I’m an accomplished senior professional across Marketing Communications, Strategic Partnerships & Sponsorship, and Product and Proposition, with 13 years’ experience. I have a hands-on approach, combining strategic vision with operational delivery, skilled at influencing through relationships. I am customer and insight obsessed, constantly looking outside of my industry for new approaches to challenges and understanding future consumer trends. Above all, I believe in having fun, motivating others, and always enjoying the challenge.
Work history
Head of Customer PropositionVirgin Trains
London, United KingdomFull Time
Accountable for the end to end customer strategy across the business
+ Responsible for the Customer Strategy, to remove customer pain points to add value – across retail, e-commerce, partnerships, brand proposition, product, pricing and ticketing.
+ Product owner, responsible for new product development (NPD), creating insight loops to inform future development, and innovation pipeline anticipating future trends.
+ Drive growth through an innovative proposition, to underpin our customer-focused brand.
+ The voice of the customer, championing their needs and wants across the business.
+ Industry-leading customer-focused UX and UI, leading respective teams and specialist agencies.
+ Drive effective cross-functional collaboration to ensure optimum delivery of the customer strategy.
Key achievements:
- Uber: Secured strategic partnership, a global first. Creating an integrated end-to-end journey solution to improve the experience. Delivering journey growth, tapping into headroom opportunity. Improving NPS (c.20pts), customer frequency and retention, worth c.£1m p.a.
- Virgin Trains USA: Led cross-functional commercial group to onboard US team on key strategies across product, sales, brand, marketing communications, brand and commercial partnerships, loyalty and CRM – tailoring UK approach to US market.
- Amazon Prime Partnership: Secured strategic partnership with Amazon, giving customers access to Amazon Prime content, free on BEAM, our onboard entertainment platform.
- Amazon Alexa: Delivered Virgin Trains skill on Alexa, a global rail first, retailing via voice. Customer-focused retail experience through voice, creating a new channel and customer tool, improving accessibility.
- Connected Digital Experience: Responsible for redefining the experience on-board. Bringing free internet to an additional 32m journey p.a., along with dynamic customer interface, tailored to customers’ need states.
Sales, Marketing & Brand, and Partnership LeadVirgin Trains
- London, United KingdomFull Time
Virgin’s Commercial Bid Team Lead, for the future West Coast and HS2 new franchise
+ Responsible for the Sales, Marketing, Brand, Strategic Partnerships and Mobility plan. The end-to-end ATL and BTL strategies, and organisational structures needed to deliver them.
+ To deliver huge customer growth across B2C, B2B and B2B2C, +£20 million incremental revenue p.a. devising acquisition and retention strategies, to take passenger growth from 40m p.a. to 100m by 2030.
+ Defining and leading future direction, reflecting changing consumer needs and trends, MarTech innovation and growth through customer experience, in an evolving multi-modal eco-system.
Key achievements:
- Integrated Marketing Approach to Deliver Commercial Strategy: Bold growth plans through national and regional, strategic and tactical omnichannel approach, innovative ATL adverting campaigns to change perception and mode shift. Retention through creating a single customer view, improved CRM and loyalty offering, and industry-leading partnership approach, to maximise customer engagement.
- Strategic Partnerships (& Sponsorship): National and regional partnerships built around Virgin brand pillars – a) Entertainment, b) Sport and c) Travel.
I am a skilled negotiator – responsible for conceiving and securing exclusive partnerships with Liverpool, and Manchester Utd Football Clubs. AEG & AXS across 02, Wembley and Hydro Arenas. NEC & Ticket Factory across NEC, Genting, Birmingham, and ICC Arenas. Identifying new routes to market via global travel e-Commerce leaders Expedia and Skyscanner.
- Strategic Mobility Partnerships: creating an end-to-end proposition securing Uber, Jaguar Land Rover, and Virgin Atlantic, as part of my vision.
- Innovative Business Development Approach: to enable growth across key business sectors, to 25% total net revenue. Created business development plans across corporate, SME and micro-SME markets. Develop retail strategies and partnerships through third-party retail channels across new and existing stakeholders.
- Reinvigorate the Brand: Created a five-year plan to rejuvenate the brand, the vision, purpose, and internal engagement strategy - to ensure Virgin Trains is relevant for decades to come.
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Education
M
M
BA hon Marketing and ManagementManchester Metropolitan Universirty
- Manchester, United Kingdom
2:1 Degree Classification