Exploring Field Marketing Internships at Twilio

Exploring Field Marketing Internships at Twilio

In this post, learn what being a field marketing intern is like at Twilio through some intern insights, and deep-dive into different segments of Field Marketing: General NAMER Field Marketing, Internal Events Field Marketing, and Events Field Marketing.

What is general North America (NAMER) Field Marketing?

As a field marketing intern for this team, you focus on program creation for different sales segments. Field marketers brainstorm and create programs for customers each quarter and work closely with the sales team to pinpoint opportunities or needs.

When doing so, there are many processes in place, such as communicating with vendors, keeping track of registrations, and maintaining information organized using customer relationship management technology (i.e., Salesforce).

After a program is completed, it is vital to perform an ending analysis. The analysis focuses on the attributed pipeline, the number of attendees vs. registrations, and strategy. When analyzing this, the team can move forward in taking specific actions or come up with new ideas.

This summer, Maggie got to learn all of these processes and steps. Her main projects focused on building a Return on Investment (ROI) Calculator to keep track of 130+ programs, creating a consolidated view of events and increasing its functionality, and helping build programs by keeping track of registration and communicating with vendors.

By utilizing tools such as Excel, formulas, Salesforce, and by asking questions for clarification, she was able to complete her main projects a little after the midpoint mark. The original due date was to complete these projects close to the end of her internship.

What is Internal Events Field Marketing?

Internal Events Field Marketing supports Twilio events that serve a business function with a large audience of over 100 individuals. As an Internal Event field marketing intern, Tiffany was able to learn the main aspects of event planning, management, and marketing in order to support the R&D VP+ Summit, CKO, and VOX Summit. At Twilio, we recognize that it is important to bring our internal employees together at events to create a healthy team culture that builds together.

This summer, Tiffany learned the importance of streamlining and scaling processes so that there is a strong foundation of Internal Events programs across the company even in times of rapid growth. She built a “Program in the Box”, which is a Google Drive filled with all documentation templates and resources  necessary to support Twilions in building and owning their own internal events programs. She also built a Resource Library, which is a centralized database of contact information for possible vendors, venues, websites, and sourcing resources that will help Twilions with event planning. The last main project that she completed was designing and templating an event website and registration form available for use by all Twilions for event planning.

By utilizing skills such as project management, design, website creation and interpersonal communication, Tiffany is able to support both projects that were assigned to her in Internal Events and new projects assigned to her outside of the Internal Events team.

What is Events Field Marketing?

Within field marketing, external events are just as important as internal events, yet simultaneously serving a much different purpose and target market. External events include third-party and industry events and conferences where Twilio employees go to represent the company and what we do. On the other hand, customer events and conferences bring others to Twilio and what we have to offer.

Twilio hosts an annual customer and developer conference, called SIGNAL, that brings together a global community of developers, Twilio product users, and industry professionals. The two-day conference is an opportunity to attend keynotes, product demos, thought-leadership breakout sessions, as well as countless customer case studies. The breakout sessions are led by Twilio clients that showcase how their business or organization uses Twilio's product(s) and how it has supported the function and/or growth of their company.

Essentially, there is something for everyone– developers, product managers, markers, non-profit leaders, and any industry professionals can benefit and network with other professionals at this tech conference.

SIGNAL is a very integral part of Twilio as it raises awareness and visibility of the company to thousands of people globally, presents direct examples of Twilio products in use, and most importantly, it is the largest single pipeline driving campaign.

A fantastic team of individuals executes this annual herculean effort leading different aspects of SIGNAL that come together to finally execute the real deal:

• Content (includes customer speakers, superclass and celebrity guests)
• Promotions
• Employee Engagement (includes volunteer roles and sales initiatives)
• Marketing Site
• Event Platform
• VIP Programming
• Sponsors

As an intern on the SIGNAL team, Pariti was tasked with supporting conference planning and operations where needed. She led speaker coaching coordination and communication between coaches and speakers, created presentations on year-over-year SIGNAL data for executive use, and made SIGNAL Content agendas for different time zones globally. Pariti also helped with the post-SIGNAL survey planning, joined conversations regarding promotional strategies and speaker selections, and generally took ownership of tasks to support functions where an additional pair of hands were needed for the Conference.

