Technology, Information and Media
Active

Melina Cruickshank

Executive Product & Marketing Leader - CEO, CMO

About Me

Strategic C-suite executive with 25+ years’ experience driving growth for category-leading consumer technology businesses across Australia and the UK. A proven leader at REA Group, Domain Group and Fairfax Media, specialising in monetisation of double-sided marketplaces and subscription models. Background primarily centres on product, marketing and data. I have experience in several ASX-listed businesses with P&L ownership. I’ve led large, cross-functional teams across product, marketing, data and Go-To-Market channels through complex and regulated competitor environments to significantly grow market share. My early-career experience includes e-commerce start-ups, media agencies and environmental sustainability roles, providing a broad foundation in stakeholder management and fast-paced operations. With a growth mindset, I have a proven ability to develop and inspire teams to achieve ambitious outcomes, and believe high quality product is central to culture and company success. Over the past decade, my work has focused on the strategic importance of ML-powered experiences and I was accepted into the AI for Strategic Business Impact Executive course at Stanford University in 2024.

Jurisdiction

Australia

Experience

Seniority LevelExecutive
Years of Experience20+ years
Current StatusActive
Chief Product & Audience Officer REA Group
2022 - Present

I held an Executive leadership role reporting to the CEO, with accountability for Group Product, Marketing, Data and Engineering (~750 people) leading a multi-market, multi-product portfolio. I also led the PropTrack product and sales division in conjunction with my CPAO role. Responsible for scaling and commercialising the multi-brand portfolio at scale. Led product marketing strategy and execution for some of Australia’s largest consumer web and app platforms, including realestate.com.au, realcommercial.com.au, flatmates.com.au, and property.com.au. Held divisional P&L accountability across multiple product lines spanning data and analytics subscriptions through to premium, high margin advertising tiers, delivering sustained double-digit yield growth over multiple years

CEO and Company Director PropTrack
2020 - 2025

- Two years after REA acquired PropTrack, I was tasked with integrating and scaling the business. This meant resetting the strategy, redefining the portfolio of products and platform and building new growth through AI-powered audience models. - Repositioned and scaled PropTrack from a single product into a leading property data and analytics business, defining target markets, customer segments, and value propositions while establishing disciplined go-to-market planning across sales, marketing, and customer success to support REA Group’s valuation models and predictive intelligence subscriptions. - Drove the growth of new revenue streams with multiple Big Four financial institutions. Built and led a high-performing, multidisciplinary team with deep property data expertise across AI-driven data science, economics, brand, product and price indexing capabilities. - Five million Australian homes are tracked on realestate.com.au via the 'realEstimate', powered by

Chief Marketing Officer REA Group |
2019 - 2025

- Recruited from Domain, I led the transformation of REA Group’s marketing team - shifting from a resource heavy, agency-led model to a technology-driven, modern marketing division, integrating tightly with the product teams. - Championed AI and MarTech-driven transformation to accelerate web and app member acquisition. Over six years, our teams scaled monthly visits across core consumer platforms from ~70M to ~150M, four times the nearest competitor with a clear #1 market position. - Strengthened unique audience lead and brand equity to record levels. Built and led a high-performing marketing and data prime analytics team. - Doubled audience market share over six years while operating on static budgets.

Chief Marketing Officer Domain Group |
2014 - 2018

Domain Group is a leading Australian property technology and services company that operates as a digital marketplace for real estate. Domain.com.au is a significant player in the Australian property market, providing services for buying, renting, and selling property. I reported to the CEO and was a member of the executive team that accelerated Domain Group through a significant period of growth, culminating in the public listing on the ASX at a $2.2B valuation in 2017. In this role, I was specifically responsible for: • Audience, membership growth and engagement (6.6M consumers) • Consumer sentiment and market share • Consumer Go-To-Market operational planning In that growth phase, I led the establishment of a new Consumer division spanning brand, Go-To-Market and product marketing to accelerate the shift to app-prime adoption and data-led lifecycle optimisation. I re-set subscriber and marketing strategy around machine learning models and advanced analytics. • Scaled PriceFinder into a subscriber-led property technology business, evolving the product to a SaaS model with materially stronger analytics. • Delivered ~25% YoY revenue growth over four years with flat resourcing through tighter operating cadence, experimentation and audience targeting. • Closed the audience gap to REA via an integrated identity and acquisition strategy that improved performance across the consumer funnel. • I was subsequently hired by REA Group to run their Consumer division.

Education

Degree of Police Studies/ CriminologyMonash University
1992 - 1996

Skills

Core skills0
Languages1

Languages

English