Hello, I'm Mathieu
and I specialize in
ABOUT
Passionate about all things digital, I am a creative Galway-based digital marketer with nearly 11 years’ experience working in online marketing. Skills include:
Marketing Strategy
SEO & PPC
Social Media
Web Development
eCommerce
Email Marketing
Graphic Design
French & Spanish
EXPERIENCE
Jan 2021 – Present (3 years and 10 months)
Digital Marketing Manager
Dec 2017 – Aug 2020 (2 years and 9 months)
Content Marketing Editor
Hillwalk Tours is an Irish digital tourism company that offers premium self-guided hiking experiences in Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales and Spain, with its main markets being the US, Germany and Netherlands.
Working in close collaboration with a Marketing Manager, I actively contributed to the creation and execution of a multichannel marketing strategy, which resulted in a 7% increase in bookings in 2019 with a turnover of over €4 million and 99.6% customers acquired through digital marketing.
As a Content Marketing Editor, my role consisted primarily in drawing up a detailed editorial calendar and delivering engaging marketing campaigns -based on customer personas, marketing analytics and segmentation- ensuring all content was on-brand and gauging its effectiveness using metrics and KPIs.
Main responsibilities:
Collaborating with a Marketing Manager on a daily basis for over two years, I learned and helped to create and implement a successful marketing plan and marketing budget.
I was responsible for the launch of new walking tours, including the Cotswold Way and South West Coast Path in 2018, the Speyside Way Whisky Trail and Pembrokeshire Coast Path in 2019 and the South Downs Way in 2020. This included working closely with the Product Team, supervising the website content, deciding on a marketing plan (email marketing, social media, etc) and executing it in order to effectively promote these new tours.
I managed over 400 PPC Search Ads for Hillwalk Tours – among them 50 I created myself – and was in charge of geotargeting the campaigns, finding the most relevant keywords using SEMrush and adjusting the bidding strategy on a weekly basis based on an allocated budget and competitors’ bids. Additionally, I put in place over 70 retargeting display ads based on visitors’ behaviour on the website to entice them to come back and increase conversion rates.
I designed and created content for over 120 email campaigns using the Mailchimp email automation platform. Targeting each campaign to a carefully defined segment from a 20,000 subscriber base, I managed to obtain an average email open rate of 54% and click rate of 7.5%. On top of this, I came up with the idea of creating a long-running campaign named This Week on the Trail featuring the best photos from customers, which turned out to be a massive success with 18 emails sent and an average open rate of 80.1%. Additionally I actively contributed to the growth of the company’s mailing list by 120% within 30 months using OptinMonster and other signup incentives.
Using the Mailchimp email automation platform, I created a state-of-the-art email automation programme triggering over 50 different email templates that were targeted at Hillwalk Tours’ mailing list based on each users’ preferences and behaviour.
With an average of 12,000 hits per month on the website, boosting the organic rankings played a significant role in the generation of new leads, using tools such as SEMRush Keyword Gap and SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool and tweaking meta tags accordingly. In order to maintain SEO rankings after a website migration from Joomla to WordPress in mid-2019, I implemented on-page optimisation in WordPress – using SEMRush Site Audit and Google Lighthouse – including CSS and JS minification, image compression, etc.
With a follower base of over 30,000 hiking enthusiasts, I wrote and cross-posted over 200 inspiring posts and stories across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using Teamup Calendar and Hootsuite scheduler. I also actively contributed to increasing the number of followers by 175% within 30 months.
This included social media collages using Canva or GIMP, promotional videos made with Wondershare Filmora and professional booklets for trade shows designed with Publisher.
In order to achieve a wow factor among our hiking enthusiasts, I was in charge of sourcing the most inspiring and high quality photos for the website and marketing campaigns, using 123RF and Shutterstock, and contacting previous walkers via vibrant email campaigns.
At the time of migrating the company’s website from Joomla to WordPress, I assisted CloveRock Design web agency by designing the mock-ups of the new website, moving content over and creating redirects to match the new url structure.
Known as the “website expert” at Hillwalk Tours, I was assigned the development of extra features for the website, including an online shop using WooCommerce, gift vouchers, an off-season page, new advanced custom fields, lead generation pop-ups using OptinMonster, etc.
For this ambitious project, I worked in close collaboration with Hillwalk Tours founder James Byrne over 6 months to provide walkers with an optimal experience on the trails. This included identifying their pain points and the different booking scenarios before designing an elegant and user-friendly A5 booklet including hikes overview, hiking directions, maps, accommodation, recommendations and more.
To ensure the smothest experience for French speakers on www.hillwalktours.fr, I reviewed the copy of over 200 pages (incl. homepage, country landing pages, tour pages, itineraries, etc) and provided translation for more than 50 pages (incl. T&Cs, Our Story, tour page and itineraries for the Cotswold Way and South West Coast Path, etc) and other marketing materials.
Apr 2020 – MAY 2020 (2 months)
Front-End Developer
Outsource Locker was a digital marketing agency established at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
I offered my expertise in web development and branding as a freelancer and built an elegant and fully functional website (see screenshot here) at short notice based on the company’s requirements and designed the company’s logo in order to quickly establish its presence online.
