Sr. Manager, Digital Acquisition

Sr Manager, Digital Acquisition

Department: DTC Ecommerce

Reports To: Director, Digital Acquisition

At Highlights for Children, we believe Children are the world's most important people. Our mission is to help children become their best selves by publishing and creating experiences that engage, delight and foster joyful learning. Through the work we do and as an inclusive corporate community, we are dedicated to cultivating our best selves in our workplace. We aim to hire talent that strives for excellence while doing the work they love, by enhancing the lives of kids and families. We come together with a common purpose because we believe children are the world's most important people.

Position Summary:

The Sr. Manager, Digital Acquisition is responsible for daily management of paid media channels for Highlights.com, including campaign and test planning, analysis, and ongoing performance measurement. This role is critical in shaping and activating the paid acquisition strategy to reach and engage new families, while enabling transformational growth for Highlights Consumer Business. An ideal candidate is someone who can think, dream, activate and grow. You're a seasoned digital marketer that loves a challenge and provides effective growth solutions. You love and leverage data to inform strategies, testing, optimization, and improve digital channel performance in context of Highlights' full-funnel marketing mix. An achiever and technical savvy leader who has a pulse on the ever-changing digital marketing landscape and applies effective, best-in-class practices. Your passion, resilience and interpersonal relationships will help you accelerate profitable business impact for the Consumer Business.

In this role you will:

• Support the Director, Paid Acquisition in co-authoring digital acquisition strategies, P&L development and success measures
• Develop seasonal campaign and media plans to support overall marketing strategy for paid media to drive traffic, engagement and productive growth, inclusive of offers, pricing, audience targeting, learning agendas, etc.
• Collaborate with internal and external partners to flawlessly execute, monitor, measure and optimize seasonal campaigns for paid search, paid social, affiliate and programmatic media
• Monitor and regularly report out on performance, promotes shared learning, identifies areas for improvement, and implements data-driven recommendations
• Elevate thinking and actioning of digital tactics, such as test plans, optimization, and success measurement; promote shared learning across marketing
• Define roadmap for media enablement to maximize channel optimization technology and data; partner with digital operations to activate
• Propose new channel and/or growth opportunities driven by collaborative analysis and financial modeling with analytics and finance
• Lead, develop and set your team up for success by setting clear expectations, providing role clarity and dedication to coaching and definition of development plans
• Identify opportunities to increase efficacy and automation; works cross-functionally to implement

• Understanding of paid media and digital marketing channel best practices
• Understanding of full-funnel marketing performance and measurement
• Understanding of ecommerce benchmarks

• Begin to learn the Highlights brand ethos, editorial philosophy and business strategy
• Build relationships with internal and external partners, inclusive of agencies, marketing teams and finance
• Immerse yourself in the current state of business performance and operations
• Analyze performance and tactics; make optimization recommendation and advise on reporting
• Practice building seasonal marketing plans

• Develop seasonal campaign and media plans to drive traffic engagement and growth; activate flawlessly through internal and external partners
• Monitor and measure daily, weekly and monthly performance; build tools and models to effectively manage paid media performance
• Prepare annual budget, quarterly plans and financial forecasts with guidance from your leader
• Identify strategic, tactical and operational opportunities to drive transformational growth and streamline day-to-day operations; gain buy in and activate plans
• Keep a pulse on landscape to stay ahead of digital shifts and competitive trends; make recommendations on how our strategies and operations need to evolve

Supervisory Responsibilities:

1-2 direct reports.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent combination of education and experience
• 7+ years of paid acquisition experience in a modern DTC, retail e-commerce environment; subscription model experience a plus
• 3+ years demonstrated leadership experience with managing, developing and growing a team
• Experience managing multiple external agencies and partners, along with a team
• A consistent track record of effectively building and managing multi-million-dollar budgets, while meeting or exceeding financial targets
• Demonstrated experience running large scale, full-funnel marketing campaigns with an understanding of how to measure performance at each juncture of the customer journey
• Excellent financial acumen and analytical skills, specifically the ability to gather quantitative and qualitative insights, model, analyze and formulate a plan to drive transformative growth
• Strong communication and storytelling; communicates concepts and ideas to partners at all levels with the ability to translate technical information to non-technical people
• Excellent problem-solving, organizational and prioritization skills to flawlessly activate and manage campaigns; detail oriented
• Demonstrated self-starter that challenges the status quo and champions change by proactively providing recommendations to drive profitable growth