Application deck Marketing leadership · Fall 2026

Campaigns that pay for themselves

Eleven years of launches, rebrands and quiet fixes for consumer brands, each one planned against a number and reported against the same number.

Portrait
Erin Castillo The candidate
Currently Senior Marketing Manager
Experience 11 years
Location Chicago, IL
Available November 2026

Four brands, eleven years

Grocery, outdoor, home goods and coffee. The categories change; the method travels.

Harvest Lane Grocery brand Regional launches and in-store campaigns. 2015 - 2017
Fieldstone Outdoor retail Seasonal campaigns across 40 stores. 2017 - 2020
Verra Home DTC home goods Rebrand and the first retention program. 2020 - 2023
Copper & Pine Specialty coffee Brand, lifecycle and a subscription launch. 2023 - Present

Set a target, then beat it on the record

Four figures from the last three years, each one next to the goal that was written down before the work began.

Target +15% +23% Email-attributed revenue FY2025, twelve months
Target 10,000 12,400 Subscribers at six months Subscription launch, 2025
Target 3.0x 4.1x Blended return on ad spend Holiday quarter, 2024
Target -10% -26% Cost per new customer Year over year, 2025

Selected campaigns

Six I planned and ran end to end. Budget, channels and result on every slide - click through for the full story.

One campaign, end to end

The Slow Roast Club - the brief, the calls that were made, and what the dashboard said afterward.

Copper & Pine 2025

The Slow Roast Club: a coffee subscription built to survive its own launch discount.

The brief

A subscription nobody had asked for yet, a soft quarter behind it, and a target of 10,000 members inside six months.

What I did

Named the program, priced the tiers with finance, briefed the creative in one page, and put 70% of the budget into the two channels the model said would carry it.

What it did

It beat the target in month five and paid back its media in month seven. The retention curve, not the launch spike, is the part I show first.

Case study
Launch creative on the street, week one.
12,400 Subscribers at six months
$38 Cost per new member
71% Still active after a year
7 mo To pay back the media

The road to here

Four roles in eleven years, each with a bigger number attached. The full CV is one click away.

2023 - Present Now
Senior Marketing Manager Copper & Pine · Chicago, IL

Own brand, lifecycle and campaign planning for a specialty coffee company; $2.1M annual media, six direct reports. Launched The Slow Roast Club subscription (12,400 members in six months) and turned a summer slump into The Porch Sale, a ten-day event worth $1.9M.

2020 - 2023
Marketing Manager Verra Home · Chicago, IL (hybrid)

Ran the rebrand (+47% branded search in two quarters), launched the First Light bedding line to a pre-built waitlist, and rebuilt the email program from six monthly blasts into a lifecycle engine carrying 31% of revenue (+212% email revenue in a year).

2017 - 2020
Marketing Specialist Fieldstone Outfitters · Chicago, IL

Planned seasonal campaigns for forty stores. The Weather Anything fall campaign lifted store traffic 31% year over year on a budget cut by more than a third, and ran for three seasons after handover.

2015 - 2017
Marketing Coordinator Harvest Lane Foods · Chicago, IL

First job in marketing: regional product launches, in-store campaigns and coupon reconciliation for a grocery brand. Learned to check the number before admiring the creative.

Read the full CV Download the PDF

The person behind the numbers

What the hiring brief usually asks for, and my answer to it.

Portrait
Logan Square, on a planning Friday.
The brief, every time
  • Owns a revenue number, not just a content calendar
  • Comfortable briefing creative and reading a dashboard
  • Can run a launch without three agencies attached

That is the job I keep getting hired to do, and it is the one I like. I started on the shop floor of a grocery brand's marketing team, taping posters and reconciling coupon codes, and I have kept the habit of checking the number before I admire the creative.

Eleven years later the work is bigger - launches, a rebrand, a subscription program - but the method has not changed: agree on the target in writing, put the money where the model says, and report the misses in the same font as the wins. My swipe file is two thousand ads deep and my favorite spreadsheet is nine years old.

Erin Castillo Chicago, September 2026

How a working week divides

The honest mix, drawn to scale - plus the tools that ride along.

