Director of Marketing, Publishing | The Optical Society

The Optical Society (OSA) is recruiting for a Director of Marketing, Publishing reporting directly to the Senior Director, Publishing Sales and Marketing and is responsible for leading OSA’s marketing efforts for the Publishing division.   More specifically, the Director of Marketing will ensure the optimal marketing of OSA’s portfolio of peer-reviewed subscription-based and open access journals and products/services and aggressively identify new, untapped opportunities for the Society.  

The major areas of responsibility for this position include:

• Overseeing an annual marketing budget of $250K. Developing market campaigns to help the division meet or exceed OSA’s annual subscription (single title and combo package), PPV, reprint, and open access revenue budget and all related benchmarks.
• Directly supervising other members of the Pubs Marketing team including the Marketing Manager and Marketing Coordinator.
• Ensuring the timely development and execution of comprehensive marketing plans and strategies by title/product on an annual basis. Key emphasis to be placed on retaining subscription revenue for the subscription titles and driving author paid revenue for the open access titles.
• Creating and managing a dynamic social media program for the OSA Publishing products in cooperation with the Public Relations team that drives usage of content and engagement with the optics and photonics community.
• Developing and implementing a robust renewals program that utilizes different renewal methods based on customer preferences. Actively tracking and analyzing renewals by effort and segment and optimizing the positioning and messaging by effort.
• Developing/updating the journal catalog and associated pricing materials annually, ensuring that the catalog is ready in time to go out with the first renewal effort.
• Effectively launching new publishing titles, products, and/or author/editor services as necessary. Creating cover/brand related materials for each new product/service, identifying specific market segments to pursue, preparing competitive analysis and assisting with the development of the business plan.
• Working with the sales team to develop value propositions and sales tools for OSA’s institutional customers. Devising and executing strategies that drive usage of OSA’s electronic products and that best meet the needs of its major constituency, the library market.
• Establishing and maintaining a dashboard which is produced monthly and which identifies and analyzes all key marketing measurements and targets. Measurements to include items like:  marketing spend YTD vs projected spend for the same period of time, engagement metrics for emails and social media efforts, etc.
• Following the journal landscape in the field of optics and photonics, regularly preparing competitive analyses and ensuring that OSA is aware of and acting on events, trends, etc., that affect the publishing division and its work.
• Participating in the development and implementation of OSA’s overarching short- and long-term strategic plans.

Education and Experience

1. Four-year college degree
2. 5-10 years marketing management experience working with an STM journal publisher.
3. Demonstrated knowledge of direct mail, e-marketing, social media, customer relationship marketing, tradeshow management, and brand development and management.
4. Experience with or an in-depth understanding of volunteer management and/or non-profit scientific publishing preferred.

Skills and Abilities

1. Dynamic individual with strong budgetary/analytical/organizational skills and the ability and the desire to take on increased responsibility over time.

1. Ability to meet multiple deadlines and work independently in a fast paced, team environment required.

3. Ability to take an innovative and entrepreneurial approach to marketing existing and new products and services.
4. Ability to establish and maintain strong working relationships with a wide variety of constituencies.
5. Ability to effectively work with and productively engage with scientific and engineering volunteers, librarians and with all departments within OSA.
6. Strong proficiency with the Microsoft office/Windows operating system
7. Excellent oral and written communication skills
8. Ability to travel 5-10% of time.

Located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, DC, OSA offers a competitive salary and excellent benefits. Please send your resume and cover letter with salary requirements to [email protected].