Trainline case study: 18 performance marketing hires with Acquire Search
When Trainline needed to scale its performance marketing teams, a gap in specialist internal recruitment threatened to slow progress.
Acquire Search partnered with the business to keep hiring moving, embedding marketing recruitment expertise within its existing talent team and delivering 18 hires across performance marketing.
Originally published in 2019. Acquire Search was previously known as Acquire Digital Talent. Results and stakeholder feedback relate to the original engagement.
The brief: keep marketing hiring moving
Trainline’s train and coach booking platform brought together technology, product and marketing to make travel simpler for its customers.
Supporting that ambition required specialist people across customer acquisition, engagement and retention.
Its established in-house recruitment team was managing demand across Development, Product and Data Science. However, the business lacked a dedicated digital marketing recruitment specialist during a period of growth across:
PPC and Paid Search
Paid Social
Programmatic Display
SEO
Affiliate Marketing
Ad Operations
Mobile Marketing
Trainline was searching for a Talent Acquisition Manager with the digital marketing knowledge and candidate network to support these teams. While that search continued, hiring managers still needed to fill business-critical roles.
The brief was to bridge that gap with someone who understood the disciplines, could build credibility with stakeholders and could identify relevant candidates quickly.
Our approach: specialist recruitment embedded in the team
Trainline engaged Acquire Search on a retained basis, with founder Alex Marriner working as an extension of its internal talent team.
The arrangement gave Alex time to understand individual hiring managers’ requirements, build working relationships and conduct targeted searches across the digital marketing market.
Understanding the detail behind each brief
Performance marketing roles demand different combinations of channel expertise, technical knowledge and commercial judgement.
Alex worked closely with hiring managers to establish what each appointment needed to deliver. That understanding informed the search and candidate assessment process, helping managers spend their interview time with people whose experience matched the brief.
Reaching specialist marketing talent
Acquire drew on its digital marketing network and targeted market research to identify candidates from leading technology and app-first businesses.
The search covered multiple marketing disciplines, including technical and content SEO, paid acquisition and mobile marketing. This breadth allowed Trainline to work with one specialist partner across several teams.
Making candidate assessment easier for hiring managers
As part of the engagement, Alex used video interviews to conduct initial candidate screening.
Hiring managers could review these interviews at a convenient time, gaining more context before deciding whom to invite to Trainline’s Central London headquarters.
This reduced the need for repeated introductory telephone interviews and supported more informed decisions about which candidates should progress.
The results: 18 hires across performance marketing
Acquire delivered 18 hires across Trainline’s performance marketing teams, supporting the people responsible for customer acquisition, engagement and retention campaigns.
At the time the case study was originally published:
All 18 hires remained with the business.
Some had been promoted within their first few months.
Recruitment had continued while Trainline searched for its permanent Talent Acquisition Manager and throughout the successful candidate’s notice period.
The engagement gave Trainline access to specialist marketing recruitment expertise while it strengthened its internal capability.
A partnership that continued beyond the initial brief
After Trainline’s new Talent Acquisition Manager joined, Acquire continued supporting recruitment across Marketing and other areas of the business.
At the time of original publication, Acquire remained Trainline’s only external agency partner for digital marketing hires.
The relationship had developed from an immediate resourcing need into a broader partnership built on sector knowledge, stakeholder trust and consistent delivery.
What Trainline’s leadership said:
Working as an extension of the internal team...
“Alex has been an embedded Consultant with us at Trainline as we scaled our Marketing function. Alex has consistently delivered results, hired niche roles within some very competitive sectors, and also been a great external representative of Trainline's brand. His domain knowledge within the Marketing sector is excellent, and thus his credibility with internal stakeholders was evident quickly. I would gladly work with Alex again in the future, he has been very easy to work with overall.”
— HR & Talent Director
Recruiting across technical and content SEO
“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Alex on a number of SEO roles covering both technical and content specialisms. What’s truly impressed me his is dedication to teasing out the requirements of the role but that of the candidate as well.
Through his huge network of contacts, we’ve filled the final few vacancies in the team fast and with great talent. He’s active on all platforms and incredibly invested in digital which helps with a broad understanding of the industry and trends. He’s been incredibly supportive with a hands-on approach throughout the hiring process. He’s also brought a whole new level of engagement not only internally but outwardly facing as well through content and social. He’s a professional from start to finish and his experience and knowledge has help close several hires.”
— Head of SEO
Bringing relevant candidates to interview
“Alex is a top-class recruiter. He understands digital marketing better than most and with the right input, can find relevant & highly talented candidates quickly. Alex asks us the right questions and helps filter ahead of interview stage so when I am meeting a candidate, I'm confident that person is a good fit with experience that fits the brief. I would not hesitate in recommending Alex (with his huge network of digital marketers and in-depth understanding of the sector) to any business looking to replace and/or scale their digital marketing headcount.”
— Head of Paid Search
Building your Marketing & Growth team?
Acquire Search recruits specialist and leadership talent for scaling DTC and consumer brands across Marketing & Growth, Sales & Commercial, and Operations & Supply Chain.
Our marketing expertise spans Performance Marketing, CRM & Lifecycle, Ecommerce, Brand & Marketing, Creative & Content, and Marketing Leadership.
Through Exclusive Search, Retained Search and Co-Branded Search, we help businesses identify and secure the people needed for their next stage of growth.
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