Natalie Crain - VP, Customer Experience & Marketing, TruStage

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Work Background

TruStageVP, Customer Experience Management and B2B Marketing

Jan. 2022Madison, Wisconsin, United StatesSupervised team of 70+ marketing and CX leaders and professionals at financial services company while controlling $17M budget, providing executive leadership, marketing, and customer advocacy expertise to drive marketing and CX strategies, programs, and initiatives. Applied business acumen to understand needs of multiple business units, translating functional strategies and goals into actionable marketing objectives to create best-in-class, high-performing marketing and CX department. Forged lasting relationships, influenced business unit strategic plans, and aligned marketing and CX initiatives to deliver on objectives. - Built effective, centralized shared-service B2B marketing and CX functions, leveraging industry best practices, outside-in perspective, and customer-centric organizational design to construct more efficient delivery of services with functional focus on strategy, operations, and execution. - Revitalized strategic planning for B2B marketing department, realigning marketing objectives to business segment objectives, introducing pod operating model that fostered collaboration between marketing, sales, product, and analytics teams, and integrating processes, marketing objectives, and customer insights.

TruStageVice President, Customer Experience Management

Jan. 2020 - Jan. 2022Madison, Wisconsin AreaDesigned and implemented centralized CX capability, focused on understanding B2B and B2C customer journeys with brand. Tasked with CX strategy, persona development, journey mapping, and product mapping. Led team of 20+ CX professionals and owned $4M budget. Leveraged voice-of-the-customer insights from surveys to improve touchpoints. - Aided business unit partners with evolving customer focus with clearly defined vision, roadmap, and value proposition for products and services; assessed leadership team maturity and crafted 5-part workshop to educate on building CX vision, measuring results, and crafting improvement roadmaps. - Enhanced retention by 15% and boosted onboarding experience by revamping 4 of 12 segments, centered on demographics, segmentation, and personas to use across product and service design, onboarding, and messaging.

TruStageVice President, Consumer Insights & Market Strategy

Jan. 2017 - Dec. 2020Madison, Wisconsin, United StatesFocused on B2C operations, leading team of 6 direct reports and managing $1.5M budget. Drove market research to support product development, identify segments and targets, and brainstorm product ideas. Guided teams in determining best products for segments based on market fit and prototype success. - Improved new customer onboarding experience with enhanced product education, leading to reduced call center incoming calls by addressing customer needs proactively; conducted surveys to showcase pain points, opportunities, and expectations and recommended improvements to digital communications and touchpoints with business case highlighting cost savings, customer desires, and changes. - Sponsored multicultural market assessment for life business segment, analyzing internal data, primary and secondary research (Forrester, LIMRA, Collage Group, and ANA), competitive intel, and call studies.

TruStageDirector, Media and Marketing Strategy - TruStage

Sep. 2015 - Dec. 2017Madison, Wisconsin AreaHired to establish B2C digital marketing capabilities as key driver of marketing strategy. Crafted strategic approach and selection of marketing mix of paid search, digital ads, and social media ads to drive profitability. Oversaw revisions to messaging and creative design for adverts in collaboration with digital marketers and external agency. - Achieved numerous successes throughout role, including securing performance marketing agencies, negotiating contracts, onboarding clients, and setting goals for agency to improve performance, leading to 83% improvement in digital media ROI (from triple negative to profitable margin) and quarter-over-quarter enhancement of direct response television performance of 110%. - Guided creative team in updating market messaging strategy for TruStage brand, leading to brand positioning revision for “Life Insurance at the Speed of Life” with stronger strategy, more engagement, and product differentiation.

Lands' EndSr. Director Brand Marketing and Digital Customer Acquisition Strategy

Jul. 2012 - Sep. 2015Dodgeville, WIDeveloped integrated campaign strategies and drove customer acquisition through digital marketing. Analyzed social, affiliate, paid, and search strategies to revamp marketing mix for digital channels. Identified keywords, publications and affiliate partners that expanded into modern clothing categories, and improved overall market presence to drive performance. - Orchestrated integrated seasonal brand and marketing campaigns, securing fashion magazine placements across print and digital properties. Delivering 26% growth for the activewear category in divisional sales and new customer acquisition. - Secured 1 million new-to-brand and reactivated customers with improved SEO, digital acquisition, and SEM strategies emphasizing customer targets within 2 years. - Conceptualized comprehensive retail marketing strategy using print, radio, digital, and social media channels to drive 7% sales growth in test markets.

REIDirector, Brand Communications

Nov. 2010 - Jul. 2012Greater Seattle AreaLeading REI's marketing program strategies, multi-million dollar budgets and a highly innovative team of 30 employees. Marketing programs include TV, Radio, Print, OOH, Mobile Advertising, Digital Display, Email, Direct Mail, Online Marketing, Social Media, Gift Cards, Co-branded Visa, Co-op Membership loyalty programing and Campaign Content development. - Managed relationship with external agency, vendors and strategic partnerships. - Developed acquisition strategy to focus on the growth of a younger and more diverse customer demographic and the need to grow new customers at a faster rate which has increased the usage of digital and mobile vehicles in the overarching marketing mix - Led the strategy and development of REI’s brand positioning and advertising campaign with creative agency in support of the acquisition target audience to raise awareness and differentiate from its competitors - Developed retention strategies to increase retention rates and meet active member growth goals

REIMarketing Manager - Digital

Oct. 2005 - Nov. 2010Seattle, Washington, United StatesLead development of comprehensive digital marketing strategies across multiple vehicles such as search engine marketing, affiliates, display advertising, social platforms and mobile - Build and maintain multi-million annual marketing budgets that has delivered above expectations with sales growth of +25% to prior year • Lead development, advocacy and execution of Social Strategies on REI.com and external social sites such as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube • Led cross-divisional team in evaluating external content partnerships, negotiated terms with partner and facilitated implementation to support strategic imperatives of REI. • Establish and maintain highly effective internal relationships with marketing and cross-functional counterparts, including e-commerce, brand marketing, finance/legal and CRM

REIDirect Marketing Acquistion Analyst

Feb. 2004 - Oct. 2005Greater Seattle AreaDirect Mail Prospecting with List Rentals and Coop Databases

REISr. Financial Analyst

Jun. 2000 - Feb. 2004Greater Seattle AreaFinancial Forecasting, Profit/Loss Analysis, Budget Management, Business Performance Measurement

National Mobile TelevisionAsst. Controller

Sep. 1995 - May. 2000Managed financials, month end close and balance sheet analysis.