Heather Shelstad Email & Phone Number

Dallas, Texas, Us

Dania Beach, Florida, Us

Leads a marketing team of 27 marketing professionals with eight director-level direct reports at a > $100MM SaaS growth company. A member ofNearpod’s executive leadership team and the Renaissance marketing leadership team. Transformed Nearpod’s marketing function from reactive to proactive, strategic and performance driven, including recruiting and on-boarding 11 new hires in the first year.Outcomes include B2B pipeline contribution rate of 31%, marketing attributed revenue of 38% for new ACV (w/ B2C revenue), and double digit user activation gains with a 5:1 marketing ROI.Leads product marketing, marketing operations, brand, internal and corporate communications, field marketing / ABM, international marketing, growth and demand generation campaigns, and channel & digital marketing functions for Nearpod.

Member of the CogBooks executive leadership team reporting to the CEO. Leading marketing at CogBooks including brand, go-to-market, demand generation and sales enablement functions to drive B2B SaaS and direct product growth.Delivering accelerated growth for the CogBooks brand and product offering, audience engagement and customer acquisition through an efficient, purposeful and data-driven marketing strategy.- Grew awareness and accelerated lead generation for the company leading to substantial revenue growth YoY- Exceeded 2020 growth marketing objectives for new inbound lead creation and closed business- Built an agile demand generation marketing team from zero to operational within one month- Launched Pardot marketing operations platform and optimized implementation with Salesforce to accelerate and measure lead generation activities- Implemented a comprehensive suite of martech tools to drive and measure growth, and optimize campaign performance- Modernized the brand, (positioning and creative), and launched a new website to improve awareness, SEO and SEM performance - Led effective marketing program within budget at an attractive CAC ratio of 8:1

I formed Marterra Consulting, LLC to provide clients personalized, hands-on strategic marketing services. Specializing in GTM strategy, project management, customer insights gathering, marketing communications and branding, I’m able to fill executive level marketing functions as a pinch-hitting teammate when a position is vacant, or fill an expertise gap when a dedicated outside consultant is simply a more efficient and effective way to go.- Embraced executive level roles tightly integrated within the organization and senior leadership. - Led multiple branding initiatives for digital products including Learn Smart (McGraw-Hill), Connect (McGraw-Hill), MindTap (Cengage).- McGraw-Hill Higher Education lead on global McGraw-Hill Education company-wide branding team that resulted in repositioning the company brand to focus on learning science.- Led customer satisfaction research initiatives for the Connect product that contributed to consistent double-digit NPS growth and > 80% satisfaction ratings.- Developed widely circulated content marketing assets regarding technology product efficacy. - Developed and led marketing leadership training sessions regarding the development of winning value propositions and customer lifecycle acquisition and engagement on behalf of the company.- Solicited and led agency selection and supervision, including research, creative and marketing agencies.- Conceived of and implemented multiple integrated, multi-channel B2B, B2C, and B2B2C marketing campaigns.

Bloomington, Mn, Us

Reporting to the CEO. Marketing strategy leadership capacity. Led special projects related to Edmentum go-to-market, including investor presentations, customer acquisition, communications and brand strategy

Hoboken, New Jersey, Us

Member of Knewton’s executive leadership team reporting to the CEO and responsible for leading the entire marketing function at the company. Responsible for communicating with and presenting to Knewton’s Board of Directors and prospective investors. Led the development of Knewton's go-to-market materials and participated actively in management presentations that resulted in the company’s successful exit to John Wiley & Sons. Created, launched and scaled the Alta brand. - Drove triple digit growth in new users from fewer than 50 to more than 300 North American colleges and universities in less than two years, while maintaining modest growth in global B2B enterprise revenues.- Conceived of, developed, tested, and launched the brand for the company’s first direct product for higher education within five months (alta). (www.knewton.com)- Grew Knewton company brand awareness by 68% YOY within target demographic for alta. - Established post-launch brand awareness for alta of 32% within six months of launch.- Partnered with Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Research and Reform in Education for ongoing transparent reporting regarding the efficacy of Knewton’s technology and the alta product.- Drove company rebrand initiative to accelerate leads and achieve B2C and B2B business objectives. - Transitioned media brand sentiment from negative to neutral or positive within one year.- Led and executed customer acquisition and lifecycle marketing including PR, social media, SEM/ SEO, website, content, demand generation, marketing operations, sales enablement and loyalty marketing program.

As a consultant, Heather served as interim director of the marketing customer insights and research team and led multiple brand and research initiatives. Key responsibilities included agency management, managing a cross-functional team and research effort associated with redefining the positioning of a key digital brand, leading a completely re-designed brand research initiative for the Cengage brand, overseeing research efforts needed to support efficacy promotion of Cengage digital products, and developing a thought-leadership study to support the Cengage brand platform.

New York, Ny, Us

Embraced executive manager level roles tightly integrated within the organization leading projects involving brand platform development, agency management, multi-channel B2B/ B2C integrated marketing campaign development and execution, new product launch, data & analytics analysis, marketing planning & strategy, developing content for and delivery marketing training programs within the company, research insights and product efficacy promotion.

San Mateo, Ca, Us

- Led media, business intelligence and brand communications. - Developed B2B2C multi-channel, integrated marketing campaigns to enhance brand and achieve revenue goals. - Managed traditional and social media program to drive awareness of CourseSmart across all target audiences to grow customer acquisition metrics. - Achieved 9X growth in total annual media impressions contributing to surge in website traffic, user engagement and sales conversions.- Led the development and launch of CourseSmart’s new website in 2010. Responsibilities included research and testing informed brand development, search-optimized content development and analytics implementation.- Launched new marketing program to support CourseSmart’s SaaS, B2B enterprise product offering.- Recruited and led PR / social media, email and creative agencies.- Provided spokesperson and social media training to key executives and employees. - Led trade show strategy and brand presence at multiple industry events.- Served as key point of contact and spokesperson for CourseSmart across all media, including written response, radio/ podcast and television. Responsible for brand management, research, business intelligence and corporate communications. Responsibilities included managing awareness drivers across B2B and B2C audiences, PR agency management, brand platform development, website content creation, customer satisfaction research and related business intelligence activities.

San Mateo, Ca, Us

- Designed and launched CourseSmart’s demand generation program leveraging email and other direct marketing tactics to drive awareness, engagement and usage among more than 1.5M faculty accounts. Email campaign delivered above industry average results in open rates (average 26%), CTR (average 8.5%), content engagement and usage. - Achieved triple digit YOY growth in instructor active accounts and faculty referral sales for three consistent years.- Leveraged publisher partner sales and marketing entities to drive program engagement, faculty account growth, activation and usage. Managed regular collaboration with inter-publisher marketing council to facilitate communication, mutually beneficial strategic marketing development and campaign execution.- Led MRD development in collaboration with UX and product engineering to support new feature development and collaborate on product roadmap prioritization.Responsible for publisher relations and sales enablement at all member/ owner publishers (including Pearson, Cengage, McGraw-Hill Education, Wiley, Bedford Freeman & Worth) and for motivating their 2500+ sales representatives and managers to promote CourseSmart eTextbooks to faculty to drive referral sales and use of digital examination copies. Achieved triple digit YOY growth in instructor active accounts and faculty referral sales for three consistent years.

Responsible for the iChapters.com (now CengageBrain.com) go-to-market plan and internal launch, along with research and development on several new initiatives for the company. Managed external agencies and in-house creative, conducted quantitative and qualitative research, developed brand position and guidelines, and managed product launches on various new initiatives to internal and external audiences.