Senior Marketing Manager, Universities

What This Role Is

Explore's revenue depends on one thing: students engaging with partner universities on our platform — searching, connecting, applying, and enrolling. The marketing function that drives that engagement at scale doesn't fully exist yet.

On any given week, the work might include launching a multi-channel student nurture sequence in HubSpot, setting up and analysing an A/B test on WhatsApp vs email for post-connection follow-ups, producing a webinar featuring a university partner's faculty, creating short-form video content that reaches students on the platforms they actually use, briefing the content writer on the next batch of lifecycle templates, reviewing calling agency performance, or running a B2B email campaign to university prospects ahead of a sector event.

The audiences are different. The channels are different. The commercial objectives are different. But the majority of your time — roughly 80% — will be spent on the student side: building and operating the lifecycle engine that moves students toward our partner universities. The remaining 20% covers B2B university-facing marketing that supports pipeline growth, partner engagement, and sector positioning.

The person who succeeds here is comfortable operating across both, but understands that student engagement is the commercial engine and prioritises accordingly.

As Senior Marketing Manager, you'll be the primary marketing partner to the Explore leadership and product squad, working closely with the Product Manager on system design and metrics, directing a Content Writer on production, and coordinating with the Manifest Global central marketing function on brand and B2B initiatives.

What Makes This Role Different

Most senior marketing manager roles sit inside a single discipline: demand generation, content, product marketing, events, or lifecycle. This one spans several of them, but with a clear centre of gravity: student lifecycle marketing and conversion.

On the B2C side — which is the core of this role — you're building and operating the systems that turn student interest into university enrolments. Automated nurture sequences across email, WhatsApp, push, and in-app. Webinars and masterclasses that give students a reason to engage with partner universities. Creative content — shorts, reels, social — that meets students where they are. A/B testing, funnel analysis, and channel optimisation that make every touchpoint more effective. This is not campaign coordination. It's building and running a conversion engine.

On the B2B side, you're supporting university pipeline growth — partner email campaigns, event marketing for NAFSA, BUILA, and IHST, and sales enablement materials that help the commercial team close and retain university partners.

Explore also sits inside the Manifest ecosystem. The counsellor network across Cialfo and BridgeU, Kaaiser's placement infrastructure, the combined data layer across the group — these are real differentiators. The marketing that makes them visible to both students and university partners is one of the most important things Explore can build right now.

What You Own

Student Lifecycle Marketing & Conversion

• Build and operate automated lifecycle sequences in HubSpot across email, WhatsApp, push, and in-app — from workflow architecture to trigger configuration to deliverability management
• Manage the template matrix across student journey stages — rotation schedules, localisation by region, and performance-based retirement of underperforming templates
• Direct the Content Writer on what to produce: which templates, for which audience, in what tone, with what CTA
• Execute A/B tests across messaging, channels, creative formats, send timing, and audience segments — set up variants, monitor results, iterate based on data
• Monitor campaign performance daily: open rates, CTR, opt-outs, delivery failures, conversion to next funnel stage
• Manage channel operations: email deliverability, WhatsApp Business API, push notification infrastructure
• Coordinate with the student placement team on lead handoffs for high-intent students
• Manage the outbound calling function — whether agency or in-house — including call lists, scripts, caller briefs, and quality review

Creative & Student Engagement

• Launch and manage student engagement formats: webinars with university faculty, masterclasses, virtual campus tours, live Q&As — whatever moves students closer to a decision
• Create or get created short-form video content (reels, shorts, TikTok) that reaches students on the platforms they actually use
• Develop creative campaign ideas that go beyond email — formats and content that students want to engage with, not ignore
• Work with university partners to source content, speakers, and assets that make campaigns authentic

Campaign Analytics & Reporting

• Build and maintain campaign performance dashboards in HubSpot and supporting tools
• Produce weekly reports: what's running, what's performing, what needs attention
• Run channel-level analysis to determine which channels convert best for which student segments in which geographies
• Manage UTM tracking, campaign tagging, and attribution logging in coordination with the Product Manager

