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Sayaka Kawashita

MBA/Marketing communications/strategy/localisation

Can work in or around Amsterdam

  • 52.37243
  • 4.89973
  • Suggested rate €500 / day
  • Experience 7+ years
Propose a project The project will begin once you accept Sayaka's quote.

This freelancer is available part-time (4 days per week) but hasn't confirmed their availability in over 7 days.

Part-time, 4 days per week

Propose a project The project will begin once you accept Sayaka's quote.

Location and workplace preferences

Location
Amsterdam, NH, Netherlands
Can work onsite in your office in
  • around Amsterdam and 50km

Preferences

Project length
  • ≤ 1 week
  • ≤ 1 month
  • Between 1-3 months
  • Between 3-6 months
  • ≥ 6 months
Business sector
  • Culture
  • Retail (Small Business)
  • E-commerce
  • Internet of Things (IoT)
  • Wine & Spirits
+8 other

Verifications

Freelancer code of conduct signed
Read the Malt code of conduct

Verified email

Languages

  • Japanese

    Native or bilingual

  • English

    Fluent

  • Dutch

    Basic

Categories

Skills (13)

Sayaka in a few words

Thinking as a local, understanding a consumer mindset, localizing marketing messages, understanding consumer behavior, visit retail outlets to see what people do and how they behave, learning from analyzing and interpreting data: these are among my strongest skills. Driving growth and marketing performance based on strategic, creative ideas and analysis is the driving force behind what I do best. Being pragmatic and result driven, I love to deliver more than was expected and, in doing so, pleasantly surprise customers and the people I work with. It is well worth to spend time and make a serious effort to make that happen. I enjoy working with people from all over the world, I have a well-developed cultural awareness and am not afraid to take the stage to present my ideas and share my thoughts on how to reach targets and objectives. I feel equally at home working in both new markets and mature markets.

Experience

Freelance

E-commerce

Marketing Consultant  - As a freelancer

Amsterdam, Netherlands

October 2020 - Today (2 years)

- Designing, developing and implementing brand strategy for a short-term and long-term
- Developing and implementing a marketing strategy and positioning including analysing a market, identifying a target and a key driver for conversion
- Executing, managing and observing a marketing and brand campaign
- Planning and executing events to increase the visibility and the awareness of the product
- Presenting and proposing a market-in idea for a product maker
- Planning and attending trade fairs to promote products

Results:
- Contributed to the 166.4% increase year-on-year in Japanese alcohol sake's export value
- Delivered a 150% increase in revenue in the Netherlands
- Increased the site visitation from 2.5% to 19% in two months
- Presented marketing analysis, market insight and brand strategy of Japanese alcohol sake in Europe to Diet members of Japanese government in September 2022
- Won a subsidy from National Tax Agency in Japan to promote sake to Europe in July 2022

Hero Gaming

Entertainment & Leisure

Head Of Marketing  - As a freelancer

Malmo, SN, Sweden

October 2020 - December 2021 (1 year and 2 months)

- Developed data-driven marketing and brand strategies including identifying targets, positioning and messaging and executed them for various products aligned with business objectives.
- Developed and executed communication deliverables for ATL and BTL
- Developed KPIs for short, middle and long terms to measure, analyse and optimise marketing performance, aligned with business objectives.
- Initiated research to identify market opportunities, analyse competitors, understand customer insights and built the value proposition of the products
- Organized and led (online) meetings with internal and external stakeholders including product teams to obtain input, create alignment and share information.
- Led and educated internal stakeholders about brand positioning and an identified messaging and discussed implementation across customer lifecycle touch-points

Results:
- Increased the interest in and intent to play our games from 4.5% to 58.6% in 3 months.
- Realized 400% traffic increase in website visitors and significantly increased conversion rate.
- Delivered a 200% increase in revenue in the targeted markets.
- Launched the first online casino TV and radio commercials in Japan, working exclusively with the largest casting agency in Japan.
- Generated 84K views on YouTube in 4 months after publishing a promotion video.

