Direct Performance Marketing Senior Manager Location : Wakefield / Bournemouth / Swindon / Northampton / London Salary: Circa £90,000 We’re seeking an experienced Senior Marketing Strategy & Planning Manager to lead our Planning Centre of Excellence and play a critical role in driving our 121-marketing strategy, developing comprehensive strategic roadmaps, and enhancing performance. Working for our Head of Planning & Partnering, you will provide subject matter expertise on marketing planning capability across the team. A strong leader, you will have a proven track record in leading the development of effective marketing plans, turning analytical insights into actionable outcomes that meet customer needs. You’ll be responsible for ensuring alignment between marketing strategies and business objectives, optimising strategic investments and fostering a high-performance culture within the team. This will mean ensuring that the planning community has the framework, training and tools needed to provide exceptional planning support to the squads they’re aligned to. You’ll also be responsible for the annual and quarterly planning cycle, management of the Below-the-Line marketing budget and reporting overall P&PM performance across 121 activities. You’ll play a pivotal leadership role in embedding new collaborative ways of working within CBE (Customer, Brand, and Engagement) to ensure plans are delivered effectively and efficiently, meeting our annual performance targets. As a key leader within CBE, you’ll spend time at our core sites at least two days per week collaborating with team's face to face, as well as virtually. And whilst you’ll have contracted hours, we’re always happy to support flexible working wherever we can. We will always strive to find a way that works for everyone. At Nationwide we offer hybrid working wherever possible. More rewarding relationships are supported through our hybrid approach, bringing colleagues together across our UK wide estate, whilst also supporting generous access to home working. We value our time in the office to solve problems, to learn, and to feel connected. For this job you'll spend at least two days per week, or if part time you'll spend 40% of your working time, based at either our Swindon, London, Northampton, Bournemouth or Wakefield office. If your application is successful, your hiring manager will provide further details on how this works. You can also find out more about our approach to hybrid working here. If we receive a high volume of relevant applications, we may close the advert earlier than the advertised date, so please apply as soon as you can. What you’ll be doing Strategic Roadmap Development: Lead the development of long-term and short-term marketing strategy roadmaps that align with business goals, emphasising 121 marketing, performance management and reporting frameworks. Performance Management & Reporting: Oversee the establishment and continuous improvement of key performance indicators and marketing performance management processes. Ensure timely, accurate and actionable reporting of marketing metrics and insights. Commercial & Financial Acumen: Leverage deep knowledge of financial services markets to inform marketing strategy and investment decisions. Partner with cross-functional teams to ensure strategies deliver optimal customer and commercial outcomes, integrating financial modelling and return on investment (ROI) analysis into planning process. Strategic Investment Management: Drive effective budget allocation and investment strategies that optimise marketing spend. Champion a data-driven approach to managing and scaling marketing investments to deliver sustainable growth. Leadership & Culture Building: Foster a culture of excellence within the Planning Centre of Excellence and among the planning community. Provide mentorship and guidance to junior team members while role-modelling best practices for performance, analytical thinking and strategic innovation. Collaboration & Stakeholder Management: Build strong relationships with senior leadership, business partners and other key stakeholders to ensure marketing strategies are effectively integrated and aligned with broader organisational goals. Analytical Leadership: Lead the Planning Centre of Excellence in utilising analytics to drive decision-making. Build and refine processes to ensure data quality, transparency, and actionable insights are consistently provided for improved strategy and investment decisions. About you As a minimum you should have: Proven track record in the field of direct (1-2-1) marketing strategy and planning. Highly experienced at understanding, analysing, and interpreting complex performance data and insight to inform direct marketing strategy and decision making. Current and proven experience in the understanding of 121 marketing channels, trends, tools, and technologies. Knowledge and understanding of personalisation strategies within direct marketing. Exceptional strategic and operational planning & organisational skills and ability to manage a breadth of multiple competing priorities and deliverables with a history of excellent decision making and critical thinking. Exec level reporting of direct marketing performance and investment and the ability to make informed recommendations. Enterprise-wide leadership experience, skilled in performance and team management. Excellent business and commercial acumen and experience of shaping and developing effective direct marketing plans. A strong and broad understanding of financial services, business strategy, direct marketing, and communication strategy. A passion to innovate in the direct and performance marketing space, with finger on the pulse of the latest best practice, engagement trends and developments. Our Customer First behaviours are all about putting customers and members at the heart of how we work together. You can strengthen your application by showing the behaviours that resonate with you, and how you might have already demonstrated these. Say it straight - This is about being honest and direct with good intent and saying what needs to be said in the room. It’s also about being clear, precise, and using language that we and, importantly, our customers and members can understand. Push for better - This is about aiming high and constantly looking for better in how we work together and serve our customers and members. Get it done - This is about prioritising what will have the greatest impact, being decisive and taking accountability for delivering on the end-to-end outcome. We know applying for jobs can sometimes feel like you’re sending an application into a black hole. We review each application individually. So, it’s a good idea to call out your most relevant experience on your application to give yourself the best chance. The extras you’ll get There are all sorts of employee benefits available at Nationwide, including: A personal pension – if you put in 7% of your salary, we’ll top up by a further 16% Up to 2 days of paid volunteering a year Life assurance worth 8x your salary A great selection of additional benefits through our salary sacrifice scheme Wellhub – Access to a range of free and paid options for health and wellness. Access to an annual performance related bonus Access to training to help you develop and progress your career 30 days holiday, pro rata Individual healthcare cover What makes us different Nationwide is the world’s largest building society. With over 15 million customers, we have a relationship with almost a quarter of the UK’s population. We’ve got the scale to compete with the big banks, but we’re not a bank. As a building society, we’re owned by our members – that’s our customers who have their current account, mortgage or savings with us. It means we can do things differently to deliver our Purpose – Banking – but fairer, more rewarding, and for the good of society. When you work at Nationwide, you can experience that difference for yourself. You’ll be part of a high-performing, purpose-driven organisation that offers rewarding career experiences and a highly competitive range of benefits to match. You’ll also be joining us at an important time as we seek to reach more and more people in the UK. We want everyone in the UK to know that they don’t have to bank with a bank. They can choose a modern mutual instead.