Director of Lifecycle Marketing

Who You Are You are passionate about helping students achieve their educational goals. You thrive in a competitive and collaborative team environment. You are comfortable working remotely and have experience collaborating with others in a virtual environment. You possess a strong attention to detail. American College of Education (ACE) is seeking a Director of Lifecycle Marketing to define the strategy and build and own the automated systems that guide prospective students from inquiry through enrollment. As a senior individual contributor with no direct reports, you will bring deep lifecycle automation expertise and hands-on execution. You will own the lifecycle roadmap, map the prospect journey, and architect and implement segmentation, triggers, channel orchestration, testing, and measurement strategies to improve conversion, re-engage prospective students, and create a more relevant and consistent experience across email, SMS, and enrollment outreach. Compensation ACE is committed to paying a competitive wage while staying true to our mission of maintaining high quality, affordable programs for our students. The starting salary for this position is $130,000 plus all full-time employees are eligible for an annual bonus. Offers vary depending on education, prior experience, and expertise being applied to the role. What We Look for in the Ideal Candidate Demonstrates self-reliance by meeting/exceeding workflow needs. Demonstrates positive attitude and motivation, concern for students, teamwork, and excellent time management skills. Follows established processes as outlined by organization and leadership. Completes assigned duties based on daily business needs and individual skill set. Consistently produces a high volume of quality work. Capable, adapts as needed, to work under pressure and meet tight deadlines. Proven ability to work independently with limited supervision and with other department personnel. Must support and embrace the College’s Impact mission to improve the people and communities we serve through our civic engagement initiatives. Must have exceptional communication, organization, and time management skills. Must be "self-motivated" as well as creative and efficient in proposing solutions to complex, time-critical problems. Must be collaborative in driving decisions and a team-player. Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with a high attention to detail. Builds and maintains student satisfaction. Recognizes and anticipates student needs. Day to Day Responsibilities In this role you will wear different hats, but your skills will be especially essential in the following areas: Designs, builds, and owns ACE's prospective-student lifecycle system across inquiry, application, admission, enrollment, re-inquiry, alumni and long-term nurture stages. Architects, configures, and continuously improves a prioritized portfolio of always-on, triggered, and term-based automated journeys that guide prospective students toward the next best action. Owns measurable improvement in email assisted inquiry-to-application, application-to-enrollment, and overall inquiry-to-enrollment conversion, with appropriate consideration for program, audience, source, geography, and time-to-convert. Architects and implements a prioritized portfolio of always-on, triggered, and term-based journeys that guide prospective students toward the next best action. Creates differentiated nurture and re-engagement strategies for high-intent prospects, stalled applicants, no-contact leads, future-term prospects, and leads who require longer consideration cycles. Establishes a testing roadmap across messaging, cadence, channel, offer, creative, call to action, and enrollment handoff; scale proven approaches and stop low-value activity. Leads segmentation and personalization using behavioral, demographic, program-interest, funnel-stage, engagement, and marketing-source data. Partners with paid media and analytics teams to activate first-party audiences, suppress converted or ineligible prospects, and create a more connected acquisition and nurture experience. Defines lifecycle performance standards, dashboards, and operating reviews that connect channel engagement to applications, enrollments, cost per enrollment, and incremental value. Owns the hands-on design, configuration, and continuous improvement of marketing automation architecture, including workflows, triggers, decision logic, data dependencies, integrations, campaign governance, documentation, quality assurance, deliverability, and data hygiene in partnership with Technology and CRM owners. Owns the primary lifecycle stakeholder relationships across Enrollment, Marketing, Technology, Analytics, and external partners; establish shared priorities, decision rights, service-level expectations, and feedback loops that keep strategy and execution aligned. Creates and maintains the lifecycle strategy, journey maps, prioritized roadmap, playbooks, technical requirements, and operating processes that make the system visible, actionable, and consistently executable by internal teams and external partners. Owns the design and continuous improvement of marketing automation architecture, campaign governance, documentation, quality assurance, deliverability, and data hygiene in partnership with Technology and CRM owners. Partners closely with Enrollment leadership to align contact strategies, lead prioritization, messaging, service-level expectations, and feedback loops between marketing and enrollment counselors. Ensures lifecycle communications follow applicable privacy, consent, accessibility, and institutional requirements, including email and SMS communication standards. Creates the lifecycle playbooks, requirements, and operating processes that enable internal teams and external partners to execute consistently. Qualifications and Education Requirements Bachelor's degree in marketing, business, analytics, or a related field. 