Design Social Media

Mark Williams

New York, NY ***** / 803-***-**** / adhjwg@r.postjobfree.com

LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-williams-la/

SUMMARY

Creative design leader with a mentoring work ethic, and proven track record of more than 15 years delivering difference-making digital products in the highly competitive financial, B2B, B2C and eEcommerce sectors. Designed and led six multi-disciplined digital experience, user research, graphic design and brand marketing teams. Led the concept, story telling and development of more than 20 branded-consumer digital products spanning IOS and Android mobile platforms and mobile technologies. Expert managerial experience, combined with hands-on technical design capabilities and excellent presentation skills. Expert in providing a practical vision for immediate and long-term product distribution strategies to maximize ROI, and improve internal communications with stakeholders and influence executive leadership.

NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS

●Rebuilt Ally Bank’s digital platforms through exhaustive UX testing recognized with the Best Online Bank Award by Money® Magazine in 2018

●Served as senior leader and architect of 10-member design team that helped raise the visibility and market impact of TradeKing, which was ultimately acquired by Ally Financial in 2016 for $275 million.

●Built, directed and mentored LowerMyBills.com 16-person design team which dramatically improved the company’s revenues and profitability, a contributing factor to its acquisition by Experian in 2005 for $330 million through creative design testing

●Re-designed LendingTree’s GetSmart.com brand generating a 32% improvement in conversions and a $2.5 million revenue increase

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Senior Product Design and Marketing Director September 2019 - Present

ConsumerTrack, Inc., Los Angeles, CA. Fledgling $10 million entrepreneurial company that specializes in design services for product partnerships of high-volume digital content for fintech and finserve, using market performance-based approaches to drive engagement. Led creative marketing for social media channels including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest Twitter, and YouTube.

Provide ongoing daily operations and leadership for a team of 12 product, and UX designers, video, audio, and photography editors, content and copywriting strategists, marketing associates, and external vendor management.

●Proactively restructured design operations to create CTI’s digital Center of Excellence, symbiotically blending the efforts of professionals working on Product, UX, Video, Photo and Brand Marketing Communications teams

●Increased CTR of core advertising and partnership ad units by 13% (compared to rate prior to start) through driving strategic redesigns and A/B testing

●Conceived and engineered cross-functional design quality improvements, quality control, and work smart process to ensure consistency in prototyping and production

●Achieved a doubling in CTR rates of Google ad campaigns through rigorous A/B testing implementation

Senior Design Director, Digital Design & UX Strategy April 2016 - March 2019

Ally Bank, Ally Financial - Charlotte, NC. Named Best Online Bank in 2018 by Money® Magazine, Ally Financial is a top 25 bank holding company organized in Delaware and headquartered in Detroit, MI that provides financial services including auto finance, online banking, corporate lending, vehicle insurance, mortgage loans and an electronic trading platform serving nearly 5 million customers.

Designed and led user experience design and creative engineering team of 50 for global product development, A/B testing experiments, market research, and brand marketing for multi-channel initiatives. Achieved numerous key metric objectives sought by upper management while simultaneously collaborating with the Executive Leadership Team to develop a master plan and design for enhancing the organization’s diversity and inclusion initiatives.

●Launched new technology initiative for Amazon Alexa® skill sets that generated a 29% customer adoption rate within four months

●Structured marketing design teams into internal agency model, saving over $150,000 in monthly agency billings

●Increased credit card application performance marketing conversion funnel rates by 63% through consistent A/B testing of application forms

●Conceived and implemented training scheme for Sketch and InVision platforms, directly increasing collaboration and productivity by 47%

●Created and built Web Content Accessibility (WCAG) team to meet all W3C accessibility standard guidelines

Executive UX, Design & Creative Director August 2011 - April 2016

TradeKing Group, Inc. - Charlotte, NC Fifth largest online discount stock and options broker known for world-class customer service purchased by Ally Financial.

Spearheaded development and design polish of the digital user experience for tradeking.com, the LIVE trading platform and auto/assisted-investing brand TradeKing Advisors. Built and managed an internal 10-person team of UX, UI, Visual Designers, User Engagement and Content Specialists. Responsible for the marketing of customer acquisition, retention and funnel conversion design efforts.

