About Us and Why We’re Hiring
We build “You Need a Budget,” the best budgeting software around. (But people in the know call us YNAB, which is pronounced “why-nab”). For more than a decade, people have been buying YNAB and then telling their friends what a difference it has made in their lives.
Google us, or read some of our
reviews on the app store, and you’ll see what we mean. We love building something that
literally changes people’s lives.
We are looking for a full-time Digital Marketing Specialist to join our used-to-be-punk-rock-but-now-we’re-playing-festivals Marketing Team. You know who you are. You’re so obsessed with CPM’s, CPC’s, CPA’s, CZX’s, and CTR’s that you’re furious that you just spent hours Googling “CZX,” which is one we just made up to make sure you were paying attention. But you were, and you always are!
You’ve got the confidence to feel comfortable spending the equivalent of a fully loaded KIA Soul on a test ad spend for a brand new social media platform that doesn’t allow the usage of vowels, but you’ve also got the respect for that amount of money to pll th plg qkly.
Also, you love the numbers. You’re an optimizer’s optimizer. Seeing the CPA’s go down is your love language. When your A/B test reaches significance, you compose sonnets for your new, winning, baby variant. And speaking of variants, you’re creative! You’re always coming up with new, meaningful test ideas.
Most of all, though, you’re hilarious. You realized long ago that comedy is one of the most precious resources in life the marketing world and you’re beyond excited that a big part of your job is making people laugh themselves all the way to financial freedom!
Requirements (these are real, actual requirements):
- We care more about a high proficiency level than years of experience, but we expect that at least 2 years of experience in the following areas of digital marketing will best set you up for success here. You should be totally (and humbly) confident in your ability to:
- Manage Paid Social advertising
- Manage SEM
- Use Analytics/Attribution platforms
- Conduct LPO/CRO experiments
- Manage relatively large (and in charge) ad spend budgets
That’s a super-brief intro of what you’ll be working on. But first, you need to know if you’ll even like working with us. We think you will.
We’re profitable, bootstrapped, and growing. YNAB started in 2004 and we haven’t taken any outside funding—we’re in it for the long haul. We have one overarching requirement when it comes to joining our team: our original
Core Value Manifesto has to really click with you. If you’re nodding emphatically while reading it, you’d probably really like it here, and we can’t wait to hear from you!
Who you’d be working with:
Ryan, our Director of Digital Marketing, will be your boss, but let’s settle down now. He was voted “World’s Most Middle Child” by Teen Vogue and has purchased all of his jeans at Costco. You’ll be able to bounce numbers and ideas off of him like he’s a sentient racquetball court and he’ll gladly dork out with you about the new data governance plan you’ve cooked up.
Sarah is our Social Content Coordinator, and also invented Budgeting TikTok™. We were like, “Hey Sarah, do you maybe want to test out TikTok?” 320,000+ followers later she was like, “Done. Now what?” We might be slightly biased, but we believe she’s the most, prolific, creative Social Media Marketer the world has ever seen.
Ben B. (because Ben I. was first) is YNAB’s (unofficial) mascot and Community Manager. When he’s not live streaming potentially Grammy-winning songs about how people might spend their stimulus checks, he’s running bootcamps, getting people fired up about teaching YNAB and starring in the hit YouTube show, Budget Nerds (what a time to be alive!).
Haley, our Public Relations Manager, is maybe the secret reason you’ve heard of YNAB. Since she joined our team last Spring she’s not only cooked up dozens of campaigns with tons of perfectly-matched influencers, she’s also masterfully helped YNAB navigate what many are calling “The Most Uncertainest of Times” in 2020...and hey, maybe YNAB was featured on The TODAY Show last Fall...literally, the words “You Need A Budget” came out of Hoda Kotb’s mouth.
Arturo is our tri-lingual Marketing Developer/wizard. Not only is Arturo one of the most talented developers you’ll ever get to work with (in a company full of talented developers), he’s also hilarious and he has an uncanny ability to teach and explain exactly what is happening behind-the-scenes, so you can be confident that, if something breaks, it’s probably not our fault.
Believe it or not, as the Digital Marketing Specialist, you’ll be working regularly with the rest of the YNAB marketing team as well. You’ll get to get all artsy fartsy and help make magic with our Motion Designer, Tristan and our amazing Visual Designers, Lauren and Marian. You can help Ashley, our Video Content Lead, crack YouTube’s algorithm so people will absolutely obliterate that subscribe button, y’all (don’t forget to turn on notifications). You’ll be living in a constant state of “whoa, [name of person] is pretty much the most amazing human I’ve ever met” after every call.
