Verushen Reddy joined Aqua in 2008, and in his time here, he has held the positions of data analyst, campaign manager and now head of analytics. Verushen has also laid claim to being the king of the foosball table, but this is fairly debatable.

Changes

In his time at Aqua, Verushen has seen some significant changes, from an average sized agency to a large entity that is data driven and intelligent as opposed to the production focused agency he first joined. He has also seen changes in staff, and although saddened to see some of his friends and mentors move on, it's been exciting, having to interact with the new recruits. As he says it, "Aqua has an amazing stock of inventors!"

Data

I asked Verushen about his day-to-day dealings here at Aqua, and as he calmly explains it, they collect data, every second of every day, then it's processing that and collating and analysing the data to produce reports and, more importantly, those key campaign insights.

Google Analytics and Omniture Site Catalyst have become my browser homepages, and I am involved in the planning, implementation and roll-out of these measurement tools, on the never ending search for the slightest increase in ROI or conversion rate. 

SEO is definitely a daily job; if they aren't doing SEO audits on client websites and quoting on monthly maintenance, Verushen and his team are monitoring valuable keywords, vetting incoming links, tweaking content and working on reducing page load times.

Verushen is also very involved in training and developing skills across the whole of Aqua, and this month, everyone at Aqua is getting a dose of SEO 101.

Campaign management

Verushen also explains that campaign management is a large part of his team's role, together with deployment of email campaigns, SMS communication and measuring viral campaigns. He proudly tells me that his team has deployed an Aqua record breaking 17 million emails on behalf of clients this year alone!

Memories

I asked Verushen about some of his happier moments here, and it was without a doubt all the staff parties (and that the Aquanauts know how to party), but that is all he has to say about that. He goes on to talk about some of the lighter moments the agency has had and was a little enigmatic about moments that involve R. Kelly at Aqua's Got Talent, a staff members desk getting completely treated with tin foil and the disappearance of a social media community manager. Even he refused to divulge further information.