No one can do everything, but — when it comes to the world of destination marketing — there are those whose singular insight has the power to truly transform a place and the relationship it has with its visitors. Whether you want to call it flair, finesse, or just a knack for knowing, our ‘Marketer of the Year’ award celebrates one individual who has shown exceptional vision and leadership in their field, all while obtaining truly outstanding results for the destination they represent.
Finalists: Shonette Laffy, Visit West; Jill Harlow, Visit Isle of Wight; Deyna Schrader, Visit Belfast
Winner: Deyna Schrader, Visit Belfast
A transformational talent
For destination marketing organisation (DMO) Visit Belfast, that one person is Senior Digital Marketing Executive Deyna Schrader. Praising her many talents in their submission entry for this category, the team at Visit Belfast wrote, “Deyna is more than an analyst. She is a connector between teams, a mentor to new colleagues, and a translator of complexity into action. Her work is shaping a more confident, agile, and data-led culture inside Visit Belfast and delivering tangible value across the wider tourism ecosystem.”
With her ability to combine strategy, creativity, and innovation, Deyna has completely transformed marketing operations at Visit Belfast. As a case in point, she played a key role in creating the organisation’s Brand Health Index as well as its Media Mix Performance Index, thus empowering Visit Belfast to connect its marketing efforts to real-world outcomes. Among her many achievements, she has also strengthened ROI clarity by enhancing partner reporting and implementing new dashboards, allowing the knowledge obtained from each and every campaign to now rolled into real-time planning.
Leaning on individual insight to enrich an entire organisation
As the team at Visit Belfast go on to say, Deyna’s “innovation lies in transforming marketing from reactive output to proactive, insight-led impact.” They further add that, “She led the development of a full-funnel reporting ecosystem that tracks content, social, and media campaigns from impression to impact. This includes new benchmarks for hook rate, engagement quality, and organic performance enabling Visit Belfast to move from vanity metrics to strategic diagnostics.”
In addition to all of this, Deyna’s insightful approach and understanding of audience behaviour has also been the force behind Visit Belfast’s use of TikTok and its successful collaborations with multiple influencers, something that — as we’ve seen in an earlier blog — has done much to enhance its overall destination marketing strategy. Always one to go above and beyond, Deyna used her knowledge to develop and deliver “a digital training programme for frontline visitor services staff, helping them better understand the website, UGC content, and campaign messaging.” This, says the team at Visit Belfast, has done much to improve staff confidence as well as the overall consistency of the visitor experience across multiple channels.
Celebrating a monumental impact
Deyna’s efforts have had a monumental impact on Visit Belfast’s marketing operations. According to the team, she helped to generate more than £36,000 in campaign sponsorship. But more than this, they add that, with her guidance, Visit Belfast achieved 61 million brand social impressions, 55 million video views, and more than 4.6 million engagements. Thanks to her influence, TikTok has become a key vector of discovery for Visit Belfast, “with 84% of visitors from TikTok being first-time users.”
Speaking of her incredible achievements, the judging panel said, “Deyna's work is earning her a huge amount of trust from both colleagues and the wider industry. Her ability to cut through large volumes of data and actually show people what it means to their businesses and to the destination at large is testament to the maturity of her approach as a marketeer.”
Well done, Deyna! There’s nothing like ending on a high note and with this final blog, it’s time to wrap up our celebrations. But before you go, be sure to join us one final time for a short round-up of our award winners from this year’s EMEA Summit — plus a little something to get you excited about next year’s event.
