Head of Marketing Operations in Chelmsford

About us: We are one of the top three automotive retailers in the UK, proudly representing 32 manufacturer brands, selling a huge range of new and used vehicles from over 150 dealerships across the UK and Ireland. We believe our people are our greatest asset, and we’re committed to recognising the valuable contribution each person makes. That’s why we continue to invest in a leading rewards and benefits package designed to support your career, wellbeing, and life outside of work.

This role leads and develops the strategic systems, data, planning frameworks, processes and governance that underpin how marketing operates. It will be a leading force in building the infrastructure that ensures the team have what they need to operate effectively and make good, confident decisions with more time spent delivering value. The role is accountable for setting up the infrastructure that powers marketing effectiveness, from data and reporting to MarTech, planning and production, while ensuring day-to-day execution is delivered through a high-performing operational team. Marketing Operations is a critical strategic enabler, creating the conditions for marketing to deliver measurable commercial impact, not just activity.

What You'll Be Responsible For

• Strategic Marketing Planning & Activity Visibility
  • Own the central marketing trading plan and processes, ensuring full visibility of activity across brands, divisions and channels.
  • Ensure the organisation understands what activity is running, when, and why, linked to commercial priorities.
  • Bring structure and visibility to a complex OEM and group campaign environment.
• Operations, Process & Workflow Design
  • Define and embed the key team wide operating processes, including briefing, workflow, production and approvals.
  • Ensure processes are efficient, scalable and consistently adopted across teams.
  • Set the standards for how marketing operates at pace without compromising quality.
  • Delegate day-to-day execution of briefing and production processes to the Marketing Operations Manager.
  • Work with marketing and compliance to ensure the marketing governance and compliance framework is well embedded across processes.
  • Embed processes that ensure compliance is delivered systematically without slowing delivery.
• Production & Delivery Enablement (Through Team)
  • Own the overall production model and capability, ensuring marketing operates as a high-performing delivery engine.
  • Drive the use of automation, AI and process optimisation to improve speed, efficiency and scalability.
  • Ensure the structure and processes are in place for effective asset delivery.
  • Line manage the Marketing Operations Manager, who is accountable for day-to-day production execution and delivery teams.
• MarTech Strategy & Capability
  • Own the shared MarTech ecosystem and roadmap, ensuring the team has the tools and capabilities required to deliver its strategy.
  • Identify and implement improvements to systems, integrations and ways of working.
  • Lead vendor strategy, optimisation and capability development.
• Data, Insight & Reporting
  • Work with functional and data team stakeholders to define and develop the marketing data, reporting and performance framework.
  • Work with data team to ensure the right data and martec infrastructure is in place to support targeting, measurement and optimisation.
  • Lead the development of marketing attribution (starting with foundational capability) with central data team, analyst and specialist expertise as required.
  • Ensure integration of external data sources and market insight to inform strategy and decision making.
  • Ensure data is accessible, well-structured and actionable for the team.
  • Line manage a Marketing Data Analyst responsible for delivering reporting, dashboards, modelling and insight outputs.
• Data & Technology Partnership Leadership
  • Own the senior relationship with the central data team, ensuring marketing requirements are prioritised and delivered.
  • Coordinate across: Data engineering, MarTech, Tagging and tracking pipelines, Data ingestion and CDP, Audience segmentation.
  • Work with external third-party data providers to support the evolution of marketing data capability.
• Budget Management & Financial Control
  • Own the end-to-end marketing budget framework in partnership with Finance.
  • Ensure full visibility and control of spend, commitments and performance across all activity.
  • Work with channel owners and divisions to improve forecasting accuracy, transparency and accountability.
  • Enable better investment decisions through clear financial and performance linkage.

The Team!

The Head of Marketing Operations leads a small, high-impact team responsible for enabling the wider marketing function:

• Direct Reports:
  • Marketing Operations Manager(s): Owns day-to-day campaign briefing process, leads production and delivery operations, manages production resources and campaign execution workflows, co-ordination of team wide trade plan accuracy and administration.
  • Marketing Data Analyst: Owns reporting, dashboards and performance tracking, delivers insight to support optimisation and decision-making, works with internal and external data sources to enhance customer and market understanding.

Wider Responsibilities:

• Leads relationship with central data team (data engineering, CDP, integrations, tagging, tracking).
• Works with external data and technology partners to evolve marketing capability.

What We're Looking For!

Essential

• Significant marketing operations experience in a complex, multi-site or multi-brand retail, automotive, or consumer business.
• Strong data and analytics capability with the ability to design reporting infrastructure, interpret performance data and drive insight-led decisions.
• Track record of building and improving marketing processes at scale, from briefing and campaign management to budget governance.
• Experience managing agency and MarTech supplier relationships, including commercial negotiations.
• Hands-on working knowledge of attribution modelling, tagging, and digital tracking.
• Highly organised, commercially fluent, and able to operate in a fast-paced environment with competing priorities.

Desirable

• Experience in automotive retail or adjacent sectors.
• Familiarity with DMS platforms (e.g. Keyloop/CDK) and automotive CRM environments.
• Understanding of OEM and manufacturer marketing realities.
• Experience implementing or scaling AI-driven marketing automation tools.

Core Benefits:

• Competitive salaries with structured pay scales and progression as you grow within the business.
• Generous annual leave that increases with your length of service.
• Enhanced family leave, including 6 months’ full pay for maternity and adoption leave, and 2 weeks’ full pay for paternity leave.
• Access to Techscheme for discounted technology purchases with flexible payments.

Health & Wellbeing:

• Eyecare vouchers to help cover vision care needs.
• Smart Health – 24/7 access to GP services to support your mental and physical wellbeing.
• Dental insurance for everyday dental care and unexpected treatments.
• Optional critical illness cover for peace of mind during life's most challenging moments.

Financial Wellbeing:

• MyView PayNow – access a portion of your pay as you earn, with features to stream, save, and track your money through a user-friendly app.
• Free will writing services to help plan for the future.
• Flexible life assurance options and partner life assurance for added protection.

Leisure & Lifestyle:

• Discounted gym memberships to support an active lifestyle.
• Travel insurance to help you explore with confidence.
• Access to home and technology vouchers bYond card and a wide range of exclusive retail and lifestyle discounts.

We strongly believe in nurturing and providing our people with specific manufacturer brand and management training to enhance career development opportunities. We have a great bunch of people, and we like to celebrate and encourage success at all levels. Lookers and Charles Hurst are an equal opportunities employer. We are committed to a working environment that is free from discrimination, is inclusive, and empowers our people to bring their whole self to work and reach their full potential.

If your application is successful, we will conduct relevant employment checks prior to you commencing employment with us. These will include verifying your recent employment, address, credit history and a standard criminal record check. For roles that require you to drive, a driving licence check will also be carried out. Please note, all offers of employment are made subject to a 6 month probation period commencing from your start date. We take our data protection responsibilities very seriously and are committed to upholding and respecting your privacy rights. Information about how we will process your data including the types of data we collect, the purposes for which we use it, who we may share it with and how long we keep it are set out in our privacy notice. It also includes information about your individual privacy rights. Please make sure you read our Privacy Notice so that you understand how we may collect and use your data.