SunLife UK
Head of Digital & Marketing Performance
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Salary and benefits
Competitive depending on experience plus generous bonus, private medical cover, 38 days annual leave, excellent pension, 12x salary life assurance, career breaks, income protection, 3x volunteering days a year and much more.
Flexible working
All of our roles are open to part-time, job-share and other types of flexibility. We will discuss what is important to you, and balancing this with business requirements, during the recruitment process.
Who we are
SunLife is a market leader in its core products with ambition to further diversify product and customer offerings to attract and retain new customers in the over 50s sector. Our vision is to offer customers simple, straightforward, affordable products and utilising effective, innovative marketing across multiple channels is one of the keys to our success. With 100 colleagues based in our vibrant central Bristol office, we have a thriving culture, a creative approach to our work and we’re fast-moving, passionate, and dedicated.
SunLife is part of Standard Life Group, the UK’s largest long-term savings and retirement business. Across the group, Standard Life offers our 12 million customers products across our market-leading brands, including Standard Life, SunLife and ReAssure, with c.£259 billion of assets under administration. Standard Life is a FTSE 100 organisation that is tackling key issues such as transitioning the portfolio to net zero by 2050, and we’re not done yet. We want to be the best place that any of our colleagues have worked.
Role purpose
Here at SunLife we offer financial products such as life insurance and equity release to people over 50. As part of Standard Life Group, we are committed to helping people secure a life of possibilities.
The Head of Digital & Marketing Performance is a key leadership role within the Marketing function. The role-holder is responsible for driving customer acquisition, lead generation, digital performance and commercial growth, whilst ensuring that SunLife's customer experience remains simple, engaging and friction-free across both digital and offline journeys. The role is accountable for delivering profitable growth through a combination of performance marketing excellence, digital experience optimisation and data-led decision making.
A passionate advocate for both the customer and commercial performance, the role-holder will champion insight-led decision making, continuous optimisation and a rigorous test-and-learn culture. They will bring customer pain points, acquisition opportunities and performance insights to the forefront, relentlessly focusing on improving conversion, increasing marketing effectiveness and maximising return on investment across all acquisition and engagement channels. This role is responsible for ensuring that every marketing pound spent delivers measurable value whilst maintaining excellent customer outcomes.
The role-holder will own SunLife's digital acquisition and performance strategy, with direct accountability for paid search, paid social, display and other performance marketing channels. In partnership with Product, Operations, IT and external agencies, they will ensure that customer acquisition activity is optimised end-to-end, from first engagement through to conversion and long-term customer value.
Alongside ownership of performance marketing, the role-holder will be accountable for the SunLife website, digital customer journeys and conversion optimisation activities, working closely with IT to ensure platforms are effective, up-to-date and performing strongly. They will lead a multidisciplinary team spanning performance marketing, digital experience, SEO, content, UX, UI and conversion rate optimisation, building a high-performing function focused on growth, innovation and customer outcomes.
The role carries accountability for significant acquisition and digital marketing budgets and therefore requires a relentless focus on commercial performance, marketing ROI and efficient investment. The role-holder will play a pivotal role in defining and delivering SunLife's Digital & Marketing Performance strategy, ensuring the business achieves its growth ambitions whilst continuing to deliver exceptional customer experiences.
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Key accountabilities
- Create and lead the Digital & Marketing Performance strategy across new customer acquisition and existing customer engagement, encompassing performance marketing, digital experience, UX and UI design, implementation, optimisation and measurement, ensuring activity delivers both exceptional customer outcomes and commercial growth.
- Develop and deliver acquisition strategies that support diversification into new products, markets and customer segments, ensuring SunLife achieves its lead generation, customer growth and revenue objectives.
- Lead the strategic development of, and establish a clear vision for, SunLife's digital acquisition ecosystem, including the website, performance marketing channels and customer engagement platforms.
- Design and implement SunLife's customer experience principles across digital and offline journeys, ensuring experiences are simple, engaging and optimised for conversion, retention and advocacy.
- Maximise the commercial value generated from digital traffic and marketing investment, focusing on increasing conversion, improving lead quality, reducing acquisition costs and enhancing customer outcomes.
- Own and optimise all performance marketing activity across paid search, paid social, display, retargeting, affiliate and emerging digital channels, ensuring efficient delivery of acquisition and ROI targets.
- Establish a culture of insight-led decision making, embedding robust analytics, attribution and reporting frameworks that enable continuous optimisation and informed investment decisions.
