We’re First Central Insurance & Technology Group (First Central for short), an innovative, market-leading insurance company. We protect the things customers love so they can get on with what matters to them in life.
Data drives us. It fuels our outstanding distribution, finance, technology and legal services. Our underwriting skills are built on data expertise; it creates the insights we need to give the right cover to the right customers at the right price. But, it’s the people inside and outside our business that power us. They make us stand out, help us succeed. We’re ambitious. We’re growing. We’ve won awards.
Are you an expert communicator with a strategic mind? Are you passionate about in-life communications and want the opportunity to build something from the bottom up and be an essential part of its development and growth? If so, we need you!
1st Central is an exciting, growing insurance brand with ~1.3m customers, an excellent rating on Trust Pilot and compelling price comparison site based car insurance proposition. But the company is pivoting. We’re evolving the customer and brand proposition. Adding more products. And starting to develop an acquisition and in-life marketing programme.
This is your chance to get in at the ground level of something exciting, by joining our Commercial & Marketing team as a Lifecycle Marketing Manager in our Haywards Heath, West Sussex office.
In this role you’ll lead the development and execution of the 1st Central in-life customer engagement strategy, framework and implementation. You’ll be building a capability, and with an entrepreneurial zeal, will be demonstrating the value of in-life activity to customers and the commercial performance of the business, enabling further investment into activity and the team. In short, you’ll be our in-life marketing evangelist.
As a key activity for 1st Central, you’ll be working closely with our Customer, Product, Brand, Digital, Data and Tech teams, as well as identifying and working with 3rd party agencies. You’ll be able to influence the tools, infrastructure, processes, modelling and content to enable a capability to be developed at an appropriate pace. With the ultimate aim to move 1st Central from low frequency, ad-hoc, non-targeted campaigns to a programme of smart, timely and optimised marketing, covering: organic and paid existing customer channels (for retargeting); relationship onboarding, in-life engagement, product x-sell, service usage and renewal marketing; and from high volume campaigns to trigger & event based activity.
Core skills we’re looking for to succeed in the role:
- Experience setting up and running successful in-life communications strategy and techniques, ideally within insurance
- A strong performance mindset
- Excited by developing a capability from ground level
- Excellent internal stakeholder engagement - building confidence, getting folks excited and building a team/budget based on results
- Happy to get hands dirty as well as determine a strategy
Nice to have skills, but optional:
- Experience working with agency partners and matrix structures
- Experience working with data scientists to develop effective propensity models for in-life activity
- Good understanding of data controls, appropriate regulations and campaign management tools (like DotDigital, our current tool)
- An eye for engaging content and effective marketing techniques
- Good understanding of MI and relevant reporting for in-life activity
What’s Involved:
- Creation and support for a lifecycle engagement strategy to deliver First Central in-year and strategic objectives, ensuring the required capital, resource and governance is in place to succeed
- Translation of the in-life strategy into a clear and executable contact strategy
- A key expert within the Digital & Marketing leadership team
- Development of First Centrals lifecycle marketing capability from current ‘basic’ level, through incremental steps
- Evolve our understanding of customer needs, behaviours and motivations
- Identify and work with agencies and partners as appropriate
- Lead, inspire and coach a small direct and matrix team
- Lead campaign delivery to the existing customer base, owning end to end delivery
- Work with brand, product and compliance to evolve the tone of voice, design, propositions and messaging
- Keep abreast of effective email marketing strategies and tools
- Develop test & learn as a core skill
- Develop reporting, modelling and data requirements
- Own marketing opt-in KPIs, key campaign metrics and marketing lifecycle contribution
- Share insightful customer research and help to drive engagement
Experience & knowledge
- Experience or potential to be a senior leader in a marketing function with a proven track record of relevant success
- Strong commercial acumen with the ability to quantify opportunities and risk to inform activity prioritisation
- Experience of building marketing capability, ideally within a regulated / insurance environment, and developing the support to invest in that capability
- Strong marketing and communication skills – understanding of proposition development, creative development and use of brand guidelines
- Ability to think creatively with an attitude that inspires colleagues to turn ideas into real opportunities and solves problems in a structured manner.
- Confident with data and strong understanding of data needs (including campaign analytics, data controls, data science / propensity modelling support)
- End-to-end delivery of marketing campaigns from design to execution, with main focus on email marketing
- Ability to challenge and hold senior stakeholders to account, in a professional & collaborative manner
- Strong understanding of regulatory requirements (including FCA, ASA and GDPR)
- Good understanding of marketing campaign platforms and lifecycle tools (the current tools are DotDigital and SmartComms)
- A passion for customer engagement
- People leadership
- Excellent communication skills
- Experience in financial services preferable but not essential
- Influencing and negotiation skills
- Excellent numeracy skills
Behaviours
- Passionate about putting the customer at the centre of all activity
- Commercial focussed with a highly driven, trading like mentality to delivering results
- Highly collaborative and self-sacrificing when appropriate
- Compassionate leader able to identify and respond to the needs of colleagues to provide a great working environment and deliver target outcomes
- Self-motivated and enthusiastic
- An organized, pro-active and flexible approach
- Strives to drive business improvements to contribute to the success of the business
If you’d like to work for an award-winning employer in a fast-paced environment, apply now!
We pride ourselves on being a great place to work. Check out our Glassdoor page to see what our colleagues think about working here.
What can we do for you?
People first. Always. We’re passionate about our colleagues and know the best people deserve an extraordinary working environment. We owe it to them so that’s what we offer. Our workplaces are energetic, inspirational, supportive. To get a taste of the advantages you’ll enjoy, take a look at all our perks in full here.
Intrigued? Our Talent team can tell you everything you need to know about what we want and what we’re offering, so feel free to get in touch.
