Head of Marketing Strategy & Insight

Job Introduction

Selfridges is a social centre where everyone is welcome. We surprise, amaze and amuse our customers everyday by doing the unexpected, celebrating those special moments and inspiring one another. We are the destination for the most extraordinary customer experience unrivalled with products and services ranging from high street to high end.

This role leads the marketing strategy and insight team for Selfridges, driving the development of an integrated customer insight and analytics function, and using those insights to develop and evolve a clear marketing strategy for customer acquisition, retention and growing customer value, to deliver against the business’ 5 Year Plan objectives.

Role Responsibility

Based in our Wigmore Street offices you’ll provide a unique and tailored service in marketing insight to customers internally and externally, going beyond the ordinary to create memorable interactions and deliver. Our customers expect extraordinary service delivered by people with a genuine passion for what they do and to share their unparalleled level of knowledge whilst taking enormous pride in maintaining our exceptionally high standards.

Working in marketing you’ll share your knowledge through unique Selfridges stories,

Key responsibilities for the role will include:

Insight:

• Leads the development of Selfridges insight capabilities – leveraging CRM data (via Salesforce), NPS data, website and digital marketing performance data (Google Analytics 360 and Coremetrics), alongside primary, panel and industry research -  to build strong, actionable insights into customers’ behaviour, identifying opportunities to improve Selfridges business performance.
• Oversees data governance, ensuring that customer data is consistent, high quality, compliant in collection and usage, and secure.  
• Partners with marketing heads of department to continuously improve measurement and reporting of marketing campaign and channel performance in a consistent and joined up way across the marketing mix and channels (stores, online). 
• Champions the roll out of new insight or analytics capabilities and/or platforms to increase effectiveness and drive business performance – managing and prioritising requests for insight from stakeholders across the business to ensure Insight team resources are allocated to those projects with the highest impact, and educating and enabling stakeholders to use tools (Wave Analytics) and automated dashboards and become more ‘self-sufficient’ for simpler, frequently requested analyses.
• Monitors the marketplace, competitor marketing activity and keep the wider business informed of key competitor marketing strategy innovations, industry initiatives and key developments.

Strategy:

• Uses insight and analytics outputs to build a clear marketing strategy for Selfridges – based on the 3 core business drivers of customer acquisition, customer retention and spend per customer growth - establishing targets aligned across channels (stores and online) and geographies (domestic, key international markets) – to support delivery of Selfridges 5 Year Plan objectives.
• Partners collaboratively with other marketing heads of department to optimise the allocation of marketing spend across channels, geographies and between acquisition and retention objectives – leveraging campaign effectiveness and channel performance data (including marketing mix modelling) to monitor progress and guide decisions.
• Manages the overall framework and process for annual planning and periodic budgeting and reforecasting across Customer Marketing & Insight – collaborating with department heads/leads to ensure plans and budgets are completed in an effective and timely way, and aligned with other key stakeholder groups. 
• Develops and refreshes the Selfridges marketing strategy, ensuring key stakeholders across Communications, Creative, Buying & Merchandising, Store Operations, Digital Trading and International understand the marketing strategy and how it is linked to achievement of 5 Year Plan objectives around customer acquisition, customer retention and sales growth.
• Leads key ad hoc strategic marketing projects in collaboration with wider business stakeholders. 

As Head of Marketing Insights you will be accountable for all aspects of the department:

• Managing and developing a team of 5+ across customer insights and customer analytics, coaching and developing them to move from providing data/reports to leveraging that data to deliver clear insights, recommended solutions/actions for the business to consider, and identifying commercial opportunities
• Create a culture of excellence and constant learning and career development for team members, ensuring opportunities to learn best practices from outside Selfridges are fully exploited.
• Promote the use and adoption of customer insight and analysis across the wider business beyond Marketing – in Buying & Merchandising, Retail Operations, Online, Finance - by prioritising the team’s resources on those projects where insight and customer analytics can have the biggest commercial impact within the business
• Constantly seek out and executes opportunities to automate analysis/reporting to improve efficiency, and to facilitate ‘self-service’ access to insights by end users across the business via existing platforms (e.g.: Wave Analytics, Google Analytics 360).

This is a thrilling opportunity and when you consider all of the exciting new projects we have coming up this year, this role will take you on a journey. You’ll inspire and lead a high-performing team of Marketers, managing a number of exciting items and you’ll do it all in a fast-moving, cutting-edge environment. Developing relationships and driving commercial focus in your team, you’ll be confident in setting the direction required to enable great performance.

The Ideal Candidate

Your passion and confidence will set you apart and while consulting with the wider business you’ll take real pride in delivering a personalised and professional service. Bringing your personality to the service experience you will always look to genuinely connect with your customers while thinking creatively to bring your ideas to life.

Key skills, experience and attributes for this role include:

• Strong strategic marketing and planning skills, ideally gained from a large multi-channel retail business in the premium/luxury sector, or other B2C industry
• Good understanding of how customer insight can be used to drive business decision-making in a retail environment, and experience of working with a broad range of data sources (including CRM data, customer satisfaction data, web analytics data, primary and panel research data)
• Experience in improving analytics capabilities and use of insights within a B2C business preferred
• Experience of working with (and influencing) a broad cross-functional stakeholder group to turn strategy into actionable plans
• Expertise in measuring marketing effectiveness and delivery against customer KPIs.
• Experience of dealing with multiple stakeholders across a multi-channel business
• Highly organised with an ability to multi-task, prioritise and work to tight deadlines
• Excellent numeracy and analytical skills.  Highly proficient in strategic ‘storytelling’ through building strong, focused powerpoint presentations
• Able to synthesize large amounts of data and information and translate this into concise recommendations and action for the company.
• Intelligent, collaborative, open and transparent – able to navigate the organisation and to be comfortable with ambiguity.
• Commercially ‘savvy’ with good negotiation skills.
• A strategic self-starter - able to develop and articulate strategy in an agile manner with little/limited support or direct reports.
• Proven record of facilitating allocation of a multi-£Ms Marketing budget, and delivering against financial measures.

About the Company

Selfridges is a shop run on imagination: a place where the world’s most covetable brands combine with the most extraordinary spectacles, events and ideas for an experience like no other.

The story began when Harry Gordon Selfridge first arrived in London from Chicago in 1906 with his heart set on opening his dream store. With his revolutionary understanding of publicity and the theatre of retail, Selfridges Oxford Street opened its doors for the first time in 1909. The founder’s spirit of innovation and creativity lives on through its owners today. Since 2003, W. Galen Weston and his family have owned and operated the business, which now includes two stores in Manchester, one in Birmingham, plus selfridges.com and the Selfridges App which both deliver to over 130 countries.

In 2016 Selfridges was the first ever store to be awarded the title of ‘World’s Best Sustainability Campaign by a Department Store’ at the IGDS Global Department Store Summit, in-line with its focus on buying better and inspiring change. For an unprecedented three consecutive occasions in a row (2010, 2012 & 2014) Selfridges also won the coveted ‘Best Department Store in the World’ award, underlining its place at the forefront of retail.

Selfridges