Ian Tester
Experienced online product manager & marketer
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Industry
- Online Media
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Ian Tester's Overview
- Current
-
- Senior Product Manager - findmypast at brightsolid online publishing
- Past
-
- Online Sales Manager at brightsolid online publishing
- Head of Sales & Marketing at findmypast.com
- Head of Marketing & Distribution at Eviivo
- Customer Engagement Manager, Europe at Yahoo!
- Head of Marketing: Yahoo! Personals Europe at Yahoo!
- Marketing Manager: woowho, studentUK, Gradunet at netdecisions
- Business Accelerator: Emap Digital at Emap
- Consultant at Venda (was brightstation)
- Business Development Manager at boo.com
- Sales & Marketing Manager at Fletcher Research
- Education
-
- University of Oxford
- Winchester College
- Recommendations
-
6 people have recommended Ian
- Connections
-
415 connections
- Websites
Ian Tester's Summary
Purely online since 1997 - ouff, that's getting on for 15 years. Worked in many internet companies in many roles but with a focus on creating and optimising great customer experiences, then marketing and growing them. I'm full of wild, good ideas but tempered by years of getting my hands dirty and seeing what works (and intuitively knowing what doesn't). Yes, I'm a product manager who understands customers, technology and marketing. And crop rotation. (And spreadsheets, but don't tell).
Specialties
NPD, Strategy, User experience, Customer engagement, web 2.0, online reputation and karma, social media, metrics, agile, scrum, branding, 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
Senior Product Manager - findmypast
brightsolid online publishing
Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Information Technology and Services industry
September 2009 – Present (3 years 9 months) London, UK
Lead product manager for the key family history / genealogy brand findmypast, as well as working as a strategist more widely across the group. Launched the immensely successful 1911census.co.uk, now concentrating on international rollouts for findmypast (Australia / New Zealand, Ireland, US) as well as bread and butter site development and a couple of special projects...recently rolling out Scrum / Agile processes into the development team, pimping our CRM strategy and powering up SEO & MVT.
Online Sales Manager
brightsolid online publishing
Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Information Technology and Services industry
January 2009 – September 2009 (9 months)
Head of online sales (acquisition, conversion, retention) at brightsolid's online publishing division which included findmypast.com, 1911census.co.uk, scotlandspeople.gov.uk, ancestorsonboard.com at the time.
Head of Sales & Marketing
findmypast.com
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 (metrics, dashboards). Acquired by brightsolid Dec 2007.
Head of Marketing & Distribution
Eviivo
Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Internet industry
January 2007 – May 2007 (5 months)
eviivo supplies management software to the tourism industry (mostly B&Bs): I helped to start the b2c side, including some online distribution setup and the first iteration of bookdirectrooms.com, and general old-skool direct marketing stuff. Looks like they're still using my site copy, so that's nice.
Customer Engagement Manager, Europe
Yahoo!
Public Company; 10,001+ employees; yhoo; Internet industry
February 2005 – January 2007 (2 years)
Looked after Customer Engagement Strategy for Yahoo! Europe (mostly UK, FR, DE and a bit of IT, ES). "Helping Yahoo! get retentive". In reality this meant user cross-sell and up-sell using: a. email/CRM (I was the EU evangelist/fixer) b. online advertising on the Yahoo! network. Defined email strategy, negotiated and rolled out a new email platform across Europe, defined Customer Engagement strategy for EU senior management team and a bunch of metrics to measure it with. The proof that I can work in a matrix (and write code when no bugger will give you enough resource).
Head of Marketing: Yahoo! Personals Europe
Yahoo!
Public Company; 10,001+ 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. Good fun, GREAT team.
Marketing Manager: woowho, studentUK, Gradunet
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), studentuk (student media) and gradunet (graduate recruitment) as well as providing consultancy on other business projects. Specced a completely new (and very early socially focused) product proposition for studentUK, but we only delivered half (not the social half) owing to dev budgets. Je ne regrette rien, honest.
Business Accelerator: Emap Digital
Emap
Privately Held; 1001-5000 employees; Publishing industry
August 2000 – June 2001 (11 months)
Hired to accelerate the digital growth of EMAP's print and radio assets, investment was scaled back just as I arrived. So I provided consultancy on subjects such as DRM / paid-for content and ran a couple of larger projects: 1. SEO best practice & implementation 2. Metrics standardisation across a very large portfolio of sites. 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 over 100 sites in UK, France and US. Nasty.
Consultant
Venda (was brightstation)
Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Internet industry
May 2000 – August 2000 (4 months)
brightstation (as it was then) bought boo.com's immensely complex and scalable backend which I knew pretty well by that point: 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. Clever man, that Mr Wagner.
Business Development Manager
boo.com
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. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C36Z3i_USrY
Sales & Marketing Manager
Fletcher Research
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 Languages
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English
(Native or bilingual proficiency) -
French
(Professional working proficiency) -
Russian
(Elementary proficiency)
Ian Tester's Skills & Expertise
- Online Marketing
- New Product Ideation
- Social Media
- Business Strategy
- Product Strategy
- Product Launches
- Customer Engagement
- Community Engagement
- User-centered Design
- User Generated Content
- Email Marketing
- Personal Data Protection
- Customer Retention
- E-commerce
- Affiliate Marketing
- SEO
- Public Relations
- Online Publishing
- Online Sales
- Marketing Strategy
- Product Marketing
- Usability
- Strategy Development
- Product Management
- Beekeeping
- Bricolage
- Product Development
- Strategy
- Digital Strategy
Ian Tester's Education
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.
Winchester College
1987 – 1992
Activities and Societies: Editorial team of Quelle (and Squelle) magazines; The Garden Tools - rhythm guitar, dodgy vocals & angsty teenage lyrics.
Ian Tester's Additional Information
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