●Re-branded the TradeKing and Zecco Trading acquisition of 2012, saving over $150,000 that would otherwise be spent depending upon outside creative agencies

●Increased TradeKing Advisors new user acquisition account sign up rate by 39% through creative marketing A/B testing

●Redesigned the LIVE trading platform desktop and mobile UI and UX, resulting in a 27% trading increase

●Boosted slow funder account funding rates by over 23% through creative email marketing A/B testing

●Executed branding architecture, design and UX initiatives for SaaS automated investing product TradeKing Advisors, a centerpiece of the business

●Led the planning and design for customer on-boarding initiatives associated with the Ally acquisition of 2016

VP of Creative Services October 2005 – May 2011

LendingTree LLC, IAC (InterActiveCorp) - Charlotte, NC Premier online loan marketplace for consumer financial borrowing needs including auto loans, personal loans, small business loans and credit cards. Offering comparison shopping services for autos, real estate sales, home improvement professionals, and online educational programs.

Principal responsibility and accountability for LendingTree.com’s online customer experiences, product lifecycles and digital marketing creative. Managed UX design, conversion, brand awareness, and acquisition efforts for sub-brands getsmart.com, homeloancenter.com and realestate.com. Led internal and remote digital team of 22 UX designers, user interface design, visual designers, marketing designers, and content specialists. Selected key accomplishments yielded record-breaking numbers in terms of both online transaction and conversion activity as well as in vastly enhanced revenue numbers.

●Conceived and produced display ad campaigns with 29% CTR difference within the first year, 52% higher than previous year average

●Increased portal advertising performance revenue by $375,000 year over year through creative concept testing

●Boosted landing page conversion rates more than 16% by aligning campaign ads to landing page designs

●Managed LendingTree.com UI form re-designs resulting in 17% improvement in lead generation application conversions

●Partnered with SEO Manager to increase Google page rankings - indexed at six in February 2009

Senior Creative Director of Creative Services May 2001 – July 2005

LowerMyBills Inc., Experian Interactive - Los Angeles, CA Leading free online service enabling consumers to compare low rates on monthly bills and reduce living costs. At the time, the company offered a network of more than 500 service providers across multiple categories, including home loans, auto insurance, health insurance, and wireless services.

Managing a team of 16 whose efforts increased net revenue contributions by more than 15%. Team consecutively exceeded monthly revenue goals through A/B and multi-variant testing that contributed to profitability and helped make the case for acquisition by Experian. Managed all daily creative execution, communications, user feedback and digital assets across five product verticals: mortgage, refinance, auto insurance, education and telecom.

●Improved CTR by 75% and lead generation by more than 87% from 2004-2005 primarily on the strength of creative ad concept testing and landing page design

●Grew retention and acquisition email revenue by more than $400k in Q3 2002 utilizing an A/B template design testing strategy

●Reduced creative agency billings 90% in just one month’s time by bringing digital production in-house

●Directed and mentored LowerMyBills.com 16-person design team which dramatically improved the company’s revenues and profitability, a contributing factor to its acquisition by Experian in 2005 for $330 million.

Education

University of California, Los Angeles

Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA

Design Software Tools, Process & Design Skills

Adobe Creative Suite – Photoshop

Photography Editing

A/V Design and Editing

Illustration & Typography

Creative Strategic Direction

Art Direction

2d & 3D Animation

JIRA + Agile

Project Management (PM)

Information Architecture

Human Computer Interaction Design (HCI)

Lean UX Best Practices

Usability Best Practices & Design Thinking

Design Systems & Brand Guidelines

Content Editing

Design Concepts Presentations

Conversion Optimization

Creative Writing & Copywriting for Editorial Content Creation

Process & Workflows Documentation

Department Budgeting & Budget Audit

Resource Managment

Analytics, Metrics and Data Analytics

Google Analytics

Tableau

Qualtrics

Leadership Skills

Adaptable

Recruit Talent & Acquisition Expertise

Fluid Communicator & Storyteller

Collaborate with a Professional Manner

Consensus Building

Design Mentor & Coach

Constructive Design Reviews w/ Clear Focus

Team Hiring & Talent Career Advancement

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