Head of Digital - WorldStrides Marketing

The Company

WorldStrides is the leader in experiential learning—taking students of all ages around the globe and into some of the most important learning adventures of their lives—with the goal of making them career and life ready for future success.  Our teachers, professors, college administrators, parents and most importantly students give us consistently high satisfaction ratings.

We place a top priority on personal attention and thoughtful service and focus relentlessly on the details. We believe it's not just the exposure to new places and opportunities that changes students' lives, but also the kind of experience they have that has the most impact. We embed interactive learning activities into all of our programs so students genuinely connect with their experiences and retain them.

How do you put your finger on a company’s essence? It's DNA? At WorldStrides you might say that we are passionately by, for, and about empowering students to grow and change. To explore every corner of the world and their personal reflections so they can become all they can be.

The Position

WorldStrides is a strongly mission driven company with a unique set of opportunities. The company is seeking an exceptional leader for the role of Head of Digital. Reporting directly to the CMO, and serving as a key member of the senior management team, the Head of Digital’s primary responsibility is to drive tangible business results (increased revenue and EBITDA) through a consumer-centric approach to using digital technology and digital marketing across the different business units and product lines.

The Head of Digital is an expert in website design, app development, digital marketing, and social media who will be responsible for the design and implementation of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy for the company that drives revenue growth through driving customer awareness, increasing engagement, and delivering a best-in-class experience. They will lead innovation using digital technology across the business and solidify the functional digital strategy to drive change across the organization.

He/she must assume the voice of the customer and infuse this voice into decisions made across the marketing team. The Head of Digital role represents a singular experience for an “A” caliber individual to make a great impact.

The successful candidate will have a passion for education and our mission of enabling students to be career and life ready by providing them with the skills, resources and experiences they need to successfully achieve their goals. 

The candidate may live elsewhere but must be willing to travel and spend a substantial amount of time in at the WorldStrides headquarters office in Charlottesville, VA and other offices in the DC area.

Key Relationships

Reports to:                                         Chief Marketing Officer

Direct Reports:                                 Director, Digital

                                                                UX/UI designers

                                                                SEM/O specialists

                                                                Digital Designers

                                                                Website design

Other Key Relationships:             IT, Sales, external agencies

Roles and Responsibilities

• Define and manage the development and implementation of all digital customer acquisition activities. Set direction for targeted customer acquisition strategy for digital and social media marketing campaigns, and messaging using an iterative, data-driven approach across products.
• Design, develop and manage the digital product strategic roadmap with a particular focus on developing a leading edge website design and capabilities as well as the development of app that can support the teacher and student/parent experience through from before during and after programs as well as over time across multiple programs. Work closely with the IT team to develop and implement.
• Translate customer interaction and engagement opportunities into executable business requirements that ensures a high quality and intuitive user experience.
• Define a transformational digital roadmap aligned to the corporate strategy to maximize operational efficiencies, market awareness and customer engagement
• Provide strategic insight, business case justifications and return on investment analysis for IT spending and initiatives
• Manage the digital lifecycle; from concept, throughout the build and test phases, until launch and maintenance
• Measure return on investment and engagement for digital marketing activities including establishing procedures to track and monitor digital marketing effectiveness and measure actual performance against planned performance. Plan, test, measure and iterate to optimize the marketing investment.

Ideal Candidate

• Degree in Marketing, Communications, or related course of study (with advanced degree or MBA preferred.)  
• Broad marketing skill-set with depth of experience across various digital channels, including website design and app development as well as display, video, search, email, social and mobile marketing tactics.
• Success in leading transformative change in an established service related business focused on consumer acquisition and retention marketing tactics. Extensive familiarity with using customer segmentation and data, test, target and measure marketing campaigns and advanced, innovative digital strategies.
• “Hands On” - willing to get down in the weeds and get their hands dirty in addition to directing the team.  Works hard and is passionate about not just winning, but in doing what it takes to win.  
• Good blend of strategic and tactical with strong customer focused orientation.
• Results oriented and super accountable to delivering results.
• Systems thinker - understand how disparate marketing capabilities can be brought to bear to form a compelling customer journey.
• Execution focused - organized, process driven and knows how to get things done on time and with high quality.
• Data driven - someone who is passionate about using data to driven decisions and who has the chops to interpret data correctly to glean business insights.
• Unifier - blend the disparate elements of the marketing team into one unit.  Celebrate successes while also providing tough but fair coaching to get the team to succeed.
• Selfless leader who puts his/her team first, leads by example and shares the recognition spotlight with others.

Critical Competencies for Success

Leadership & Leading Change: Recognizes, articulates and evangelizes the opportunity to improve and enhance customer and internal business engagement using digital technology. Lead the emergence of a culture of innovation and drive digital transformation initiatives across the company by:

• Involving the customer and key influencers in the design and implementation of change initiatives.
• Establishing processes or practices to encourage and reinforce innovation and change thinking. Positioning complex digital business solutions with consideration for diverse business operations and goals.
• Keeping in mind what is best for WorldStrides and their customers while affecting new thinking and processes.

Build and execute a digital growth strategy: The Head of Digital will build and execute a strategy for continued company growth. WorldStrides has a strong brand, invests notably in marketing, and has an extremely strong presence and positioning.  Significant attention must be focused on obtaining new consumers and expanding its digital presence. To be successful, this executive will demonstrate the following:

• Passion and enthusiasm for creating and executing a successful end-to-end personalized online experience for the varied customer segments from acquisition through site experience, conversion and retention.
• High intellectual horsepower that combines deep quantitative ability with a keen strategic mind.  Ability to assess the growth opportunities for WorldStrides through its people, products and processes, and translate this into an executable and well-understood plan. Ensure this plan is supported and championed by key constituents across the organization.
• Ability to increase consumer demand across all digital channels – including the website, mobile and social media.  Ensure that the number of engaged prospects is increasing through the innovative and effective use of product assortment, data analysis, technology, and customer service.

Other Personal Characteristics

• Strong business “athlete”, able to serve as an advisor partner to the management team and CEO.
• Superior work ethic, limitless energy, commitment, optimism, and humor.
• Passion for education and our mission of enabling students to discover their career and life interests, and to providing them with the skills, resources and experiences they need to successfully achieve their goals.
• Ability to negotiate conflict and maintain constructive working relationships with people at all levels of an organization (both inside and outside the company).
• Strong teamwork; awareness of how decisions affect the department and the wider organization.
• Analytically superior, with ability to build effectively use/process data to inform answers to business questions.
• A motivational style that inspires others to achieve great things and aggressive objectives.
• A highly analytical style and data-driven approach to managing and decision making.
• A natural curiosity and interest in trying new approaches to reach customers and influence the brand.

If you want to apply, please click on the website link below: 

https://worldstrides.com/about/careers/