Acquisition Director, Forward Partners
Salary not provided
Expert level
London
Early-stage VC fund for tech
Job no longer available
Early-stage VC fund for tech
21-100 employees
B2BArtificial IntelligenceMarketplaceInvestingVenture Capital
Job no longer available
Salary not provided
Expert level
London
21-100 employees
B2BArtificial IntelligenceMarketplaceInvestingVenture Capital
Company mission
To build London’s leading and most admired early-stage venture firm.
Role
Who you are
- You’ll have a proven track record in building and leading performance marketing for a fast-growing e-commerce business
- You’ll be comfortable with a fast-paced environment, and be highly analytical with a craving for results
- You’ll demonstrate a wealth of experience within paid marketing, especially across PPC, Paid Social, SEO, programmatic and Affiliate marketing at senior strategic levels. Above-the-line experience including TV, print and out-of-home is a bonus
- You’ll be capable of developing a strategy that encompasses all acquisition and performance initiatives, including the on-site customer journey
- You’ll have good Google Analytics, data layer and Google tag manager knowledge
- You’ll be comfortable with ‘hands-on’ self-serve analytics platforms such as Looker (our current platform) or Tableau
- You’ll be able to demonstrate a thorough understanding of attribution models and have a clear view of how we navigate performance marketing in a world of cookie depreciation. Experience in running media mix modelling is highly desirable
- Experience working with both agencies and in-house teams is preferred
- You’ll have extensive experience leveraging brilliant creative throughout the digital funnel (especially across Meta and Google)
- You’ll have the drive to be constantly seeking alternative or better ways of doing things within the digital space
- Finally, you must show love for our category and brand. We want someone that loves books and creating personal, meaningful connections, and who connects deeply with our internal company values of courage, kindness and curiosity
What the job involves
- We are looking for a passionate Director of Acquisition who’ll be responsible for driving profitable new customer growth
- This high profile, brand new role will sit as part of our Marketing leadership team, be responsible for over £15m in marketing budget and will report into the Chief Marketing Officer
- New customer growth strategy. You’ll be responsible for setting our new customer and performance marketing growth strategy. You’ll break this down into a roadmap of impactful initiatives that need to be delivered each T (third of a year). You’ll report on progress weekly, galvanise teams to deliver and change tack when appropriate to keep us on track to meet targets
- Budget management & optimisation. You’ll be responsible for setting, managing and optimising an annual paid media budget of over £15m to help you achieve your new customer growth targets within CAC (cost per customer acquisition) goals
- Team leadership. You’ll lead a core team of 6 performance marketers. We run the majority of our performance marketing activity in-house. You’ll coach your experienced direct reports, develop strengths and focus on improving areas for development. You’ll identify team goals and evaluate team progress. You’ll keep all team members focussed on initiatives that help us meet our goals whilst ensuring they are happy, motivated and developing in their careers
- Multichannel marketing: You’ll spearhead the strategic planning of all digital channels to drive efficiencies and scale across both acquisition and support on the execution of branding campaigns. Working closely with your channel leads, you’ll develop all strategies across our paid channels; Paid Search, Paid Social, Affiliates, ATL (above the line) and resellers (Amazon). You’ll tenaciously seek new growth opportunities across the likes of Tiktok, Pinterest, programmatic etc. In tandem with delivering paid channel excellence, you’ll seek to reduce our reliance on paid media by devising and executing unpaid channel strategies (organic channels including SEO, Meta, Pinterest etc.) to drive new customer growth and reduce our CAC
- Marketing measurement. You’ll be responsible for keeping us on the forefront of marketing measurement, working with our marketing analyst to ensure our in-house multi-touch attribution model is maintained and improved where possible. In a world of cookie depreciation, you’ll find ways for Wonderbly to evolve and adapt, with a clear plan on how we ensure the continued effectiveness of our marketing spend (including media mix modelling, incrementality testing, server-to-server tracking solutions and first-party data use)
- Cross-department collaboration. You’ll devise business cases where there’s an opportunity to develop the customer on-site experience and work with the technology team to ensure projects are prioritised and delivered. You’ll work with our Head of Trade & E-commerce to ensure that our pricing and promotion strategy is optimal for driving profitable new customer acquisition
- Creative and segmentation. You’ll devise a plan of how we leverage our customer segmentation within performance marketing and creativity to deliver results. You’ll work with our in-house creative team and external partners to ensure we strike the right balance of creative asset investment to drive continued profitable growth
- 3rd party relationship management. You’ll build tight relationships with our top digital marketing partners (in particular Google, Meta and Smartly) and
- Ensure we maximise the potential of our platform and partnership. You’ll keep tabs on new innovations and ensure we have the best marketing technology in place to deliver against our strategy. You’ll make the case to enlist agency support where relevant
Salary benchmarks
Our take
Forward Partners is a Venture Capital firm focused on Applied AI, Marketplaces and eCommerce, with around 40 active portfolio companies. The firm brings startups into their Hoxton studio. Here, they have helped to build some of the UK's most exciting fast-growth tech companies by investing capital, craft and capability from day zero through Series A.
The firm believes that its focus on close operational support, on top of a relatively narrow sector expertise, sets them apart in an increasingly crowded space. Forwards Partners has also worked on creative initiatives such as the Path Forward Guide, which is a popular online framework for early stage founders or operators. Its revenue-based financing subsidiary Forward Advances, however, was shut down in 2022 after just two years due to "macroeconomic uncertainty", so that the firm could focus on its core VC business.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Company benefits
- Flexible home and office working
- Company bonus scheme
- Top of the line hardware (Macbook, Magic Mouse, Magic Keyboard and anything else you need) or PC equivalent
- 25 days of holiday per year (of which 2 can be duvet days) plus bank holidays. 1 extra day awarded per calendar year served
- 4 mental health days annually
- 2 weeks ‘work from anywhere after 1 year of service
- AXA private medical insurance (for you and your partner or family)
- £300 (pro-rata) annual L&D budget to spend via Sunlight (+ additional budget at your manager’s discretion)
- Bonusly recognition platform (accrue points for good work, to redeem against gift vouchers etc)
- Monthly team lunches, as well as free office breakfast, snacks and drinks (whenever you’re in the office)
- Cycle to work scheme
- Travelcard loan
- Paid parental leave
- Company swag!
Company HQ
Finsbury, London, UK
Leadership
Nic Brisbourne
(Managing Partner)Graduated from Cambridge before earning an MBA at London Business School. Became an associate at multiple Venture and Private Equity firms before becoming partner at DFJ Espirit.
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