Head of Analytical Performance Marketing

We are looking for a Head of Analytical Performance Marketing with a strong analytical core. This role is about understanding growth through numbers: modelling future platform performance, steering paid marketing based on real ROI, and making deliberate trade‑offs to offset declining organic traffic.

This is explicitly not a branding role. We optimise for measurable, long‑term ROI.

You are expected to be hands‑on with data while leading others: comfortable building and validating models yourself, and able to guide the team in turning complex data into clear decisions.

About Studyportals

Every month we help millions of students make one of the most important decisions of their lives, for free.

Every minute, more than 100 students around the world use our platforms, such as mastersportal.com, to find the education that fits them best. They do this for free, often at a moment when they feel uncertain, overwhelmed, or afraid of making the wrong choice.

Our mission is simple and ambitious: to help millions of students find the right study, and to help universities build more diverse, successful, and engaged classrooms. By matching the right student to the right programme, we help reduce dropouts and create better outcomes for everyone involved.

Our team consists of more than 200 people, representing almost 40 nationalities. We are curious, direct, and kind. We care deeply about personal growth, honest collaboration, and building things that actually help people.

Why this role exists

Our funnels are long (often 1–1.5 years from first click to conversion) and increasingly impacted by external changes such as:

• Declining organic reach due to Google core updates
• Shifts in how people discover information and make decisions like AI Search
• Limited attribution visibility in ad platforms compared to real business outcomes

We need a leader who can quantify these effects, forecast what they mean for future growth, and actively redesign how paid marketing supports the business.

What success looks like

Success is measured by true business ROI

Not:

• Short‑term ROAS in Google Ads
• Platform‑reported conversions in isolation

But:

• Linking paid spend today to real conversions that happen many months later
• Making investment decisions based on long‑term value creation
• Understanding where paid channels can structurally compensate for organic decline

This requires creativity in measurement, comfort with imperfect data, and strong analytical judgement.

Your core responsibilities

1. Analytical performance and forecasting

• Build and maintain models covering the full conversion funnel
• Forecast visitors, registrations, and downstream conversions
• Quantify the impact of organic traffic changes on long‑term outcomes
• Make assumptions explicit and continuously validate them with data

2. ROI‑driven paid marketing

• Steer budgets on real ROI, not platform‑level ROAS
• Design approaches to connect ad spend to conversions occurring 1–1.5 years later
• Actively optimise marginal ROI across channels and campaigns
• Decide where and how paid marketing should compensate for organic losses

3. Lead a multi‑disciplinary performance team

You will lead a team covering:

• Paid marketing
• CRO and experimentation
• Nurturing and lifecycle marketing
• ·Organic Social and performance‑driven awareness channels

Responsibilities include:

• Leading and developing senior specialists and team leads
• Setting a clear analytical standard for decision‑making
• Creating ownership, accountability, and focus on outcomes over activity

Leadership experience is required:

• At least 3+ years leading teams of 6+ people
• Experience in mentoring team leads and scaling ways of working

4. Turn insight into direction

• Translate analysis into concrete priorities and trade‑offs
• Challenge oversimplified growth or attribution narratives
• Work closely with product, data, and engineering on measurement and experimentation

Must‑haves

• Strong analytical mindset: numbers, models, and data detail energise you
• Clear obsession with ROI optimisation (not branding or vanity metrics)
• Proven people leadership experience (3+ years, teams of 6+)
• Comfort working with long and delayed conversion journeys

Nice to have (not mandatory)

• Experience with nurturing, lifecycle, or social performance channels
• Experience designing or improving attribution or measurement models

You are likely someone who:

• Questions dashboards instead of accepting them at face value; in fact, you “define” the dashboard to be developed
• Is comfortable making decisions with incomplete but well‑reasoned data\
• Thinks in systems and second‑order effects
• Can explain complex analysis in clear, simple language

The role of AI in this position

AI is not an experiment or a side topic in this role. You are expected to continuously follow the latest developments in AI and translate them into concrete improvements in how we do digital marketing.

You actively introduce new AI-driven ways to automate processes, improve decision-making, and maximize results across Google Ads, email nurturing, and social channels. This includes using AI to better understand long conversion journeys, improve targeting and bidding strategies, improve conversion ratios, and scale experimentation without increasing complexity.

More importantly, you bring a clear vision on how AI will change marketing and advertising in the coming years. You help shape how Studyportals wins in a world where traditional search, attribution, and advertising models are being reshaped by AI-driven discovery. You do not just react to change; you help define our direction.

• Competitive salary including a bonus and pension
• 32 vacation days (including bank holidays) and you have the flexibility to take your holidays whenever you want (e.g., be off on Chinese New Year instead of King’s Day)  
• Possibility to buy/sell 5 vacation days out of your annual balance  
• Reimbursement of your work-related travel costs
• Flexibility to work remotely 3 days per week, including a remote working allowance. 
• Possibility to work from abroad 2 times a year
• An annual personal development budget because personal growth is KEY! 
• A nice and fun office in the heart of Eindhoven; five minutes’ walk away from the station - take an insiders’ perspective here  
• The opportunity to make our world a little better by increasing international access to education and being at the core of a study choice giant that the world education market is desperately waiting for  
• Studyportals is committed to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, particularly SDG 4 (Quality Education) and SDG 13 (Climate Action), promoting equal access to education while minimizing our environmental impact through digital innovation and responsible operations