How You’ll Work at YNAB
We work really hard to make working at YNAB an amazing experience (we’ve even been named
Fortune’s #1 Best Small Company to Work For) and have a team full of truly exceptional people—the kind you’ll be excited to work with. Here’s how we operate:
Live Where You Want
We’ve always been a fully remote team, and have people all over the world. For this particular position, however, we're looking for someone within +/- 4 hours of Central Standard Time, due to the high amount of synchronous coordination needed with the rest of the Marketing team. Anywhere within those time zones is okay, though. Just make sure you have a reliable internet connection.
No Crazy Hours
We rarely work more than 40 hours per week. There have been a few occasions where things got a little crazy and people had to log some extra hours. But then they took some extra time off, so it all balances out. We work hard and smart but we’re in this for the long haul, no need to go crazy on the hours.
Take Vacation (Seriously)
We want you to take vacation. In fact, we have a minimum vacation policy of three weeks per year. Five weeks feels about right (plus two extra weeks for Holiday break). It’s important to get out and do something. We’ll look forward to seeing pictures of your vacation in our #office_wall Slack channel.
The YNAB Retreat
When the pandemic isn’t keeping us from traveling, we get the teams together once a year to catch up on spreadsheets and powerpoints in a Best Western conference room. Just kidding. So far, we’ve done
Costa Rica, a
gigantic cabin in the mountains, a beach house in the Outer Banks, a ranch in Montana, and most recently,
Laguna Beach. We work together, play together, and reinforce the bonds we’ve made as a team and company. Every year, we leave refreshed, motivated, and excited for the year ahead together.
Up Your Game
We’re serious about helping you improve your craft. We budget for it (hey-o!). Think conferences, online courses and subscriptions, dedicated time away from work to learn something new… it’s really up to you and your manager. But we love to see our people growing.
International is Absolutely Okay
If you are Stateside, we’ll set you up as a W2 employee. If you’re international, you’ll be set up as a contractor. (We are spread all over the world: Switzerland, Scotland, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Germany, Canada, and all over the United States.) As mentioned, we have some time zone restrictions for this role, but as long as you're within +/- 4 hours of Central Standard Time, we're good!
Benefits
For our U.S. employees, we offer fantastic health, dental, and vision insurance, where we cover 100% of the premium for you and your family. (No need to check your vision, you read that right, 100%. Although if you did need to check your vision, we’ve got you covered!)
We also have a Traditional and Roth 401k option. YNAB matches your contributions, up to six percent of your paycheck. Matches vest immediately. (Are you a personal finance junkie like our founder Jesse? He set up YNAB’s 401k to have the lowest fee structure possible, where all plan costs are paid by YNAB, not your retirement nest egg. The investment funds available are fantastic, passively-managed, ultra low-cost index funds. You’re not a PF junkie? Trust us, it’s awesome.)
Other Tidbits
- Once you start, we DEMAND (in a friendly, ALL CAPS IS YELLING way) that you fill out your “Bucket List” spreadsheet with 50 items. (That’s harder than it sounds!)
- The bucket list really helps in deciding what we should give you for your birthday and the holidays.
- We have a bonus plan based on profitability. You’ll be in on that from day one. YNAB wins, you win. That kind of thing.
- We’re all adults. There’s no need to punch a clock, or ask for permission to take off early one afternoon to go see the doctor. We look at what you accomplish, not how long you sit (have you tried standing?) in front of a computer.
- We want you firing on all cylinders so we’ll set you up with a shiny new computer and replace it every three years.
- Did we mention we make a huge, positive difference in people’s lives? You may not think that matters much, but then a few months down the road you’ll realize it’s made your job really, really enjoyable. Don’t underestimate this one!
If this sounds like your ideal environment, read on because now we want to talk about you. You will play a big, big part in helping YNAB become a household name, which will help hundreds of thousands of people gain total control of their money. You will change lives. I’ll only say that six more times.
Now, back to you, our Digital Marketer…
What Success Looks Like:
We have a strong brand and a very loyal user base. We’ve also gone big on Content Marketing for the last decade with no sign of stopping. But if organic growth through Content and Referral Marketing is the wind at our sails, we’re also looking to pour more Digital Marketing gasoline into the engine to really get this ship moving!