Jan 2014 – Mar 2017 (3 years and 3 months)
Marketing Manager
Línea Gráfica is a leading Spanish digital agency that uses the popular eCommerce CMS PrestaShop to build premium websites for their clients, and was awarded the title of Spain’s Best Web Design Agency in 2019.
As a Marketing Manager, I was entrusted with the launch and sales development of eCommerce plugins on the official PrestaShop marketplace. By developing and implementing a strategic marketing plan, I managed to build a catalogue of popular products that are still selling strong with over 100,000 downloads to this day, and generated a significant and durable revenue stream for the business.
Main responsibilities:
Due to the high level of competition on the Addons Prestashop marketplace between contributors, I endeavoured to create differentiation for Línea Gráfica’s modules by:
- identifying and ranking for the top keywords
- identifying and answering customers’ pain points as part of the product description
- adjusting prices based on competition
- identifying and developing extra module functionalities for a broader scope of potential customers
- creating module bundles with a significant discount as a incentive
- building a solid reputation across the marketplace based on customer satisfaction and feedback
- building a consistent visual identity among the company’s modules to increase return customers
In line with my previous point, I worked towards making the textual description and graphic content of the modules as informative and comprehensive as possible. To do so, I wrote descriptions in English, French and Spanish keeping the customer perspective in mind and including answers to common questions I received as part of the customer support service (see next point for more information). In terms of graphic design, I focused on taking and uploading screenshots of the key features of every module, making sure to caption them using GIMP image editor to give context and explanation. Additionally, I created thorough step-by-step guides and tutorial videos using Camtasia Recorder and Camtasia Studio to document in-depth how to use them and keep support queries at a reasonable level.
In order to solve module internal bugs, compatibility issues with templates or conflicts with other modules, I asked customers for a backend access to their shop and a FTP or cPanel access to their server (and occasionally an access to their database) to identify what was causing the issue and to solve it using my PHP, HTML, CSS, Javascript and SQL knowledge.
Another strategy I used to reach out to more potential customers was to add more functionalities to modules and make their interface more user-friendly. To do so, I worked in a local environment using XAMPP and developed over 100 new functionalities using PHP, HTML, CSS, SQL and Javascript.
To ensure customer satisfaction, I answered about 40 incoming pre-sales and post-sales enquiries a day in either English, French or Spanish via a ticket system. With an average module rating of 4.5/5 and a customer support rating over 95% (response time and quality), I managed to obtain the highest Superhero ranking expertise on Addons PrestaShop.
Jan 2014 – Mar 2015 (1 year and 3 months)
Web Content Editor
Bee-Circle | Ecommerce Startup | Lausanne, CH
Bee-Circle was a young startup with a multilingual e-commerce platform where suppliers and merchants could offer their products directly to customers.
I assisted with the launch and configuration of their ecommerce platform (powered by Magento CMS), creating and optimising content and listing new products. Although this startup no longer exists today, I successfully managed the launch of their online shop and ensured everything was working smoothly before passing on the torch, shortly after the company received its first orders.
The only way to do great work is to love what you do
– Steve Jobs
EDUCATION
Sep 2012 – Jun 2014
Master in e-Commerce & Foreign Languages
Université de Franche-Comté | Montbéliard, FR
Sep 2009 – Jun 2012
Bachelor in Foreign Languages (EN/FR/ES)
Université de Franche-Comté | Montbéliard, FR
TESTIMONIALS
PORTFOLIO
- All
- Web Development
- Digital Marketing
- Graphic Design
- Video Editing
INTERESTS
Half Marathon Runner
As an avid runner, I practice on a weekly basis and enjoy challenging myself and pushing past my limits (40:00 for 10k and 1:35:00 for half-marathon). With over 500k run within a year and participation in several scenic races across Ireland (Dingle Marathon, Connemarathon, Dublin Rock'n'Roll Series, Run Galway Bay), I am planning on doubling up the distance in the near future and switching to full marathons.
Music Enthusiast
Music has always been very important to me and since a young age I have developed a special fondness for country music, heavy metal and Irish traditional music. I play electric guitar and have seen over 200 live performances across Europe. I particularly enjoy supporting young and up-and-coming bands by attending their gigs and buying their records.
Outdoor Enthusiast
Passionate about nature, I have always enjoyed exploring the outdoors and wide-open spaces. Between April and July 2017, I realised a dream of a lifetime driving 28,250k (17,554mi) across America from San Francisco, CA to New York, NY via 27 states and 28 National Parks. I documented this exceptional journey on a WordPress blog I created myself (see portfolio).
Craft Brewer
I discovered the art of all-grain brewing in 2017 and since that day I have never stopped experimenting with different recipes of stout, porter and IPA. Starting with the 4 essential ingredients (malted barley, hops, water and yeast), the process of turning water and grains into beer has always been very rewarding to me and has taught me patience, as it generally takes 4-5 hours and an extra 3 weeks to allow the beer to ferment.