Overview
Position Summary
Reporting to the Senior Director, Digital Marketing Initiatives (DMI), the Marketing Manager is an important member of the Digital Marketing Initiatives (DMI) team.
The DMI team seeks to implement a unified strategy that focuses on both increasing alumni engagement and increasing donor counts. The unit oversees broad-based alumni and development communications across multiple channels, online programming and engagement, and is a leader in implementing and using enterprise-level technology shared across the Office of Alumni and Development (OAD). The goals of the unit include conveying value, benefits, and opportunities to alumni, creating a holistic communication strategy around development and engagement, and fostering a culture of impact that benefits the University and its alumni and donors.
The Marketing Manager fulfills a critical role within a matrixed environment and will oversee the strategy, implementation, and execution of central digital marketing campaigns through email, social media, SMS, and web platforms. The individual will also be DMI’s primary liaison supporting partner school and department-specific digital marketers at OAD, and serve as a project manager on initiatives that impact over 380,000 alumni and donors across Columbia.
Responsibilities
Responsibilities include, but are not limited to the following:
- Works in close collaboration with the Columbia Alumni Association (CAA) and Annual Fund Programs (AFP) teams to amplify broad-based messaging that drives alumni and donor engagement, fundraising, and stewardship.
- Employs a creative, user experience approach to developing new marketing processes and campaigns. Projects include but are not limited to Columbia Giving Day and other central engagement and giving initiatives, setting up an email preference center, and managing the implementation of automated email marketing journeys.
- Acts as a subject matter expert on the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform and can facilitate high-level needs and solutions between analytics, technology, and communications teams.
- Identifies and implements strategies that optimize email, social, and web campaign performance for measurable engagement and fundraising outcomes.
- Contributes to the development and marketing of OAD’s external-facing websites (Columbia Giving, Columbia Alumni Association, and Giving Day.)
- Establishes meaningful goals and benchmarks, and guides reporting on the impact and ROI of the DMI team’s digital marketing efforts.
- Collaborates with the Insights & Analytics team in assessing and providing data-driven strategic direction for digital marketing campaigns.
- Serves as a strategic liaison to school and departmental partners in demonstrating and communicating the best practices and value-add of broad-based or universal initiatives.
- Develops and executes a paid social media strategy to extend reach and program visibility for OAD broad-based marketing campaigns and school-specific campaigns in partnership with AFP.
- Prepares, executes, and tracks assigned projects coordinating with internal partners and external vendors supporting email, web, and paid media platforms.
- Fosters a culture of documentation for new campaigns, onboarding, best practices, and internal processes.
- Opportunity to manage and mentor email marketers and support teammate growth within OAD and the larger Columbia community.
- Performs other marketing projects as needed.
Minimum Qualifications
Bachelor’s degree required. A minimum of two to four years of related work experience (i.e., digital marketing, communications, annual giving, non-profit management/fundraising) required. Experience with CRM tools and marketing automation platforms (Salesforce preferred). The ideal candidate excels in collaborating with a wide range of partners and demonstrates a passion for digital marketing and creatively proposing new solutions and ways of thinking. Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously, set deadlines, determine priorities and monitor results required; a high level of proficiency with analyzing and segmenting data in Excel and other spreadsheet tools; experience in supervising staff is a plus, planning and managing programs, strong verbal skills and attention to detail and follow up, excellent organizational skills and a high degree of flexibility and initiative required; and excellent writing skills required; position may require longer hours during peak marketing seasons, including some evening work.
Preferred Qualifications
Work experience in higher educational institution, or other complex organization, highly preferred.
Other Requirements
Must have the ability to manage relationships with faculty, students, staff, and alumni and have the temperament to work skillfully with a diverse population.
Equal Opportunity Employer / Disability / Veteran
Columbia University is committed to the hiring of qualified local residents.