Our winner of employee of the month for July is Sam Brookes! We caught up with Sam on all things analytics, ClickThrough, and Stitch figurines!
Our employee of the month for July has been announced! This month, we’re honouring our Analytics Manager, Sam Brookes, following her many months of hard work on GA4 migrations.
“Sam has been such an inspiration in the past couple of months: She's had to go from 0 to HERO on GA4 . Not only has she completely mastered the platform, new definitions, and overcome titanic technical barriers, but she's been preparing and delivering training to both colleagues and clients (which in turn has created a new stream of revenue). Unfortunately, her work tends to go unnoticed due to the nature of her role - everything happens in the background. But it is precisely the lack of noise that is an indicator of how amazing she is. Without Sam's hard work and expertise, our clients could not have had a smooth migration to GA4 and would have encountered all the risks and nuisances that would have created. I truly think she deserves recognition for her dedication, work ethic, and everything she does, which ultimately helps other teams to be able to be as great as they are and offer a smooth impeccable service to clients.”
We caught up with Sam to find out more about her long tenure with us at ClickThrough, and the new challenges GA4 has brought with it!
First up, can you tell us a little bit more about your role here at ClickThrough?
I’m ClickThrough’s Analytics Manager, I handle anything to do with Google Tag Manager for ClickThrough and our clients. If things go wrong, or need amending, in Analytics or Tag Manager, I’ll go in and put them right! A colleague described me as the go-to knowledge base for all things analytics and reporting, which seems accurate!
At thirteen years of service, you’re our second-longest serving team member at ClickThrough (beaten only by CEO, Phil)! What would you say is your favourite thing about working here?
The people, the atmosphere, and the support. We’re all appreciated here, and there's a lot of a lot of help and support for anyone who needs it, whether there are challenges in work or at home. I think that’s a huge part of what makes ClickThrough a great place to be!
What would you say has been the biggest change over the past 13 years?
Oh my goodness where to start! I started off in the little, tiny office that sits on the other side of the car park and, within three months of working at ClickThrough, moved into the office that we're at now. And we've gone from around 20 people to about 50, over the years! When I started, ClickThrough was very much a small business - we’ve gone through a big expansion to respond to our client and product bases growing. It’s hard to pinpoint individual changes, but the scale is definitely the biggest!
Not only have you been moving all our clients to GA4 over the past year, but you were also here during the move to Universal Analytics! Have there been any big differences between the two?
Universal Analytics took off in 2012, so I’d been working at ClickThrough and on classic analytics for two years by then. And now, to be moving to GA4 – well, it’s a massive shock for any business! I think the move to Universal Analytics was a lot smoother, mainly because of more complexity within the industry and the need for GA4 to solve a lot of problems that simply didn’t exist before, with GDPR creating a lot of challenges too.
It's not just Analytics which has seen changes, the format of AdWords (now Google Ads) has changed twice since I’ve been here. You just have to be open to these changes – I think that’s why I’ve been here so long and do well in my role, I’m not phased by what the industry throws at me!
What three words would you use to describe yourself?
Empathetic, resilient, and flexible.
Let’s finish on the most important question - what are you planning on spending your voucher on?
Ooh - it's probably going to be something Stitch related! I collect Stitch figurines and was looking for a new one. Any time I’ve had a voucher from ClickThrough, whether it’s this one or the birthday vouchers we get every year, I try and spend it on something a bit frivolous, and really make sure I’m using it to treat myself!
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