Account Director

Armadillo Associates Limited; Bristol; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 70,000; Part time

Job summary

Join a dynamic CRM agency in Bristol as an Account Director, where you will lead strategic initiatives for major clients like McDonald's. This role emphasizes creative campaign management, client relationship building, and financial oversight, ensuring projects meet client expectations and agency goals. With a focus on collaboration and innovation, you will mentor a talented team, drive best practices in CRM, and contribute to the agency's growth. If you're a strategic thinker with a passion for creative communication, this is an exciting opportunity to make a significant impact in the industry.

Qualifications

• Proven record in delivering CRM programmes and excellent client management skills.
• Strong leadership skills and ability to mentor team members.

Responsibilities

• Provide strategic leadership to account teams and manage client expectations.
• Oversee campaign planning and ensure alignment with client strategies.

Skills

Campaign Planning

Client Management

Financial Acumen

Data Analysis

Leadership

Communication Skills

Strategic Thinking

CRM Knowledge

Tools

MS Office

Job description

We’re Armadillo, a CRM agency based in the heart of Bristol. We work with some of the world’s biggest brands, including McDonald’s, Disney, P&O Cruises, Hotels.com, and Cunard Cruises, to produce beautifully creative, and effective, CRM campaigns.

At Armadillo, we believe in the long-term success that comes from always putting the best interests of our clients, and the well-being and progression of our staff, at the heart of everything we do.

The Account Director is responsible for providing strategic leadership to a busy account team. Working with our client McDonald’s, you will be the focal point to ensure the day to day work delivered by the team and through the agency is resourced well, in keeping with the agreed strategy and to client delivery expectations. The successful candidate needs to be well organised, with a proven record for having delivered CRM programmes for clients.

The candidate we are looking for will job share the role and will be prepared to work 3 days per week.

Key responsibilities

Campaign planning and management

• Responding to client briefs to establish a clear requirement for the Agency – conducting Q&A, challenging assumptions, adding value.
• In the absence of a client brief, gathering and documenting client requirements, questioning and challenging as appropriate to ensure exact requirements are understood. Add value to the process and ensure that this is factored into client cost estimates.
• Initiating and hosting kick off meetings and documenting agreed outputs.
• Ensuring that the total potential scope of work is identified through the campaign planning process and factored into client estimates – including strategic planning, delivery, campaign reporting and analysis.
• Provide the team with support in conducting kick off meetings, briefings and reviews to ensure the right level of support and that the strategic vision is being followed.

Creative and Strategy alignment

• Strategic understanding – maintain a sound understanding of the campaign strategy in relation to client’s business, to ensure effective contribution to the creative and communications planning process and ultimately the client’s bottom line.
• Consumer understanding – demonstrate a consistent ability to analyse information and research on consumers and articulate a point of view.
• Instigate and lead effective brainstorms where appropriate to inspire and initiate creative thinking.
• Writing creative briefs (drawing on key influence insights) and gaining approvals from relevant team members and the client.
• Briefing (and inspiring) the creative, studio and production teams.
• Critiquing / reviewing work against agreed brief and gaining all necessary internal approvals prior to client presentation.
• Presenting work to client; documenting and disseminating feedback and gaining approvals.

Client and agency management

• Developing relationships with senior clients – being an extension to their marketing team.
• Instigating and leading effective client/agency status meetings, including the creation of well-structured agendas and comprehensive contact reports.
• Managing client expectations through regular and timely updates on project / timing plans and cost estimates.
• Creating effective presentations to communicate all aspects pertaining to communication planning and project delivery.
• Development of post campaign wash up meetings to ensure we are always optimising and learning.
• Delivering account updates to the SMT regularly (financial, projects, news etc.).

Data and production

• Working alongside the planning team provide analytical interpretation and insight generation, working with data planner to ensure analysis is carried out effectively and appropriately and work to answer the client’s objectives.
• Briefing data management teams for campaign data requirements.
• Identifying opportunities (with the Data Planner) to improve campaigns to help client meet their objectives and the agency hit growth targets.
• Providing guidance on production process to more junior team members.

Finance Management

• Sound commercial acumen – demonstrating good understanding of the need to charge for and maximise the recovery of campaign related resources and the need to manage costs carefully.
• Development and ongoing management of finance documents including retainers, reconciliations etc.
• Demonstration of careful management of resources, estimates, budgeting and invoicing.
• Identifying and documenting any risks both internally and with the Client.
• Weekly reporting of agency forecast highlighting income differences.
• Identifying and optimising potential growth opportunities and coordinating actions.

Team leadership and management

• Line management of Account Executive / Senior Account Manager including mentoring, coaching and performance management under the Agency’s appraisal process.
• Upward management (and delegation where appropriate) to ensure sensible workloads are maintained across the team.
• Leading the team to strive for agency goals, review creative, strategy, budget estimates to ensure consistency and alignment with overall client strategy.
• Support Client Service Director with client development activities, including but not limited to research, pitches and creation of client proposals.

Industry knowledge

• Be a knowledge holder and driver of best practice in CRM. Maintain up to date knowledge of all aspects of marketing, particularly in CRM.
• Have in-depth knowledge of the client’s business and the sector in which they operate.

Specific skills and experience

• Excellent knowledge of MS Office tools, including Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
• Solid financial acumen. Have a deep level of understanding of internal and clients financial processed. Confident owning forecast sheets and report financial numbers to the Client Services Direction.
• Excellent knowledge of core processes for campaign development across e-mail and mobile technologies.
• Excellent understanding of UK data protection regulations and application to prospect / customer communications.
• A keen interest and understanding of the industry and current trends.
• Ability to fully understand client strategy and ensure all work is aligned to this vision.
• Strong leadership skills. You will need to lead and mentor the team to meet client and agency objectives, provide reviews on work to ensure a level of consistency is upheld and perform effective line management, leading objective and appraisal reviews.
• Impressive written and verbal communication skills.
• A team player. We work best at Armadillo when we are collaborative, therefore you will need to be a team player to ensure the work gets done to the highest standard.
• Be a strategic thinker. You will need to input to overall CRM strategy, quarterly reviews and individual campaign analysis work.

Armadillo is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability or age.