- Coach, lead and develop members of the Digital & Marketing Performance team, creating a high-performing environment that nurtures talent across digital experience, acquisition, optimisation and performance marketing disciplines.
- Own the day-to-day management of agency and supplier relationships required to support the Digital & Marketing Performance strategy, ensuring high-quality delivery, innovation and value for money.
- Manage significant digital and acquisition budgets, ensuring marketing investment is deployed effectively to maximise return on investment and achieve agreed commercial growth targets.
- Steer digital and marketing performance initiatives, ensuring projects are prioritised effectively, delivered successfully and aligned to SunLife's strategic objectives.
- Work closely with Product, Operations, Finance, IT and Change teams to develop integrated customer acquisition and engagement strategies that support wider business goals.
- Champion a continuous test-and-learn culture, identifying opportunities to improve customer journeys, marketing effectiveness and conversion performance.
- Ensure the delivery of good customer outcomes is embedded in the day to day working practices and culture of the team. Monitoring performance against consumer duty through a robust and proactive risk and control framework.
- Define and track key performance measures including customer acquisition, lead generation, conversion, marketing ROI, channel effectiveness and commercial growth outcomes, ensuring clear accountability for results.
Measures
- Shape a Digital & Marketing Performance strategy that draws upon customer insight, channel data, market research, external benchmarking and industry best practice to drive sustainable growth and exceptional customer outcomes.
- The Digital & Marketing Performance function is future-proofed, with the capability, technology, skills and operating model required to support growth, new products, evolving customer expectations and changing market conditions.
- Be recognised as an expert in emerging acquisition, performance marketing and digital experience trends, continually identifying and testing innovative opportunities to improve marketing effectiveness and commercial performance.
- The improvements made to SunLife’s digital acquisition and customer journeys can be evidenced by higher lead generation, increased quote and apply conversion, lower acquisition costs, improved SEO performance, greater customer engagement and increased lifetime customer value.
- Deliver measurable improvements in marketing effectiveness through enhanced channel performance, stronger attribution, better targeting and optimisation of paid search, paid social, display and other acquisition channels.
- Establish a robust performance measurement framework that enables clear visibility of marketing ROI, acquisition performance, conversion outcomes and commercial contribution, supporting effective decision making across the business.
- Lead and inspire a high-performing Digital & Marketing Performance team, demonstrating excellence through strong engagement scores, capability development, succession planning and the achievement of team objectives.
- Select, appoint and manage agency partners that are aligned to SunLife’s strategic goals, ensuring the delivery of high-quality services, innovation and strong value for money.
- Digital, acquisition and performance marketing programmes are delivered on time and within budget, with clearly defined commercial outcomes and demonstrable return on investment.
- Ensure that marketing investment is continually optimised, with spend allocated effectively across channels to maximise customer acquisition, conversion, profitability and long-term value.
- Embed a strong test-and-learn culture across the function, with continuous experimentation, measurement and optimisation driving improvements in customer experience and commercial performance.
- Build strong relationships across the organisation and encourage colleagues to adopt a customer-focused, data-led and digital-first mindset, ensuring digital and performance marketing capabilities are fully integrated into business decision making.
- Maintain a strong governance and control environment, ensuring acquisition and marketing activities operate within regulatory requirements, risk appetite and agreed business controls.
- Success in the role will be evidenced through the achievement of key business metrics including customer acquisition volumes, lead generation targets, marketing ROI, cost per acquisition, conversion rates, customer retention measures and overall commercial growth.
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Stakeholders
- External agencies.
- Marketing SLT.
- SunLife SLT.
- Marketing team
- Operations
- Product P&L owners
- Legal, Risk & Compliance and Data Protection Office
- IT & Change.
Skills and experience required
- Senior experience within a digital marketing or experience role.
- Experience of key performance marketing platforms including Google and Meta.
- Experience of managing departmental budgets with a strong focus on commercial outcomes.
- Strong understanding of customer insight techniques in a digital environment.
- Technical understanding of content management systems, conversion rate optimisation tools and technical SEO/GEO.
- Planning and coordination skills.
- Supplier management and negotiation.
- Actively engaged in understanding external best practices and tools for digital experience optimisation.
We want to hire the whole version of you
We are committed to ensuring that everyone feels accepted, and we welcome applicants from all backgrounds. If your experience looks different from what we’ve advertised and you believe that you can bring value to the role, we’d love to hear from you.
If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, please let us know so we can help you to be at your best.
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