Introduction

Thank you for considering our Consumer Insights and Marketing Executive role at Fair4All Finance. As we continue our exciting growth plans and begin to deliver on our ambitious goals, we are seeking a passionate and enthusiastic person with experience in delivering consumer insights projects and direct to consumer marketing activity to support our customer focused product and marketing design. Your work will have a direct impact on the lives of potentially millions of people who are living in vulnerable financial circumstances, building awareness of the organisations that can help them the most and supporting them design more effective marketing plans.  During covid 11m people accumulated £25bn of debt and arrears for essentials – our work is focussed on helping those customers have better alternatives and more affordable credit.

In this role, you’ll be managing our consumer insights projects, where the outputs are used to develop inclusive products and services for customers in financially vulnerable circumstances. This means you’ll be passionate about understanding consumers and developing strategies to reach and serve them. Ideally, you’ll also have experience in direct to consumer marketing activity, which could include supporting strategy development, supporting or leading marketing delivery or measuring marketing performance.  

You’ll support our efforts to grow access to affordable credit by working with lending organisations to identify and refine their marketing strategy and plans, and guide them to measure and improve their marketing performance, based on consumer understanding. You’ll own relationships with a range of external agencies to ensure excellent service is provided to organisations in the community finance sector.

You will be joining a talented and driven team drawn from a range of backgrounds spanning CEO, Partner and Director roles within Financial Services institutions through to leaders in impact investing and social purpose organisations. The reach and influence of our team makes this an exciting place to work and enables us to engage important stakeholders at the highest levels.

We’re working to create a fairer financial services system for all, and a core part of that is understanding people who are marginalised and excluded. Our team is no different, and we strongly encourage applications from members of minority groups and all sections of the community. We are passionate about inclusion and looking for someone who is prepared to work on a range of initiatives as we support development across the sector.  

We believe this is a hugely exciting opportunity for an experienced consumer insights and marketing professional who enjoys a diverse range of work and is seeking further development in their career. If this sounds like the role for you, please do get in touch!

Role purpose 

Organisations in the Community Finance sector (namely credit unions, community development financial institutions and social fintechs) excel at serving customers in vulnerable circumstances across the UK and are experts in their customer base. Despite their strength in serving customers, awareness of these organisations is generally low, as is penetration within their potential customer base.

There is a diverse range of marketing capability and resource in community finance organisations, ranging from sophisticated marketing automation and analytics with reasonable budgets and campaigns delivered by agencies, to a single person responsible for all aspects on a limited budget.

The person in this role will be responsible for managing our consumer insights projects, getting to the heart of the complex and varied issues that our end consumers face, sharing this insight internally and externally and recommending (and delivering) activity that can improve the lives of people in financially vulnerable circumstances.

You’ll have experience in writing briefs, procuring brilliant agencies, ensuring projects run to plan and that we’re staying true to our purpose with our work. You’ll be adept at planning how we use and share insights to get the most impact from our wide range of stakeholders, which includes government, mainstream banks, regulators, community finance providers and charities.

We are also looking for someone to support community finance providers to develop their marketing capability, increasing the effectiveness of marketing through sector wide support and helping marketing teams within organisations to develop their skills and experience. You’ll either deliver this from your own marketing expertise, or by being incisive and focused on identifying challenges and finding the right marketing specialists to support organisations.

Our remit extends to the wider financial services sector and working with mainstream banks to support them to more readily serve customers currently excluded from financial services. In this role you'll have opportunities to support major banks on their journey to financial inclusion, including sharing your learnings and sharing effective approaches on marketing, product and strategy, working with our wider propositions team.

The support that you deliver will have a direct impact on the lives of potentially millions of people who are living in vulnerable circumstances, building awareness of the organisations that can help them the most. For example, you’ll help our investees to reach more customers, where the financial and social impact includes; 

• Moneyline saving low-income customers £5.4m in interest payments compared to high cost lenders (view their latest social impact video with Michael Sheen)

• Fair For You generating at least £50.5m of social impact through their lending

• Credit Unions helping people in some of the most deprived areas in the UK to build their financial resilience, such as Enterprise Credit Union in Merseyside and  HEY Credit Union in East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire

This role will suit someone who is passionate about putting consumers first in their work. You’ll have led consumer insights projects and have been actively involved in turning insights into action. You’ll have direct to customer marketing experience or have worked closely with marketing teams and understand the fundamentals of marketing strategy and delivery. 

You’ll be excited to drive change across a sector, working with organisations at differing levels of capability and working with a range of external stakeholders.

You’ll be organised, often owning several project plans at once and thinking ahead to how the outputs of our work can have the most impact.

Your responsibilities 

1. Managing consumer insights projects from initial brief through to delivery to ensure our product, marketing and operational work is fit for purpose and meets customer needs – 40%

This will include:

• Developing your understanding of our strategic aims and initiatives, and where new consumer insights are needed to maximise the impact of our work

• Ensuring that our broad stakeholder groups are considered in the overall brief, and in the outputs, of our work

• Being an expert in Fair4All Finance’s consumer segments, and an advocate for these internally and externally which may include running workshops to embed learnings

• Ownership of procurement of consumer insights agencies including writing briefs, managing assessment processes and contracting, working closely with our Operations team

• Working with agencies to design a clear project plan, and keeping all parties on track of both the objectives of the work and the deadlines

• Planning required deliverables, including toolkits, webinars, videos or other content, to share the outcomes of our work (working closely with our Communications team)

