In 2017, Exodus experienced its first surge. Ninety days to Easter of that year, we added nearly 1,500 men. I thought we were being hacked; it turns out the 750 guys who came the previous year invited their friends for the next. A few business mentors asked me about the kind of campaign that we ran: "What were the inputs that won the result so that we can replicate this for the future?" The truth was that there were no inputs: no campaign, no ads, no emails. It happened to me, and I did very little to support it other than answer support requests for 20-hours straight, 3 days in a row. Those were the days when I knew we were on to something, that God had bigger plans for the Exodus than I had previously imagined.
In the following years, we did our best to maximize what was happening organically and started to run campaigns through Q4 leading up to the January start. I started by building the ads and cobbling together basic prospecting and retargeting campaigns. They were pretty terrible, honestly, but with a bit of luck and help from many friends, we kept growing. And because of this, we were able to bring on an agency to run marketing for us, which is how we have operated ever since.
We are looking for a Director of Digital Marketing to lead all of our digital marketing strategies and activities moving forward. Read on if you believe this task is one you'd be interested in shouldering for the indefinite future.
ABOUT THE COMPANY
Our mission is to bring the freedom of Jesus Christ to men. We accomplish that through our spiritual exercises that provide a path to freedom and formation through prayer, asceticism, and fraternity. The mission of our company is the foundation for how we run it. We believe that your job should support your vocation and not the other way around.
The Holy Spirit leads every aspect of our mission. We started from nothing a few years ago; that we have reached over 40,000 men in 65 countries in only a short time fills us with gratitude and awe. Our company is small. Right now, we have only 6 full-time team members. That's me (James), Mark, Nathaniel, Stephen, Doyle, and Jacob. You will become number 7, but you will be far from a number to us. You will know the people with whom you work.
We run on Traction, a simple operating system for organizations like ours. We have one team meeting per week that lasts for 90 minutes. We also meet for one day per quarter and two days per year to review our strategic plan and set the goals we need to accomplish our 1-year plan, 3-year picture, and 10-year target.
Requirements
ABOUT THE JOB AND THE WORK
Fundamentally, this job is about developing and executing a broad strategy to bring more people to the front of the funnel by increasing awareness and interest outside of what we've already built. Because we don't sell massages, it's also about nurturing potential program participants from interest to intent to action. It's about converting prospects into Exodus men, and it's about retaining them in Day 91. In short, you will own our entire digital funnel.
We'll support your strategy with the adspend budget that you will need. While you'll have support from the CEO and VP of Marketing, you will be responsible for any other needed vendors. Building an in-house team is something we'll discuss down the road, but it's not something we will look to do quickly. Remember, it's year 5 for us, and you will be number 7.
While some may see this as a disadvantage, we think it's an opportunity that the right person will enjoy. It's for someone who wants the growth of a life-changing experience on their shoulders and is motivated by the fact that if they do not succeed, men around will the world will not be free. It's for a self-starter who is faith-filled but normal, organized, ambitious, and also has a lot of fun at work. Someone, who after a nice weekend without any work, wakes up on Monday and is excited about it.
You'll bring us new ideas we've never considered in the past. And, watch out, we will trust you because no one else can do your job. In addition to big picture strategy, you'll focus on practical day-to-day activities like: managing adspend budgets and acquisition costs, writing email sequences and blogs, concepting new Facebook audiences and messaging, improving our Q4 campaign, creating new offseason campaigns, coming up with new content ideas, and fielding sponsorship opportunities that come our way. You'll also be expected to regularly detail progress, setbacks, and marketing insights for the whole company. And you will be working in tandem across departments: product, content, support, and development teams.
We will reach about 20,000 men this year, and we want to keep pushing the envelope to reach 40,000 in the next. We believe the right person can point us in the right direction, guide us, improve our old campaigns, come up with new ones, create them, launch them, study the results, course correct, revamp, and try more things.
You will report to Jacob, our VP of Marketing. This is a remote job. You're free to work where you work best: home office, co-working space, coffee shops, here in the States, or that far-off place you've always wanted to live. We have an office in Fort Wayne, Indiana. You are welcome to move to the Promised Land (Indiana), and if you do, we will pay for any moving expenses that you incur. Travel for this job will be minimal, apart from our bi-annual meetups to get our full-time team together in one place.
Bottom-line, this is an impact job. In time, the ministry should look better with you on board, a clear case of before and after. You'll help us be noticed, be seen, and be found. We should also feel better about ourselves with you around. This is a big responsibility, and we are here to support you, cheer you on, and make it happen. We've talked about having someone like you on board for years, and now we're finally ready to welcome you.
ABOUT YOU:
We are only open to candidates who have more than five years of experience in growth marketing who have managed databases and adspend budgets of hundreds of thousands. The ideal candidate is a digital marketing generalist with adpsend and email marketing specialties.
