Email Operations Manager

Come work with me at the National Geographic Society! My team is expanding and we're hiring for two roles. You'd be joining a team of passionate, creative individuals who are driving forward the mission of the Society.

📌 Manager, Email Operations: This role manages our end-to-end email and SMS strategy, including planning, scheduling, implementing best practices and analyzing performance metrics.

📌 Coordinator, Social Media Community Engagement: This role helps us implement our community engagement efforts, increasing the engagement and relevancy of our social channels.

Posted by: Rebecca Matulka, Digital Strategy Director

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How You’ll Contribute

The Communication, Marketing and Brand division uses creative and strategic tools to further the mission of the National Geographic Society, while maintaining our place as one of the world’s most trusted nonprofit organizations and global brands. The division’s creative minds develop and execute mission-driven, on-brand strategies, unifying our efforts across our owned and operated channels, strategic partners and earned media. The team is composed of seven integrated departments: Creative Studio, Integrated Brand Marketing, Partnership Marketing, MarCom Operations and Internal Communications, Strategic Communications, Executive Communications, and Crisis Communications and Public Relations.

The Manager, Email Operations will serve as the Society's central email and SMS role, managing the end-to-end strategy, including planning, scheduling, implementing best practices and analyzing performance metrics. As part of the Social Media and Digital Engagement team within Integrated Brand Marketing, this role plays an integral part in omnichannel alignment to drive user acquisition, engagement and retention across audiences to realize business objectives.

The Manager, Email Operations is responsible for the execution and optimization of the Society’s email and SMS strategy to nurture subscribers. Partnering with teams across the Communications, Marketing and Brand division and cross-functional stakeholders, this role will manage email campaign planning, segmentation, personalization, automation, testing and analytics, while also ensuring compliance with audience management principles, contact strategy rules and regulatory requirements. This position will focus on experimentation and testing to help make data-driven recommendations and meet email key performance indicators (KPIs).

The Manager, Email Operations will support embedded marketing teams’ email efforts, which include managing a central email calendar to reduce friction, partnering with Audience Engagement and Growth and MarTech to to build email journeys and implement dynamic email content to optimize audience touchpoints, and deploying emails. This role will work cross functionally with other marketing teams to incorporate email best practices and efficiently engage users across the lifecycle.

Your Impact

Responsibilities Include:

Email Management (40%)

• Implement the Society’s email and SMS strategy through the entire email lifecycle from acquisition to engagement to retention. 
• Build and deploy monthly newsletters, special edition emails, conversion campaigns and SMS in partnership with marketing teams. Partner with the Content Strategy and Marketing teams to ensure email content is optimized for the channel while remaining on-brand and maintaining consistent voice.
• Collaborate across digital channels to create omnichannel engagement plans for campaigns and other marketing initiatives.
• Execute a testing roadmap (A/B, multivariate testing, send-time optimization) and experimentation plan to continuously improve email KPIs and engage targeted audiences.
• Implement personalization strategies and dynamic content to ensure highly relevant email experiences for the Society’s diverse audience segmentations and reduce content duplication. 
• Partner with the Creative Studio team to build, test and maintain a library of email templates. 
• Manage email assets and partner with the Photography team to source high-quality imagery for emails.

Email Operations (40%)

• Manage a central email calendar for all Society emails, aligning with marketing teams embedded throughout the Society on email sends and resolve scheduling conflicts to ensure the Society is effectively engaging audiences. 
• Partner with Audience Engagement and Growth, MarTech and Advancement teams on audience list definitions and segmentation, accurate data synchronization and campaign tracking.
• Collaborate with the Audience Engagement and Growth and MarTech teams to develop email journeys and workflows using marketing automation tools (e.g., Journey Builder) for the Society’s main newsletter and other marketing teams’ emails.
• Build and optimize automated/lifecycle campaigns, including welcome series, slow drip campaigns and reactivation series, to nurture audiences.   
• Grow and maintain healthy email lists, partnering across marketing on acquisition strategies and optimized sign-up experience.

Email Platform Health and Performance Optimization (20%)

• Produce weekly reports to track and meet email KPIs and monitor the overall health of email channels.
• Follow compliance with email marketing regulations (CAN-SPAM, GDPR and other applicable laws) while maintaining high deliverability and sender reputation scores.
• Partner with the Manager, Analytics and Insights to share insights and data on email campaigns as part of larger analytics initiatives. 
• Serve as a partner and the Society’s subject matter expert on email and SMS best practices, incorporation industry trends and optimizations across all email efforts.

What You’ll Bring

Educational Background

Bachelor’s degree in a related field (Marketing, Public Relations, Communications)

Minimum Years and Type of Experience   

5+ years of email marketing or email operations experience

Necessary Knowledge and Skills

• Expert-level knowledge of Salesforce Marketing Cloud (Email Studio, Journey Builder, Content Builder and Automation Studio).
• Experience with Customer Data Platforms (BlueConic) and proficiency in using SQL queries for audience segmentation.
• Familiarity with marketing compliance such as CAN-SPAM, CASL and GDPR.
• Passion for exploring new trends, AI-driven personalization and emerging technologies to advance the effectiveness and efficiency of email marketing efforts.
• Ability to work on multiple projects, under deadlines, with changing priorities in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills and the ability to maintain a consistent brand voice. 
• Ability to work independently to drive forward projects while also working collaboratively and in a team environment to achieve goals and objectives. 

Desired Qualifications

• Experience managing email operations for a brand, nonprofit organization or fundraising organizations. 
• A demonstrated interest in science, storytelling, education and conservation of the earth’s cultural and natural resources.

Supervision

No direct reports

Salary Information

The National Geographic Society offers a competitive and holistic total rewards package. Our compensation structure and transparent pay philosophy are based on industry-specific market data for similar-sized nonprofit organizations.

The salary range for this position accounts for a wide range of factors including but not limited to organizational need; specific skill sets; experience and training; certifications; and more. At the National Geographic Society, individuals are typically hired at or near the starting point of the salary range for their role, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case.

The salary range for this position is $104,500.00 - $110,000.00.

In addition, the National Geographic Society offers a competitive and comprehensive benefits package that includes, but is not limited to, medical, dental, and vision insurance; engaging and comprehensive wellness program; 401(k) retirement savings plan with matching contributions after 6 months of employment; flexible paid time off benefits with up to 22 days of paid annual leave per calendar year (15 days for new hires in their first year, prorated based on the number of pay periods remaining in the year) and 10 days of sick leave; 12 paid holidays and a paid winter break between December 25 and 31 (May not apply to all roles that are required to work during high volume seasons or essential workers. Please check with the hiring manager for confirmation.); paid parental leave, adoption and surrogacy expense reimbursement, fertility benefits; learning and development opportunities; Lifestyle Spending Account; pet adoption assistance and insurance; pre-tax transportation benefits with a generous employer subsidy; employer-paid life insurance and disability benefit; and a variety of National Geographic discounts and perks.

Job Designation

Hybrid - At the Society, we believe in the advantages of coming together to build community, mentor and learn from colleagues, and connect more deeply with our mission. As a result, the majority of our staff are Hybrid. Our Hybrid category requires that staff work at Base Camp two days each week: every Tuesday and Wednesday. Hybrid staff are also always welcome to come in additional days each week if preferred.

Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States. This position is not eligible for visa sponsorship.

We encourage you to apply even if your experience is not a 100% match with the position. We are looking for someone with relevant skills and experience, not a checklist that exactly matches the job description. We want to help you grow and in return, you help us grow into a stronger, more inclusive organization.