AAArda Acikalin

Professional history

Experience

A reverse-chronological view of roles, responsibilities, and outcomes.

  1. — Present

    Current role

    Growth Operations Manager

    Instagrid

    Helsinki, Finland · Hybrid

    Owns and improves the systems behind the marketing website and wider growth operations, combining website product thinking, analytics, marketing technology and practical AI-assisted workflows.

    Ownership

    • Own the day-to-day website roadmap and operations, coordinating a developer, external partners and internal stakeholders.
    • Lead website platform, tracking, lead-form and marketing automation initiatives.
    • Improve content, analytics and reporting workflows with AI-assisted processes.
    • Manage selected marketing technology contracts, licences and vendor relationships.

    Selected outcomes

    • Led the migration from WordPress to a headless website setup using Contentful and Vercel.
    • Improved the connection between website forms, tracking and Salesforce.
    • Built AI-assisted workflows that reduced some multi-day analysis and content tasks to a few hours.
    • Expanded the role from channel-focused growth into broader website and operational ownership.

    Skills: Growth operations · Website operations · Web product management · Marketing automation · Analytics · Salesforce · Contentful · Vercel · AI-assisted workflows · Vendor management

    Related work

  2. —

    Digital Growth Manager

    Instagrid

    Helsinki, Finland

    Joined Instagrid to grow digital acquisition and progressively took ownership of the marketing website, webshop, analytics and technical website projects.

    Ownership

    • Managed paid acquisition across Google Ads, Meta and LinkedIn.
    • Owned website and webshop improvements, coordinating agencies, freelancers and internal stakeholders.
    • Implemented and troubleshot website analytics, conversion tracking and conversion-rate improvements.
    • Supported content operations and SEO-friendly website development.

    Selected outcomes

    • Launched the webshop and a pre-order campaign that generated orders before the product was released.
    • Established stronger website ownership within marketing and laid the foundation for the later Growth Operations role.
    • Built practical experience translating marketing requirements into technical website delivery.

    Skills: Digital growth · Paid acquisition · Website management · E-commerce · Web analytics · Conversion optimisation · Google Ads · Meta Ads · LinkedIn Ads · Project management

    Related work

  3. —

    Country Manager, Turkey

    Bonusway

    Helsinki, Finland

    Led a four-person team and owned the growth of Bonusway's Turkish market, covering acquisition, partnerships, marketing strategy and commercial performance.

    Ownership

    • Led the Turkish operations and a four-person team.
    • Owned customer acquisition, marketing strategy and the management of more than 100 partnerships.
    • Used performance data to improve acquisition efficiency, sales and customer engagement.
    • Took on additional business-development projects across Bonusway's 16 markets, including marketing automation and customer onboarding.

    Selected outcomes

    • More than doubled registered users and revenue in the Turkish market.
    • Reduced active-user acquisition cost to below EUR 0.15 with a payback period of under one month.
    • Expanded responsibility from one market into cross-market business-development initiatives.

    Skills: Country management · Team leadership · Customer acquisition · Partnership management · Marketing strategy · Performance analysis · Business development · Marketing automation

  4. —

    Marketing Assistant

    Bonusway

    Helsinki, Finland

    Worked on customer acquisition and partner marketing for the Turkish market, combining paid campaigns, content and performance analysis.

    Ownership

    • Managed paid customer-acquisition activity including search, influencer marketing and partner promotions.
    • Analysed external marketing performance and used the results to improve channel decisions.
    • Produced SEO-friendly content for social media, newsletters, push notifications, search campaigns and the company blog.
    • Managed relationships with publishers, bloggers and partner stores.

    Selected outcomes

    • Progressed into the Country Manager role after taking on increasing ownership of the Turkish market.

    Skills: Digital marketing · Paid acquisition · Content marketing · SEO content · Influencer marketing · Partner marketing · Campaign analysis