Open to senior marketing leadership roles

Ian McLoughlin

Marketing Leader · Growth, Product & Lifecycle · MBA · PMP

I turn what customers tell me into revenue the business can count on, then build the teams, programs and technology to keep it growing.

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1,000×

Growth of a new digital marketplace I led, from a side project into a core revenue line.

Marketing professionals I led across operations, product marketing, lifecycle, eCommerce, analytics, events and creative.

Years turning customer insight into growth, from the retail floor to the marketing leadership team.

Business models led: B2B, B2C, SaaS subscription and digital marketplace.

About

Customer insight, turned into growth.

I'm a senior marketing leader with more than two decades of experience across B2B, B2C, subscription and marketplace businesses. My work spans growth strategy, brand, product and SaaS marketing, digital transformation and customer experience.

I've led a multidisciplinary team with P&L responsibility, covering marketing operations, lifecycle marketing, eCommerce, analytics, merchandising and creative. I led the move to an enterprise marketing automation and CRM platform, building the segmentation, automated journeys and attribution the business could scale on.

My career started on the retail floor and the phones, helping customers find exactly what they needed. That habit of listening to customers still drives every plan I build. I also bring an MBA in Marketing and Business Analytics from Villanova, and two music degrees from Penn State.

Experience

From the phones to the leadership team

22 years at J.W. Pepper & Son, the nation's largest sheet music retailer. Every chapter came with more scope, more people and more of the business to grow.

2019 – 2026
Exton, PA

Senior Marketing Director, Growth, Product & Marketplace Strategy

J.W. Pepper & Son, Inc. · The nation's largest sheet music distributor

Led a multidisciplinary marketing team with P&L responsibility, spanning marketing operations, product marketing, merchandising, lifecycle, eCommerce, analytics, events and creative.
Led marketplace strategy and digital transformation that grew the digital marketplace into a core revenue line.
Built CRM segmentation, personalization and automated lifecycle programs to strengthen customer retention.
Led go-to-market and customer acquisition for CutTime, a cloud-based SaaS platform for school music programs.
Directed enterprise adoption of marketing automation and CRM for segmentation, automated journeys, attribution and reporting.
Built and launched My Score, a self-publishing platform for music creators.
Owned catalog strategy for print and digital catalogs, using testing and customer analytics to improve reach and efficiency.
Drove international growth through localized digital marketing, SEO, paid media and content.

2012 – 2019

Manager, Product Development & Product Sales

J.W. Pepper & Son, Inc.

Expanded and commercialized the product portfolio, growing product revenue.
Co-developed the Print-on-Demand service, creating a new revenue stream.
Grew digital product sales and established digital delivery as a core channel.
Grew the self-publishing division to diversify the company's sources of new music.
Introduced Agile workflows and automation that greatly increased product creation capacity without adding headcount.

2003 – 2012

Publishing, Digital Product & Customer Experience Leadership

J.W. Pepper & Son, Inc.

Led Wingert-Jones Publications, overseeing publishing operations, repertoire and composer relationships.
Contributed to ePrint, one of the company's first digital sheet music platforms, and designed a faster title-ingestion process.
Worked directly with educators and musicians in retail and phone-order roles, building a ground-level view of customer needs.

How I lead

The best idea in the room can come from anyone. My job is to find it and make it win.

I built a culture where every idea was welcome, and paired it with a clear expectation that our work had to drive sales and profit. Both were judged through one lens: what our customers told us they needed.

The lens

Voice of the customer

Every idea and every decision started with what customers told us, through sales data, customer research, direct conversations and the frontline teams who talk to them every day.

Culture

Every idea is welcome

Product, creative, content, data and digital specialists all had a seat at the table. The best ideas came from that mix, and people brought them because they knew they'd be heard.

Accountability

Drive sales and profit

A good idea still had to earn its place. Every campaign needed a clear path to revenue and margin before it moved forward, and it was measured against that after launch.

01
Open floor
Ideas come from everyone on the team. No idea is too small to put on the table.
02
Creative brief
I required a written brief for every campaign: audience, goal, timing, budget and how we'd measure it. No flying by the seat of our pants.
03
My decision
I decided what moved forward now, what waited for a better moment, and what we passed on, based on the brief and the profit case.
04
Build together
The whole team delivers on one timeline, with clear owners and deadlines.
05
Measure and improve
After every campaign we looked at the results and fed what we learned into the next brief.

Step 5 feeds step 1. That's why these campaigns got stronger year after year.

Insights

Notes on Leadership

A writing series on how leaders listen, adapt and help people move forward.

No. 1 · Oct 30, 2026 · 1 min read

Your Experience Isn't a Formula

Years of experience should give you perspective, and enough humility to recognize that your experience is yours. Real help starts with understanding what someone else is facing.

Read the article →

No. 2 · Coming soon

Empathy Is Not Weakness

The next note in the series is on its way.

Expertise

What I bring to a leadership team

Core strengths

Growth Strategy
Go-to-Market
Product Marketing
Customer Experience
Digital Transformation
Marketing Operations
CRM Strategy
Cross-Functional Leadership
Program & Project Management

Marketing & CRM

Braze, Salesforce, SugarCRM, GA4, Google Ads

Data & BI

Databricks, Power BI, Tableau, Oracle, Excel

Product & Delivery

Jira, Rally, ClickUp, Agile, Scrum

ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, NotebookLM, Abacus.AI

Education & Leadership

Credentials

MBA, Marketing & Business Analytics

Villanova University

M.M. & B.M., Trumpet Performance

Pennsylvania State University

Project Management Professional

PMP since 2022. Agile and Scrum delivery for complex, cross-functional programs.

Board of Directors

Music Publishers Association, 2020 – 2026