Campaign planning briefs, budgets, channel plans 30%
Lifecycle and email flows, segmentation, retention 25%
Paid media search, social, and the weekly pacing call 20%
Brand and creative positioning, briefs, copy reviews 15%
Analytics dashboards, tests, the Monday report 10%
Also in the stack
  • Klaviyo
  • GA4
  • Figma
  • Looker
  • Asana
  • SQL, enough to be dangerous

Three things you can hold me to

Each one comes with the receipt from the last time it was tested.

01 Plans built backward from a number

Every campaign starts as one page: the target, the budget, the channels and the date we check. Nobody discovers the goal in the retro.

The receipt 40+ campaigns shipped this way
02 Creative that survives finance

I brief creative with the unit economics attached, so the beautiful idea and the payback period stop being enemies.

The receipt 4.1x blended return, holiday 2024
03 Teams that ship without me

I write the playbook as we go and hand it over. The last two teams I built still run the calendar I left.

The receipt 6 marketers hired and coached

People I have made look good

Three managers and one founder, each with the figure we shipped together.

Erin inherited a launch that was three weeks late and a founder who wanted it yesterday. She cut the channel plan in half, moved the date once, and the program still beat its year-one target by month five.
Marcus Oyelaran Marcus Oyelaran Founder, Copper & Pine
10,000 Target
12,400 Members
5 mo To beat it
Most marketers show me creative. Erin showed me a payback model, then the creative, in that order. The rebrand she ran is the reason our branded search finally moved.
Priya Raghavan Priya Raghavan VP Marketing, Verra Home
+47% Branded search
2 qtrs To land it
$0 Extra media
She ran forty stores' worth of fall campaign on a budget that used to cover twenty-five, and traffic still went up. I stopped checking her math after the first season.
Tom Kowalski Tom Kowalski Marketing Director, Fieldstone
40 Stores
-38% Budget
+31% Traffic
Erin rebuilt our email program from six tired blasts a month into a lifecycle machine. It is now the channel every other budget gets measured against.
Jenna Marsh Jenna Marsh Head of Ecommerce, Verra Home
+212% Email revenue
12 mo Timeframe
31% Of revenue

Figures come from the campaign wrap reports. Every referee will confirm them by phone or email.

On the record

Awards, talks and print, newest first.

2025

  • Campaign of the Year shortlist, The Slow Roast Club Prize Midwest Marketing Awards
  • Briefing creative with the P&L attached Talk Brand Camp Chicago
  • The subscription launch that skipped the discount Press Consumer Brands Weekly

2024

  • Best integrated campaign, The Porch Sale Prize Lakefront Ad Club
  • Retention is a media channel Talk DTC Roundtable

2022

  • A rebrand with receipts Press Commerce Journal
  • What forty stores taught me about local media Talk Retail Marketing Summit

The questions recruiters ask first

Short answers, no hedging.

When can you start?
I am wrapping a launch through October 2026 and can start from early November. My notice period is four weeks and I have never left a calendar in a mess.
Remote, hybrid, or in the office?
I live in Chicago and like a room with a whiteboard, so hybrid suits me best. I have run fully remote teams across four time zones for three years - the campaign calendar does not care where I sit.
Would you relocate?
For the right role, yes - I would consider Denver, Austin or the East Coast. I would rather not decide that in a first call, and I do not need to.
How big a team have you managed?
Six direct reports at the largest - two lifecycle marketers, two paid media, a designer and a coordinator - plus the usual orbit of agencies and freelancers. I hired four of the six.
Agency or in-house background?
In-house, all eleven years, always on the brand side of the table. I brief agencies well because I have read a thousand bad briefs and written a few of them myself.
Can I see campaign work that is not on this page?
Yes. Some programs are under NDA, so the appendix version of my CV carries them with the client names blinded. Ask and I will send it.

The whole record, in one PDF

Every role, the education, the certifications and the selected campaigns - formatted to print, current as of this month.

Let's talk about your next number

Tell me the role and the target that comes with it - I will bring the plan.

[email protected]

The fastest route. The form works too.

Location Chicago, IL - hybrid or remote
Available From November 2026
Notice Four weeks, negotiable
References Three, on request
Elsewhere
Your name
Work email
The role, and what the number is