Senior Director of Digital Marketing and Communications

Strategic Leadership & Planning

• Architect and execute a future-forward digital marketing and communications strategy that enhances brand awareness, drives student acquisition and supports retention and graduate engagement. 
• Lead and align digital advertising, marketing communications, social media, and content strategies across to ensure impact and consistency across all audience segments and digital platforms.
• Develop and implement strategies that deliver a cohesive student journey, optimizing interactions across marketing and service-related touchpoints.
• Establish Full Sail University as a leader in digital brand storytelling, leveraging the intersection of education, technology and culture.
• Champion the use of machine learning and AI-driven campaign strategies, personalization and predictive analytics to scale digital engagement.

Digital Performance Marketing & Growth

• Lead paid media strategies across all digital channels, including paid search, paid social, streaming audio and video, affiliate, and influencer marketing.
• Lead development of high-impact digital creative assets and ensure alignment with institutional messaging and brand standards.
• Drive paid campaign performance, optimizing for customer acquisition cost, return on ad spend and other key metrics.
• Develop new and innovative methods of measuring and evaluating paid media effectiveness to inform strategy, identify growth opportunities and accelerate acquisition.

Omnichannel Communications Strategy

• Develop and manage a cross-channel student communications framework utilizing email, SMS, chat, push notifications, and social media platforms.
• Design communications strategies that guide prospective and current students through key milestones in their journey—improving engagement, enrollment, and retention.
• Lead content development across digital properties, ensuring consistency and personalization across websites, landing pages, microsites, online platforms and mobile applications.
• Collaborate with key stakeholders to optimize user experience across core websites and digital platforms. 
• Ensure all campaigns and communications meet compliance requirements related to education marketing, privacy, and accessibility standards.

Customer Journey & Audience Management

• Map and optimize the end-to-end digital customer experience from awareness to enrollment, onboarding, retention, and graduate engagement.
• Lead customer segmentation initiatives to support personalized communications and targeted marketing across all stages of the student journey.
• Collaborate with admissions, student services, academic departments, and career development to align digital touchpoints with student needs and institutional goals.

Data-Driven Strategy & Performance Management

• Leverage analytics to measure campaign and communications effectiveness, continuously improving targeting, messaging, and channel mix.
• Implement testing and experimentation strategies to refine messaging and increase conversion rates.
• Provide executive dashboard reporting and insights on marketing and communications performance, pacing toward goals, and optimization opportunities with a focus on predictive insights.

Technology & Innovation

• Lead the strategy, orchestration and optimization of marketing technology platforms including DSPs, CDPs, CRMs, and marketing automation tools (e.g., Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Eloqua, HubSpot).
• Collaborate with IT and data teams to ensure necessary data structures are in place for automation, personalization, and performance tracking.

Team Leadership & Development

• Build, lead, and mentor a high-performing multidisciplinary marketing and communications team capable of delivering across the full spectrum of marketing functions.
• Foster a test-and-learn, innovation-driven culture focused on excellence, agility and impact.
• Provide training and development opportunities to elevate team capabilities and performance with a focus on upskilling around new platforms and digital fluency.

Supervisory Responsibilities: 

☒YES              ☐  NO

If YES, then the below applies in addition to those listed in Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Recruits, interviews, hires, and trains staff in their department.
• Oversees the schedules and responsibilities of staff in their department.
• Provides constructive and timely staff performance evaluations. 
• Follows established guidelines for employee disciplinary action as determined by Full Sail policies and procedures.

Education and/or Experience:

• Bachelor's degree in marketing, communications, or related field
• 10+ years of progressive experience in digital marketing and communications, including 5+ years in senior leadership roles focused growth, innovation and team development.
• Proven success leading cross-functional teams and multi-million-dollar digital campaigns with measurable ROI.
• Strong track record in performance marketing, paid media strategy, audience engagement, with a strong foundation in brand storytelling.
• Experience in leading the development of analytics and reporting strategies that deliver clear attribution, performance insights and visibility across the customer journey.

Competencies:  

• Deep expertise in paid media, customer journey orchestration, and content marketing.
• Highly proficient in advertising technology and automation platforms, with a strong grasp on how these technologies integrate to drive marketing performance.
• Deep understanding of how AI is transforming digital marketing and communications, with a clear vision for future applications and the strategic mindset to guide institutional readiness and adoption.
• Excellent written, visual, and verbal communication abilities.

Technical Proficiency:

• Experience with marketing automation tools (Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Eloqua, HubSpot, etc.).
• Proficiency with ad platforms (Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, DSPs, etc).
• Familiarity with web analytics tools (e.g., Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics).
• Strong knowledge of CRM platforms and customer journey orchestration tools.
• High proficiency in Office 365 and collaborative digital tools.

Environmental Factors/Physical Demands:

Work is performed in an office environment. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to have the ability to maintain active customer and employee communication; access, input and retrieve information from the computer system; enter alphanumeric data into a computerized system often while listening on the telephone. May be subject to bending, reaching, kneeling, stooping and lifting up to thirty (30) pounds.