Director, Digital Marketing

6200 Hermann Park Dr, Houston, TX 77030, USA

Posted Wednesday, January 7, 2026 at 7:00 AM

The Director, Digital Marketing is Houston Zoo’s designated expert in digital marketing and engaging our customers through appropriate channels. This role develops digital marketing programs and customer engagement strategies leveraging owned media/web properties, SEM/SEO, email campaigns, social media, email marketing tools and other digital channels. This position is also responsible for tracking and reporting digital marketing KPIs and is expected to identify, recommend, and execute improvements for optimizing strategy, budget allocations, website, email, and social media content improvements.

The incumbent has an intimate understanding of paid media and can communicate paid social planning recommendations while illustrating how this data fits into the larger social marketing mix and broader digital ecosystem. Supervises the Digital Content specialists.

Our Mission: Houston Zoo connects communities with animals, inspiring action to save wildlife.

Our Vision: Houston Zoo will be a leader in the global movement to save wildlife.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

• Develops strategic direction for digital media planning and buying, define demand and lead generation plans, and execute growth strategies for digital channels including: SEM/ PPC, social media, Display/Retargeting, Events, Websites/SEO, email. Leads digital marketing team as a strategic coach and technical expert; partner with creative services team for development of marketing collateral to support digital marketing performance plans; guide implementation and optimization efforts for marketing analytics, tracking, testing and interpretation of results.
• Conducts A/B tests across channels to continuously optimize campaign and channel performance. Defines and executes a digital marketing strategy that supports and extends marketing initiatives, continually evolving the strategy to remain in front of competitive threats and market shifts.
• Manages all web properties as well as the company's internal portals and their continued enhancements.
• Develops and executes data-driven digital marketing strategies across the full customer lifecycle, from acquisition through retention, membership growth, and re‑engagement.
• Partners with all departments to develop and execute effective digital marketing programs to drive demand, cultivate prospective customers, strengthen brand, and mission awareness.
• Gauges digital marketing initiative effectiveness using available analytics tools and make recommendations for marketing campaign optimization based on those results.
• Manages digital vendor relationships and supervises SEM/SEO and paid digital media activity. Consistently explore new vendors, technologies, platforms, and digital marketing solutions.
• Provides recommendations to marketing leadership on how to expand digital marketing capability including talent, skills, tools, and platforms to maximize the digital channel reach and effectiveness.
• Leads implementation, optimization, and ongoing governance of marketing automation and CRM platforms (e.g., Hub Spot), including email journeys, segmentation, lead nurturing, and integrations with ticketing and e‑commerce systems.
• Ensures Houston Zoo website is constantly up to date with fresh, relevant content.
• Ensures the website is safe and secure by monitoring site security vulnerabilities and acting to address them.
• Works with outside web developers to resolve technical issues that arise with the website, blog, and related sites.
• Works with IS Application Support to ensure the best possible user experience between Houston Zoo website and the zoo’s e‑commerce platform.
• Trains new website users and manages groups of existing users.
• Contributes to saving animals in the wild through: reduction of waste, water and energy use and inspiring guests and staff to take wildlife protection actions.
• Performs other duties as assigned.

Education and Experience

• BS degree in Marketing or related field
• Eight (8) years’ work experience in digital marketing
• Strong digital marketing competencies (website, SEM/SEO, social media, email campaigns)…