At Northwestern Mutual, we are strong, innovative and growing. We invest in our people. We care and make a positive difference.
Is this you?
What you will do:
As the Senior Director, Strategic Marketing Operations you will drive improvement, efficiency and effectiveness of the marketing function through its people, processes, technology and data! You will mold and nurture a Center of Excellence team, you will lead Marketing operations including strategy, planning, operations, and measurement. In this role, you will also act as a key partner to the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and lead planning, budgeting and prioritization, while cultivate integration across the Marketing department and will also work closely with Marketing leaders to advance and complete key priorities for the department.
How you will do it:
Strategy & Operations:

• Partner with CMO and other marketing leaders, develop and implement vision and strategy for Northwestern Mutual marketing.
• complete marketing planning processes such as annual and quarterly planning as well as quarterly business reviews.
• Partner with key business leaders across the department to develop consolidated strategic priorities and measure success and recommend allocation of resources.
• Make use of insights and consumer market data to make decisions involving marketing planning and delivery.
• Act as the lynchpin between marketing teams (Field, Brand, Growth, Client) effectively integrating activity and prioritizing when necessary. Step in to lead cross-functional pivotal initiatives. Partner with Marketing leadership and Human Resource team to develop hiring and implement strategy.
• Lead, in partnership with finance team and marketing leadership team, budgeting process and spend projection.
• Own and optimize standard operating procedures with marketing. Identify and solve inefficiencies in process and maintain internal documentation outlining progress to goals and process maps
• Develop Quarterly Business Reviews, Board Decks, SLT and presentation/updates to CCO. Support other marketing presentations to internal and external audiences (e.g. field and exec visibility) as needed.
• Facilitate regular department leadership meetings to evaluate barriers to success and develop courses of action to overcome issues at the departmental level.
• Apply your advanced verbal and written communication skills to ensure that communication materials are clear, practical, useful and appropriately tailored for the audience.

Measurement:

• Collaborate with marketing partners to understand data needs and questions in support of key initiatives. Synthesize and address partner needs through the design, development and delivery of a Marketing data and analytics roadmap.
• Lead the development of a comprehensive and unified perspective on marketing data management, including the standardization of marketing and sales data, to enable a collective understanding of campaign effectiveness from the executive level down.
• Improve integration across disparate first-party and third-party data sources to drive new insights, new opportunities for activation, and more comprehensive reporting structures through the modernization of our data landscape and implementation of UDP, CDP, and other platform solutions.
• Act as the primary point of contact and business owner of marketing data to support key enterprise initiatives in partnership with Data Governance. This includes but is not limited to owning the data definitions, defining data retention requirements, partnering with engineering, and approving any new data / processes.
• Lead all aspects of the delivery of regular, insightful, and dynamic reporting for a variety of critical partners across the business through the definition and identification of OKRs (including forecast and return on investment), cadence and formatting of reporting that influences decision making and future strategy.
• Accountable for connecting the dots across the organization to drive increased visibility of performance and insights related to campaign measurement.

Bring Your Best! What this role needs:

• 10+ years of experience in Marketing, with a focus in operations, strategy, and data and 5+ years managing a team.
• Experience in attracting, developing, growing, and managing an impactful diverse team of operations and measurement SMEs supporting a variety of marketing subject areas across Brand, Client, Field, and Acquisition.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and manage large and complex assignments including those with enterprise-wide impact or may need to be on a parallel path.
• Ability to partner and influence horizontally with senior leadership while bringing a clear and developed perspective to the table and collaboratively aligning others behind that perspective.
• Exceptional problem solving and critical thinking skills with an ability to identify business issues and influence others.
• Ability to act as a consultative partner for peers across the Marketing Leader Team to ensure that Marketing initiatives are grounded in insights and ladder up to the broader strategic vision.
• Effective communication (oral and written) and interpersonal skills with an ability to create compelling presentations and written reports.
• Strong analytical and research skills with proven ability to absorb complex information and independently solve problems in a dynamic environment. Comfort around large data sets and relational databases as well as familiarity with web/digital analytics concepts and platforms preferred.
• Highly skilled at leading cross functional marketing, technology, and other teams to identify, build, implement, and evolve our capabilities.
• Familiarity and perspective regarding best-in-class advanced testing methodologies with ability to provide situational guidance that ladders up to a broader testing framework.

Benefits:
Great pay package, 401K, Company sponsored retirement plan, Educational assistance, Performance based incentive pay, Medical, dental and vision insurance, Parental leave, Caregiver time off....and more
#LI-POST
#IN-POST
This job is not covered by the existing Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Required Certifications:
Grow your career with a best-in-class company that puts our client's interests at the center of all we do. Get started now!
We are an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, age or status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.