Learn more about SIGNAL and join Twilio for the Conference this year in November!

Conclusion: Intern Insights

As first-generation, early-in-career, and undergraduate college students exploring marketing in tech, Maggie, Tiffany, and Pariti were hopeful to get a summer internship at a stellar tech company like Twilio. Individually, they each had their own journey of working towards landing offers from Twilio.

Pariti’s recruiter messaged her on LinkedIn regarding open field marketing internship applications at Twilio. Further researching the company, learning about twilio.org, as well as the company’s active anti-racist policies (that did not seem performative unlike many other big corporations), she was intrigued by the overall work culture and definitely wanted to explore marketing in the tech industry. With prior planning experience in higher education and nonprofit management, Pariti wanted to explore large-scale conference planning in tech. In line with her passion for events in regards to TEDx Conferences, Twilio’s SIGNAL Conference was a phenomenal experience to explore a different side of event management and the tech industry at large. This internship helped Pariti further her knowledge of event planning, and she hopes to find more opportunities in the same realm to diversify her exposure to different parts of management.

Tiffany found the job listing on LinkedIn and was interested by the job description, however, was unsure if she would be a good fit. To further learn about the opportunity, she purchased LinkedIn Premium in order to cold message Twilio Early In Career Recruiters requesting a coffee chat to learn more about the opportunity. After connecting on LinkedIn and initiating a virtual coffee chat with her recruiter, Nhon Nguyen, Tiffany loved the warmth and passion she felt at Twilio. After searching reviews on Glassdoor about the employee experience and learning about Twilio’s amazing work culture through their website and social media platforms, Tiffany realized this would be the perfect place for her to grow her soft and hard skills. This internship has given Tiffany the opportunity to take ownership of event marketing projects from start to finish and learn by building.

Maggie found the job listing for a marketing intern at Twilio on LinkedIn Jobs search and applied. Since then, she was able to move onto interviews and landed an offer. Maggie chose Twilio over her other offers because of the Twilion culture, more specifically the Twilio Magic values. These values resonated with her, more specifically the “We are Builders” value. This internship taught her that she is interested in analyzing data and working with a team towards bigger goals. By digging deeper in qualitative and quantitative data, solutions and opportunities can be found.

If you're interested in seeking internship opportunities, LinkedIn is a powerful tool to help you succeed. Feel free to connect with us below!

Maggie Aguilar Diaz is a Field Marketing Intern for the NAMER Field Marketing team. She is very passionate about the intersection between marketing and data analysis - during the internship, her main objective was to build something meaningful for her team that could be integrated easily, for example, her ROI Calculator. Her best piece of advice is to go beyond your comfort zone and seek intellectually challenging projects. She can be reached on LinkedIn.

Tiffany Nguyen is a Field Marketing Intern for the Internal Events Field Marketing team. She is very passionate about marketing and project management. She loves to communicate creatively and concisely, and use communication as a tool to bring people together. As a first-gen student, she faced the imposter syndrome when she first started interning at a renowned tech company like Twilio, but was able to overcome it through recognizing and growing her skill sets by asking her manager questions that helped her fully understand a concept, and asking for new tasks that could challenge her. Her best piece of advice is to always ask questions, and to challenge yourself beyond what you believe you are capable of. She can be reached on LinkedIn.

Pariti Sutaria is a Field Marketing Intern for the Worldwide Field Marketing team, specifically for the SIGNAL Customer and Developer Conference. She is very interested in event management and enjoys conference planning. She is also a TEDx Conference organizer. At Twilio, Pariti supported the SIGNAL team in various conference operations from speaker and content management to YoY statistics. Her advice to incoming interns is to be curious, ask questions, and connect with different people from different teams outside of your immediate role. She is always open to networking and can be connected on LinkedIn.