Simon Barrell
Verified Expert in Marketing
Marketing Expert
New York, NY, United States
Toptal member since June 22, 2023
Simon is a seasoned digital marketer willing to leverage his expertise in developing new products and services in financial business information, software, technology, risk, cybersecurity, and media. He excels in both traditional and interactive marketing, with a high-performance track record of generating leads and meeting financial goals for blue-chip companies and startups. Having worked in eight countries, Simon brings a truly global perspective and multilingual capabilities.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
Marketing Director
CreditSights
- Developed and rolled out cross-sell marketing plans to promote its new unified platform to the CreditSights, LevFin Insights, and Covenant Review customer bases in the US and EMEA regions.
- Applied a brand refresh to all website properties, templates, communication channels (including telemarketing), collateral, and other subsidiary brands to improve user experience and boost user engagement.
- Wrote and produced new platform launch communication, including creating online FAQs, user guides, blog posts, press releases, and an explainer video series.
- Executed hands-on digital campaigns, building email nurtures on HubSpot and creating graphic assets on Canva.
- Coached the CreditSights marketing team and external consultants to achieve 300% YoY MQL growth through email, PPC, paid LinkedIn campaigns, webinars, in-person events, and social activity.
Digital Marketing Director
Symphony
- Refreshed Symphony's website with new brand design treatments, navigation, and content to drive engagement with new logos.
- Built processes around Marketo email campaigns for lead generation, client communication, webinars, and events.
- Launched an internal social advocacy program using the GaggleAMP platform to encourage employee engagement and activity across our social media profiles. LinkedIn's monthly follower growth increased by 100%, driving 15% of website traffic.
- Supported digital campaign execution, scoring model revision, and advanced Marketo training across teams.
- Wrote GDPR and data privacy guidance for commercial teams in the EMEA and APAC regions.
Senior Director, Digital Experience
IntSights
- Redesigned IntSights's website with the support of the Imarc design team and successfully implemented it in just six weeks. New visits increased by 50%.
- Migrated the marketing automation platform from HubSpot to Marketo to coincide with the website relaunch.
- Created all prospect email communication via Marketo for customers and internal audiences using SendGrid and increased click-to-open rates from 12% to 22%.
- Conducted two monthly webinars, growing registrations from 100 to over 400 and the attendance rate from 19% to 30%.
- Managed the events marketing team and coordinated the field and business development teams at regional events, trade shows, and global presentations.
- Supported the business development team on lead funnel specifics, reporting, and coaching for client calls.
VP of Digital Marketing
Infor
- Planned and executed a strategy across all digital marketing channels, including search engine marketing (SEM), pay-per-click (PPC), content syndication, email nurturing, and paid social.
- Relaunched Marketo instance, redesigning prospect lifecycle, scoring, and building out reporting capabilities.
- Led the global website relaunch project and oversaw regional site projects, ensuring the launch of 16 new country sites in just four months, providing localization, increasing relevance to local market needs, and increasing conversion.
- Developed the global email nurture strategy, replacing ad-hoc email drip campaigns.
- Integrated an online survey tool into emails and global events communication to increase engagement and conversion.
- Directed SEO and PPC campaigns and lowered the average cost-per-click (CPC) on SEM campaigns from $178 to less than $100.
- Acted as the team lead for ABM rollout, evaluating Engagio (now DemandBase), Terminus Ad platform, and Bombora intent data.
Marketing Director
WorkWave
- Recruited to drive growth in the WorkWave digital marketing agency client base, working with business development and supporting executive leadership on strategic marketing projects. WorkWave is a $50 million SaaS business for SMBs in field service.
- Ran demand generation efforts for corporate businesses and over 300 client websites, resulting in a 500% increase in revenue in 24 months fueled by SEM campaigns and new subscribers' acquisition of the website, SEO, social media, and review plans.
- Created training programs for sales and support teams and produced event collateral, including animated videos.
- Led a cross-discipline team to define specifications and a GTM strategy for a new lead management platform to complete our closed-loop field service SaaS solution. Expected potential revenue in the $50 million range before company acquisition by IFS.
- Launched a new testimonials module and live chat services on the clients' website.
Chief Marketing Officer
NIP Group
- Reported to the CEO of a risk management intermediary group, overseeing all marketing strategy and activities for six distinct professional insurance divisions across the US. Revenue grew from $15 million to $19 million during my tenure.
- Managed the implementation and launch of Salesforce CRM across three business units, including the corporate communications aspects of the initiative.
- Activated Marketo's marketing automation tool to replace the antiquated in-house routines and outsourced email vendor platforms. Built scoring and lead nurturing programs to manage prospect pipeline and conversion.
- Rolled out a content strategy, social media strategy, and webinar series, doubling traffic to group sites.
- Expanded broker and prospect databases from 40,000 to 250,000 records, introducing data hygiene processes and data append tasks to increase the quality of data acquired in list purchases, call campaigns, and organic record capture.
Co-founder
Formas International Markets LLC
- Co-founded a consulting company that offers integrated marketing expertise, social media, and execution services to media, content, and technology businesses. The company focuses on new markets such as Latin America and emerging financial markets in the US.
- Developed the corporate communications and marketing strategy, including branding, collateral, and the Formas website design.
- Built a pipeline of 60 qualified international prospects and five key targets within three months of incorporation.
- Executed the online marketing strategy for Intech, an engineering design company. Rewrote the website code for SEO, created email campaigns supported by social media activity, doubled website visits, generated leads, and increased sales by 80%.
- Defined the paid advertising strategy, including Google Ads, traditional print campaigns, PR, email marketing, events, and content creation for Sensor Products, an electrical engineering software vendor for manufacturing and industrial applications.