You should be very familiar with Exodus, embrace all the teachings of the Church, and absolutely pumped at the opportunity to deploy your gifts and skills for our faith-based mission.
We value a Liberal Arts education, but that's not required. We care about what you can do and how you do it, not about how you got here. A strong track record of conscientious, thoughtful work speaks volumes. You do not need to have worked in Church-world before this job; we'd almost prefer you to have not.
Our marketing stack includes Hubspot, Facebook & Twitter & Google Ads, Stack Adapt, and Leadpages. Our analytics stack includes Google Analytics, Mixpanel, and Looker. Our website is built on Wordpress, and our product is a mobile application for iOS and Android. You do not have to know all of our systems on Day 1, but you should be an expert in comparable tools from your past experience. You will need basic technical and design skills for working on our site, landing pages, and creative assets.
We value managers of one, mainly because we do not have time for micromanagement. We appreciate people who can take a stand yet commit even when they disagree. We subject ideas to rigorous consideration and challenge each other, but all remember that we're here for the same purpose: to do good work together for our mission to men and for the Lord. That comes with direct feedback, openness to each others' experience, and willingness to roll up our sleeves and get the work done.
You can expect other staff to listen and hear you. You can expect to give and provide direct feedback. You can expect to be counted on. You can expect to do your best work and build a career here. We build our app, our team, and our company for the long haul, and we enjoy the ride.
Benefits
PAY AND BENEFITS:
Though Exodus is a nonprofit and faith-based organization, we do not look to the industry or the Church as benchmarks for workplace culture or compensation. We pay competitively, and we also operate on same position, same pay, no matter where you live.
Benefits at Exodus are all about helping you lead a healthy life outside of work. That starts with working no more than 40 hours a week on a regular basis and getting 8+ hours of sleep a night (if your children allow!). Our workplace and our benefits are designed to support a sustainable, healthy relationship with your work. Work for 8, sleep for 8, and then do whatever you please with the other 8, but please pray for at least 1.
The Commandments are at the heart of the Book of Exodus. As such, for no reason do we work on Sundays. It can always wait until Monday.
You get 15 days of paid time off for the first 3 years, 20 days after four years, and 25 days after five years. We don't work on Holy Days of Obligation, personal and company patronal feast days, nor most national holidays. In the summers, we work 4-day weeks (May-July). We offer a fully-paid parental leave of one month.
We do not offer group insurance; we are too small to opt out of coverages that contradict the teachings of the Church. As such, you choose the health coverage you would like, whether that's insurance or a healthcare sharing ministry like most of us have chosen. We pay your monthly premium 100%. In addition, we give you $500 per month in a QHRSA for qualified reimbursable health expenses. This helps cover the cost of your annual share (in sharing programs) or your deductible (in insurance programs) or other costs that fall outside of your coverage like therapy. We do this because we do not want your hard-earned salary swallowed up by medical expenses. Rather, it should serve your long-term goals like getting out of debt, investing, and saving for your kid's college.
We are launching a new pre-tax retirement benefit through a SIMPLE IRA, which is a retirement benefit that's built for small companies like ours. This will offer you a 3% company match on contributions.
We pay for all of your software and hardware needs. Anything that touches your work at any time, including your cell phone, laptop, and internet are ours to cover. We pay for your gym membership, but if you don't use the gym, we'll cover a comparable membership (like lKON Pass or golf membership). When you join the company, you'll be given a company credit card with only two words as a guide: "Spend wisely."
Lastly, we work on our company just like we work on our mission. We don't have it all figured out, but we've optimized a lot over the past five years. And we will welcome your voice in shaping the best place that we could ever dream to work.
HOW TO APPLY
We want to get a sense of how you think. To that end, please use your cover letter to share with us your take on the following questions:
- Tell us how you've taken an existing brand to a new place by revamping their approach to marketing. How would you begin to approach figuring out where we stand and where we should be standing? How will you take us from 20,000 to 40,000 men over the next year?
- We are looking for a strategist who can roll up their sleeves and do the work. Give us a sense for your digital marketing channel strengths and weaknesses, specifically performance adspend and email marketing, and examples of the kinds of products that you have marketed before and whether or not you have marketed a mobile app before.
- Give us an example of a small-to-medium sized business that you think markets themselves particularly well? Who's doing an outstanding job out there? And why?
- What's inspired you lately? What's the most creative thing you've seen or experienced in the last few years?
We value great writers, so take your time with the application. Keep in mind that we do not equate length with substance, so please keep your cover letter to fewer than 1500 words. Stock cover letters won't do - tell us why you want this job, not just any job.
We are accepting applications for this position until May 14th, 2021. We want to fill the position to start by the beginning of June.
We can't wait to hear from you!
Peace of Jesus Christ,
James Baxter
Co-Founder & CEO