“VP, Online Sales & Marketing”
(Birmingham, AL – Mountain Brook area)
Company Overview
Protective Life Corporation is an industry-leading, nationwide provider of innovative insurance solutions and investment products designed to help individuals achieve and maintain financial security. Since its inception in 1907, the company has built an outstanding reputation for providing consumers access to cost-effective ways to meet their long-term protection and retirement income goals. With annual revenue of $3.6 billion and assets of approximately $57.4billion, Protective Life is uniquely positioned to offer both stability and nimbleness, and is committed to the development of forward-thinking, customized solutions that serve to tear down the barriers of confusion, complexity, affordability and lack of trust that keep people from protecting their financial tomorrow.
Protective Life has four business units and operating segments:
· Life and Annuity Division
Life insurance products, including universal life and variable life, offered primarily through a network of brokers, stockbrokers and independent marketing organizations. Annuities, including fixed and variable annuity products, marketed through brokers and financial institutions. Protective Life Insurance Company has earned high financial strength ratings, specifically A+ (A.M. Best), A (Fitch), AA- (Standard & Poor’s) and A2 (Moody’s).
· Acquisitions
Services policies acquired or co-insured from other companies. This business unit has successfully executed 45 insurance acquisitions over the last thirty years, including the recent acquisition of AXA’s MONY Life Insurance Company of America.
· Asset Protection Division
Markets extended service contracts, and credit life on auto, RVs, and marine through dealers, direct employee sales representatives and general agents.
· Stable Value Division
Markets fixed and floating-rate funding agreements to the trustees of municipal bond proceeds, institutional investors, bank trust departments, and money market funds.
Four founding principles and values—Do the Right Thing, Serve People, Build Trust, and Simplify Everything—govern Protective’s approach to enhancing the quality of life for its current 6million customers, 2300 employees, and share owners. Corporate headquarters are located in Birmingham, Alabama, and specifically, in the Mountain Brook area. For more company information, visit www.protective.com.
© 2013 Wiser Partners, LLC
Protective Life ~ “VP, Online Sales & Marketing” Page 2 of 6
(NYSE:PL – Past 2-Year Stock Performance)
Position Overview
This position will play a critical role in accelerating Protective’s new multi-channel Customer Engagement strategy by developing a best-in-class Digital component that drives brand awareness and consideration across electronic mediums while building the company’s online transactional business and self-service capabilities. The“VP, Online Sales & Marketing” will develop Protective’s direct to consumer web sales channel for the Life and Annuity Division with accountability for the online user experience, user interface, lead generation, application process, and mobile strategy. Utilizing consumer insights and analysis, this position will develop strategic solutions that deliver a differentiated online customer experience and advanced results in terms of targeting, awareness, consideration, user experience, and ultimately, online sales of life insurance and annuity products. The VP, Online Sales & Marketing will serve as steward of the brand, managing the development of brand campaigns and sponsorships from creative through media plan execution and reporting.
This Online Sales and Marketing leader must demonstrate passion for, and experience in, delivering results and building innovative tools that deliver against the entire consumer purchase funnel. They must have an ability to be data-driven in their decision making, aMarketing innovator, and a strong collaborator in building working relationships with agencies and cross-functional teams. Protective Life is committed to reinventing the way theygo-to-market, by leveraging Interactive capabilities strategically and aggressively. This is a role for a dynamic, commercially oriented and profit minded Marketer who is comfortable in a resource lean, dynamic environment.
Scope of Responsibilities
· E-Commerce Functionality – Protective Life will be working diligently to implement a best-in-class, scalable, E-commerce platform and tool set, as a foundation for the company’s emerging Digital strategy. This individual will need to assume critical leadership here, coordinating functionality across the organization (IT, Operations, Fulfillment, and Service).
· Acquisition & Retention – Through strategic segmentation and enhanced targeting, and by continually optimizing the online Marketing mix, this position will lead Protective Life’s Marketing’s efforts to drive revenue and EBITDA through strong efficient online customer acquisition and relentless focus on improving ROI (reducing cost-per-acquisition) and maximizing LCV.
· Website Development – Protective Life’s web sites today are not optimized, but the stage is set for someone to help lead the design and delivery of an exceptional customer experience on the company’s web site(s) and across all the Digital channels—one that allows prospects and customers to be educated and inspired, and one that allows for tailoring and self-service to individual customer needs.
· Brand Oversight – Serve as a passionate steward, advocate and gatekeeper for the Protective corporate brand and product brands. Champion a renewal and refinement of the Brand’s strategic positioning and architecture (as needed), derived from adata-based understanding of key customers and competitors, as well as a keen understanding of an ever-changing competitive, technological, financial and regulatoryenvironment.
· Marketing Strategy & Plans – Partner with the executive management team to architect—and continually update and optimize—an integrated Brand and Marketing strategy. Utilize market data, consumer research and insights, and competitive intelligence to identify new customer segmentation initiatives that will drive acquisition and new revenue streams for the company.
· Search – Develop the long-term and short-term strategies for Search Engine Marketing (SEM) programs, including the annual Marketing budget. Develop on-going Search Engine Optimization (SEO) campaigns and programs campaigns and oversee annual SEO Marketing budget. Measure and track all organic site traffic. Develop and manage Analytics platforms and testing strategies. Create best practices for how Protective Life leverages search engines.
