Marketing Personalization Manager, Salt Lake City, UT

Western Governors University•Salt Lake City, UT

4d•Onsite

About The Position

The Personalization Manager leads audience level personalization across the WGU marketing experience to increase positive user behavior, up to application. They develop/enhance and execute a website personalization strategy aligned with WGU's objectives, creating a one-by-one experience. Collaborating with internal teams, the manager leverages qualitative and quantitative data to find the right avenues to enrich the prospective student’s experience. This role is critical to connecting data and optimization, content and experience to specific marketing audiences, while helping to define and revise those audiences.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree
Five years or more of experience leading conversion rate optimization, website personalization, or quantitative user research with a proven track record of executing and evaluating tests to optimize conversion.
Proficient in personalization and A/B testing tools (VWO preferred), and experience with analytics tools (Adobe Customer Journey Analytics, Microsoft Clarity preferred).
Understanding of JavaScript, HTML & CSS.
Experience working in a Content Management Systems (headless preferred) and of UX Design principles and tools (Figma)
Data-Driven Decision Making: Demonstrated experience in using data to inform operational, design, and marketing strategies, focusing on delivering personalized user experiences.
Strategic Vision & Innovation: Ability to align audiences and personalization use cases with broader institutional growth ambitions and improved student outcomes.
Human-First Ethos: Student obsession is the UX Team’s credo. This role requires you to continuously explore new ways to leverage data and empathy for improved prospective student outcomes.
Collaborative Leadership: Excellent communication and relationship-building skills, with a proven ability to influence cross-functional teams, build consensus, and serve as a personalization evangelist.
Technical understanding: Working knowledge of website development and front-end technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), with familiarity in personalization approaches across client-side, server-side, and API-driven architectures and the ability to collaborate with engineering teams on scalable personalization implementations.
Exceptional analytical, conceptual, and problem-solving skills are required, including understanding how to interpret business and user needs and translating them into an optimized user experiences.
Familiarity with CMS (Content Management System) platforms (headless preferred) and knowledge of CDP (Customer Data Platform) systems and how they can be used to enhance data-driven personalization.
Experimentally minded: Strong understanding of experimentation and optimization methods for personalization, including A/B and multivariate testing.
Working knowledge of adaptive approaches such as bandit methods—when and where they are appropriate for personalization use cases.
Project Management: Strong project management skills to oversee end-to-end personalization initiatives and track performance against KPIs.
Equivalent relevant experience performing the essential functions of this job may substitute for education degree requirements. Generally, equivalent relevant experience is defined as 1 year of experience for 1 year of education and is the discretion of the hiring manager.

Nice To Haves

Certifications in Conversion Rate Optimization, Digital Analytics, and/or User Research

Responsibilities

Develop and execute a comprehensive personalization strategy that optimizes individual marketing touchpoints as connected parts of a broader student journey, aligning personalization efforts on the website to both conversion goals and the overall student journey.
In alignment with WGU's business objectives, creating personalized strategies that cater to different audiences, working with internal teams to develop personalized content and messaging.
Collaborate with internal Marketing and other Student Life Cycle teams such as email, lead generation, enrollment, scholarships, etc. to optimize each conversion path, identify opportunities for personalization, and increase marketing funnel efficiencies.
Work closely with the Audience Segmentation Manager to design requirements for ML/AI-driven segmentation in the CDP and effective triggers in personalization tools that target nuanced audiences.
Evaluate and select appropriate personalization tools and technologies to meet the company's needs.
Review user behavior analytics (e.g. web analytics, customer journey analytics, heatmaps and screen recording sessions) to discover personalization opportunities and evaluate performance of personalization campaigns.
Design personalized experiences in conjunction with UX Design and Web Operations.
Use data-driven insights to make informed decisions and improvements and communicate optimization performance and user behavior insights across Student Lifecycle Services.
Analyze user data, including behavior, preferences, psychographics, social context, and other demographics, to inform personalization efforts.
Work in conjunction with Marketing Research, Conversion Rate Optimization, and UX Design teams to identify and support research opportunities that support a continually developing understanding of the prospective student journey and audiences that drive a one-by-one approach to experience design.
Demonstrate commitment to WGU core values.
Assist with the conversion optimization of digital assets and campaigns across touchpoints and channels.