2. Through direct delivery and working with marketing agencies to ensure community finance providers get excellent support for marketing strategy and delivery – 30%

To increase awareness of the community finance sector, you will manage initiatives that help to develop marketing capability across the sector. This will include:

• Working with marketing agencies on the development of marketing toolkits to support capability development across the sector, including guidance on marketing performance measurement, channel strategy, brand strategy and more. This applies to marketing that is both direct to customer, and through referral routes (for example through employer or housing association partnerships with lenders as many organisations currently have these relationships but have low penetration of the membership base)

• Identifying new market and customer opportunities for the sector, monitoring market trends and delivering insights and recommended actions to support fast and effective execution

• Developing a content plan for regularly sharing knowledge to improve capability, whether directly or by procuring additional support. This could include a wide range of support for marketing leads across the sector including:

  • facilitating webinars or roundtable events on specific aspects of marketing;

  • collating best practice content, activity, practical guides and templates;

  • commissioning content that can be white labelled for use by multiple organisations eg materials for employers to use in internal communications to drive uptake of the products and services they are able to offer through partnerships with lenders for.

  • Commissioning and managing the roll out of technical product training materials which help to enable referrals from organisations to lenders to target those most in need eg engaging with housing associations, whose residents are amongst the most vulnerable, to build understanding within their teams of the benefits of community finance lending and savings products and how to refer to lenders using HM Treasury approved credit broking exemptions aimed at facilitating help getting to those who need it most

Success looks like increased brand awareness, reduced cost per acquisition and helping organisations to reach and serve a more diverse customer base (in terms of product holding, financial circumstances and into minority characteristics who we know are more likely to be excluded from mainstream financial services).

3.  Awareness raising activity for the Community Finance sector – 20%

To support our strategic priority of growing the affordable credit sector, support and lead initiatives that help grow the awareness of affordable credit. This could include working with other organisations such as Money and Pensions Service to provide content and support for their plans, or to directly lead activity that raises awareness of community finance providers through direct to customer campaigns that we deliver or fund lenders to implement using white labelled campaign collateral (for example, leading work to design one set of campaign assets that can be used by a range of providers)

You will use your consumer insights, and any previous marketing experience, to identify what successful campaigns look like and to identify where specialist agencies are required.

4. Wider content and comms support – 10%

On an ad-hoc basis, use your capability to support our Communications and Content team, such as repurposing customer insights and analysis for different audiences, supporting our social media delivery and promotion of Fair4All Finance content and events.

Person specification 

Essential experience and capabilities 

To be successful you will need: 

• A curious nature, challenging us to think about the gaps in our knowledge, and what research and insights will increase the impact of our work

• Experience in generating actionable insights that support delivery of product and marketing strategies 

• Experience in managing consumer insights and research projects, from brief writing and assessment of providers through to project planning and delivery

• Experience of customer focused design and delivery, including customer persona work, customer insights and its implications for marketing strategy and delivery

• Strong organisational skills to develop and manage project plans and budgets when working with external agencies

• Procurement and contract management experience to maximise the impact of external spend

• Experience working in, or closely with, direct to customer marketing teams

• Preparation of compelling and exacting market and marketing analyses

• Strong stakeholder management skills

Desirable experience and capabilities 

It would be great if you also have: 

• Experience of working for a financial services organisation or with clients in the financial services sector

• Marketing delivery and measurement experience across a range of channels (online and offline) in a direct to consumer role – this could be in an organisation or at an agency

• Understanding of market segmentation, strategy, planning and execution of marketing activities across a variety of channels

Personal characteristics

• Our ideal candidate will be organised, flexible, creative, and resourceful

• You’ll be experienced at dealing with stakeholders, building relationships internally and externally

• You will be innately curious about how to tackle complex tasks and reach those who are excluded from, or not engaged with, financial services providers

• You will be passionate about our mission to increase the financial resilience of people in vulnerable circumstances, and seek continued learning and development either formally or through supporting other projects across the organisation as and when required   

• You’ll be able to deal with complexity and uncertainty, and work under your own initiative

Terms of employment

All applicants must have an existing Right to Work in the UK.

Fair4All Finance is committed to being a diverse organisation that is truly representative of the people and communities we serve. We are an equal opportunities employer with an inclusive environment where different experiences, expertise and perspectives are valued, where everyone is encouraged to grow and develop and all team members can contribute to their fullest potential.

Applications are welcome from people of any age, sex, gender identity, disability, marriage or civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, religion or belief, race, sexual orientation, transgender status or social economic background. We are determined to ensure that all team members and applicants receive fair and equitable treatment or are not disadvantaged by any inappropriate conditions or requirements being placed on them.

When we are recruiting, we actively seek to reach a diverse pool of candidates. We are happy to consider any reasonable adjustments that potential team member may need to be successful. We recognise the importance of a good balance between work and home life, so we do everything we reasonably can to accommodate flexible working.

Applications

• Please apply through BeApplied by 18 July

• We may contact you prior to the closing date to arrange an interview

• If you would like to have an informal chat about the role before applying, please email jobs@fair4allfinance.org.uk

After the job advert closes, your answers will go through a sift process: randomising and anonymising answers to take out individual information that could add biases into hiring decisions. This enables application reviewers to review each answer objectively. People scoring the applications will not have seen your CV at this stage of the process so please try your best to answer questions with specific examples and without simply rephrasing your CV, which they will review later in the recruitment process.