Senior Creative Strategist, Direct Mail &… at EXL · California

Senior Creative Strategist, Direct Mail & Customer Engagement

Location: California, United States

Senior Creative Strategist, Direct Mail & Customer Engagement

Remote, US

$130k- 150k plus bonus plus benefits

For more information on benefits and what we offer please visit us at https://www.exlservice.com/us-careers-and-benefits

The posted range is the hiring range for this role — a subset of the broader range available to employees over time — and reflects base salary across our national hiring scale. Final offers are based on several factors, including the candidate's skills and experience, internal pay equity, work location, market conditions for the role, and the specific scope and responsibilities of the position. The top of the range is reserved for candidates who notably exceed the requirements; the lower end applies to those with less experience or fewer preferred qualifications. For positions based in higher-cost zones (e.g., California, New York, New Jersey), actual compensation may exceed the posted range; your recruiter will share specifics during the process.

Position Summary

We are seeking a highly strategic and client-focused Senior Creative Strategist to lead the development of insight-driven direct mail marketing programs for financial services, banking, and fintech clients. This role will serve as the critical link between Analytics, Creative, Production, Account Management, and Client stakeholders to ensure campaigns are strategically sound, creatively compelling, operationally executable, and performance-driven.

The ideal candidate combines deep direct marketing expertise with strong business acumen and understands how customer data, analytics, audience insights, testing strategies, creative messaging, and production capabilities work together to drive measurable results. This individual will be a trusted advisor to clients and an internal leader responsible for translating complex business objectives into effective direct mail strategies and creative recommendations.

Experience within banking, lending, payments, credit, fintech, or other highly regulated financial services environments is required.

Creative Strategy Leadership

• Develop comprehensive direct mail strategies that align client business goals with audience insights, performance objectives, and brand requirements.
• Lead strategic development of acquisition, retention, cross-sell, and loyalty marketing programs.
• Partner with analytics teams to translate customer and campaign insights into actionable creative recommendations.
• Define audience, messaging, offer, segmentation, and testing strategies that improve campaign performance.
• Build campaign briefs that clearly communicate strategic direction to creative and production teams.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Serve as the strategic liaison between Analytics, Creative, Production, Data, and Account teams.
• Collaborate with designers, copywriters, and production specialists to ensure concepts align with strategic objectives and operational requirements.
• Guide stakeholders through creative development, testing methodologies, and performance optimization opportunities.
• Ensure creative concepts can be efficiently executed within production and compliance constraints.

Client Leadership & Presentation

• Act as a primary strategic contact for client engagements and campaign discussions.
• Lead discovery sessions, strategic workshops, campaign reviews, and quarterly business reviews.
• Present strategic recommendations and campaign performance insights to senior client stakeholders and executive audiences.
• Build trusted relationships by providing consultative guidance and thought leadership.

Performance & Optimization

• Analyze campaign results and identify opportunities to improve response rates, conversion, ROI, customer acquisition, and customer lifetime value.
• Partner with analytics teams to develop testing roadmaps and measurement frameworks.
• Use data-driven insights to continually refine audience targeting, offer strategy, messaging, and creative execution.
• Stay informed of industry trends, consumer behavior shifts, and emerging direct marketing best practices.

Creative Development

• Contribute to campaign ideation and concept development.
• Review creative work to ensure alignment with strategy and customer insights.
• Support copy and visual concept development where appropriate.
• Ability to write strategic messaging, develop campaign narratives, or create creative concepts is highly desirable.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Communications, Advertising, Business, or related field.
• 8+ years of experience in direct marketing, CRM marketing, creative strategy, customer engagement, or integrated marketing.
• Proven experience developing direct mail strategies for financial services, banking, lending, payments, fintech, or other regulated industries.
• Strong understanding of audience segmentation, testing methodologies, offer strategy, and performance measurement.
• Experience partnering with analytics teams to translate data into marketing recommendations.
• Exceptional client-facing communication and relationship management skills.
• Outstanding presentation and storytelling abilities with experience presenting to executive stakeholders.
• Strong project management and organizational skills with the ability to manage multiple initiatives simultaneously.
• Demonstrated ability to work effectively across creative, analytics, production, and account teams.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting financial institutions, digital banks, fintech platforms, credit card issuers, mortgage lenders, or consumer lending organizations.
• Understanding of print production, postal requirements, and direct mail operations.
• Experience developing omnichannel customer engagement strategies.
• Ability to write creative briefs, campaign messaging, and strategic recommendations.
• Prior experience contributing to copywriting, concept development, or creative direction.
• Familiarity with customer journey planning, personalization strategies, and marketing automation platforms.
• Familiarity with creative software and platforms.

Success Characteristics

• Strategic thinker with a strong analytical mindset.
• Client-focused and consultative approach.
• Comfortable influencing senior stakeholders.
• Excellent communicator and presenter.
• Creative problem solver who balances innovation with business objectives.
• Highly organized with strong attention to detail.
• Collaborative team player who thrives in cross-functional environments.

This role is ideal for someone who can bridge analytics and creativity, turning customer insights into compelling direct mail programs that generate measurable business outcomes for leading banking and fintech clients.