Head of Customer Engagement Activation

Description

The Head of Customer Engagement Activation will serve as a key marketing and business leader at General Motors, responsible for the activation, operation, and end-to-end delivery of all 1:1 customer communications. This requires having a performance-driven leadership approach that optimizes both customer outcomes, enterprise efficiency, and business growth. This position reports to the Executive Director, Customer Engagement Marketing.

This leader will oversee a matrixed team that partners with our Customer Lifecycle, Owner Growth, MarTech, Marketing Applied Sciences, and Data Engineering teams. To be effective, we are looking for a candidate who can collaborate with confidence, developing a strategic perspective that both direct, indirect, and external teams can rally around.

To achieve strong results, a successful candidate will need a modern marketing mindset that is curious, adaptable, digital-first and outcome-driven. This leader will be accountable for transforming our current sophisticated partner activation model while also building a world-class internal production studio.By leveraging modern MarTech tools, process automation, and a business mindset, a successful candidate will be able to unlock transformation in speed-to-market, channel outcomes, and resource efficiencies.

What you will do (key responsibilities):

Build and scale a tiered activation studio

• Design and stand up an end to end CRM inhouse studio that can deliver modern 1:1 customer communications from brief intake through production, QA, and deployment.

• Evolve and scale our studio as the flagship integrated production capability for Customer Engagement, unifying ways of working, tools, and SLAs across digital and physical channels.

• Redesign the Marketing Activation operating model to shift the team from manual campaign execution to strategy, inspiration, and continuous improvement.

• Leverage AI and automation to ensure flawless delivery of 1:1 campaigns.

• Operationalize and scale a three-tier delivery model:
• Agency - for the most complex, high-risk or breakthrough work.
• Insourced - for repeatable, high value work that the studio can execute efficiently at scale.
• Expansion / Innovation - for rapid prototyping, new formats, and test and learn.

• Establish clear process and decision frameworks that determine when work is done in house vs. with external partners, balancing speed, quality, risk, and cost.

• Build the studio's capacity planning, resource management, and vendor management practices.

• Partner with Product teams to ensure technical readiness and quality across CRM channels.

• Evolve our scaled, repeatable operating model with clear SLAs, playbooks, and KPIs across channels (email, SMS, push, direct mail, digital media extensions, etc.).

• Stand up a process improvement / transformation office within the studio that:

• Identifies and prioritizes workflow, tooling, and process improvements across activation and production.

• Runs a visible transformation roadmap and backlog with clear owners, milestones, and value realization.

• Implements LEAN/Agile ways of working, standard operating procedures, and consistent documentation.

• Use data, dashboards, and KPIs to track production throughput, cycle time, quality, and cost, and systematically eliminate manual work, handoffs, and rework.

• Oversee day to day studio operations, including brief intake, scoping, scheduling, trafficking, production, QC/QA, and deployment for all 1:1 customer communications and related assets.

• Partner with Lifecycle, Owner Growth, OnStar Marketing, CCA Marketing, GM Energy Marketing, and other internal stakeholders.

• Maintain strong relationships with external agency partners.

• Partner with MarTech Product Management to ensure the studio operating model fully leverages enterprise platforms .

• Translate studio and campaign needs into clear requirements for MarTech, ensuring features are designed for operational reality and adopted effectively by studio teams.

• Collaborate with MAS and Analytics to integrate data and insights into day to day studio work.

• Lead and develop a multidisciplinary team of producers, project/program managers, operations specialists, and vendor/agency managers.

• Foster a culture that is curious, operationally excellent, customer obsessed, and experimentally minded, encouraging small autonomous teams to author work.

• Champion change management, leading teams to thrive through transformation.

• 10+ years leading marketing production, in-house agency, or marketing operations for a direct-to-consumer brand or scaled enterprise; 7+ years in people leadership roles.
• Bachelor Degree required

• Demonstrated experience building or significantly scaling an in-house production studio or agency-like production function (creative adaptation, content production, QA, trafficking).

• Deep understanding of CRM / 1:1 communication production (email, SMS, push, direct mail, and related channels), including workflow design, capacity management, and quality control.

• Strong program and portfolio management skills; proven ability to manage complex, multi-year transformation initiatives while maintaining business continuity.

• Proven track record of process redesign and continuous improvement, with measurable impact on speed to market, cost efficiency, and quality.

• Solid working knowledge of modern MarTech ecosystems (e.g., ESPs, journey orchestration, CDPs, DAM, content supply chain tools) and how production teams integrate with these platforms.

• Demonstrated ability to manage agencies and vendors, including negotiating scopes, defining roles and responsibilities, and optimizing onshore/offshore models.

• Excellent stakeholder management and communication skills, with comfort working across marketing, technology, analytics, legal, privacy, and brand/business leaders.

• Experience as a Head of Production, MarTech professional, or Operations Lead within an advertising/creative agency or internal studio.

• Experience using AI and automation to drive organizational change.

• Experience transforming an organization to an integrated, multichannel model.

• Background in automotive, retail, subscription, or other high-complexity, high-frequency CRM environments.

• Experience designing or scaling global or multi-region studio models, including playbooks, hubs/spokes, and shared services.

• MBA or relevant graduate degree in marketing, business, operations, or a related field.

• Operationally tuned and action-oriented, with a strong bias for simplifying complex workflows.

• Customer obsessed, ensuring every asset and process improves owner and prospect experiences.

• Hands-on approach to developing and testing new capabilities and AI.

• Entrepreneurial and resourceful, comfortable building net-new capabilities in an evolving environment.

• Collaborative and inclusive leader, skilled at bringing together cross-functional teams and aligning them to shared goals.

• Strong executive presence, with the ability to influence senior leaders, advocate for the in-house model, and represent CET's studio vision across the enterprise.