· Insights & Innovation – Strive to continually uncover and identify new marketplace and customer trends, thereby enabling Protective Life to set the pace for “whatmust come next” from a category standpoint. This understanding should be leveraged to help the CMO and the SVP/CIO to define new product/technology opportunities worth exploring further via strategy/business case development and measurable, projectable in-market testing.
· Budget and Agency Management – This person will establish and manage annual Digital operating and capital budgets, and will work closely with other functions to ensure delivery of the forecast. He/She will also be the principal liaison with all external Digital agencies and Interactive suppliers, which will require constantly pushing for “best-in-class” solutions and value-based vendor pricing.
Scope of Responsibilities continued
· Functional Training & Development – There are assets currently in-place at Protective Life, in terms of systems, technologies, tools, and staff, and as the online business scales, the operation will become more aggressive about investing in the level and quality of infrastructure required to take Protective into the leading Web position. This new “VP” will need to be deeply committed to building out this functional capability, with both talent and systems. He/she will help identify investment opportunities for the department, positioning the group for future growth.
Performance & Success Measures
• Total # of net new customers acquired (initial focus on life insurance)
• Cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and lifetime customer value (LCV) numbers
· Revenue growth and EBITDA targets
· Marketing ROI
· Brand Health metrics (Awareness, Preference, Equity)
• 360-degree feedback from internal teammates; external customer feedback
Reporting Relationships
This position reports to Mr. Frank Sottosanti, SVP/Chief Marketing Officer. He oversees the company’s Consumer Marketing and branding initiatives. Prior to joining Protective in March 2012, Mr. Sottosanti was Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for BBVA Compass in Birmingham. He also worked for Wachovia and Bank of America in various Marketing leadership roles while living in Charlotte. He began his career with The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta and has more than 20 years of experience in driving brand differentiation and sales through innovative marketing. Mr. Sottosanti currently serves on the board of the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center. Previously he has served on the board of the United Way of Central Alabama and the Autism Society of North Carolina. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Management from Bucknell University and a Master’s in Business Administration from New York University’s Stern School of Business.
Direct/Indirect Reports
In terms of Digital Marketing staff managed, the new “VP, Online Sales & Marketing” will be directly and indirectly accountable for a team that will grow overtime. This individual will have the authority to expand the team, as they see fit, and make changes to the organization that will enable this business to win in the marketplace. At present, there is one direct report: The AVP, Brand & Digital Marketing.
Critical Operating Relationships
· Executive Leadership Team
· SVP/CIO, Web Development team, and Project Management Office
· Project Development (Life Insurance and Annuity products)
· Sales & Distribution (Agent Sales)
· Consumer Marketing: Corporate Communications & Social Media; Customer Experience & Insights; Meetings and Events; Direct Marketing & Analytics teams
· Finance
· External Agency partners
Compensation & Benefits
• Competitive base salary
· Annual incentive bonus opportunity
• Long term incentive opportunity
• Company funded Pension Plan
· 401K
• Comprehensive health care benefits
• Relocation assistance to the Birmingham/Mountain Brook area
Candidate Profile
Experience Base
· Significant, relevant, practical experience with online/web Marketing (eCommerce), ideally from industries such as Financial Services, Information Services, Retail or Telecom
· Experience managing the continuous improvement of conversion rates from site visitors to new customers
· Consumer-focused brand Marketing (ideally, CPG at the Brand/Product Manager level)
· Experience developing and managing a complex, interactive Marketing database
· Proven success at effectively managing a P&L
· Significant experience managing agencies, including experience guiding creative (teams)
· Experience successfully hiring, developing and leading direct/indirect reports
Skill Set
· Superior functional expertise (broad and deep Interactive Marketing toolkit)
· Exceptional leadership (leads by reference and not hierarchy)
· Commercial mentality (understands that the key deliverable is profitable revenue growth)
· Intellectual horsepower (highly analytical & strategic)
· Listening skills (listen first, then respond)
· Bias for action; ability and willingness to take action with little information (a “doer,” not a “talker” that can write and then execute the playbook)
· Creative and conceptual thinking (creates new ideas, stimulates new thinking)
· Resourcefulness (stretches people and money, compresses time)
· Open, direct and effective communications (strong written and oral/presentation communication skills)
Personal Traits
· Integrity (highly principled; delivers results the right way)
· Creative (divergent—yet strategically sound—thinking)
· Entrepreneurial (proven innovation)
· Business acumen (“street smart”)
· High capacity (endless energy, “blue collar” work ethic, strong tactical execution)
· Team orientation (focus is on the work and winning; not just self)
· Passion for Winning (not satisfied with just doing better)
· Strong relationship management and interpersonal skills (high EQ)
· Influencing (proven ability to persuade through reference and not hierarchy)
· Comfortable with ambiguity (recognizes that the only constant is change and acts/reacts accordingly)
Search Contact
David Wiser
Principal Partner – Cincinnati, OH Office
513.919.4000 (M)
File: Position Specification/Protective Life/Protective Life VP Online Sales Mktg Spec (09 19 13-F-DW)
© 2013 Wiser Partners, LLC