Executive Director of Digital Marketing, External Affairs

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. 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.

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.

Required Skills

• Bachelor's degree in marketing, Communications, Advertising, Business, Analytics, or a related field.
• 8+ years of progressive digital marketing leadership experience, including budget and vendor/agency management.
• Demonstrated experience overseeing SEO, digital advertising, and marketing analytics functions.
• Proven success building or scaling marketing analytics, reporting, or dashboard infrastructure.
• Track record of leading, developing, and retaining high-performing marketing teams.
• Strong vendor and agency management experience, including contract and performance oversight.
• Excellent relationship-building, influence, and communication skills, with a demonstrated ability to build trust and drive alignment across a large, decentralized, matrixed organization.
• Current, working knowledge of digital marketing and marketing-technology trends, including practical applications of AI in marketing and analytics.

 

Preferred:

• Experience in higher education marketing or another complex, multi-unit institutional environment.
• Experience partnering with Institutional Research or a similar data/decision-support function.
• Familiarity with higher-education marketing and analytics platforms.

 

 

We are an equal opportunity employer, and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, natural or protective hairstyle, religion, sex, age, national origin, physical or mental disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, genetic information, military service, pregnancy or pregnancy-related condition, or because of marital, parental, or veteran status. We are a VEVRAA Federal Contractor. 

Required Experience