Creative Marketing Operations · Lake Bluff, IL

Ashling Struve builds the structure behind growth.

Develop the idea. Build the campaign. Prove it worked. I run marketing as a department of one across three service brands — combining brand storytelling and campaign execution with the CRM administration, automation, and reporting systems that turn a marketing push into measurable pipeline.

ashlingstruve85@gmail.com linkedin.com/in/ashlings Portfolio & artifacts Resume available on request

CREATIVE Develop the idea

Brand voice, messaging, and campaign concepts that translate technical services into stories customers actually respond to.

EXECUTION Build the campaign

Multi-channel content across social, email, web, and sales enablement — each brand keeping its own distinct voice.

SYSTEMS Prove it worked

Dashboards, automation, and CRM data quality that show leadership exactly what's driving pipeline — and what isn't.

Selected work

Case studies from running marketing for United Services by Permaco — a family-owned restoration company operating three brands: United Services, 1-800-BoardUp Chicagoland, and Dr. Energy Saver NE Illinois.

Analytics

Multi-brand marketing intelligence dashboards

Leadership had activity but no visibility. I built a formula-driven dashboard suite in Excel — COUNTIFS/SUMIFS engines tied to year selection — covering lead sources, job outcomes, revenue opportunities, and year-over-year performance across all three brands. Marketing conversations moved from "we've been busy" to "here's what's working, and here's what it's worth."

BUILT WITH · Advanced Excel · Formula-driven architecture · Monthly summary + live touch tracking

Automation

Lead-intake automation

Job-intake emails were being logged by hand. I built a Power Automate workflow that parses intake emails into a SharePoint-based log automatically — reducing manual entry and making CRM data consistent enough to report on.

BUILT WITH · Power Automate · SharePoint

Analytics

Fire Department Intelligence Dashboard

A standalone dashboard correlating field-outreach touch activity with emergency call volume by fire department — including the data-quality cleanup that made the correlation trustworthy enough to guide relationship-development priorities.

VIEW ANONYMIZED CASE STUDY → · Excel · Data cleanup & entity matching

Insight

Lost-job analysis → operational fix

Digging into lost-job categories revealed that intake response time — not marketing reach — was the leading driver of lost opportunities. The finding turned into a targeted improvement for the call-center process. Sometimes the best marketing fix isn't a campaign.

OUTCOME · Marketing data driving an operations change

Revenue operations

Sales & marketing operating system

Created the resources that align sales, operations, and marketing around one process—including an eight-stage journey that connects team actions with the customer and referral-partner experience.

VIEW ANONYMIZED CASE STUDY → · Process design · Sales enablement

Creative work

The creative side of my work spans two distinct lanes: my three-brand role at United Services and independent brand projects for small businesses.

Current role · United Services

Creative Marketing Operations across three brands

These are connected parts of my work for United Services, 1-800-BoardUp Chicagoland, and Dr. Energy Saver NE Illinois.

Three brands, three voices

Ongoing content across social, email, and web for a restoration brand, an emergency-response brand, and a home-performance brand — each with its own audience, tone, and calls to action.

Translation as a craft

Turning technical services and real customer needs into clear, approachable messages, campaign concepts, and visuals people actually understand.

Campaigns from idea to follow-through

Leadership ideas and market opportunities turned into executable campaigns — message and creative materials built together with the tracking and follow-up behind them.

Independent creative work

Bespoke Brand Solutions

Bespoke Brand Solutions was the name of my independent creative project for developing logos, visual identities, and early brand concepts for small businesses.

Agency work · 2013–2016

rabble+rouser

Production coordination, quality assurance, office and studio operations, creative and developer project management, and app and website testing. I helped move ambitious creative work from idea to delivery—on schedule, on brief, and checked twice before it shipped.

