Senior Performance Marketing Manager

Risepoint is an education technology company that provides world-class support and trusted expertise to more than 100 universities and colleges. We primarily work with regional universities, helping them develop and grow their high-ROI, workforce-focused online degree programs in critical areas such as nursing, teaching, business, and public service. Risepoint is dedicated to increasing access to affordable education so that more students, especially working adults, can improve their careers and meet employer and community needs.

The Impact You Will Make:

The Senior Performance Marketing Manager will play a critical role in driving student recruitment growth across Risepoint’s UK university partner portfolio through best-in-class paid media planning, agency management, and performance optimisation. Working across paid search, paid social, and other paid media channels, this role will ensure media investment is planned, executed, optimised, and measured effectively to deliver high-quality demand, efficient conversion, and strong return on investment.

As a senior member of the UK marketing team, this role will act as the performance marketing lead for paid media across a growing portfolio of university partners. The Senior Performance Marketing Manager will translate data into clear insight, challenge agencies to deliver stronger results, and collaborate closely with product marketing, creative, digital experience, and partner-facing teams to build a high-performing, data-driven paid media function that supports Risepoint’s growth ambitions and strengthens outcomes for our university partners.

How You Will Bring Our Mission to Life

What You Will Do:

• Lead paid media planning and execution across a portfolio of UK university partners, ensuring plans are aligned to partner objectives, programme priorities, recruitment goals, and commercial performance targets.
• Manage media agencies across paid search, paid social, and other paid media channels, setting clear expectations, challenging recommendations, reviewing performance, and ensuring campaigns are delivered to a high standard.
• Drive best-in-class performance across all paid media channels, continuously improving campaign structure, targeting, creative testing, budget allocation, conversion efficiency, and return on investment
• Own the day-to-day performance view across paid media activity, using data to identify opportunities, diagnose issues, and recommend clear actions that improve lead quality, conversion rates, cost efficiency, and enrolment outcomes.
• Partner with UK/EMEA senior marketing managers, creative teams, digital experience, analytics, and agency partners to ensure campaigns are informed by strong positioning, audience insight, channel best practice, and full-funnel performance data.
• Lead regular performance reporting and insight sharing, translating complex media, funnel, and conversion data into clear recommendations for internal stakeholders, senior leaders, and university partner discussions.
• Manage paid media budgets across partners and programmes, ensuring investment is prioritised effectively, spend is monitored closely, and decisions are made based on performance trends, market opportunity, and recruitment priorities.
• Support new programme and partner launches by developing paid media recommendations, forecasting demand, briefing agencies, reviewing launch plans, and ensuring campaigns are set up to deliver measurable growth from day one.
• Identify opportunities to improve performance marketing operations, including reporting processes, agency ways of working, testing frameworks, AI-enabled optimisation, automation, and scalable campaign management approaches.

What Success Looks Like:

• Paid media activity consistently delivers against partner recruitment goals, with clear improvements in lead generation, lead quality, conversion efficiency, and return on investment.
• Risepoint’s media agencies operate as high-performing strategic partners, with clear accountability, strong optimisation discipline, and measurable improvements across paid search, paid social, and other paid media channels.
• Campaign performance is proactively managed across the full funnel, with data-driven recommendations leading to stronger investment decisions, improved conversion outcomes, and more efficient use of budget.
• Internal stakeholders and university partners have confidence in paid media performance, supported by clear reporting, actionable insight, and transparent communication.

How Impact Will be Measured:

• Achievement of paid media performance targets across partner portfolios, including lead volume, lead quality, cost per lead, conversion rate, enrolment contribution, and return on investment.
• Improvements in paid search and paid social performance, including campaign efficiency, audience targeting, creative testing outcomes, budget utilisation, and funnel conversion metrics.
• Effective management of media agencies, demonstrated through improved recommendations, stronger optimisation practices, timely delivery, and clear accountability against agreed objectives.
• Quality and clarity of performance reporting, insight generation, and recommendations shared with internal stakeholders and partner-facing teams.

What You’ll Bring to the Team

Experience That Matters Most:

• 6+ years of experience in performance marketing, paid media, growth marketing, or a closely related digital marketing discipline.
• Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, or a related field, or equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
• Significant hands-on experience managing paid search and paid social activity, either within a performance marketing agency or in a client-side role focused primarily on paid media, growth marketing, or acquisition.
• Strong understanding of performance marketing principles across the full funnel, including audience strategy, campaign planning, optimisation, measurement, attribution, conversion rate optimisation, and ROI management
• Proven experience managing agencies or external performance marketing partners, with the ability to challenge recommendations, evaluate performance, and drive continuous improvement.
• Demonstrated success managing paid media budgets across multiple brands, products, partners, markets, or business units.
• Strong analytical skills, with the ability to interpret campaign, conversion, and business performance data and translate it into clear, actionable recommendations.
• Experience working with paid media platforms and analytics tools, such as Google Ads, Meta Ads Manager, LinkedIn Campaign Manager, GA4, Looker Studio, or similar reporting and optimisation platforms
• Strong commercial awareness, with the ability to connect media performance to wider recruitment, revenue, enrolment, or business growth outcomes.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to explain performance trends, trade-offs, risks, and recommendations clearly to both marketing and non-marketing audiences.
• Ability to manage multiple priorities in a fast-paced, matrixed environment, balancing campaign planning with hands-on performance oversight and day-to-day decision making

Experience That’s Great to Have:

• Experience working in higher education, edtech, education technology, student recruitment, or another high-consideration lead generation environment.
• Experience managing performance marketing across multiple partner brands, portfolios, or international markets.
• Experience supporting paid media activity for new product, programme, or market launches.
• Familiarity with CRM, marketing automation, and lead management processes, particularly where media performance is measured beyond lead generation through to conversion or enrolment.
• Experience working with creative, content, and landing page teams to improve paid media conversion performance.
• Understanding of AI-enabled paid media optimisation, automation, campaign testing, or reporting tools.
• Experience building or improving paid media reporting frameworks, test-and-learn programmes, or agency operating models.

Risepoint is an equal opportunity employer and supports a diverse and inclusive workforce

This role is eligible for comprehensive benefits

Personal and Professional Development:

• Continuous Professional and Leadership Development Programs
• Tuition Reimbursement for employees and their dependents