Cheltenham, England

Matt ByrneDigital leader turning strategy into profitable outcomes.

Commercially focused Digital & Ecommerce leader with 25+ years' experience delivering growth across travel, retail, utilities and financial services. Strategic leadership with a hands-on approach — building teams, managing agencies and driving complex projects from concept to delivery.

25+
Years in digital & ecommerce
+40%
Conversion uplift from website rebuild
32% → 45%
Digital share of company revenue
-15%
Acquisition cost, +17% ROI

Experience

Track record

  1. April 2026 — Present

    JG Travel Group

    Digital Delivery Manager

    • Lead relationships with digital agencies and technology partners, prioritising delivery roadmaps and ensuring successful execution of strategic projects.
    • Translate business requirements into technical solutions and provide leadership reporting on progress, risks and outcomes.
  2. November 2014 — April 2026

    JG Travel Group

    eCommerce Manager

    • Built and scaled internal digital capability, growing the team from 2 to 4 to support long-term business growth.
    • Led implementation of CRM, Trustpilot integration and migration to Force24 — lifting company rating from 3.0 to 4.2.
    • Delivered a complete website rebuild programme, increasing conversion rates by almost 40%.
    • Established a company-wide CRO programme, replicated across multiple brands.
    • Consolidated SEO and paid search into a hybrid model, reducing acquisition costs by 15% while improving ROI by 17% via agency.
    • Increased digital contribution of company revenue from 32% to 45%, and website conversion from 0.38% to 0.55%.
    • Increased email engagement from 28% to 39% through automation and segmentation.
  3. 2007 — 2013

    Scotts of Stow

    Senior Online Marketing Executive

    • Managed online marketing strategy across 13 brands covering PPC, SEO, affiliate and email channels.
    • Grew affiliate revenue from £300k to £1.2m within two years.
    • Delivered £1.6m email revenue in 2012/13.
    • Introduced checkout improvements increasing conversion rates by 15%.
  4. 2006 — 2007

    Simply Switch

    Online Marketing Executive

    • Managed all online acquisition channels including PPC, affiliates, email and SEO.
    • Increased energy switch applications from 226 to 1,505 while reducing CPA from £71.95 to £17.28.
    • Increased affiliate demand by 30%, delivering £90k additional revenue.
    • Increased online conversion rates from 4% to 6.2%.

Earlier experience is detailed on LinkedIn.

Recommendations

What colleagues, clients and leaders say

Verbatim recommendations from LinkedIn.

JG

James Gambling

Experienced CMO | Marketing Director | Customer Marketing specialist

I worked with Matt at JG Travel Group in the Marketing team. Matt was our E-Commerce Manager and responsible for the development, operation and performance of our 3 websites (at the time). During our time together Matt took ownership of the specification and implementation of new websites for Just Go! and National Holidays. Matt's role included speccing the sites, liaison with UX design teams and working as our busin…

DC

Danny Crowe

Customer insight and retention strategist. Fractional CMO/CCO. Board Advisor.

Matt was great to work with. You could trust him to solve problems, produce great ideas and was extremely dependable. He was great at finding ways to solve challenges especially working with a disparate set of marketing technology. His digital marketing knowledge is of the highest level. I would genuinely recommend him.

SF

Sophie Ferris

Head of Marketing at Bolthole Retreats

Matt and I worked together for more than seven years. Throughout all the shifts in our organisation (and there were many!), our working relationship remained strong, built on mutual respect, a shared commitment to get results, and plenty of laughs along the way. Matt's knack for storytelling is quite unrivalled! Matt excels when given autonomy and a clear objective. He is fiercely independent, choosing always to let…

AF

Andy Freeth

CEO | Travel Industry | Tour Operator | Specialist Luxury Travel

Matt was part of the marketing team at JG Travel Group during my time as CEO, and I saw many of the qualities that others consistently highlight. He has a strong grounding across SEO, paid search and CRM, combined with a practical, solution-oriented approach. Matt takes the time to understand the wider context and commercial impact, and applies his expertise in a considered and effective way. He is dependable, straig…

ME

Matt Eastlake

Founder at Interview Performance | Career & Leadership Mentor

I was fortunate to have Matt on the team. He was proactive and solution orientated. I always believed that he was thinking about the bigger picture and how the development work he was doing impacted the wider organisation and also our budgets. He was a good listener, hence considered all angles before talking through his plan. I also liked his humour, positive attitude and ability to get on with everyone.

MH

Matthew Herbert

Experienced commercial lead in leisure and tourism

During the two years I worked with Matt I always found him to be dependable and trustworthy. Matt was pivotal in assisting us to launch a new brand and new website to complement this. Day to day Matt was the go to guy to manage five websites and ensured all email comms featured relevant information, was delivered to the correct audience and in line with timescales to compliment the business. Matt's technical understa…

Capabilities

What I bring

  • Digital Strategy
  • Ecommerce
  • CRO Programmes
  • UX/UI
  • Digital CRM Implementation
  • Team Leadership
  • Website Rebuilds & Migrations
  • SEO / GEO Strategy
  • PPC
  • Email Automation
  • Stakeholder Management
  • Revenue Growth
  • Web & Marketing Analytics
  • Agency Management

Education

University of the West of England

BA (Hons) Business Administration

Recommendations

13 recommendations from colleagues, leaders and agency partners.

Read recommendations