Mariana Kuiken Mendoza

Strategic Lead for Channel Diversification & Performance Innovation. Acting as the Markets Goal Owner, holding end-to-end accountability for Zalando's media resilience and long-term strategic growth.

• P&L & Scalable Budget Management: Directly overseeing an 8-figure annual digital budget , successfully scaling investment by >70% since team inception while consistently outperforming efficiency targets
• Measurement Advocacy & Strategic Impact: Pioneered an agile, incrementality-led measurement journey in collaboration with Data Science to move channels from "belief-based" spending to a rigorous, ROI-driven framework. This shift ensured 90% of the budget is validated by true business lift , improving year-over-year (YoY) marketing efficiency
• Global Ad Tech Product Influence: Influenced global product roadmaps at TikTok, Pinterest and Snap US HQs, co-creating proprietary solutions such as Omni-Channel campaign structures and enhanced DPA algorithms to meet Zalando's high-performance requirements
• Commercial Negotiation & Efficiency: Secured €1.3M in annual creative pipeline savings for 2025 by partnering with Procurement to negotiate subsidized creative and media credits within global Service Agreements
• Operational Excellence: enabled team to engineered technical automations that slashed TikTok/Snap/Pinterest campaign volume by 50% , enabling a lean team to expand market coverage from 15 to 24 countries without increasing headcount through Smartly automation
• Strategic Risk Mitigation (TikTok Shop): Led a 10-month data-driven evaluation of UK Social Commerce; provided the C-Level recommendation to divest from non-scalable ventures, preventing significant resource leakage and protecting long-term ROI
• Organizational Design & Leadership: Authored the successful business case to re-scope 10 FTE roles from "Campaign Management" to "Strategic Development," aligning departmental compensation with strategic value. Mentored two FTEs to Senior levels and accelerated junior talent into essential leadership roles

Leading the activation manager team (8 FTE) for Zalando brand partners in all markets including Nordics, Western/Southern Europe

• Team management, enabling team and individual growth acting as a leader, manager, and coach -
• Responsible for driving key sales moment and ensure media sales target achievement
• Develop marketing media plan to ensure Zalando Partner customer satisfaction for special brand activations
• Collaborating with data analytics team to improve MSTR dashboard for the media team and improve measurement of ROAS in campaigns
• Lead digital marketing campaigns for maximal presence and sales generation among targeted audiences across Paid Media & Zalando in house ad servers
• Collaborate with product owners/engineers to improve Zalando in-house Branding & Performance ad servers

Owning the setup, optimization, and enhancement of media campaigns across in-house ad servers, Facebook/ Smartly, Google Ads, DV360

• Developing and approving media plans that are in line with client strategy to drive tangible business results for mid and large-scale campaigns
• Monitoring and optimization of media across different digital channels
• Supporting the Sales teams/ clients with ongoing optimization recommendations
• Automating workflows for campaigns/reporting
• Supporting product/tech teams to improve tools
• Ad platform training for junior team members

Responsible for scaling performance on Display channels for DH MENA/APAC brands via Google, Snapchat, Facebook/Instagram and Twitter

• Channel budget planning and setting targets (ACQ/CPA)
• Channel OKRs and planning testing roadmap
• Performance review analysis and defining action plans
• Display Incrementality Calibration project owner/ squad lead
• Defining campaign strategy, support on execution and optimization across networks to reach targets
• Ads Competitive Research and creative optimization via testing with in-house team/creative agencies

Executing campaign strategy and account optimization across Display/ YouTube and Search network for MENA/LATAM/APAC brands

• Creating, developing and optimizing campaigns
• Creating briefs for creatives and working closely with local teams for Keywords generation and writing ad copies
• Restructuring SEM accounts to follow company best practices via Google Ads Editor
• Working closely with Google Account manager to troubleshoot performance and ensure optimal campaign set-up
• Running A/B tests for creatives
• Preparing monthly reviews to report performance to local stakeholders

Developed social media content and optimized it while tracking online reputation.

• Create engaging posts optimized for Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest via collaboration with translation/ design team
• Responsible for social media content creation and optimization and supporting to monitor social media online reputation
• Content scheduling according to best times to post per region
• Weekly social media content performance reporting, ongoing content time scheduling analysis
• Facilitated the initial rollout of influencers/KOLs both internally and with external partners.
• Reported weekly on social media content performance and analyzed optimal scheduling times