Mark Beekman

Group Marketing Director at Graydon

My experience and deep interests:

• Sales, Marketing & Advertising

I am based in: Amsterdam

My professional career started in 2000, when I joined a digital consumer finance Start-up. This start-up evolved - after a merger with Binck.nl in 2008 - into one of the leading private investor solutions for self trading and private banking in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Italy. I led the marketing department in the Netherlands from 2006 to 2009 after various positions in Marketing & Sales. I was one of the driving forces behind Alex.nl reinventing the market for private investors.

In 2009 I took on the challenge to transfer an established traditional company - Graydon, founded in 1888 - into a modern digital innovation company. I built a team of high-energy, passionate marketing professionals who operate in Amsterdam, Antwerp and London. The team received various B2B awards and is leading in B2B marketing areas as Digital Marketing, CRM & Market Intelligence, Inbound Marketing and Thought Leadership. In addition, the team launched the digital innovation start-up OpenCompanies. From 2015 I have also been responsible for Sales & Product Development.

My passion is to build brands that stand out in their industry. I connect creativity, data and marketing technology to drive breakthrough innovations in Marketing, Product and Sales. As a manager, I am dedicated to continuously educating and developing my teams. I strongly believe that to learn and grow competencies and skills is crucial to being successful in this rapidly changing economy. I therefore enable my team members to spend substantial amounts of time on personal development.

I am an author of many publications on data-driven marketing. My expertise centers on the areas of inbound marketing, Big Data, marketing intelligence, and digital marketing. As an enthusiastic marketing technologist, I have also given multiple keynote presentations in the Netherlands. Last year, I was a guest speaker at the B2B Marketing Forum, Content Club Nederland, Content Marketing Seminar, Big Data Expo, Dutch Marketing Professionals, Emerce, Digital Future of B2B and the Next Marketing congress.

In my spare time, I play competition golf and dream of being a good kite surfer.