Derek Martin
Verified Expert in Coaching
Coach
Millburn, NJ, United States
Toptal member since February 19, 2025
Derek is a full-stack digital marketer with 20 years of experience leading successful marketing, technology, operations, and transformation initiatives. He has an extensive background in the financial services, insurance, education, and not-for-profit sectors. This combination ensures Derek's approach considers design, execution, and long-term support to ensure sustainable success.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Coaching
- Business Leadership Coaching
- Change Management
- Coaching
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM)
- Marketing Strategy
- Project Management
- Team Building
Work Experience
Founder and Lead Consultant
Perform Solutions
- Directed the strategy and execution of marketing automation, including email campaigns and list management, for B2B and B2C initiatives within Microsoft Dynamics CRM for an aging care marketplace.
- Increased conversion rates by 70% for B2C and 14% for B2B audiences through targeted marketing automation in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
- Designed and launched a paid B2C digital marketing campaign for whole-phonics.com, achieving a 4:1 return on ad spend (ROAS).
- Spearheaded vendor selection and implementation of digital platforms for web, customer relationship management (CRM), email, and data management initiatives.
- Built a customer data platform (CDP) in Snowflake for a leading university, unifying partnership contacts across 15 departments and external partners to streamline outreach and strengthen engagement efforts.
Marketing Expert
Toptal Client
- Developed and drove digital marketing workshops for presales and sales teams, enhancing their ability to identify client challenges and align solutions to improve sales conversion.
- Provided digital marketing frameworks, KPIs, and martech stack insights to guide strategy and execution.
- Facilitated participatory workshops that equipped sales teams to map client needs to KPIs, uncover root causes, match relevant solutions, and develop persuasive engagement messaging.
Head of Digital Platforms, Data, and Transformation
United Nations
- Directed a $2.5 million marketing platform and operations budget, including contract negotiation and vendor management to optimize spend and performance.
- Migrated the content management system (CMS) and web portal to Drupal, enhancing user experience and single sign-on (SSO) access, which increased usage by 15%.
- Optimized the application process by enhancing positioning, implementing a cost estimator tool, and automating approval workflows, increasing conversion rates by 7% and reducing processing time by five days.
- Enhanced CRM list quality by 35% and reduced data costs by 15% through advanced data quality strategies.
- Established Agile campaign testing practices and managed performance analytics using Google Analytics 4, Moz, Semrush, and Hotjar.
- Supported the transition of the member environmental, social, and governance (ESG) survey to an online format by developing a web-based app for 20,000 members across 150 countries.
Director of CRM and Marketing Technology
International Rescue Committee
- Optimized omnichannel performance across web, landing pages, social media, emails, direct mail, and events, increasing B2C donations by 27% through analytics-driven segmentation, A/B testing, and improved deliverability.
- Directed marketing analytics for web, social media, email, and direct mail channels, providing actionable dashboards and A/B test-driven optimizations.
- Consolidated three CRM solutions into a single Salesforce instance, integrating web, email, direct mail, SMS, and payment systems.
- Implemented and managed Salesforce Pardot, centralizing marketing campaign operations across 30 countries.
- Developed in-house direct-mail list management and targeting tools using Heroku, increasing conversion rates by 4%.
Managing Director of Product Development and Program Delivery
Digital Prism Advisors
- Directed a $5 million digital transformation and software project portfolio, achieving measurable bottom-line results.
- Established a robotic process automation (RPA) center of excellence, automating high-intensity processes and saving $6 million annually.
- Automated 50% of a major financial firm's quarterly earnings reporting process using AI and RPA.
- Designed and executed a B2B portal enabling search, leasing, and payment functionalities for a leading industrial tank leasing company.
Executive Director of CRM and Database Marketing
Laureate Education
- Directed digital marketing and operations across 10 global online universities, overseeing a $4.5 million profit and loss (P&L) statement.
- Oversaw paid and organic digital marketing initiatives across existing web, social, email, and SMS leads, surpassing performance targets.
- Increased database lead reactivation by 60% and conversion rates by 48% through strategically targeted web, email, and social initiatives.
- Increased new student conversion by 6% through enhanced onboarding and gamification strategies.
- Enhanced email and direct mail response rates by 10% through testing, optimization, and segmentation.