7 or more years of progressive experience in lifecycle, CRM, or conversion marketing, including at least 3 years of hands-on experience, owning, designing and building complex email and SMS automations. Deep, hands-on expertise building lifecycle automations, including journey configuration, segmentation, trigger and decision logic, branching, personalization, testing, QA, troubleshooting, and channel orchestration across email and SMS. Demonstrated success improving conversion across a multi-step customer journey with long or variable consideration cycles; higher education or another lead-to-sales environment is strongly preferred. Advanced working knowledge of enterprise CRM and marketing automation platforms, with the ability to translate strategy into configured workflows and diagnose execution issues directly; experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365, Marketo, Click Dimensions (Click) or comparable tools is preferred. Advanced experience designing automated journeys, segmentation, trigger logic, personalization, experimentation, and channel orchestration across email and SMS. Strong analytical judgment and the ability to move beyond channel metrics to evaluate cohorts, funnel progression, incrementality, cost efficiency, and business outcomes. Demonstrated ability to set lifecycle strategy, visualize the end-to-end journey, prioritize a roadmap, and translate it into clear technical requirements, campaign briefs, measurement plans, and operating processes while remaining hands-on enough to identify and resolve execution issues. Strong stakeholder leadership and communication skills, including a record of owning senior cross-functional relationships, creating clarity across competing priorities, establishing standards, and influencing Marketing, Enrollment, Technology, Analytics, and executive leadership without relying on direct authority. Working knowledge of CRM and marketing automation platforms; experience with Microsoft Dynamics 365, Marketo, or comparable enterprise tools is preferred. Understanding of email deliverability, consent management, data governance, CAN-SPAM, TCPA, FERPA, and accessibility considerations relevant to prospective-student communications. Ability to translate strategy into clear requirements, campaign briefs, measurement plans, and operating processes while remaining close enough to execution to identify and resolve issues. Strong stakeholder leadership and communication skills, including the ability to create clarity, establish standards, and influence across Marketing, Enrollment, Technology, Analytics, and executive leadership. Our Commitment to Employees Just as we strive to empower our students for success, we also aim to enrich the lives of our employees. For 6 consecutive years, ACE was recognized as one of Indiana’s Best Places to Work, winning the #1 spot for medium-sized companies in 2020. In addition, ACE has earned national recognition, being named a USA Top Workplace in 2022, 2023 and 2024. As a virtual first organization, we celebrate diversity and are committed to creating a family-like inclusive work environment. For our full-time employees, we offer the following benefits: Medical, dental, & vision Insurance HSA and FSA options Paid parental leave Paid volunteer time Tuition reimbursement & reduction programs Generous PTO 401k and employer match Full-service wellness and EAP program Employee recognition and awards programs Employer paid life & AD&D insurance Short-term disability Employer paid long-term disability And more… Physical Demands The physical demand described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to communicate with and receive communications from students and ACE employees in real time using online and other electronic media. Commitment to Culture At American College of Education, we’re all about building a one-of-a-kind, supportive community where everyone—students, faculty, and staff—can thrive. Guided by our mission and values, we focus on everything from innovative curriculum design to personalized instruction and student support to intentional planning, inclusive initiatives, and strategic resource allocation. We’re dedicated to creating an environment that celebrates freedom of expression, diversity of thought, open dialogue, and mutual respect. We believe in fostering a sense of belonging and wellness so that every member of our ACE family feels empowered, valued, and ready to reach their full potential. Together, we’re creating a vibrant, resilient, and connected learning community where everyone matters. Additional Notes This job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities that are required of the employee for this job. Duties, responsibilities, and activities may change at any time with or without notice. Employees are increasingly integrating AI into their roles, demonstrating its potential to boost efficiency, accuracy, and productivity. By utilizing AI technologies, we can streamline processes, gain valuable insights from data, and automate routine tasks, which allows employees to concentrate on more strategic and creative aspects of their work. While AI is a beneficial tool in the workplace, if its use—such as ChatGPT, Grammarly, Copy.ai, etc.—accounts for more than 50% of any work assignments or job responsibilities, it will need to be reported to a direct leader. Internet bandwidth speeds from an employee's remote work location must be a minimum of 50Mbps download speeds and 5Mbps upload speeds. Please note if the bandwidth is shared across multiple devices (tablets, computer, streaming, phone, etc.) you will need higher overall speeds. You can test the speed of your connection by visiting speedtest.net Purchase, setup, installation, support, and ongoing maintenance of reliable internet service is the responsibility of the individual. American College of Education seeks to attract and retain a diverse staff consistent with its diverse student body and surrounding communities. At this time we cannot consider candidates residing in Alaska, Washington D.C., Massachusetts, South Dakota, or Alabama. ACE is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Who is American College of Education Founded in 2005, American College of Education continues to be a leader in professional development through our online programs. The mission of ACE is to deliver high-quality, affordable, and accessible online programs grounded in evidence-based content, real-world experience and relevant application that places our students’ needs first. ACE is a mission-driven institution continually recognized for its commitment to social responsibility and positive impact. As an Impact Institution, we believe we have a responsibility to our students, alumni, employees, communities, and society as a whole. Guided by our core values, we strive to create meaningful impact that extends well beyond our bottom line. We prioritize candidate safety. Please note that all official communication will only come from our verified company email domain @Rippling.com