Product Manager at brightsolid online publishing
United Kingdom
- Current
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- Product Manager at brightsolid online publishing
- Past
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- Online Sales Manager at brightsolid online publishing
- Head of Sales & Marketing at findmypast.com
- Head of Marketing & Distribution at Eviivo: www.eviivo.com
- Customer Engagement Manager at Yahoo!
- Head of Marketing: Yahoo! Personals at Yahoo!
- Marketing Manager: various companies at netdecisions
- Business Accelerator: Emap Digital at Emap
- Consultant at brightstation (now venda.com)
- Business Development Manager at boo.com
- Sales & Marketing Manager at Fletcher Research
- Education
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- University of Oxford
- Winchester College
- Recommended
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1 person has recommended Ian - Connections
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239
connections
- Industry
- Online Media
- Websites
Ian Tester’s Summary
10+ years in online - ouff. Worked in too many internet companies to remember in too many roles to recall but with a focus on optimising customer experience and marketing. Everything from bread and butter on- and off-line marketing & communications to mapping and bugfixing overly-large backend integration projects and developing entire product propositions. Often deployed as a troubleshooter/fixer, although it often feels more like a strategic cleaner. Yes, I'm a marketer who understands technology. And customers. And crop rotation.
Ian Tester’s Specialties:
Strategy, User experience, Customer engagement, metrics, PR, complex user targeting, retention, online marketing, SEO, SEM, affiliate marketing, email marketing, business planning, process development, creative development, data protection, business law, research, media sales, database development, you name it....
Ian Tester’s Experience
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Product Manager
brightsolid online publishing
(Privately Held; Online Media industry)
September 2009 — Present (6 months)
Product Manager for 2 key family history properties in the brightsolid portfolio: findmypast.com and 1911census.co.uk. There's gonna be a lot of redevelopment going on down here: let's go to work....
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Online Sales Manager
brightsolid online publishing
(Online Media industry)
January 2009 — September 2009 (9 months)
Head of online sales (acquisition, conversion, retention) at brightsolid's online publishing division including findmypast.com, 1911census.co.uk, scotlandspeople.gov.uk, ancestorsonboard.com familytreeexplorer.com and more to come!
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Head of Sales & Marketing
findmypast.com
(Internet industry)
June 2007 — September 2009 (2 years 4 months)
Head of Sales & Marketing for a family history site spun out of a UK genealogical research specialist. "Helping people understand their place in history". Lots of work on acquisition (optimising online traffic acquisition, customer experience) and retention (rolling out complex email platforms, pricing and loyalty initiatives) plus making sure we can measure it all....
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Head of Marketing & Distribution
Eviivo: www.eviivo.com
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)
January 2007 — May 2007 (5 months)
Eviivo supplies inventory management software to the tourism industry: I helped to start the b2c side and did a bunch of general direct marketing stuff.
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Customer Engagement Manager
Yahoo!
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; YHOO; Internet industry)
February 2005 — January 2007 (2 years )
Looked after Customer Engagement Strategy for Yahoo! Europe. "Helping Yahoo! get retentive". In reality this meant user cross-sell and up-sell using: a. email/CRM b. online advertising on the Yahoo! network. Defined email strategy, rolled out a new email platform across Europe, defined Customer Engagement metrics and strategy for European management team.
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Head of Marketing: Yahoo! Personals
Yahoo!
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; YHOO; Internet industry)
September 2003 — February 2005 (1 year 6 months)
Head of Marketing for Yahoo!'s online dating product in UK, France, Germany from launch, through breakeven to established service. Focus on ROI-positive online marketing, consumer PR and building heavy, heavy forecasting and analysis tools.
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Marketing Manager: various companies
netdecisions
(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)
June 2001 — August 2003 (2 years 3 months)
Worked as Marketing / Commercial manager on a number of e-commerce ventures including woowho (online dating) and studentuk (student media), gradunet (recruitment) as well as providing consultancy on other business projects.
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Business Accelerator: Emap Digital
Emap
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; EMA; Publishing industry)
August 2000 — June 2001 (11 months)
Provided consultancy on subjects such as DRM / paid-for content and ran a couple of larger projects: 1. SEO best practice & implementation 2. Metrics. For SEO I developed a complete "how to kit" covering every stage of the process. Metrics spun out into a large project around defining key KPI metrics and rolling out standard cookie and webserver configurations across the portfolio of sites in UK, France and US. Nasty.
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Consultant
brightstation (now venda.com)
(Internet industry)
May 2000 — August 2000 (4 months)
Brightstation bought boo.com's backend: I continued to help develop the operational ASP plans I'd worked on at boo.com. After I left, the technology was developed into what is today the immensely successful venda.com.
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Business Development Manager
boo.com
(Online Media industry)
May 1999 — May 2000 (1 year 1 month)
Hired to look after Knowledge Management, I actually ended up doing the testing and launch signoff on all backend systems (everything after the buy button - finance systems, logistics including messaging to warehouses, payment gateways, customer care). Aged about 3 years in 6 months but hey, nothing like a steep learning curve and sleep deprivation. Post-launch, I built missing backend processes for the Customer Service team until I could reasonably escape, then worked on an operational and business plan to convert the backend into an ASP e-commerce platform, and on category expansion (into cosmetics). I learned things about product databases, messaging middleware and fraud velocity hedges that normal people might rather forget.
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Sales & Marketing Manager
Fletcher Research
(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Market Research industry)
December 1997 — May 1999 (1 year 6 months)
First employee of Fletcher Research, a start-up internet consulting and market research business that was sold to Forrester and became Forrester UK. Fascinating position that started with me being a cold-calling salesman and ended up with a move to Marketing and PR. Really stunning growth over 18 months through solid b2b marketing and database growth.
Ian Tester’s Education
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University of Oxford
BA, MA (Oxon) , Modern Languages , 1993 — 1997
Based at St Catherine's College. Studies mostly revolved around French and Russian literature. I am left with an enduring love for the medieval world and Soviet Russia (although not the shopping).
- Activities and Societies:
- Publishing: (successful) Business Manager for the Oxford Student newspaper, Oxbridge Careers Handbook and Isis magazine.
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Winchester College
1987 — 1992
- Activities and Societies:
- Editorial team of Quelle (and Squelle) magazines, The Garden Tools - Rhythm Guitar
Ian Tester’s Contact Settings
Interested In:
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