Communications Specialist

You'll need to be a self-starter with an entrepreneurial outlook who is skilled at working with senior stakeholders. You need to be self-motivated and comfortable working autonomously, as well as part of a team.

You'll need to be able to take in a lot of information from various sources, collate and curate it to assess the key insights, and translate that into practical, actionable, strategic recommendations for the client to convince them that the investment is worth the effort.

You'll need to be a competent and confident presenter and storyteller to make a convincing argument. You'll also need to be able to plan and facilitate workshops and interviews with client stakeholders to gather information to inform strategy.

Leading and supporting on new business opportunities will form an important part of your role. You will have extensive experience scoping and developing new business opportunities for new business prospects and identify ways in which we can optimise current activity and deliver added value to our current client base.

You will work with the Strategy and Insight Director as required and work in collaboration with other members of the wider Strategy and Consulting team, such as digital and experience strategists and data analysts. You will also need to liaise, work with, and draw on expertise from other parts of DCX, e.g. Client Services, Creative, Solutions Design, Technology, Sales, the wider Paragon DCX group, and also Paragon Customer Communications.

Key Duties

• Work on new business tenders and client development opportunities – writing proposals and responding to client briefs and feeding into cost estimates, pitch preparation, and presentations.

• Plan and lead client workshops and facilitate discussions amongst different stakeholders (annual planning, customer journey workshops, etc.).

• Define, audit, and improve customer communication journeys (either marketing or operational environments) with a focus on proposition, content, messaging, targeting, digital transformation, and channel mix recommendations.

• Provide data planning and targeting recommendations for both acquisition and retention activity across a range of direct and digital channels (email, direct mail, door drops, digital display, and social), working with media partners as required.

• Develop test and learn strategies to maximise learning and optimise the effectiveness of future communications.

• Define frameworks to measure marketing effectiveness, set KPIs, benchmarks and targets (evaluation plan / approach – commissioning research, tagging management requirements). This will involve work with the analysts to deliver campaign analysis, segmentation projects, and predictive models

• Manage workload and projects in a profitable way and ensure projects are scoped and costed accurately.

• Create case studies and content pieces from activity to show our work in its best light.

• Keep up-to-date with digital and CRM trends, best practice, and innovations in the communications space.

• Grow knowledge and understanding of current and emerging industry technologies as well as the DCX tool-sets available.

• Keep up-to-date with GDPR, data protection, and any new compliance requirements.

What we're looking for

• At least 4-5 years working in a marketing/CRM planning, strategy or consultancy role.

• A strategic thinker with an ability to understand data, research, and behavioural psychology, and translate this into actionable consumer and market insights for use in marketing or operational communications.

• A practical and pragmatic streak and a willingness to roll up your sleeves and get stuck in to meet client deadlines.

• Strong multi-channel communications planning skills, with a good understanding of the digital space and its integration into acquisition and retention CRM programmes.

• Experience of (and interest in) working alongside complementary disciplines such as CX and UX, and developing journeys that consider multiple digital and physical touchpoints across the customer lifecycle.

• Planning expertise across multiple sectors.

• An understanding of the capabilities of CRM and data mining technologies, such as IBM campaign, Faststats, Salesforce, Adobe.

• Ability to use online reporting solutions to identify trends and insights, e.g. Tableau, Power BI, Google Analytics.

• A focus on results and outcomes and showing how our work brings value to a client - able to “business case” your proposals.

• A passion for marketing and insights, with a love of thinking problems all the way through to come up with the very best solutions.

• Strong verbal and written communication with the ability to present with clarity and confidence.

• Strong project planning and coordination skills to manage the communications with our internal departments and external clients.

• Some experience in briefing and assessing creative and ensuring content matches the brief.

• An eye for detail, a passion for ensuring that every deliverable is perfect and belief that mistakes are a learning opportunity - but should happen only once.

• Strong IT skills (MS Office, Powerpoint, Excel, Visio) to help bring to life client and internal presentations.