The week at Sailthru started off a bit slow, with some follow-up from last week’s first full html email coding session. Overall, my take on coding html emails from last’s weeks post still stands, but I don’t really mind it when it gets mixed in with some more programming-heavy projects. And that’s a pretty good description of this week’s workload…a mix of a few different projects.

We picked up a few client-focused projects this week to help Account Managers with their client’s technical needs, mainly in setting up email templates and helping them code up their hosted pages (which are typically opt-out pages and preference centers for their email lists). With one client, the Account Manager asked me to be available for tech questions and I immediately jumped in to help a client with some programming bits they needed for their preference center. It felt good to be able to dig into the documentation and figure out the best solution without a lot of assistance.

Also of note and as a result of the more client-facing role, my official title is “Implementation Specialist.” I think it’s a bit of a vague title, but within the context of the organization, I guess it does makes sense.

The other main project for me this week was taking the flat html pages I coded up last week and adding some core programming bits to make updates to the email list and database. It took a day or two to really understand Sailthru’s admin panel and user flow, but I got the hang of it and even found some ways to code “around” which got the nod from the two full-time Implementation Engineers who I asked to check my work. As far as I know, the pages are done and functioning properly, so that feels good. That said, I really look forward to digging in a bit further and also increasing my speed and productivity over the next few weeks.

So the overall theme from last week was communication, and though I don’t have any important lessons from this week’s experience, I will say this…being friendly, courteous and simply smiling a lot can make a huge difference on the impression you make within the first few weeks at a job. Sailthru’s people and culture make it pretty easy to be friendly and happy there, but it still struck me as important for that first impression.

It may be simple, but it really can go a long way: