Senior Vice President, Marketing – Retirement, Investment & Wealth Solutions

About this role

Ascensus is the leading independent technology and service platform powering savings plans across America, providing products and expertise that help nearly 16 million people save for a better today and tomorrow.
Section 1: Position Summary
The Senior Vice President, Retirement, Investment & Wealth Solutions Marketing is a key commercial leader, driving growth across multiple lines of Ascensus businesses and contributing to Ascensus enterprise key results: net sales, number of savers, and reputation (net promoter score). This role reports to Ascensus’ Chief Marketing Officer and will be part of the Marketing, Analytics & UX leadership team, as well as the Retirement leadership team.
Ascensus is a growing, fast-moving company that sits at the center of America’s savings ecosystem. Our purpose is to help more savers save more and that purpose drives us every day to serve clients and have greater impact. This role is a wonderful opportunity for a nimble, commercial marketing leader to be part of something critically important – improving workplace savings availability and quality, and savers’ retirement outcomes.
Our ideal candidate operates at the intersection of business growth and client experience and indexes high in 3 specific areas:
1. Commercial acumen and accountability: Understands what drives financial and key results and focuses energy, resources and budget on marketing efforts that most successfully drive those results. A strong analytics orientation is required.
2. Retirement and investment expertise: Strong defined contribution/retirement and investments experience, spanning advisor, third-party administrators, plan sponsor, and participant audiences.
3. Client experience: Proven ability to use marketing and UX to drive client engagement, digital adoption and better outcomes with specific experience influencing participant/saver behavior.
Section 2: Job Functions, Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Strategy and Execution

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• Define marketing strategy with clear OKRs (objectives and key results) bringing together understanding of multi-year strategic business growth plans, market/client segmentation, customer behavior, and competitive landscape.

• Direct execution and measurement of go-to-market programs, campaigns, product demos/technology showcases, and selling systems to support sales growth and client retention, including marketing key offerings, expanding sales pipeline through increased qualified lead volume, and improving lead-to-opportunity rate, win rate and new saver revenue.

• Improve brand familiarity and articulate differentiation by reinforcing our value proposition through storytelling across all sales and marketing channels: sales enablement, web, PR (in partnership with Corporate Communications), social media, thought leadership, partnerships and events. Develop effective messaging to connect products and services to our value proposition.

• Own the Corporate events strategy, including client and advisor events, as a lever for pipeline, sales and client retention, with commercial targets set for each major event.

Intelligence and Scale

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• Improve the financial impact of marketing and lower cost of acquisition by using data and analytics to improve segmentation, campaign targeting and message personalization within institutional key accounts, white label partners, banks and credit unions, TPAs, retirement advisors, small-to-mid-sized business owners and savers.

• Own commercial targets and results for marketing programs, and partner with Insights & Analytics team to evaluate the short- and long-term performance and tangible financial/commercial benefit of those programs. Continuously improve and optimize program strategy and execution as required to meet financial measures.

• Utilize marketing technology, data, AI, experimentation and client experience measurement to scale and optimize marketing initiatives, improving outcomes and key results across marketing touchpoints.

• Drive AI adoption across the Retirement marketing team for efficiencies, and partner with Marketing Operations to re-engineer and standardize team workflows.

Influence and Inspire

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• Lead and drive commercial results by influencing cross-functional resources, gaining buy-in from key stakeholders, and encouraging all to bring their best thinking to position marketing initiatives for success.

• Develop and maintain relationships with Sales teams, seeking input on client needs and marketing programs/messaging, as well as keeping teams informed of all marketing efforts and their effectiveness.

• Inspire and develop the Marketing team through transparent communications, respect and inclusion, clear goals and expectations, empowerment, and a shared vision for marketing excellence.

Values and Risk Management

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• Lead with our Core Values of People Matter, Quality First and Integrity Always®.

• Secure and properly handle all confidential data to protect against unauthorized access, improper transmission, and/or unapproved disclosure of information that could result in harm to Ascensus or clients.

• Ensure all Retirement marketing completes required compliance review and approval before use and manage brand and reputational risk in partnership with Corporate Communications and Compliance.

Section 3: Experience, Key Attributes, Knowledge Requirements

• Commercial acumen and accountability: Proven track record of marketing programs that delivered documented sales, pipeline and revenue growth in financial services. A strong analytics orientation is required.

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• Brand and storytelling: Experience positioning and elevating the reputation of top-tier financial services brands in the eyes of most commercially critical audiences through consistent messaging applied across marketing and communications channels. Superior content and communications skills required.

• Holistic client experience orientation: Position and market business and key solutions across client experience…