In a heavily competitive (FinTech) ocean (was going to say landscape, but, you know, boats), navigating this boat (sticking with that metaphor) means hitting fairly aggressive KPI’s, but the good news is that we only have one product (YNAB) and really only two subscription tiers. Within that narrow scope, you’re excited about looking for opportunities with low CPM’s where you can improve CTR’s to lower CPC’s to get even lower CPA’s. Boom. Math.
And even though we know our core audience fairly well, we’re looking for you to use your expertise and finely-tuned processes to expand and test out new, uncharted, waters (I swear, that’s the last mention of the ship metaphor). Oh, and hey, as those new, potential-YNABers hit our marketing site, you’re hitting them (but in a nice way) with custom landing pages, specific to their ad creative, helping them make the life-changing decision to give YNAB a try.
Let’s say that YNAB didn’t change their life on that first go around. No problem. You’re looking at the data, and creating subtle, relatively personalized retargeting experiences that will help these future YNABers give it another go, and maybe this time, it sticks.
Overall, you are a master of the marketing funnel. You have a solid grasp on the customer journey/lifecycle and you have all of the tools in your toolbelt to efficiently and effectively put money behind helping these future YNABers hop on board (shoot. Probably fits the ship metaphor. I did try).
You are our ideal candidate if:
- You have substantial experience planning, implementing and executing campaigns across all areas of Digital Marketing:
- Paid Social
- SEM
- Mobile and Web Display
- Retargeting
- You can point to multiple Digital Marketing campaigns you’ve implemented from start to finish.
- You can effortlessly fly around in Analytics, and ad platforms to understand, analyze and optimize spend.
- You’re not a coder, but you fully understand tracking, attribution and how ad tech works for both web and mobile to help troubleshoot potential issues with developers.
- You’re not a data scientist, but you feel comfortable picking out trends and patterns to test out new hypotheses and spend money effectively.
- You’re not a web developer, but you love working with developers to set up CRO and LPO tests.
- You relentlessly pursue high-quality work and continuous improvement. At the same time.
- You have a deep appreciation for brand strength achieved only through uncompromising consistency.
- You are a stellar communicator.
- You are wildly productive and independent, but a team-player at heart.
- You love to test, optimize, test, optimize and then test again.
- You are willing to experiment even if it means chalking mistakes up to learning from time to time.
Some things you’ll be doing at YNAB:
- Planning, implementing, and executing campaigns for:
- Paid Social (Facebook/Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc.)
- SEM (Google, Bing)
- Web and Mobile Display (Google UAC/Display, BuySellAds, etc.)
- Creating various retargeting campaigns across several ad platforms.
- Using custom built components in WordPress to build landing pages/funnels for LPO/CRO experiments in Google Optimize.
- Using Amplitude, Google Analytics and Ad Platforms to track, analyze, optimize and report on spend.
- Working with our content team to brainstorm and create new ad content (copy, visual design, video, etc.).
- Assisting our Public Relations Manager to track and analyze influencer and affiliate campaigns.
- Maybe being asked to rewrite the lyrics to popular songs to make them parodies about budgeting???
YNAB is an equal opportunity employer. We believe diversity of backgrounds, beliefs, and experiences to be critical to our success and are passionate about creating a welcoming, supportive, and collaborative environment for all employees. All are encouraged to apply as we continue to grow a smart, hard-working, and diverse team who love working together to build something that matters.
How to Apply
-
Apply here by 11:59PM PST on Thursday, February 25th, 2021. Firm. It’s a real deadline.
- Attach a PDF cover letter introducing yourself and explain why this position interests you and why you would be a great fit. Cover letters are meant to sell, so sell us!
- At the end of your cover letter, briefly tell us your thoughts on the future of the Digital Marketing landscape with the demise of the IDFA and the probable loss of 3rd-party cookies in Chrome.
- Attach a PDF resume. If you don’t have a resume because you aren’t even sure you’re looking to change jobs, that’s fine! An informal list of your work and education history are all we’re looking for.
- Please send all attachments as PDFs. (I know, we've now said this three times, but it makes our lives so much easier.)
We look forward to hearing from you!
P.S. If you’re not interested in or available for this position, but know someone who is, we would really appreciate it if you passed this along!