The Vice President, Consumer Marketing is a key revenue and profit driver for Empowered, with primary responsibility for filling the top of the funnel (driving new customer acquisitions), helping drive conversion from prospect to student, and helping drive graduation success. This person will leverage a wide variety of offline and online Marketing vehicles, including proven-effective consumer advertising and media including e-mail Marketing, SEO/SEM, Affiliate/Aggregator and display web marketing, etc. This work will require close collaboration with multiple functions inside the company, including Corporate Communications, Brand Marketing, Academic Affairs, Product, Prospect/Customer Care, and the Executive team, as well as, close collaboration and partnership with external agencies and consulting partners.
At a high level, this position will drive (or co-drive) activities around Acquisition, Lifecycle Marketing and Business Intelligence. This person will own the responsibility of attracting prospects, helping turn them into students, and helping support them through graduation – along with driving the market research, data gathering and analysis needed to enable us to make smart business decisions along the way.
Scope of Responsibilities
- Acquisition Planning – Work closely with a variety of functional Acquisition Marketing colleagues, Corporate Communications, and outside agencies, to help shape and develop an annual integrated Marketing plan, leveraging a wide range of both Digital and conventional Marketing tools, designed to drive new member acquisition. This work will include optimizing the online Digital Marketing mix, including Online Display, Retargeting, Email, SEO/SEM, Affiliate Marketing, Mobile and Social Media. Drive a strong Test-and-Learn culture within Empowered, balanced with strong prioritization skills to generate key insights. Evaluate the financial viability of new promotions to ensure profitable Marketing campaigns. Present updates to Senior Management on price/offer test results, upcoming test plans, and rollout recommendations.
- Campaign Planning – Manage the planning, scheduling and execution of programs and campaigns on time, on target and on budget through effective planning, logistics and implementation. Act as a champion within the organization to set appropriate Cost-per-Order targets across all sources of acquisition based on LTV analysis to insure long term health of customer files.
- Lifecycle Marketing – Develop price/offer/conversion strategies that drive new customer acquisition and maximize Customer Lifetime Value across all Marketing channels. Working closely with the VP Prospect/Customer Care, establish, communicate and lead strategic priorities all the way through final production to ensure that the promotions are relevant to acquiring the target consumer, and consistent with delivering broader short/long-term brand and financial objectives.
- Business Intelligence – Responsible for enhancing company-wide Direct Marketing competencies and “Best Practices” (e.g., Direct Mail, E-Mail, Telemarketing/Customer Care, etc.) by overseeing Analytics and Reporting information systems. This area also includes all Marketing/Insights consumer research functions.
- Contributor to Brand Building and Public Relations Activities – Responsible for driving and/or working cross functionally on such critical Brand projects as:
- Finalization of all visual voice/tone/brand elements
- Entire Orientation/Onboarding experience
- Managing social media channels (Facebook Page; Twitter)
- Management of portals/microsites
- Deployment of CAA talent (e.g. A-list Celebrity Tweeting)
- Guidance/Assessment product and prospect experience
Candidate Profile
Experience Base
- General Experience – The candidate will also have general project management, marketing P&L management and consumer product/brand management experience. Also, experience in marketing communication, PR, positioning or branding work, agency management or professional/medical marketing would be a plus. An undergraduate college degree is required, and an MBA is preferred.
- Direct Marketing – Significant DM/DR experience, leading a large-scale, nationwide customer acquisition/retention effort, across multiple channels, with a Marketing mix that includes a variety of communication vehicles. Relevant industries include E-Commerce, Education, Retail, Financial Services, Media, Publishing, and Technology.
- E-Commerce/Digital Experience – Candidates should have 10+ experience managing an online business (actually selling products or services) or an online retail channel (for a business selling in other channels, too), and developing Digital Marketing plans to drive that business (with an understanding of the current eCRM marketplace and agencies/suppliers). Must be familiar with a variety of Interactive/Digital Marketing tools, including E-Mail, Display Advertising, Affiliate, SEO/SEM, Social Media, and Mobile.
- Functional/Team Development – Demonstrated success building Organizations through process design, organizational development, recruiting and training high-performing Marketing teams.
Skill Set
- World-class Direct Marketing and Digital skills (technically proficient)
- Innovative and creative thinking (fresh, imaginative thinking)
- Organizational leadership and team development (leads through influence)
- Intellectual horsepower (highly analytical & strategic)
- Drives for results in prioritized manner (balanced sense of urgency)
- Listening skills, minimal ego (listen first, then respond)
- Complex problem-solving (explores all options, then converges)
- Organized and attention-to-detail approach (strong tactical execution)
- Highly resourceful (stretches people and money; compresses time)
- Collaborative (works with peers across many functions within the company)