you and you don't even know where was your last project status at? Or you're mid sentence and writing your blog announcement and somebody's pinging you something that's urgent that's due in two hours for the cmo. It's kind of just getting real with yourself of what's your to do list system right now. And if you don't have one, that's where you need to start and manage your stuff first before you can start figuring out how to help others. And then that will showcase like that will give inspiration to your teammates of like, oh, you're doing it this way. I want to try that. Like it starts with yourself. I think so.

[A]

I love that. It's like model the behavior you want to see in others, right?

[C]

Yeah, exactly.

[A]

Well, we end every episode of Marketing Millennials with one question, which is, Erica, what is one marketing hill you would die on?

[C]

Yeah, that's a fun question for sure. I think on a lean Trello PMM team. On Trello, we didn't have the luxury of throwing headcount at every single campaign that we ran this year. We had a big pivot out of project management into personal productivity. But what we did have is clarity. And that comes with having really great partners and building that trust and relationship with our product and our design teams and our co marketing teams on different channels. But we had a lot of clarity over our user and our message and our positioning and the impact that we wanted to have. So I would die on the hill of just like making sure you have precision and making sure that precision beats scale every time. Like just having that clarity over your users and your messaging and just being user centric. I think that will outperform the noise to your competitors. Every time.

[A]

Precision beats scale every time. That one's going to be on a loop in my brain for a while. That's a good one. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. Where can people find out more about you, follow you, learn more about Trello?

[C]

Yeah. Thank you so much for having me again. This has been so fun. You can find out about me more on LinkedIn. I'm there. I'm posting occasionally updates about Trello. Definitely follow atlassian on LinkedIn or Instagram. And Trello is also active on Instagram as Well as on LinkedIn through the Atlassian Channel. And there's a lot of new exciting things to come so I'm excited to share that out more with the world as it comes.

[A]

Amazing. Well thanks again for having us. And if you take away anything from this episode, it's to go and start a to do list right now. Get that system in place.

[C]

Exactly. We're rooting for you. Take a deep breath and find that right to do list for what we're doing. Works for you.

[A]

So exactly.

[B]

Thanks so much for listening. Keep tuning in to hear more great insights from the coolest marketers from around the world. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and follow the Marketing Millennials podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, I would greatly appreciate you giving us a five star rating. It helps bring more marketers into our community.