Sr. Marketing Executive overseeing marketing strategy, brand execution, digital strategy and membership growth and engagement.
The SVP of Marketing and Membership aims to better the marketing strategy and execution at the Y, to build brand awareness, to increase relevance among target audiences and to improve the overall value of affiliating with and belonging to the organization. This role is responsible for overseeing constituent lifecycle engagement especially with members as well as supporting volunteer and donor cultivation to build a clear engagement vision for supporting the Association’s cause. This includes leading the Association’s integrated marketing communications planning and executing comprehensive digital strategies to drive brand affiliation and loyalty among YMCA facility and program members, donors, volunteers, staff, prospective staff, media, supporters and partners.
The SVP of Marketing and Membership will direct brand building, lead nurturing, sales operations and strategy, customer service and retention tactics to improve the revenue streams needed for the Association to support community outreach, innovation and programmatic impact. These tactics, standard operating procedures and processes should also aim to build the marketing and membership core competencies of the Association’s core team leaders and individual Y center Executive Directors and their staff teams as they seek to better understand and fulfill community member needs.
Membership and program growth: Drives marketing and membership engagement/sales strategies and call center operations to support year over year membership and program growth.
- Collaborate with program development leaders to develop strategies for new program launches, sales integration and existing program initiatives.
- Develop a collaborative working relationship with the other business units, to ensure that membership campaigns and support systems integrate with program development and respond to the existing and anticipated needs of members, program participants and donors/volunteers.
- Drives online and offline communications and engagement strategies and implementation to support sales, retention and brand recognition goals.
- Provides direction to the sales and marketing teams in the execution of year round promotional calendar, sales and engagement planning, implementation and evaluation of R.O.I.
- Research and develop strategies and plans, which identify growth opportunities and coordinate with the team to evaluate and execute from an integrated engagement perspective.
- Analyze data and evaluate the effectiveness of sales, customer service, methods, costs, and results to inform future strategy development.
Philanthropic revenue development: Supports network-wide philanthropic goals, leads Association-wide marketing, and communications campaigns aimed at increasing contributed revenue.
Brand: Stewards the YMCA of Metro Chicago brand architecture, including messaging strategy to stakeholders.
- Co-Directs with CEO and PR staff and agency all public relations for the Association.
- Works with business systems to ensure the physical environments of Y facilities align to brand requirements and meet quality expectations
- Provides consolidated internal perspectives and is key point of contact for the company’s marketing partners to produce an effective messaging and creative strategy.
- Supports and educates internally on Brand Standards and the need for adherence.
- Enforcement of and advocacy for the YMCA Metro Chicago’s brand and editorial standards across all Centers and Camps online and offline collateral.
Digital strategy development and implementation: Lead a cross-functional task force to reinvent the Y’s digital capabilities matched to meet identified customer experience needs.
- Responsible for overseeing the development, implementation and ongoing front-facing support of YMCA of Metro Chicago’s online services including online registration, membership purchasing, CRM and point of sale transactions.
- Develops and implements policies for integrated interactive marketing, sales and engagement strategies.
- Develops and oversees the implementation of website and social media optimization strategies including search, ad and retargeting placements.
- Oversees YMCA of Metro Chicago mobile app development and enhancements.
- Oversees video creative production online and interactive initiatives as needed.
- Builds and mentors a team of online and interactive content creators and digitally experienced marketing, communications and sales staff to better support sales/membership, marketing, retention, communications and fundraising efforts.
- Develops distributed content authorship and online audience engagement strategies across the YMCA Metro Chicago Centers and Camps.
Marketing and Sales Administrative Management: Manages and sources sales and marketing communications related vendor relationships, monitors their usage, and establishes a vendor evaluation process with the YMCA leadership team.
- Supports the management of the budget for marketing, sales and customer engagement related activities.
- Creates and promotes a work environment that encourages productive, collaborative relationships.
- Optimizes resources to ensure quality, consistency, creativity, and operational effectiveness.
- Partners with leadership to develop and implement needed processes, methodologies, technology, and tools as the organization evolves.
- Run discoveries, write briefs, and proactively manage schedules and budgets.
- Responsible for the management of and annual projections for budget expenses related to integrated marketing, communications and membership.
- Develops streamlined process for measuring and reporting on integrated marketing, communications and sales results.
- Hires, trains, supervises, evaluates and monitors workloads of the marketing, public relations and call center staff and determines need for outsourcing projects to external vendors.
- Bachelor’s Degree in Communication, Marketing, Psychology, or Business or Associate’s Degree plus six to eight (6-8) years of equivalent experience. MBA or related advanced degree preferred.
- Seven (7) or more years brand management, marketing, sales, consumer engagement, and communications experience in a consumer-facing organization. YMCA experience preferred.
- Demonstrated experience-engaging consumers across the lifecycle to enhance brand awareness and value and drive revenue, customer acquisition and retention.
- Experience leading execution of integrated sales and customer relationship management strategies including digital and offline engagement channels. Three (3) or more years managing call and chat support center operations preferred.
- Strategic experience leveraging consumer demographics, market research and customer trends in order to provide customer insight, remain competitive and meet goals for revenue, customer acquisition and customer retention.
- Exceptional analytical skills with the ability to analyze and leverage sales, customer, revenue and other trends to inform sales and customer strategy and execution. Three (3) or more years producing business analytics and making information actionable.
- Demonstrated strategic planning and fiscal management skills with the ability to create effective operating plans amidst multiple, competing priorities.
- Proven experience leading, engaging, motivating and developing outstanding teams.
- Ability to collaborate with multiple stakeholders to define and execute on strategies and operating plans
- Ability to travel locally to multiple YMCA locations in the Chicagoland area.