Biography
Lutz is passionate about Marketing – understanding how consumers make choices and then influencing those choices with creative solutions that improve sales and strengthen relationships with customers. Lutz has an extensive senior marketing background, primarily in the global financial services industry, with deep knowledge of direct marketing and product development. As a leader, Lutz can rapidly absorb large amounts of information and draw strategic conclusions and recommendations, and motivate a team to scale those plans from inception to execution that influence millions.
Most recently, Lutz was Chief Marketing Officer of Higher One, a FinTech company that was the largest digital-only banking provider with over 2M accounts serving students at over 500 universities and which had previously come under heavy regulatory scrutiny for its prior marketing practices. As part of a new executive team, he revamped and re-energized the Marketing organization, led the development and launch of new and unique product features that increased engagement, and ultimately helped to sell the business to BankMobile (a division of Customers Bank). There he continued as CMO for an 8-month transition period during which he oversaw the rebranding of multiple product lines and increased NPS for its flagship product, BankMobile Vibe, by 15%.
Prior to that, Lutz joined PetCareRx as CMO to turn around a 15-year old online retailer of pet supplies and within 3 months had created a new consumer strategy that led to the launch of a new website with extensive personalization and deep integration of commerce and content. That strategy helped the retailer move from losing money to breaking even within a year. At PayPal, Lutz developed a loyalty program for its best customers, which raised net promoter scores (NPS) of that segment by 5 points within six months of launch. At Wells Fargo, he took on the leadership of a flagging marketing organization and within a year had built a team that developed and executed break-through campaigns to acquire personal lending customers. At Washington Mutual, he introduced a new segmentation strategy to target recently acquired credit card customers, which was based on behavior rather than risk and which improved the performance of early-life activation and utilization programs. And at Citibank, he spent 10 years in startup-like roles of increasing responsibility, launching new products and businesses in the North America, Latin America, and European markets.
Lutz grew up in Germany, Belgium, and Arizona, and speaks fluent German and French. He received an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BA in Business from Arizona State University. He lives in the DC area with his wife Jane and their black Labrador Mario, and when he’s not visiting his 23-year old son Alex at Montana State University, Lutz is a fervent tennis player and a prolific amateur photographer whose works have graced album covers, billboards, and corporate offices. He also recently taught a Digital Marketing course at Southern Connecticut State University.