Group Director,Analytics-1PD Data & Loyalty

VML•Detroit, MI

3d•$100,000 - $230,000•Hybrid

About The Position

This role will oversee and advise on Ford's first-party customer data, including ownership history, customer journey behavior, and loyalty program activity across Ford Rewards and Lincoln Access Rewards. This is an increasingly important source of competitive differentiation for Ford — loyalty programs generate rich behavioral signals that can meaningfully improve targeting precision, message sequencing, personalization, and ultimately customer retention and lifetime value. The Group Director, First-Party Data & Loyalty Analytics will serve as WPP Ford's US subject matter expert for first-party customer data, responsible for building the analytical bridge between Ford's loyalty programs and its owner marketing communications. This is a net-new leadership position, established to create a domestic center of expertise. The role will be part of WPP Ford's Marketing Intelligence team, but partners closely with other global WPP business units. The emphasis of this role is on insight and business impact rather than reporting volume. Success is measured by the quality of the recommendations produced and their influence on marketing decisions — identifying what matters in the data and translating it into clear, actionable guidance for Ford's marketing leadership.

Requirements

10+ years in marketing analytics, CRM analytics, or customer data strategy, with deep hands-on experience in first-party/owned customer data (not primarily ad platform or media data)
Specific experience in loyalty, retention, or customer lifecycle analytics — not general-purpose marketing analytics
Fluency querying, joining, and analyzing data with reproducible code (SQL required; Python or R a plus)
Hands-on experience with enterprise customer data and marketing platforms — Adobe Experience Platform / Real-Time CDP, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, or comparable CDP and marketing automation tools — including how customer profiles, identity resolution, segmentation, and activation work within them
Demonstrated experience building measurement frameworks from raw behavioral or transactional data, not just reporting against existing dashboards
Ability to connect business and marketing context to data strategy — identifying and prioritizing use cases, asking the questions that matter, and translating findings for executives
Track record of presenting analytical findings directly to marketing executives and having those findings change a decision
Experience working across and influencing matrixed, cross-functional teams, both internally and with clients
Proactive ownership: the initiative to work through ambiguity and drive issues to resolution

Nice To Haves

Automotive or considered-purchase category experience (long consideration cycles, ownership data, dealer/retail hybrid models)
Direct exposure to loyalty program mechanics — points and rewards structures, tiering, redemption behavior
Experience within a holding company or agency model, balancing client-facing credibility with internal delivery accountability

Responsibilities

Own the first-party data agenda
Analyze ownership and customer journey data to identify the behavioral patterns that predict loyalty, retention, and customer lifetime value
Work directly within Ford's first-party data and martech ecosystem — including customer data platforms (e.g., Adobe Real-Time CDP), Salesforce Marketing Cloud, and adjacent identity and audience management tools — to access, structure, and interrogate customer-level data
Advise on data architecture and readiness for first-party use cases: unified customer profiles, identity resolution, audience schemas, consent and preference signals, and the data quality required to support them
Build and maintain measurement frameworks for loyalty program performance and its downstream effect on owner marketing outcomes
Identify opportunities where personalization and targeting performance can be improved through better integration of loyalty and owner marketing data, and quantify the associated business value
Integrate loyalty and owner marketing analytics
Serve as the analytical link between Ford Rewards, Lincoln Access Rewards, and owner marketing communications
Develop evidence-based recommendations for targeting, message sequencing, and personalization informed by loyalty behavior signals
Translate loyalty behavior insights into activation-ready guidance — audience definitions, segmentation logic, suppression rules, and journey triggers — that CRM and platform teams can implement in Salesforce Marketing Cloud and the CDP
Identify areas of duplication or misalignment between the loyalty and owner marketing workstreams and drive their resolution
Lead client engagement and strategic narrative
Translate analytical findings into clear, compelling narratives that enable marketing executives to make informed decisions
Present recommendations directly to Ford marketing stakeholders; this is a client-facing leadership role with regular executive engagement
Support Enterprise Solutions with first-party data expertise on broader customer experience and personalization initiatives, and build the delivered-work case for expanded CX investment