Are You Passionate About Helping Students Find Their Path to College and Career Success?

Encoura is looking for a VP of Marketing to own the growth initiatives for our Encourage high school student and educator programs, including the nationwide adoption of our Encourage student app. Reporting directly to the Chief Marketing Officer, you will oversee our B2C marketing strategy and execution. You will spearhead and support all student and educator-facing marketing initiatives to increase student engagement and program adoption. You will partner and work closely with the Product, Creative, Digital Ops, and ACT Marketing teams, so cross-functional collaboration is critical to success and enjoyment of this role.

This position will require strategic planning, a data-driven approach, student-centric attitude, creative energy, and a resourceful hands-on approach. We move fast and so should you! You will own all levers and aspects of student marketing, including paid acquisition, SEO/SEM/ASO, digital and social campaigns, lifecycle marketing, media placements, events, website evolution, and other channels and activities that you help define.

The VP should be a trusted thought leader, true people manager and developer of talent. We’re all here to help pursue our mission, and we need someone who is motivated to help students, passionate about education, a self-starter, flexible, organized, reliable, and can deal well with ambiguity. This leadership role requires the ability to both see the big picture and be willing to execute against Encoura’s business objectives.

A day in the life

• Build and grow a great team: Develop our existing team members, fill in any gaps where we need them to execute against our strategy, and build a culture of excellence; define roles and responsibilities for each position; manage professional development for all direct reports by setting clear goals, objectives, and career paths
• Drive all B2C marketing initiatives: achieve student, family and educator growth objectives, new customer acquisition, and engagement activities
• Own strategy execution: lead acquisition marketing efforts to build, grow and optimize all channels, including paid social, paid search, SEO, ASO, display, affiliate, direct mail, in-classroom, television and more
• Co-Lead Encourage brand strategy: in partnership with CMO and Creative team, build on, develop and execute on the overall brand strategy across paid and unpaid channels (including social media, PR and partnerships). Identify key brand pillars across our products and mission and develop innovative strategies to build on and reinforce them. 
• Work with our Create and Digital teams to execute a winning marketing strategy: product/growth marketing, positioning, messaging, demand generation, channel, content, sales enablement, partner marketing, social media, PR, AR and marketing operations
• Integrate deeply across the company: Marketing should be connected into everything we do! We want you to help ensure our teams across the company in content, product, design, engineering, support, sales, finance, operations and HR, are working with marketing to tell our story and put our programs in the hands (literally) of students.

Role progression and impact

• Within 1 month, you will learn all aspects of Encourage including products, teams, internal and external collaborations, company goals, and the importance of the connection to our higher ed products and services
• Within 3 months, you will be actively participating in planning and strategy for marketing and growing the Encourage mobile and web apps to students, families, and educators, as well as attending event(s) to promote the app and network with educators, including coordination with our parent company ACT
• Within 6 months, you will take the lead in making strategic decisions and generating new ideas around product/growth marketing, positioning, messaging, demand generation, channel, content, sales enablement, partner marketing, social media, PR, AR, and marketing operations
• Within 12 months, you will have launched full marketing campaigns to promote the Encourage program, created a strong network of educators and students who are active brand ambassadors, trained other teams in the company on the Encourage app and mission, collaborated with product to enact changes based on user feedback, integrated promotion of Encourage from higher education institutions, and developed proven growth of use among students, families, and educators

Experience

• 15+ years of experience with strong leadership skills; a track record of successfully leading and growing DTC businesses using data and analysis 
• Expert level knowledge of paid media channels, including: Paid Social, Paid Search, Affiliate, Display, ASO, Podcasts, Webinars, etc.
• Experience in mobile app user acquisition, and using the above channels to attract and convert students in our large ecosystem to Encourage users
• An understanding of marketing automation and site management (web analytics, a/b/n testing, tag management, content management); Experience with Salesforce Marketing Cloud a plus
• A creative and analytical mind with exceptional problem-solving skills 
• Strong leadership and communication skills 
• An entrepreneurial mindset 
• A passion for education and helping students find their ideal path to success
• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Communications or a related field (MBA a plus) 

What sets us apart

• Mission driven culture
• Comprehensive health and benefits package
• 401k company match that vests immediately upon participation
• Paid holidays and a generous PTO policy
• Paid parental leave

About:

Encoura’s mission is to empower students and institutions to create meaningful connections so everyone can make the most informed decisions to achieve their goals. Since 1972, the company has evolved its products and services to better represent the link between students and higher education institutions and to create the highest probability of student success.

With the launch of the Encoura platform in 2017, the company provides custom technology solutions that combine Eduventures research, data science, strategic enrollment, and multichannel marketing services to over 2,000 higher ed institutions. The company also offers myOptions® Encourage™—the nation’s largest free college and career planning program used by millions of high school students and educators nationwide.

Encoura is an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) employer. It is the policy of the Company to provide equal employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, protected veteran or disabled status, or genetic information. All applicants must be eligible to work in the U.S.

Encoura endeavors to make reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities and disabled veterans pursuant to applicable federal and state law. If you are an individual with a disability and require reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process or are limited in the ability and need an alternative method for applying, please contact the Talent Team.

To review our privacy policy, please click this link: https://encoura.org/privacy-policy/

More Information on Encoura

Encoura operates in the Edtech industry. The company is located in Austin, TX and Boston, MA. It has 188 total employees.