Work With Dave

When your company works with me it will benefit from a marketing and customer experience leader focused on scaling businesses across a variety of industries. My strength is in achieving growth and results by leading marketing and customer teams with accomplished customer focused strategy development and implementation skills.

leadership

Leadership

I’ve built small and large teams ranging in size from 3 to 20 people. I lead by example and treat individuals and teams I’ve managed as if I was their customer and my primary focus was on helping them succeed. This not only developed employees who were fulfilled and productive, but also helped the team and company to reach it’s goals.

“Dave’s leadership qualities and attention to detail were second to none and stood out amongst his peers…His attitude was infectious; everyone loved him around the office.” – Greg Goodson, Co-Founder, Rafflecopter

“He’s what every manager could ever wish for in his/her department and destined to be the one that is running that department…He drove change. He challenged us to be better. He took us to new places rapidly. He worked harder than 99.99% of people.” -Steve Lankler, Managing Director and Business Head, CIT Digital Small Business Solutions

Customer And Marketing Strategy

growth-marketing

This is where it all starts. Using a customer-focused, data informed approach, I have a deep background in building growth and marketing plans that support business goals and objectives. I’ve led a wide variety of projects, from ideation through implementation, encompassing user acquisition, conversion optimization, user on-boarding, and retention.

At Rafflecopter, I led the development of identifying customer personas and lifecycle stages then created a growth strategy that included the KPIs for each stage, the success factors to reach each stage, the specific tactics to be successful, and finally the measurement framework to provide insight on progress.

Project Management

People and teams with a solid foundation of processes and systems have the freedom to be more creative and productive because they release the mental baggage of trying to stay organized. Building strong and effective systems is always a central component of any team I have strong experience in building and improving processes to help create high performance teams.

At TrainingPeaks, I was the project leader for the selection, implementation, and optimization of a marketing automation system. The project was comprehensive involving integrations with several existing technical and business systems, plus collaborations with several teams including marketing, sales, dev, and the executive team. The project was challenging with a customer database size of 500,000 records plus hundreds of data points on each customer. The project was successful. There a goal of increasing revenue per email by 3x within 12 months. We hit this goal in 6 months.

Reporting And Analysis

One of the most exciting developments for me as a data-informed growth marketer is the ability to measure (pretty much) everything. While this doesn’t mean we should measure everything, it gives us the ability to strategically select the metrics, behaviors, and KPIs that help identify and drive the growth levers appropriate for each business.

One of the common themes across every professional position I’ve held is the use of data, measurement, and analysis. I’m often leading the charge at companies to bring an analytical approach to growth from building a strategic plan for what and how to collect pertinent data, to the tactical implementation of selecting the right tools and building dashboards to keep the organization data informed.

Experience

Here’s a peek at some of the companies I have worked with.

Details, Details

For some details on my work with each of these companies, and more, check me out on LinkedIn.

Better yet, let’s talk!

Recommendations

Greg Goodson, Co-Founder, Rafflecopter

TL;DR Dave is a kickass, goal-oriented, intelligent marketer, and talented leader.

Dave worked on the Rafflecopter team for close to 3 years. His responsibilities at our company were many. Dave was a marketing swiss army knife, originally hired specifically for a customer acquisition and growth role, but quickly progressed his duties to content creation, product management, analytics, and beyond.

All of Dave’s duties were pivotal into supporting our growing community surrounding our product, used by hundreds of thousands of people. He helped manage the on boarding process of potential customers, which included a mix of customer outreach and customer development. In addition to a deep understanding of our company’s internal analytics, Dave also possessed a firm grasp of the emotional side of our customers and why they used our product.

Dave was able to adapt quickly to the fast-paced work environment that you’ll find at a software startup like ours. At a small company like ours, it’s easy to see who is putting in the extra hours, and Dave was always going above and beyond in his duties. Dave’s leadership qualities and attention to detail were second to none and stood out amongst his peers.

Dave is very well organized, diligent, and was a very loyal employee and supporter at our company. His attitude was infectious; everyone loved him around the office. Working with Dave so closely the last 3 years has been a highlight of my professional career. Needless to say, I highly recommend Dave for employment.

Justin Ratner, Co-Founder, Rafflecopter

I had the pleasure of working with Dave at Rafflecopter for nearly 3 years. Dave is a soldier. Give him a mission, and he’ll do everything in his power to meet the objective. A startup goes through a roller coaster ride of ups and downs, but people like Dave help keep the organization focused and moving forward. Even with his mission-oriented style, he remains balanced and open to new ideas.

You should hire Dave if you care about keeping your organization’s goals measurable. He’s a skillful operator when it comes to pulling data together from many sources and creating a coherent and quantitative picture of the organization. A founder’s vision can only materialize when the strategy for achieving it is grounded in reality. Dave not only understands this but knows how to put it into action.

Just as he does with all of his co-workers, Dave will also show your customers a great deal of respect and patience. Don’t hesitate to give him face-time with customers. He’ll go to great lengths to make a customer’s day. He’s also at home managing customer support teams.

Give Dave a great place to work, and you won’t be disappointed.

Steve Lankler, Managing Director And Business Head, CIT Digital Small Business Solutions

Dave Criswell is remarkable, a linchpin, indispensable, an artist, a shipper, passionate, innovative, proactive, hard working, relentless, organized, focused, and so much more. He’s what every manager could ever wish for in his/her department and destined to be the one that is running that department.

I only had about a year to work with Dave, but it felt like 10 years. He drove change. He challenged us to be better. He took us to new places rapidly. He worked harder than 99.99% of people. He taught me new things. He stayed educated around the clock. He had the secret sauce that drives success in droves…skill + passion. He smiled the entire time.

I was consistently blown away by his level of production, but quality was never sacrificed. He could execute all day long. I feel tremendously fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with Dave. He changed the course of my career and he is truly destined for big success. He will always be a friend, adviser, confidant and consultant.

And by the way, he also finds time to train for and complete iron man triathlons in his spare time…not much more to say…he is a bona fide Superstar.

About

Who Is This Dave Guy?

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go” – T.S. Eliot

Six Half Ironmans, five Marathons, three fire walks, two Ironman races, and an ultra marathon. These are all experiences I’ve done that challenged what I thought was possible and help shape my worldview on setting goals and then finding a way to achieve them.

I’m a native New Englander (and passionate Boston sports fan!) who landed in Boulder, CO after building a real estate business then jumped full-time into the marketing world to help businesses grow in industries ranging SaaS, technology, e-commerce, real estate, financial services, economic research, and outdoor sports.

My strength is in achieving growth and results by leading marketing and customer teams with accomplished strategy development and implementation skills. I’m highly motivated by the opportunity to create growth by delivering customers a great product with a remarkable experience.

I’m a marketing leader offering 25 years of experience in SaaS, technology, e-commerce, real estate, financial services, economic research, and outdoor sports industries. I have led projects, from ideation through implementation and measurement, encompassing user acquisition, user onboarding, conversion optimization, marketing automation, retention, content marketing, and strategic partnerships.

My non-work time is devoted to family, coaching soccer, endurance sports, reading non-fiction, and listening to music.