Director, Supporter Engagement & Retention Mass Marketing

IRC’s External Relations (ER) department is responsible for the global delivery of private sector resources and plays a meaningful role in the creation of IRC’s brand, awareness and support for its advocacy goals.

Job Overview:

The Director of Supporter Engagement & Retention will build IRC’s MMUSA supporter engagement, retention, and upgrade programs across all channels and donor segments. In particular you will be in charge of maximizing engagement and LTV from key segments including sustainer (monthly donor) and mid-level donors (individuals giving between $1-$19,999 in single gifts), which are a critical for our strategic growth.

Major Responsibilities:

1. Lead and oversee, along with marketing senior leaders, DMUSAs mid value donor program including strategy, planning and implementation together with two team members to significantly increase income from this key segment of donors via ongoing engagement and optimized fundraising outreach.

2. Supervise the work of the email marketing team and its work in communicating, engaging with, and asking for financial support from our supporter file. Ensure all email journeys are done in tight coordination with offline so that DMUSA has a seamless multi-channel supporter journey for its supporters. Also to oversee the development of the email channel including the calendar of email touch points and ask, with three critical campaigns of the year being year-end, mother’s day and child survival in the summer.

3. Improve the supporter journey for all donors across channels like digital, mail, or TM. Ensure that an optimized and coordinated sustainer journey and mid value journey is in place and that sustainers and mid value donors become more engaged and giving. Lead on approaches to save lapsing sustainers, upgrade them, and ask for additional gifts.

4. Develop strategies for cash donors to convert to sustainers – as an organizational priority – and where not, that they increase level, frequency and retention of cash giving. Work across DMUSA and in close collaboration with colleagues, both on and offline, to implement plans.

5. Collaborate with our Supporter Services Team to ensure they are an integral part of all DMUSAs work to engage and retain supporters.

6. Work with audience profiles and mapping journeys specific to profiles with the aim of improving metrics.

7. Represent supporter engagement in emergencies ensuring we maximize the value of our fundraising in and around emergencies including if there are opportunities to convert cash donors to sustainers and the feedback, reporting which goes back to supporters post event.

8. Continually supervise results and do analysis and adjust strategies to maximize revenue. Develop critical metrics and track them.

9. Support the Senior Director in making recommendations to IRC senior management for additional investments for engaging, retaining, and upgrading supporters.

10. Work collaboratively with Strategy and Planning colleagues and with other colleagues internationally to help the organization get results and pool systems and resources effectively.

11. Oversee recruitment of any agencies/consultants/firms working on supporter engagement and manage the delivery of our strategies.

12. Work with the Associate Director of Reporting & Analytics DMUSA to ensure all budgets, reports and analysis is recorded, tracked and fulfilling the needs of running an optimized program.

13. Act as team leader on creation of budgets and projections, as well as monitor budgets to ensure they are accurate. Prepare annual budgets and quarterly re-forecasts for areas specifically related to the mid value donor program. Advice the team with the analysis and insights required both from internal and external resources.

14. Deliver strong content with measurable outcomes and testing strategizes to improve performance in all our engagement and retention efforts while ensuring all acquisition assets are on brand and to a high standard.

15. Coordinate with colleagues in IPP on engagement campaigns with corporate brands. Recent partners include: TripAdvisor, Airbnb and Google.

16. Provide clear metrics and returns to build strong growth investment business cases for engaging with donors and improving the lifetime value of donors.

17. Assist with building strong active joint training & planning, collaboration, support & engagement with relevant colleagues.

18. Keep up to date on sector trends and important metrics in engagement and retention with a particular focus on the US and our competitors.

19. Lead team responsible for running mid value and email marketing programs. Do so with commitment, integrity and accountability to the “IRC Way” – IRC Global Standards for Professional Conduct.

Qualifications

Education: Bachelor Degree, or equivalent

Work Experience:

• 8+ years of work experience in modern high-performance marketing, with consistent record of income growth.

• Experience of working in a variety of marketing channels including for example, digital, Telemarketing, offline, SMS, etc.

• Proven experience in supporter engagement and in mid-level programs

Demonstrated Skill and Competencies:

• US experience in marketing in the following areas:

• Donor engagement– specifically with sustainers (monthly) donors and mid-level donors and including retention, upgrading, saving donors, lapsed reactivation, increasing value and frequency of giving – working to improve Life Time Value (LTV)

• Management of agencies

• Analytics set-up and monitoring

• Ability to identify unmet market needs and create/execute marketing strategies

• Creates and owns business metrics and goals to determine what will move the needle

• Proven success in direct to consumer marketing

• Consistent track record of driving committed/monthly donor income and running high performance sustainer programs

• Experience of delivering emergency fundraising highly desirable

• Understanding of the US fundraising marketplace

• Proven track record using analytics to inform and influence decision-making

• Thorough and a critical thinker, able to ask probing clear questions and drive toward solutions quickly

• Predisposition toward simple and practical solutions

• Strong interpersonal skills, collegial and collaborative, high energy, good humored and creative leader

• Strong resilience and change management skills – with experience of leading a rapid growth program, and the challenges that come with rapid growth

• Excellent written and verbal communication

Working Environment: This role requires working remotely full or part time (i.e., telecommuting).