- Promoted 25 live events annually in the US for seminars for engineers. Generated leads to drive seminar sign-ups through SEO, PPC, email, and traditional mail marketing campaigns. Typically, we filled a 30-40-person venue at each event.
- Created brand and messaging and built websites for a specialty cake business. Ran all email marketing, wrote copy, and executed content marketing, paid Google and Facebook campaigns, in-person events, and other lead-generation activities.
Project History
FAQs for Product Launch
https://know.creditsights.com/cs-platform-faq/Led the design and development of the new platform FAQs page on the CreditSights website to support the launch, migration, and cross-sell campaigns.
To support the launch of the new CreditSights platform, I developed an FAQ page that Included explainer videos on Loom, links to a digital user guide, and other materials, all of which I scripted, recorded, and built into our WordPress site.
I also wrote a five-part launch email series in HubSpot for user migration and onboarding, each with links to one of the how-to videos and other FAQ material.
Digital Marketing Strategy for Enterprise SaaS Vendor
https://www.infor.com/Developed a comprehensive and integrated marketing strategy for a global enterprise SaaS vendor and executed on all digital marketing channels, including SEO, SEM, PPC, email, paid social, webinars, and online events.
Through competitive keyword research using Semrush and testing of new creative and CTAs copy, we reduced the average CPC on SEM campaigns in Google Advertising and Bing Ads from $178 to under $100.
I developed a global email nurture strategy replacing ad-hoc email drip campaigns in Marketo, and we integrated an online survey tool, Survicate, into the email and global events communication to increase engagement and conversion.
Additionally, I project managed a global website relaunch on Craft CMS, and regional site project oversight for 16 new country sites allowed us to provide localization, relevance to local market needs, and increased conversions.
Email Marketing Acceleration Plan for salesElement
Wrote recommendations for effective use and expansion of email marketing to promote salesElement proposal and quoting software.
The CEO hired me as a consultant to evaluate their database and email process. We agreed that to improve engagement with prospects and generate new leads through referrals and from advocates, salesElement should use email more actively as a channel to market to its existing database of contacts and find ways to increase the database record count and quality.
I wrote a complete email marketing plan that evaluated the current database state and contact info in SFDC and MailChimp. I recommended ways to go beyond infrequent product announcements by repurposing new content from the new website and blog, requesting reviews, such as testimonials and NPS, and also by engaging with users to ask how the company can serve them better and thereby earn referrals.
The published plan factored in the following topics:
• Template update
• List building
• Segmentation
• Content plan and calendar
• Creative recommendations
• Data hygiene
• Tasks and responsibilities
• Objectives, milestones, and timelines
• Costs and budget
Seminars for Engineers Event Series
https://seminarsforengineers.com/Promoted 25 live events annually in the US for Seminars for Engineers. Generated leads to drive seminar signs ups through SEO, PPC, email, and traditional mail marketing campaigns. Typically we filled a 30-40 person venue at each event.
I led the promotion and organization of about 25 two-day events each year, supported by an event manager. We conducted the lead generation for the event sign-ups primarily through SEO and PPC to a dedicated Seminars for Engineers website, plus email, print, and traditional mail marketing campaigns. The Sensor Products sales team also pushed event sign-ups in their client outreach.
Surprisingly we saw large numbers of sign-ups through postcard mailing campaigns and cards inserted in trade magazines focused on engineering and manufacturing verticals, such as Popular Mechanics, Paper & Packaging, Nasa Tech Briefs, and many other publications.
Education
Master of Science Degree in Integrated Marketing
New York University - New York, NY, USA
Skills
Core
Digital Marketing, Email Campaigns, SEO Tools, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), SEO Keyword Research, Blogging, Digital Campaigns, Content Creation, Digital Marketing Strategy, Digital Marketing Best Practices, Campaign Strategy, Marketing Leadership, Email Marketing, Marketing Strategy, On-page SEO, Off-page SEO, Paid Advertising, Lead Generation, Go-to-market Strategy, Content Marketing, LinkedIn Marketing, Local SEO, Pay-per-Click (PPC), Social Media, Social Media Marketing (SMM), Marketing Automation, Public Relations (PR), Print Advertising, Brand Strategy, Google SEO, Growth Hacking, Google Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Brand Marketing, SEO Backlinking, Facebook Ads, Social Media Management, Facebook Marketing, Social Media Posting, Keyword Research, Social Media Content, Link Building, Email Marketing Automation, Writing & Editing, Content Strategy, SEO Content, Marketing Operations, Marketing Analytics, Account-based Marketing (ABM), Product Marketing
Platforms & Tools
Google Analytics, HubSpot, Marketo, Asana, Monday.com, Canva, Mailchimp, Moz, Screaming Frog, Yelp
Business Models
B2B, SaaS, SaaS Product Marketing
Technical
Google Search Console
Other
Digital Strategy, Content Writing, Web Content, Event Marketing, B2B Lead Generation, Salesforce, Press Releases, Brand Design, Dashboards, Social, Website Redesign, Website Management, Website Audits, Website Migration, Website Traffic, Lead Marketing, Websites, Business Consulting, Business Cases, Paid Search, Startups, Brand Building, Business Development, Fintech, Team Development, Customer Acquisition, Statistical Analysis, Database Management, Planning, Webinars, WordPress, Elementor, Webex, Craft CMS, Trello, Video Editing, User Engagement, Product Launch, SendGrid, Project Management, Joomla, Technical SEO, Growth Marketing, Paid Media, Drip Email, Nurture & Retention Campaigns, Surveys, Corporate Communications, Brand Identity, Organizational Structure, Organizational Strategy, Events, Telemarketing, Sales Presentations, Organizational Behavior (OB), SEO Consultant, Buyer Personas, Growth Strategy, Startup Marketing, Sales Growth
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