Email and SMS Marketing Specialist

About The Company

ACE Scholarships is a reputable 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2000 and headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Dedicated to promoting educational equity, ACE provides low-income children with access to quality K-12 private education through partial scholarship programs. Over the past 25+ years, ACE has successfully awarded more than 140,000 scholarships valued at over $390 million, positively impacting thousands of families across multiple states including Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. The organization is actively exploring expansion opportunities supported by national funding partners and is preparing for the upcoming Federal School Choice Tax Credit Program scheduled to launch in January 2027, which promises to broaden access to school choice for hundreds of thousands of students nationwide.

About The Role

ACE Scholarships is seeking a strategic, innovative, and mission-driven Email & SMS Marketing Specialist to lead and enhance our multi-channel communication efforts. This role is vital in managing and executing email and SMS campaigns that foster donor engagement, family and applicant outreach, storytelling, and fundraising initiatives. The ideal candidate will have prior experience working in fast-paced, mission-oriented environments, with a strong proficiency in ActiveCampaign or similar platforms. You will oversee the entire lifecycle of campaigns, from development to analysis, ensuring they align with organizational goals and compliance standards. Your work will directly contribute to increasing engagement, driving conversions, and supporting ACE’s mission to advance K-12 educational freedom.

Qualifications

The ideal candidate will possess 4-6 years of hands-on experience in email marketing, with proven success managing campaigns within nonprofit, education, advocacy, or fundraising sectors. Proficiency in ActiveCampaign or comparable ESPs such as MailChimp or Klaviyo is essential, including automation, segmentation, workflows, and reporting. Familiarity with SMS marketing principles, compliance regulations (TCPA, 10DLC, opt-in/opt-out), and permission-based texting is required. Strong copywriting skills, with the ability to craft persuasive and emotionally resonant content tailored to segmented audiences, are necessary. Basic knowledge of HTML/CSS for email customization, graphic design skills (using Canva or Adobe), and experience integrating email and SMS strategies in a unified approach are highly desirable. A bachelor’s degree in Journalism, Communications, Marketing, or related fields is preferred, along with familiarity with CRMs like Salesforce or Bloomerang. Knowledge of education policy and current K-12 issues, as well as experience working in multi-state organizations, are advantageous.

Responsibilities

Email Marketing:

• Develop and implement integrated email and SMS marketing strategies targeting various stakeholder groups, including donors, families, scholarship applicants, and partner schools, across different stages of engagement such as acquisition, cultivation, retention, and major gifts.
• Create compelling, on-brand copy for emails and SMS messages, including attention-grabbing subject lines, concise content, calls-to-action, and personalized messaging designed to inspire donations, applications, event participation, and sharing.
• Manage audience segmentation within ActiveCampaign, maintaining clean lists, building targeted segments based on criteria like giving history, geography, engagement, and application status, while ensuring compliance with CAN-SPAM, GDPR, TCPA, and other regulations.
• Design, test, and deploy campaigns using ActiveCampaign’s tools, including responsive templates, automation workflows (welcome series, donation acknowledgments, impact updates, year-end appeals, urgent fundraising pushes), A/B testing, personalization, dynamic content, and multi-channel sequences.
• Coordinate with web development teams to ensure contact forms are integrated with ActiveCampaign for effective lead capture and conversion.
• Develop and optimize subscriber marketing funnels to enhance engagement and conversion rates.

Text Message Marketing

• Lead SMS strategy development, including obtaining and validating opt-ins, managing consent and opt-outs, and automating STOP handling.
• Execute high-engagement SMS broadcasts and MMS campaigns with images for added impact, including urgent fundraising appeals, event reminders, real-time updates, text-to-give initiatives, and two-way communication for supporter interaction.
• Monitor deliverability, set quiet hours, and analyze open and response rates to maximize timely engagement without overwhelming supporters.

Operations & Collaboration

• Work closely with organizational partners, state teams, development, scholarship programs, and external vendors to ensure cohesive messaging and campaign execution.
• Track and analyze campaign performance metrics, providing regular reports and strategic recommendations to leadership to improve engagement and ROI.
• Ensure all content complies with nonprofit best practices, brand standards, and platform policies.
• Collaborate with marketing, development, programs, and communications teams to align messaging with organizational campaigns, events, press releases, and storytelling initiatives.
• Maintain and optimize ActiveCampaign platform setup, troubleshoot issues, implement new features, and train team members on platform usage.
• Stay informed on the latest trends in email and SMS marketing, nonprofit communication best practices, and platform updates to maximize campaign effectiveness.

Key skills/competency

• Email Marketing Strategy
• SMS Marketing
• ActiveCampaign
• Donor Engagement
• Fundraising Initiatives
• Copywriting
• Audience Segmentation
• Campaign Analysis
• Marketing Automation
• Nonprofit Marketing