Executive Director of Digital Marketing, External Affairs

Socket.dev; Boston (MA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Tuition remission

Retirement contributions

Health and dental coverage

Paid time off

Job summary

Boston University is seeking an Executive Director of Digital Marketing to lead the university’s digital marketing infrastructure and analytics capability. Reporting to the Assistant Vice President of Digital Marketing and Brand Management, you will coordinate decentralized investments and establish a performance-driven ROI framework.

The ideal candidate is an experienced digital marketing leader with fluency in AI and emerging trends, capable of building enterprise data, reporting, and insights

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain BU's digital marketing infrastructure and governance.
• Define best practices in SEO, digital advertising, and marketing tech across BU.
• Tie marketing investments to enrollment, fundraising, and ROI.
• Build an internal analytics dashboard for External Affairs with real-time performance data.
• Create a university-wide data, reporting, and insights framework for cross-unit learning.
• Partner with Institutional Research, IS&T and units to define metrics and schedules.

Job description

The Executive Director of Digital Marketing is a strategic and hands-on leader within Boston University's External Affairs division, charged with building the university's digital marketing infrastructure and its analytics and insights capability from the ground up. Reporting to the Assistant Vice President of Digital Marketing and Brand Management, this leader will serve as BU's central point of strategy for the digital marketing work happening across BU's colleges, schools, and administrative units, including the external vendors and agencies those units engage, ensuring that decentralized investment is coordinated, strategic, and clearly tied to institutional return on investment. This role will also stand up BU's analytics and reporting backbone, beginning with an internal performance dashboard for External Affairs and growing into a comprehensive, university-wide data, reporting, and insights structure that lets BU's marketing community learn and improve together.

The ideal candidate is an experienced digital marketing pro and people leader, an industry expert who is fluent in current and emerging trends (including AI), a confident builder of infrastructure and process, a strategist with a keen eye toward performance metrics, and, above all, a trusted relationship-builder who can bring together a large, decentralized institution around shared standards of excellence. Boston University is a leading private research and teaching institution with more than 38,000 students, 11,000 faculty and staff, 300 programs of study, and 130 research centers and institutes. Our scholars are at the forefront of innovation, successfully competing for more than $574 million in sponsored research awards last year. Our students come from all 50 states and more than 140 countries, and nearly 20 percent of our undergraduates are first-generation college students.

What You'll Own:

Digital Marketing Strategy & Infrastructure

• Design, build, and maintain BU's digital marketing infrastructure: the platforms, tools, workflows, and governance the University runs on.
• Define and champion best practices in SEO, digital advertising, marketing technology, and channel strategy across BU.
• Tie digital marketing investment, at both the University and the unit level, to institutional goals such as enrollment, persistence, and fundraising, and to demonstrable return on investment.
• Analytics, Reporting & Insights Build an internal analytics dashboard for External Affairs that gives leadership real-time visibility into digital marketing performance.
• Design and lead a university-wide data, reporting, and insights structure so BU's colleges, schools, and units learn and improve together rather than in silos.
• Partner with Institutional Research, IS&T, and unit stakeholders to define shared metrics, data governance, and reporting schedules tied to institutional priorities.
• Translate complex data into clear, actionable insight for senior leadership, unit partners, and the External Affairs team.

Cross-Campus Partnership & Vendor Strategy

• Serve as the day-to-day strategic partner to BU's colleges, schools, and administrative units on digital marketing, building trusted advisory relationships with unit marketing leaders and the agencies and vendors they engage.
• Establish and maintain a consistent, University-wide framework for evaluating, engaging, and managing digital marketing vendor relationships, keeping them aligned with BU's brand, strategy, and goals.
• Analyze current vendor engagements and digital spend to find opportunities for consolidation, efficiency, and stronger return on investment.
• Advise unit leaders on digital advertising strategy, investment, and vendor performance, raising the quality and consistency of the digital marketing done on their behalf.

Team Leadership & Culture:

• Lead, coach, and develop a team of digital marketing and analytics experts, setting clear goals, growth plans, and performance expectations.
• Build a high-performing, collaborative team culture grounded in curiosity, excellence, and partnership with colleagues across campus.
• Work across reporting lines by design, encouraging collaboration within External Affairs and across BU's wider marketing community.

Industry Leadership & Innovation

• Scan the marketing and higher education landscape for emerging tools, platforms, and practices, including generative AI, and translate them into practical opportunities for BU.
• Prepare the University for the impact of AI on marketing, search, and analytics, and lead BU's response.
• Represent BU's digital marketing work externally, stay active in professional networks, and benchmark BU's performance against peer institutions and leading consumer brands.

Work Arrangement:

• This position is hybrid and requires three days per week on campus at 985 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA. Tuesday and Wednesday are required in-office days.
• The third in-office day is determined in consultation with the manager.
• Position requires occasional night and weekend work.

Boston University offers competitive pay and a comprehensive benefits package that includes:

• Tuition remission for employees and eligible dependents.
• Retirement contributions.
• Health and dental coverage.
• Paid time off.