Email Marketing Senior Strategist

About the California Academy of Sciences

The California Academy of Sciences is a globally renowned scientific and cultural institution located in the heart of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Home to a world-class planetarium, aquarium, research center, and natural history museum—all under one living roof—our mission is to regenerate the natural world through science, learning, and collaboration.

Our extensive collections span plants, animals, fossils, and cultural artifacts from across the globe and throughout history. We are a diverse team of leading biodiversity scientists, educators, storytellers, designers, and communicators who work collaboratively to advance knowledge and inspire action through science and storytelling.

When you join the California Academy of Sciences, you become part of a mission-driven community that values curiosity, collaboration, and innovation. Whether you're working behind the scenes in research or engaging the public on the museum floor, your work will help connect people to the natural world and empower them to protect it.

About the Opportunity

The Email Marketing Senior Strategist plays an essential role in CRM Strategy and Email Marketing at the Academy. This position is responsible for providing strategic email marketing recommendations to all public-facing Academy teams who use email to communicate with their audiences and for sharing performance insights and analytics through existing and new reporting tools. In addition, the Email Marketing Senior Strategist will own responsibility for email marketing project management, initiating email builds and testing and facilitating customer segmentation using the Academy’s CRM and email marketing platforms. The role will manage the workflow of over 900 campaigns annually through pre-planning, requirements gathering, segmentation and configuring emails through the CRM and email marketing platforms, and facilitating stakeholder approvals. Additionally, this role will drive increased automation in the platform through the exploration of new messaging streams and optimization of existing streams, and, potentially, the incorporation of new messaging channels to complement the Academy’s email outreach.

This role is a hybrid position, with the expectation that a person will be able to report onsite at the Academy at least 2 days per week.

We are committed to ensuring diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion are intrinsic to Academy culture and operations, from recruitment and retention to science and advocacy. Explore Our Commitment to Racial Equity to learn about our intentional engagement of traditionally excluded groups in an effort to spark interest in or foster pathways to scientific careers.

Organizational Culture
Join a team dedicated to the Academy’s mission, vision and values! Currently, the Academy has a new strategic plan including three initiatives – Hope for Reefs, Thriving California, and Islands 2030 – that leverage biodiversity science, environmental learning, and collaborative engagement to regenerate fragile ecosystems around the world. Learn more at https://www.calacademy.org/about-us/major-initiatives.

We hope you are inspired by what we do and are excited to contribute to our mission. The mission of the California Academy of Sciences is to regenerate the natural world through science, learning, and collaboration. The Academy is looking for candidates who do great work, and we know they may come from a number of different backgrounds and experiences. We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every qualification for the position.

This position is based in San Francisco, California. This position is part of a bargaining unit represented by Cal Academy Workers United, and will be subject to the terms and conditions of that contract.

Key Responsibilities

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions

• Work with email stakeholders/content strategists to drive strategy to increase engagement and acquisition across all email streams; including re-engagement, drip campaigns, transactional emails and lifecycle marketing
• Lead meetings with stakeholders to develop, set up, and launch email campaigns with emphasis on content strategy, project management, customer segmentation, contact strategy, execution & analysis
• Manage campaign workflow through the Academy’s project management platform, ensuring milestones are met and campaign is executed on time
• Build, edit, and test email campaigns using the Academy’s custom JSON email template engine
• Create audience segments to match stakeholder requirements by using pre-existing SQL queries (that may require minor modification) and other tools as necessary
• Monitor HTML, CSS, and other performance issues to maintain email template functionality
• Manage email marketing and project management platforms, including set-up of user accounts, lists, tables and fields, segmentation, and automation of applicable campaigns and processes
• As necessary, assist the Sr. Manager, Marketing Operations, and external agency with migration from current email platform to forthcoming email & marketing automation platform
• Assist on key analytics projects that require coordination with technical teams
• Assess Academy email KPIs and adjust/update as necessary to align with industry guidelines
• Create, present and share clear, actionable metrics reports and campaign analyses, based on established KPIs, with stakeholders
• Maintain an overview of all existing email reporting tools
• Research industry best practices for email reporting and analysis
• Identify areas for optimizing email reporting processes and tools
• Lead the creation of new email reporting and analysis tools, including self-service dashboards for stakeholders
• Research, identify and promote to stakeholders areas for optimization in email performance, audience engagement, segmentation, and campaign strategy
• Monitor, update, and expand the use of automated cart abandonment retargeting emails
• Identify other viable use cases for retargeting email streams, and oversee their creation
• Analyze and compile email results to support program optimization and benchmarking
• Use research, insights, and A/B testing to optimize campaigns
• Work with the Sr. Manager, Marketing Operations, to maintain correct customer segmentation and data extraction
• Maintain accurate documentation of email build, send, and list pull processes
• Manage and train other staff as needed on email-related processes
• Follow all Academy safety regulations
• Perform other assigned duties as required

Qualifications: A successful candidate will have the following:

Experience and/or Education:

• Minimum of 5 years’ experience in email marketing or related roles
• Bachelor or Associates degree in related field preferred and not required

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities:

• Experience implementing a project management framework
• Proficiency with cloud-based project management tools like Jira, Wrike, Asana, or Basecamp
• At least 3 years’ experience using a top-tier Email Service Provider and/or marketing automation platform (e.g. HubSpot, Iterable, Marketo, Marketing Cloud, Mailjet, etc.)
• Preferred: direct experience with Mailjet and HubSpot platforms
• Advanced knowledge of HTML and CSS
• Basic proficiency with SQL
• Preferred: basic proficiency with JavaScript and JSON
• Proven knowledge of email marketing trends and willingness and ability to adopt new technologies, languages and or frameworks to keep up evolving best practices
• Experience using of Business Intelligence and analytics tools such as Looker Studio and Google Analytics and willingness to adopt evolving best practices
• Experience using dynamic scripting languages for email content automation
• Detail-oriented with excellent interpersonal skills, including written and spoken communications and strong collaboration skills
• Flexible and solutions-oriented problem solver who can independently troubleshoot technical issues and help facilitate strategic decision-making and negotiation of competing priorities
• Familiar with email workflow tools preferred (Email on Acid or Litmus)

Physical Environment:

Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities who meet the essential functions of the job. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is frequently required to stand, sit, use a computer, and communicate on the phone, in person, and online meetings/calls. Must be able to perform repetitive motions 80% of the time.

Compensation and Benefits:
The salary range for this position is $86,757 - $93,912. Actual compensation will be commensurate with the final candidate's qualifications and experience, including skills, knowledge, relevant education, certifications and aligned with the internal peer group. We believe in fair and equitable compensation practices and are committed to providing competitive salaries within the industry and market standards. The Academy offers a total compensation package that emphasizes both base salary and comprehensive benefits based on the hours per week worked. Further details regarding compensation and benefits will be discussed during the interview process.

Schedule: Temporary full-time, 40 hours/week, hybrid

How to Apply:

Interested candidates should submit a resume and application through our Careers Page portal.

The California Academy of Sciences will give full consideration for employment to all qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance (SF Police Code, Article 49).