Director, Digital Marketing and Analytics

Queen's University; Kingston; On-site; CAD 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Job summary

A prominent educational institution in Kingston, Canada is seeking a Director of Digital Marketing and Analytics to lead digital engagement strategies and analytics across the university. This strategic role involves overseeing digital marketing standards, guiding teams in AI integration, and enhancing marketing performance through analytics. The ideal candidate will have significant experience in digital marketing and analytics, alongside strong leadership capabilities.

Benefits

Professional development opportunities

Collaborative work environment

Comprehensive benefits package

Qualifications

• 8-10 years of experience in digital marketing technology.
• 5 years focused on analytics or digital experimentation.
• Experience planning and optimizing multi-channel campaigns.

Responsibilities

• Lead the development and implementation of digital engagement strategy.
• Oversee the digital analytics stack and maintain performance benchmarks.
• Provide strategic counsel to marketing teams on campaign design.

Skills

Digital strategy

Analytics proficiency

Leadership

Collaboration

AI integration

Education

University degree in marketing or related field

Graduate degree

Tools

GA4

SiteImprove

PowerBI

Job description

Job Summary

Reporting to the Associate Vice-Principal, Marketing & Brand, the Director, Digital Marketing and Analytics plays a key leadership role in advancing digital maturity and consistency across Queen’s. This position champions the development and adoption of digital best practices, including analytics, digital quality standards, and the responsible integration of AI. By developing shared frameworks, providing expert guidance, and enabling access to self-serve tools, the Director supports marketing and communications teams across faculties and units in strengthening the collective digital capacity of the university. The role focuses on building strategic partnerships that enhance institutional effectiveness, contributing to Queen’s reputation and visibility in an increasingly competitive digital landscape.

The Director also provides strategic leadership in digital engagement, analytics, and innovation across Queen’s University. The incumbent oversees enterprise-wide digital marketing standards and plays a central role in championing AI integration, supporting experimentation, and enabling insight-driven decision-making through shared digital tools and frameworks.

The Director leads a small team and works collaboratively with peers across University Relations and campus partners to ensure alignment with brand strategy, institutional goals, and evolving digital trends. While the role is primarily strategic, the successful candidate must be comfortable regularly shifting between high-level strategic oversight and hands-on tactical execution. This includes leading digital strategy discussions and actively engaging in detailed activities such as analytics and implementation tasks. The successful candidate will demonstrate a commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility, and will foster a team culture that reflects these values in both workplace practices and outward-facing digital strategies.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:

Digital Strategy and Governance

• Lead the development and implementation of Queen’s digital engagement strategy, including lifecycle governance, performance benchmarks, QA standards, and channel-specific KPIs across web, social, email, paid media, conversational AI, and emerging platforms.
• Chair the cross-university Digital Analytics Initiatives group to drive collaboration, data alignment, and continuous improvement in marketing performance measurement.
• Collaborate with leadership across both the Marketing and Brand department and the Integrated Communications Department to ensure digital efforts support both marketing and communications objectives, and are integrated with institutional brand standards, messaging consistency, and content strategy.

Analytics and Insight Enablement

• Oversee the university’s digital analytics stack (GA4, SiteImprove, PowerBI), maintaining a single source of truth for campaign and content performance.
• Develop self-serve dashboards, data dictionaries, and training to build analytics literacy across marketing and communications teams.
• Audit data tagging and reporting to support consistent measurement across faculties and units.

Owned Media Strategy and Experimentation

• Set strategy for Queen’s organic digital presence across all public web properties; monitor crawl health, schema, and search performance.
• Lead A/B and multivariate testing, managing the experimentation backlog and applying a governance model to test execution.

Campaign Support and Performance Advisory

• Provide strategic counsel to marketing and communications teams on channel selection, targeting, and campaign design.
• Deliver performance reporting, optimization advice, and real-time campaign insights for priority initiatives.
• Create and maintain campaign playbooks, QA checklists, and post-campaign analysis frameworks.

AI and Innovation Enablement

• Pilot and evaluate generative-AI applications (e.g., content automation, predictive analytics) for marketing use cases, with quality and risk controls.
• Develop AI adoption playbooks and provide guidance to teams on responsible and effective use of AI in marketing operations.

Campus Partner and Institutional Alignment

• Cultivate strong relationships with digital and communications leads across faculties, departments, and shared service areas.
• Advise University Relations leadership on analytics trends, engagement insights, and performance optimization.
• Co-develop digital vision and OKRs with the AVP, Marketing & Brand.

Leadership and Team Development

• Provide strategic and day-to-day leadership to a team of digital marketing and analytics specialists, fostering a culture of adaptability, innovation, and continuous learning.
• Lead the team through ongoing change in the digital environment, including the integration of emerging technologies such as AI, evolving analytics capabilities, and shifts in audience behaviour.
• Support staff through change by setting a clear vision, guiding adoption of new tools and processes, and encouraging experimentation and collaboration.
• Partner with the Digital Architect and others to evolve team structure, service delivery models, and workflows to reflect the changing digital landscape and institutional priorities.
• Set goals, oversee team performance, and promote alignment with university-wide digital strategy.

People Management and Talent Development

• Evaluate job candidates and make effective recommendations on suitable hires.
• Make decisions and/or effective recommendations regarding transfers and promotions.
• Evaluate employee performance and decide on appropriate training or coaching to address lack of proficiency in carrying out responsibilities, or remedial action for staff disciplinary situations.
• Make effective recommendations on level of discipline up to and including discharge and probationary termination.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS:

• University degree in marketing, analytics, business, or a related field. A graduate degree is considered an asset.
• Eight (8) to ten (10) years of progressive experience in marketing technology or digital marketing, including at least five (5) years with a primary focus on analytics, owned (organic) media, quality assurance, or digital experimentation.
• Proven experience in planning, executing, and optimizing multi-channel digital campaigns with measurable outcomes.
• Demonstrated success using analytics to inform decision-making, and experience with platforms such as GA4, SiteImprove, and PowerBI.
• Experience in team leadership, including performance management, coaching, and supporting equity-driven workplace culture.
• Consideration will be given to an equivalent combination of education and experience.

Review full job description, responsibilities, and special skills online.