Associate Product Owner - Agile Marketing, Affinity Markets

At Manulife, our Affinity Marketing Team is committed to driving growth through strategic customer retention and expansion initiatives. We are seeking a talented Associate Product Owner to support our efforts in retaining existing clients and expanding their engagement with our products and services.

What role will I play?

As an Associate Product Owner within the Affinity Marketing team, you will be an integral part of an agile marketing squad dedicated to producing a variety of creative assets, including digital content, video, print advertising, and written content, to support our marketing campaigns.

Your role will focus on enhancing customer retention strategies by collaborating closely with the Senior Product Owner, agile squad, delivery teams, marketing teams, and business partners. By leveraging data, customer insights, and agile principles, you'll help accelerate growth and expand our customer base.

As an Associate Product Owner, you will assist the Product Owner with:

• Customer retention strategy: Defining, planning, and delivering products, services, and features that enhance customer retention and growth opportunities in collaboration with marketing and sales.
• Agile delivery: Identifying, curating, and prioritizing User Stories while gathering requirements from business partners, and clearly identifying acceptance criteria, assumptions, risks, and dependencies. You will also be actively participating in sprint planning, daily standups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives.
• Day-to-day team support: Booking and organizing meetings, coordinating inputs for the squad, facilitating meeting discussions and documentation, invoice management, peer review of creative, etc.
• Customer Journey Mapping & Optimization: Optimizing the customer retention journey, ensuring all touchpoints are aligned and designed to nurture and support our customers. Identifying pain points in the retention funnel and implementing targeted solutions to improve retention and cross-sell results.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Collaborating closely with squad and external stakeholders to ensure the successful delivery to the market.
• Data-Driven Decisions: Conducting analysis and incorporating findings, feedback, and insights from customer and business research to improve retention strategies, including nurture, cross-sell, and up-sell opportunities.
• Market Research & Analysis / Customer-Centric Mindset: Conducting basic market research and analysis, and user testing to understand basic customer behavior and needs.
• Strategic & Creative Thinking: Setting up and participating in creative brainstorming sessions, and supporting the development of marketing strategies and creative assets.
• Campaign Management & Optimization: Supporting the planning, development, maintenance, and evolution of marketing assets, and coordinating with cross-functional teams and vendors.
• Experimentation and A/B Testing: Assisting in designing and executing basic marketing experiments.

Who are you?

• You are passionate about customers, constantly seeking ways to listen, engage, and act to enhance their experiences and foster loyalty.
• You think big, with a constant curiosity to discover ways to use an agile mindset to achieve business outcomes.
• You thrive in team environments, believing that collaboration drives innovation and customer-focused solutions.
• You take ownership with an entrepreneurial mindset, building solutions that prioritize customer retention and business growth.
• You act with integrity, doing what is right and speaking out when necessary.
• You promote diversity and inclusivity in the workplace, creating an environment where everyone can thrive.

Competencies for the role:

• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills in a fast-paced environment with changing priorities.
• Detail-oriented and strong organizational skills to ensure day-to-day operations are smooth and efficient.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, able to clearly articulate business needs.
• Entrepreneurial drive and demonstrated ability to achieve stretch goals in an innovative environment.
• Ability to influence and resolve conflict without direct authority; confidence to address issues as they arise.
• Experience managing external vendors and resources for print and digital executions including quoting, liaising between teams, and ongoing coordination/timeline management.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, or a related field
• 2 - 5 years of relevant work experience
• Experience working in the Financial Services and/or Life & Living Benefit Insurance industry
• Experience with Agile, Design Thinking, User Centered Design, User Experience, and journey mapping is an asset

What we bring:

• Ambitious goals and a commitment to transforming our industry.
• A leadership team dedicated to your growth and success.
• Our best, every day.

About Manulife and John Hancock

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services provider, helping people make their decisions easier and lives better. To learn more about us, visit our story.

Manulife is an Equal Opportunity Employer

At Manulife/John Hancock, we embrace our diversity. We strive to attract, develop and retain a workforce that is as diverse as the customers we serve and to foster an inclusive work environment that embraces the strength of cultures and individuals.

Primary Location

Toronto, Ontario

Working Arrangement

Hybrid

Salary range is expected to be between

$61,350.00 CAD - $102,250.00 CAD

Manulife offers eligible employees a wide array of customizable benefits, including health, dental, mental health, vision, short- and long-term disability, life and AD&D insurance coverage, adoption/surrogacy and wellness benefits, and employee/family assistance plans.