- Launched an integrated content workflow and archival platform, increasing content output by 15%.
Director of CRM, Retention, and Cross Sales
MetLife
- Drove $7 million in premiums by executing and optimizing B2C and B2B2C cross-channel marketing campaigns.
- Maintained $3 million in annual premiums by implementing process improvements and leading a dedicated retention team.
- Directed 30% year-over-year growth for two new products by executing targeted web, direct-to-consumer, and email campaigns.
- Boosted MetLife USA's net promoter score (NPS) by 10% through process improvements, reaching the company's highest score to date.
Director of Business Development
Velti
- Developed and launched a bank loyalty app that combined payments, personalized deals, and community engagement solutions.
- Innovated SMS solutions, boosting payment collection rates by 4% and reducing annual costs by $5 million.
- Launched an in-app membership points calculator using dynamic retail conversion rates for a major credit card company.
Director of Engineering, Customer Engagement, Sales, and Retention
American Express
- Transformed customer engagement, sales, and retention for 7,000 agents across 24 countries.
- Improved Platinum and Centurion card sales by 4% and retention by 8% by leading a cross-functional team to integrate premium servicing across travel, concierge, and disputes functions.
- Managed marketing operations for 7,000 global call agents, developing home-grown CRM solutions, including offers, tracking, and incentives.
- Increased US cards, insurance, and fee product cross-sales by 50% through personalized offers and timing.
- Spearheaded the rollout of B2C travel insurance sales through call centers across 10 countries, exceeding performance targets.
- Oversaw a $50 million annual servicing CAPEX investment budget, driving a 7% improvement in ROI.
- Grew outbound call sales by $24 million using advanced list segmentation and call management strategies.
Project History
AI Governance Enablement
Established AI governance, policies, and controls to support the 60 user pilot deployment of Anthropic Claude at a student loan financing company.
I drove workshops, coaching sessions, and project planning to establish an AI governance framework, document and implement policies and controls, and roll out generative AI (GenAI) tools to an initial pilot team of 60 users across marketing, operations, and planning.
AI Data Readiness Assessment
Identified significant but solvable gaps in 40% of customer data and 25% of operational data, providing recommendations to improve data quality, ID resolution, meta tagging, and access profiles.
I analyzed customer and operations data for a B2B SaaS company. I identified data quality, tagging, and access gaps that could significantly limit business effectiveness and adoption of AI tools and workflows.
Inbound Email Automation
Automated disposition, routing, and draft response for 1,000 inbound inquiry emails, reducing response time from seven days to two and enhancing issue tracking and escalation.
I enabled Zapier and ChatGPT automations for inbound email inquiries at a United Nations division, connecting Gmail and Outlook accounts and automating disposition, routing, and draft responses with human-in-the-loop approval. I trained the model on 1,000 emails to improve accuracy and efficiency.
Education
Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Finance
Ross School of Business, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, MI, USA
Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration (BBA)
Skidmore College - Saratoga Springs, NY, USA
Certifications
ChatGPT + Excel: Master Data, Make Decisions, Tell Stories
Vanderbilt University | via Coursera
Digital Marketing Certification
Attract and Engage Customers with Digital Marketing
Google | via Coursera
OKRs
Measure What Matters
Prompt Engineering
Coursera
Certified SAFe 6 Scrum Master
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
Data Strategy
Learning SnowflakeDB
LinkedIn Learning
Machine Learning for Product Managers
Duke University
Artificial Intelligence Algorithms Models and Limitations
LearnQuest | via Coursera
Generative AI for Digital Marketers
Salesforce Expeditioner
Salesforce
ChatGPT for Beginners: Using AI for Market Research
Deprecated Guided Projects | via Coursera
AI Fundamentals for Non-data Scientists
University of Pennsylvania | via Coursera
Marketo Certified Expert
Adobe
Digital Marketing Certification
American Marketing Association
Agile Business Owner
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
Skills
Executive Coaching
Business Leadership Coaching
Platforms & Tools
Google Meet, Zoom
Other
Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Process Automation, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Project Management, Team Building, Change Management, Strategy, Coaching, Agile Coaching, Marketing, Marketing Strategy, Mentorship, Training, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Documentation, Governance, Pilot, Customer Service, Prompt Engineering, Data Management
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