Booking.com

Travel & Tourism

Marketing Communications Manager

Amsterdam, Netherlands

November 2016 - October 2020 (3 years and 11 months)

- Enable rapid brand expansion at scale by adapting a global campaign toolkit.
- Prepare, plan and launch the Booking.com brand in new growth markets Japan, China and Indonesia including bespoke, culturally localized creative materials for online and offline channels.
- Promote brand awareness in new growth markets mentioned above.
- Manage a cross-functional team (Communications, PR, Media, Social Media, Product Management) to create and launch a loyalty program strategy.
- Build hypotheses and test creatives by analyzing research and data and by gathering input from local offices to boost customer acquisition by developing full-funnel, integration marketing communication strategies.
- Monitor and analyze campaigns and brand performance to improve and optimize offline and online channels for website visits, bookings and incremental ROI.
Result:
- Achieved the highest conversion growth for Japan among all 43 markets in Booking.com and
- Increased brand awareness by 35% across the APAC region.
- Testing creatives and analysing data resulted in improving brand/ communication strategies that delivered a 50% increase in brand sentiment.
- Implemented a loyalty program strategy (Genius program) that resulted in 20% increase in new registrations of users.
- Executed campaigns across 31 markets, achieving #1 brand position in European markets (UK, DE, FR, ES, IT) and top-3 brand position in USA and LATAM as a result of adapting a global campaign toolkit.

Booking.com

Travel & Tourism

Team Lead Copywriter

Amsterdam, NH, Netherlands

January 2016 - November 2016 (10 months)

- Build and lead the first localization copywriter team (5 people).
- Create content strategy maintaining voice consistency across pages and platforms for (9) Asian markets.
- Deliver presentations to the IT department to educate on and improve localization issues.
- Educate local office teams during (online) meetings and local office visits to update them on creating localized content, tone of voice, do's and don'ts in Asian markets.
- Analyze data and key metrics to measure the impact of copywriting techniques and transform insights into measurable ideas.
Results:
- Successfully built and developed this team that achieved the highest A/B test success rate among the IT department, 15% on average as compared to 5% by other teams (copywriting is integrated in the it department).
- Built an A/B test tool kit together with the developers so that copywriters can do A/B testing by themselves.
- Achieved highest individual success rate (23%) for A/B testing.

Booking.com

E-commerce Copywriter

Amsterdam, Netherlands

December 2015 - November 2016 (11 months)


•Established the new role, a localization copywriter, as the first non-native English copywriter in the company
•Collaborated closely with product owners, designers, developers and translators to localize our site in each Asian language. (Main focus: Japan and China)
•Crafted copy, both long and short form, across all pages and various platforms and ran an A/B test
•Attended the user test in Tokyo and prepared the copy and analyzed the result to understand how users' impression influences conversion and other key metrics by running an A/B experiment
•Ensured that our translations teams are provided with a sufficient amount of context (both conceptual and visual) for translating or transcreating ideas for their local audience

Toshiba - Toshiba

Marketing Communications Manager

Tokyo, Japan

July 2011 - December 2012 (1 year and 5 months)


- Design and implement short-term and long-term marketing strategies for Toshiba PCs.
- Create seasonal (spring, summer, and autumn/winter) brochures and related marketing collateral.
- Execute brand research and design brand concepts against the benchmark.
- Develop and optimize marketing communication and customer journey for retail channels.
- Contribute to business development and develop a marketing strategy for tablet-PCs, a new product at the time, in collaboration with internal and external stakeholders. Results:
- Developed a brochure that was published 3x per year in a circulation of 500,000 pieces.
- Implemented a new marketing communication strategy and customer journey concept across 4,200 outlets in Japan.
- Achieved highest sales in laptops ranking #1 among competitors in Japan.
- Contributed to the successful launch of tablet-PCs, at the time an untapped market segment, that became a bestseller compared to similar products from other companies.

Toshiba - Toshiba

Marketing Communications Specialist

Tokyo, Japan

April 2009 - June 2011 (2 years and 2 months)


- Work on domestic marketing communication for Toshiba laptops.
- Contribute to the overall campaign strategy for the three yearly campaigns in spring, summer, and autumn/winter for the laptop portfolio.
- Collaborate with internal and external teams and stakeholders and arrange group meetings to share customer requirements and create promotional toolkits.
- Research and verify product information and selling points for (new) products for brochures per product including exact specifications and verified connotations and develop marketing collateral including POP materials.
- Develop social media campaigns based on famous Japanese mascots/ characters.

Education