Our ‘Profile: A Day in the Life of’ feature takes a look at some of the global professionals working across performance marketing. It aims to shed light on the varying roles and companies across the flourishing industry.

Name: 

Richard Hamnett

Job title and company:

Co-founder and CTO, ResponseTap

In one sentence, how would you describe what the company does?

ResponseTap enables businesses to link up their online marketing activity with offline sales, such as those made on the phone.

What are the company’s unique selling points?

ResponseTap is one of the only call analytics platforms to offer visitor-level call tracking, which allows a business to track the customer journey from keyword to phone call. Unique phone numbers allow businesses to link individual customers with specific phone calls and all marketers to truly understand how their efforts are translating into sales.

Within the last six months, what stands out as the company’s major milestones?

Winning the Great British Entrepreneur Award in November was a great end to a fantastic year. In 2013 we gained a lot of new customers – around 40 to 60 every month as well as increasing our number of staff. We’ve also brought a new performance product to market, which is specifically designed to allow networks, advertisers and publishers to operate pay-per-call campaigns that link online customer journeys with offline phone calls.

Duration in current role:

Five years.

Where are you based?

Manchester, but we also have offices in London and New York.

Previous performance marketing-related Co’s you have worked at:

Before starting ResponseTap, I was running another successful telephony business with centres in the US.

What are your main job responsibilities?

As CTO, it’s my responsibility to make sure our business is at the forefront of technological advancement. With this in mind, my main role is leading the design and architecture of the ResponseTap platform, driving innovation and directing the development team.

Take us through what you get up to on a typical working Monday:

Every day is so varied, it’s hard to say what a typical Monday looks like! My day normally starts with a look through our performance stats from the previous day to identify any trends I need to be aware of. This allows me to see how our customers are using the platform and see how we can improve this. I’m always going out to meet our customers face-to-face to get their direct feedback on what can be improved on the platform and how we can help them, as without this valuable feedback it’s impossible to improve further. Tech events also form an important part of my time, to be able to keep pace with the industry and talk to other developers about the call tracking space.

What top three websites can you be found browsing during your lunch hour?

BBC News Tech, The Drum and a lot of other pretty techy sites that I won’t bore you with.

What are your top three tips for someone looking to get their hands on a job like yours?

  • You need to constantly challenge yourself to solve problems – this is the only way you’ll be able to come up with innovative solutions
  • It sounds obvious but try and be creative. If you have an idea, it’s always possible to develop the technology to make it happen
  • Make sure you’re always speaking to people, especially your customers. It’s only by understanding your customers that you’ll be able to create products that they really want to use

Career-wise, where do you see yourself in three years time?

We’ve had amazing growth in the first five years of ResponseTap, I’m still really excited to grow the business even further. As we expand our product’s capabilities and increase the number of customers we work with, I look forward to developing even more innovative solutions for our customers and expanding the business even more.

Tell us one thing people at work don’t know about you?

I’m actually a fully qualified skydiver with over 600 jumps under my belt.

 

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