
Head of Marketing, E-Divisions at Towergate Partnership
London, United Kingdom

Head of Marketing, E-Divisions at Towergate Partnership
London, United Kingdom
EXPERIENCE
• Head of Marketing for all E-Divisions of Towergate.
• Existing structure has an MD and a Marketing Professional at each of the companies. These Marketing people have decision-making powers within their own business unit in isolation whilst I have governance across all the businesses, stepping in where need be.
• This puts me as a peer with the MDs of these businesses as a direct report also of the Managing Director.
•. I have direct Responsibility for the start up of Towergate.com and British Insurance.co.uk alongside a brand new team of sales, product and operational professionals.
• Based in the Square Mile of the City and has 10 years professional experience including time at Siemens, Egg.com Nationwide and Derbyshire Building Society.
• Expert knowledge of pay-per-click, display advertising, SEO, aggregators, affiliates and acquisition.
• Track record of speaking at Uk and international conferences and brilliant network of trusted, expert and good value suppliers - not beholden to third party media agencies with a commission agenda who are really running the 'e-show'
CAREER
• Fully responsible for the design, creation, delivery and deployment of Nationwide’s digital strategy.
• Controller of the Digital team and the multi-million acquisition budget.
• Creator and Owner of inaugural Affiliate program and delivering Search Engine Optimisation program.
• Consultancy provided directly to the board on Aggregators to shape our Group position.
• Has managed handover between media agencies including implementing DoubleClick Tracking process.
• Supports Sponsorship Controller on micro-site delivery and strategy for sponsoredbyyou.com.
• Process design including customer journey analysis to ensure integrated campaign delivery.
• Experience of managing major problems e.g. affiliates fraud, phishing and supplier underperformance.
Creation of Nationwide programs - Affiliates Marketing; Natural Search (SEO); Aggregator Board Strategy; Online advertising - £5m+ annual display and ppc search. Board - Strategy papers & presentations. Web 2.0, Online PR / Link Strategy / Social Networking sites. E-mail Marketing - targeted communications. CRM - database marketing, segmentation, effectiveness. Internet Banking - servicing, demos, i-prompts, management. Online security. Branch micro-sites; Brand micro-sites
(Insurance industry)
May 2009 — Present (7 months)
Worked with the Heads of Sales, Product and Managing Director to create two new personal insurance lines businesses – British Insurance and Towergate.com – whilst also having marketing governance over Your Insurance Group, Insurance4Carhire, Insurance4Excess and Smart Landlord.
The businesses use all forms of online acquisition and distribution including affiliates, aggregators, partnerships, e-mail marketing, paid search, natural search, display marketing and offline marketing.
The initial phase was to set the marketing vision for the new businesses and sell this in to the senior team. The next step was to translate this vision into an actionable project plan for others to follow. Using third parties we developed a tactical website including design, functionality, format and quality of content whilst ensuring best practices for SEO were deeply embedded within all aspects of the site.
The second phase was to execute the strategic mission whereby a number of agencies pitched to deliver a new content management system, provide a top-class design and to have a large operational team. The pricey agency, Fortune Cookie, was chosen to deliver a new website; the strategic IT platform was again desire and the prestigious EPiserver CMS chosen as the content management system. The project was planned out with a multi-million launch budget with clear marketing objectives covering all elements of PPC, SEO, E-mails and online marketing and demonstrating a profitable return over a two-year period.
My wider responsibilities include oversight of marketing activity across all e-division businesses; acquisition budget preparation and a large number of duties befitting an Executive in a senior role. At a more corporate level I have worked with the Head of Group Marketing to deliver a news portal and platform which will become an official Google news source when indexed over time.
(Privately Held; 10,001 or more employees; Financial Services industry)
April 2005 — Present (4 years 8 months)
• Creating and delivering the Digital Branding vision and strategy for Nationwide.co.uk.
• Developing bespoke online content for brand/sponsorship properties including virals and micro sites.
• Leading our approach to social media including technology implementation and identifying influencers.
• Consultancy to the senior team including Directors and Head of Brand Strategy on all things digital.
• Instigation and Management of Affiliate program and Search Engine Optimisation programs.
• Thought leadership for Nationwide in terms of traffic control, management and maximising ROI.
• Management of £3 million + budget for tactical and strategic promotional spend.
• Digital campaign management including display, affiliates, PPC search and aggregators.
• Scoped a project that will produce a fundamental overhaul of the Nationwide website.
• Managed redesigns of Nationwide.co.uk, micro-sites and Online product brochures.
(Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; EGG; Banking industry)
September 2004 — March 2005 (7 months)
Contractor for Egg Banking Plc - the world’s largest pure online bank with 3.5m customers since its inception in 1998.
• Creating and delivering segmented customer and service propositions and campaigns.
• Responsible for meeting or achieving business volume and sales targets and analysing ROI.
• Controlled elements of the overall selections enquiry including loans and research campaigns.
• Multi-channel contact strategy included Direct Mail, email, web, inbound & outbound telephone calls.
• Segmented propositions on a one-to-one level with tangible offers depending on precise circumstances.
• Contributed to affiliates, portals, finance sites and search engines strategy, led by Planning Managers.
• Used Technical tools SAS 8, Communications Builder, PowerMigrator, UNIX, Windows and FTP Surfer.
(Privately Held; 501-1000 employees; Financial Services industry)
January 2003 — September 2004 (1 year 9 months)
• Created and delivered a segmented customer contact strategy for the business.
• Responsible for thought leadership in planning and developing lead generation and retention activities.
• Developed an acquisition strategy for financial planners including seminars and wealth management.
• Provide board level insights into Account, Customer and Market trends within the sector.
• Used CACI, MOSAIC, ACORN and profiling technical tools such as SAS and Enterprise Guide.
• Role between the Derbyshire (3 days a week) and Financial Planning (2 days) to maximise value.
(Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Utilities industry)
2000 — 2002 (2 years )
Siemens Energy Services had 10m residential and business customers when I left in 2002.
I was fully responsible for the creation of siemensmetering.co.uk including design, images, planning, content and managing three developers and a technical contractor.marketing intranet site. Also aided UK and European businesses within the Global Academy of Internet Commerce was set-up to develop a consistent approach.
The site anticipated was ahead of its time in including customer journeys; it had animation, PDF guides, rich content and we built an online meter reading platform - back in 2000/2001.
The marketing intranet was another key project. Called ‘Compass’ it was mainly used as a knowledge management solution.
General Marketing experience also gained in branding, research, acquistion and retention.
MBA , International Business Marketing , 1997 — 1999
BA Hons , Organizational Psychology & Human Resource Management , 1994 — 1997
Internet Benchmark group, Lancaster University
Winner of the “Outstanding Online Marketer” category at the British Business Awards 2009 on a personal basis.