VP OF MARKETING JOBS: “Get Response seeks a VP of Marketing (Boston, MA).” Possible telecommute?

GetResponse’s revenue model is straightforward: The company makes money through free trial upgrades and paid customers. The company offers a free trial account which lets customers enjoy 30 days of service. During that time, new users are able to store up to 250 contacts in their account. Once they exceed that amount or run out of time, it is up to these users to decide to upgrade the service to the paid Pro level.

Additionally, GetResponse offers add-ons such as a landing page creator. Other promising services include Get Response 360°, a high-end customized service for high-volume accounts and enterprises. Get Response 360° offers educational support tailored to its clients’ specific needs. In a sense, this popular service provides Agency like qualities, and its monthly price is in the 4 figures.

The US small business administration claims that there are approximately 8.5 million small businesses in the United States accounting for 67% of America’s jobs. Nearly any of these companies could be a GetResponse client. Naturally, there are hundreds of industry-specific verticals, and thousands of niches within those verticals, and tens of thousands of subcultures within those verticals.

Consider the restaurant industry: According to Datamonitor, the US restaurant industry consists of ~550,000 restaurants with annual revenue of more than $400 billion. Key growth drivers include innovations in menu items and dining concepts.

Of those restaurants, how many are Mexican? How many are Chinese? How many are pizza joints? And this is where a knowledge of restaurant marketing might come in handy: How might Mexican restaurants use email marketing? How would that differ from how Chinese restaurants use it? And what about pizza joints? How can you drive each of them to trial?

GetResponse could also market its product to law firms. The US legal services industry includes about 180,000 law offices with combined annual revenue of $245 billion and is forecast to grow at a moderate rate over the next two years. Business transactions are a key driver of growth. As a marketer, could you envision ways that law firms could use email marketing software?

And that’s exactly what this job is about: Marketing email marketing software to SMBs who will use it to market their businesses. However, it’s important to know that marketing success that GetResponse will not begin / end with online marketing. Sure, you’ll need to fill your sales funnel with content / social, SEO, SEM, display ads, affiliate, and email marketing. You betcha. But what happens as your customers morph from Aware, to Interested, to having Desire to taking Action? You’ll need a plan.

Such a plan could involve organic and paid search, etc. at the top of the funnel. However, at some point you might need to consider sponsoring industry-specific events in certain cities, or hosting niche specific webinars. Or running two-step lead generation classified ads in industry specific trade rags that say “We wrote the book on email marketing. Call for your free copy.” and then using an inbound telesales team to capture leads and test close prospects before sending out the free premium.

According to First Research, as a percentage of sales the following industry sectors spend the most on advertising and marketing …

1. Music Stores – 5.3%
2. Landscaping Services – 4.9%
3. Direct Marketing Services – 4.5%
4. Coffee Shops – 4.3%
5. Specialty Eateries – 4.3%
6. Food Service Contractors – 4.3%
7. Catering Services – 4.2%
8. Home Furnishings Stores – 4.2%
9. Recreational Vehicle Parks – 4.1%
10. Exterminating & Pest Control Services – 4.0%
11. Internet & Mail-Order Retail – 3.7%
12. Internet Auctions – 3.7%
13. Digital Advertising Services – 3.7%
14. Directory & Mailing List Publishers – 3.6%
15. Bowling Centers – 3.6%
16. Advertising & Marketing Services – 3.5%
17. Furniture Stores – 3.5%
18. Security Guard Services – 3.5%
19. Shoe Stores – 3.5%
20. Ski Facilities – 3.5%
21. Book Publishers3.3%
22. Nonalcoholic Beverage Manufacturing – 3.3%
23. Personal Care Products Manufacturing – 3.2%
24. Commercial Real Estate Brokerage & Management – 3.2%
25. Vending Machine Operators – 3.1%
26. Pet & Pet Supplies Stores – 3.0%
27. Art Dealers & Galleries – 3.0%
28. Restaurants – 3.0%
29. Automotive Oil Change & Lubrication Services – 3.0%
30. Amusement Parks & Arcades – 3.0%
31. Florists – 2.8%
32. Fuel Oil & LP Gas Dealers – 2.8%
33. Gambling – 2.7%
34. Direct Selling – 2.7%
35. Financial Transaction Processing – 2.5%
36. Performing Arts Companies – 2.5%
37. Surveillance, Investigation & Security Consulting Services – 2.5%
38. Breweries – 2.4%
39. Entertainment & Games Software – 2.3%
40. Fast-Food & Quick-Service Restaurants – 2.3%
41. Casual Restaurants – 2.3%
42. Golf Courses – 2.3%
43. Trade Show & Event Planning Services2.3%
44. Consumer Product Rental – 2.3%
45. Bed & Breakfast Inns – 2.2%
46. Biotechnology Product Manufacturing – 2.2%
47. Electronic Toys & Games Manufacturing – 2.2%
48. Soap & Other Detergent Manufacturing – 2.2%
49. Hair Care Services – 2.2%
50. Sales Promotion Services – 2.2%

Where should you start? My advice: Order a bunch of magazines of high percentage verticals that look interesting in terms of their size and underlying economics, see who else is marketing to them both online and off, get a feel for their culture, hot buttons and emotional triggers, topics of interest, and lingo — then test small, and double down on what works.

In marketing, it’s critically important to understand very specifically who your customer is, what their biases are, and to market to them the way they buy, rather and how you want to sell. Pretty much anything you need to know about how to kick ass in this marketing job can be learned in this 237-page document. This role is NOT simply an ecommerce job. Certainly, that’s a major part of it, and we’d expect you to have meaningful answers to questions such as …

• What is your process for improving conversion rates?
• What are the top marketing metrics that you track in your online business? LTV, churn, retention, attrition rates … and HOW are you tracking these?
• Describe your email marketing experience. Be very specific. Give us examples of your work and the results that your references can verify.
• What is your process for creating an effective email marketing campaign? Get nitty gritty, with details on list management, offer creation, list hygiene, segmentation, offer development, copywriting, etc.
• What’s your process for improving return on investment with marketing? What’s your experience in developing and running performance driven campaigns? Explain in detail.

But more than anything, we’re looking for a M.A.R.K.E.T.E.R… Somebody who knows how to develop an affinity with a target customer and get inside his beady little brain. Somebody who can get up in front of a room full of 200 SMBs and make them WANT to sop up GetResponse’s email marketing religion. Somebody who knows how to rent a mailing list if necessary. Somebody for whom the freaking Internet is just a means to an end (customer intimacy!) and not an end unto itself.

Well, you must be creative and be able to develop your own concepts. You must be able to work without a team. You must be a self-starter and take ideas and build around them. You must be able to take a concept and rally support for it — both internally and externally, even when people aren’t obligated or incentivized to support you.

GetResponse’s culture is about getting one’s hands dirty all the time, and the firm’s focus is on things like product development, improving marketing, figuring out what keeps customers awake at night, and determining where the bottlenecks to growth are in its business and processes. The firm doesn’t have $1 billion to spend on marketing. GetResponse is scrappy, and it looks for “force multipliers” in all aspects of its business — so that every dollar it spends looks like it spent ten dollars. If you can thrive in that kind of environment — then by all means, please apply below.

PS — Final interviews for this role will be in Poland. In March. So bundle up!