Stephen Salcedo Email & Phone Number

Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States

Oversee marketing strategies that support company growth through direct response marketing, lead generation, market expansion, marketing data management and analysis, a national partnership and brand management. • Core member of the firm's leadership team, reporting directly to Founder and CEO.• Oversee the planning and execution of direct marketing strategies including TV, radio, podcast, print, drip email, website, YouTube and digital, to raise brand awareness, generate new leads and drive appointments for the Advisory team.• Increased monthly lead count by more than 25% between 2022-2023 through new marketing funnels and optimizing existing marketing; doubled “first appointment” count between 2022-2023 through expanded marketing efforts and lead nurturing strategy; increased “stick rate” by 10% (from 52% to 62%) between 2022-2023 through event optimization and focus on nurturing leads that enter through higher-performing lead funnels.• Managed the firm's marketing budget, ensuring efficient allocation of resources and closely monitoring spend.• Established the firm’s first national partnership as the Official Wealth Management Partner of Notre Dame Athletics.• Architected the firm’s first expanded marketing team, built the firm’s first Lead Nurturing (appointment setting) team, and assumed management of Impressions (customer service) team.• Implemented processes and technology that lend to scaling and automation, including CRM, SMS (including keyword-based marketing campaigns for lead generation, as well as appointment communication to maintain show-up rates), lead analytics, website lead capture, and online calendaring.• Oversee the brand wherever and however it appears, both in physically and digitally, to ensure presence is on-brand and consistent.• Consult on non-marketing business decisions including budget, staffing, compensation, benefits, all-team communication, culture and technology.

Fort Wayne, Indiana Area

• Led effort to update brand presentation, including company letterhead, business cards, stationery, photography, website and other marketing collateral, that promotes Howard Bailey's brand differentiation through process, voice, experience and core values.• Grew team from 1 full-time and 1 part time team to 5 marketing team members, as well as absorbed Impressions (front office) team that is tasked with fielding phone calls, SMS messages, and welcoming guests.• Oversaw recurring, turnkey seminar events, as well as larger scale client appreciation events, designed to generate new clients and referrals.

Fort Wayne, Indiana Area

Roanoke, Indiana

Oversee the development and execution of omni-channel acquisition and retention strategies, including seasonal campaigns, online and print direct response marketing, customer engagements, sweepstakes, national advertising and catalogs. Manage the Social Media team in content strategy for Facebook, Instagram and the brand’s blog, driven by traffic, engagement and new follower acquisition goals. Lead cross-functional strategy sessions among Creative, Digital, UX, PR and Social Media teams in developing cohesive go-to-market strategies for product introductions and key business initiatives.• Increased Instagram following 46% to 439k between June 2017 and June 2019• Gained more than 20,000 social media followers in 5 days as a result of our first time-based customer engagement in July 2018• Drove 275k unique participants over our seven most recent sweepstakes, with almost half being new customers• Increased blog Pageviews 119% to 702k, and Average Time on Page 84% to 3:37, between February and May 2019, as compared to the same time frame in 2018

Roanoke, Indiana

Manage the Digital Creative and User Experience teams to ensure all creative and UX executions met business and branding objectives. Monitored Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) through Foresee, and leveraged customer feedback to identify areas of future website optimization. Leveraged Monetate to perform control/experiment testing that provided insight on customer behavior and browsing preferences on verabradley.com.• Led initiative to restructure the team into separate Creative and UX functions, focusing internal resources based upon their strengths and expertise

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Lead an expanding Digital Creative team in producing assets that support growing digital marketing initiatives. Oversee asset creation for multiple digital channels, including verabradley.com, email marketing, affiliate advertising and social media, that support quarterly product releases and new product introductions. Direct ongoing efforts to optimize the user experience and interface on verabradley.com.• Led the internal creative team in launching Vera Bradley’s first responsive e-commerce website - one of the first in the travel and fashion vertical, as well as for the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer, the Vera Bradley Careers micro-site, and the Vera Bradley Outlet Sale micro-site

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Lead a small team of digital creatives and copywriters as the company transitions to a true multi-channel retailer with a heavy focus on e-commerce and online promotions. Establish the creative execution work flow. Oversee all assets for multiple digital channels, including verabradley.com, email marketing, affiliate advertising and social media, to support quarterly product releases and new product introductions.• Leveraged technology like Basecamp, ProofHQ and Google Calendar to streamline processes and bring efficiency to the digital creative work flow

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Design and direct creative assets that support quarterly product releases for email marketing and verabradley.com. Work closely with Creative Director to ensure digital assets are consistent with seasonal print collateral. Create website designs and digital assets for the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer. Establish new processes and work flows as the digital creative team expanded.• Launched Vera Bradley’s first Facebook and Twitter profiles in 2008

Fort Wayne, Indiana

Spearhead creative and user interface design for the re-launch verabradley.com. Design seasonal email marketing and website updates to support bi-annual product releases. Ensure that creative is cohesive with seasonal print collateral. Assist with an email service provider (ESP) migration to Experian/CheetahMail.• Hired as Vera Bradley’s first web-focused team member, and served as the sole member of the web team• Launched Vera Bradley’s first customer-facing e-commerce website in January 2006

Adjunct Instructor for the Department of Journalism’s introduction to new media design course. Developed syllabus to include sessions on hand-coded HTML and CSS, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Web design theory, usability, web copy standards, online self-promotion and self-branding principles.

Designed and maintained websites for several CS Kern clients, from Christian pop singers to golf course designers, as well as the company’s self-promotional online portfolio. I worked directly with clients to identify project requirements and timelines, and alongside ASP developers to integrate shopping carts, product catalogs and other dynamic functionality.

Credited internship designing websites for CMG Worldwide, a leader in the representation sports, entertainment and music celebrity estates. The Marketing team was tasked with designing the official websites for all CMG clients; my accomplishments included the websites of Malcolm X and Bettie Page.

Bachelor Of Science, Journalism Graphics

Activities and Societies: Society for News DesignJournalism Graphics major and Telecommunications minor, with a strong focus on print.

Digital Design

Studied Scandinavian Web design, HTML, JavaScript and Flash during a 7-week course.