WEBSITES · APPS · COOKBOOKS · TV ADVERTISING · DIGITAL · PRINT · SOCIAL · EVENTS

Weber Grills Omaha Steaks Atkins Nutritionals Blue Moon Farm Credit FCC Services Mortgage Cadence Health Links Futrix Health Healthspek Colorado Health Institute LiveWell Colorado National Multiple Sclerosis Society Immunize For Good Keystat Marketing Access Fund Save The Dome Metro Crisis Services Denver's Road Home New Code Denver Regional Air Quality Council Electric Ride Colorado Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment

The toolbox

A marketer who understands what's under the hood of the systems she runs.

Technical foundation

MIT xPRO — Full Stack Development with MERN · 2023

Full-stack web development training from MIT on the MERN stack — MongoDB, Express, React, and Node.js. It means integrations, APIs, websites, and marketing platforms aren't black boxes — when a system needs configuring, connecting, or fixing, I can work at the level where the problem actually lives.

Working stack

CRM administration
Power Automate
SharePoint
Power Apps
Advanced Excel
Marketing automation
Email & web marketing
Social media
Agile & PM foundations

New credential · HubSpot Academy

HubSpot Revenue Operations Certified

Training focused on aligning people, processes, systems, and data to improve the customer experience and support sustainable revenue growth.

Now building

Side projects where the MERN training gets its reps — real tools for real problems.

Live project

DonutKnow — dinner, decided

“Donut know what you want? Roll for it.” A restaurant-decision app that ends dinner indecision: pick a mood — from “I Can't Even” to “Wild Dice” — set your filters, and a dice roll picks a well-reviewed spot nearby. Concept, branding, and full-stack build.

DONUTKNOW.COM · MERN · Google Places API

In development

House Manager Tool

Maintenance schedules and issue tracking for the place you live — an idea born the day a tree fell through my house. Real problems make the best product briefs. A home-inventory element is next on the roadmap.

IN PROGRESS · Full-stack build

Live client project

My PA for a Day — practical help, thoughtfully organized

A service-business website for professional organizing, planning, strategy, and business support across Chicagoland and the northern suburbs. I helped shape the positioning, service structure, inquiry experience, and full website build.

MYPAFORADAY.COM · Brand positioning · Web strategy · Site build

Off the resume

A one-page resume is an exercise in leaving things out. Some of what got cut.

PEAK6 · 2008–2009 WeSeed: a startup, from zero

Project lead at PEAK6's virtual trading-platform startup — led a team of six building a search-engine database from the ground up, and designed a card game to help new users learn their trading symbols.

PEAK6 · 2009–2010 Energie: the in-house creative department

Coordinated creative services company-wide for PEAK6, a Chicago trading and financial technology firm — film and photo shoots, set books and auditions, trade shows, university recruiting, and large-scale event production.

PEAK6 · 2010–2012 OptionsHouse: operations at a #1 brokerage

Operations specialist at PEAK6's online brokerage — rated #1 by Barron's for options traders four years running — writing the standard operating procedures that held a fast-growing platform together and managing the move of 40,000 client files to the Chicago Board of Trade.

Certified Makeup artist

Formally trained and certified — color, light, and detail work at the closest possible range. Creative direction you can hold a brush to.

2022–2024 The classroom

Substitute teaching at my daughter's preschool while re-entering the workforce — coordinating with teachers and parents, running projects and schedules for the toughest stakeholders there are: four-year-olds.

About

My agency education came at rabble+rouser, a Denver brand studio — production coordination, quality assurance, and operations, supporting work for clients like Weber and Denver's Road Home. That's where I learned how good creative actually gets made: on schedule, on brief, and checked twice before it ships.

Then came seven years of full-time parenting across the UK and Illinois, with freelance creative and marketing projects running through it all. Rebuilding a career after a break teaches you resourcefulness in a way no job ever has.

Today I run marketing end-to-end for a three-brand services company — and I'm at my best in scalable growth environments where lifecycle strategy, process clarity, and data-driven decisions beat reactive activity. My favorite compliment from leadership: the bridge between the systems and the people who use them.

Also true

B.A. Geography, University of Denver — with GIS coursework, the original data-driven mapmaking
Seven years living between the UK and Illinois — adaptability, field-tested
Fluent in translating between marketers, salespeople, and spreadsheets