B2B University Marketing

• Plan and execute integrated campaigns that drive university pipeline growth and partner engagement across key regions
• Run demand generation across email, webinars, partnerships, events, and organic channels, with clear accountability for pipeline contribution
• Support positioning, messaging, and go-to-market execution for Explore's products and services
• Develop sales enablement materials, customer stories, and presentations that the commercial team uses in partner conversations
• Serve as Explore's SPOC for coordinating marketing at major industry events including NAFSA, BUILA, ICEF, and IHST — working with central marketing and the commercial team on campaigns, collateral, pre-event outreach, and post-event nurture
• Design lifecycle programmes for university partner onboarding, engagement, and retention
• Execute content and thought leadership initiatives that position Explore as the platform that understands international student recruitment

What Success Looks Like

You'll start by building a clear picture of the current state: what lifecycle messaging exists, where students drop off, which channels perform, where the B2B marketing gaps are, and what the highest-leverage improvements are.

From there, things will be measurably better. Student engagement metrics — connected student activation, connection-to-application rates, weekly active return — will be moving in the right direction. Nurture sequences will be live and iterating. Creative content will be reaching students through new formats. The calling function will be operational. A/B testing will be producing actionable insights every week. University pipeline sourced from marketing will be growing and better tracked. Event marketing will generate real commercial momentum rather than just presence.

Over time, Explore will have a marketing engine that provably influences student decisions — with every touchpoint logged, measured, and attributed. That evidence protects the revenue model and makes Explore indispensable to university partners.

What You Bring

You have 7–10 years across B2C lifecycle marketing, growth marketing, or integrated marketing, ideally in a consumer-facing product where engagement and conversion were your primary metrics. Experience supporting B2B marketing alongside B2C is valuable — but your centre of gravity is the student/consumer side.

You're a HubSpot power user (or equivalent: Braze, CleverTap, MoEngage, Iterable). You can build workflows, configure triggers, manage contact properties, troubleshoot deliverability, and build reporting — hands-on, not through a team. This is your daily environment.

You're creative and resourceful. You think beyond email — webinars, short-form video, social, interactive content. You come up with ideas and get them produced, whether through freelancers, agencies, AI tools, or your own hands.

You're data-driven. You track open rates, CTR, conversion rates, and channel performance because they're useful to you, not just required. You can run cohort and funnel analyses, pull your own campaign data, and make keep/kill/iterate decisions based on results.

You understand enough about B2B marketing to run partner campaigns, event marketing, and sales enablement when needed — but you don't default to it when the student conversion work needs attention.

You're comfortable operating in a lean environment with significant autonomy. Explore is a growing business unit within a larger group. You won't have a large team around you. You'll be expected to manage your own priorities, direct a Content Writer on production, and deliver high-quality output without constant direction.

You're genuinely open about AI as a working tool — for content production, campaign optimisation, and operational efficiency.

Experience in international education, higher education, EdTech, or student recruitment is a strong advantage. Familiarity with the study abroad decision journey — especially for students from India, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East — gives you a meaningful head start.

Why Manifest

Manifest Global is building the infrastructure for global human capital mobility, connecting students, schools, universities, and employers across 50+ countries. Our portfolio spans Cialfo (AI-powered college counselling, 2,000+ schools), BridgeU (university guidance for international schools globally), Kaaiser (trusted study abroad counselling since 1997 across India and Southeast Asia), and Explore (AI-powered university outreach platform). Together, we move talent across borders at scale. $700B flows annually in remittances from migrant workers. 85M workers will be missing from developed economies by 2030. We're building the operating system that changes that. $80M raised. Still early.

For this role specifically, Explore sits at the point where the Manifest ecosystem meets the university market. The counsellor network, the student data, the K12 platform reach: all of it becomes commercially valuable to universities through Explore. The marketing function that makes that value visible and credible to the right university buyers is one of the most important things Explore can build right now. This is the seat where that work gets done.

Explore is part of Manifest Global, a multi-brand group building the infrastructure for global human capital mobility, operating across 50+ countries with $80M raised from Tiger Global, SIG, and Square Peg.