Our Company
Aura is a technology company that provides small, affordable loans to working families in America. We give our customers access to fairly priced credit and we help them build up their credit scores. We have raised over $100M to date from investors including First Mark Capital, Revolution Ventures and Coppel Capital. We have been named to the INC 5000 Fastest Growing Companies in America, American Banker’s 2019 Best Places to Work in Financial Technology and we are ranked #23 on the San Francisco Business Times’ Top 100 Fastest-Growing Private Companies.
Our Values
We are a tight-knit team of highly talented, hardworking, and motivated people from a diverse set of backgrounds and industries, all tenaciously motivated by our mission. We value creativity, courage, and collaboration and we believe in letting the best and most creative ideas rise to the top. We are looking for outstanding people who want to work hard, have fun, and build a socially-minded, profitable, and enduring business in the process.
What we are looking for at Aura
The Job
We are looking for a VP Marketing or CMO (depending on the level of experience) to build and lead a marketing department that scales our existing B2B2C model while also leveraging the potential of our newly minted brand (Aura!) to drive additional D2C and B2B2C volume. Aura uses technology to make empowering, consumer loans through a network of 80 partner companies and their 2000+ sales associates who offer Aura loans across 1200 storefronts in CA, TX, IL and AZ. Each sales associate interfaces with prospective applicants and enters their application information directly Aura’s credit and app system, which uses 3,000+ variables to make underwriting decisions on over 60,000 applications per month. Currently, 10% of Aura’s sales associates drive 90% of the volume. Accordingly, there is tremendous opportunity to improve user engagement and productivity across Aura’s existing partners and sales associates. We are looking for a VP of Marketing who has deep experience in B2B2C businesses and prior success and ideas for driving productivity and improved performance across B2BC channels. Aura is also growing its B2B brand and new business development capability. A strong VP of Marketing would also have experience supporting B2B sales and growth as well as partner launches and awareness. Finally, while Aura has not historically pursued a direct-to-consumer model, we believe that with our new name and the right, targeted investments, we can build the brand and awareness needed to drive additional prospects and pull through demand to our partners and also to direct digital/mobile channels. The VP of Marketing will be responsible for the strategy and execution of this roadmap with success ultimately defined by: (1) volume, specifically by sales associate, (2) customer satisfaction (NPS and retention), (3) CAC, (4) brand recognition (including externally via PR) and, over time, (5) successful new product launches and sales.
The VP of Marketing will be responsible for designing and executing the marketing strategy and plan, using all relevant tools, that will support Aura’s plans to grow 100%+ year over year and to more than 1 million active customers. Marketing will also help launch new products to expand Aura’s reach beyond credit and into core banking, insurance, and investing/asset-building products. The VP of Marketing should be, one the one hand, highly analytical, strategic and think like a general manager, and on the other, should also be highly creative and brand-centric with a deep understanding of the emotions and social ties that drive our customers, their behavior, and financial decisions. We want Aura to be a leading, iconic brand in the market revered and deeply trusted by its customers (like USAA among the military) and lauded by the industry for its focus on doing what’s right by our customers always. Organizationally, the VP of Marketing should be a leader and seasoned developer, manager and mentor of people. The VP of Marketing will be tasked with recruiting, hiring, managing and developing a highly talented team to help execute the marketing plan in a startup environment that is both family-like and results/execution driven.
Finally, the VP of Marketing will be prepared to generate insights into our target prospect population initially through creative, targeted methods and, as we grow, to develop a consistent approach of integrating customer feedback into all things marketing and product development. The best candidate will have deep experience and a history of success in both B2B2C and B2B business where the brand plays a strong role in demand, retention, and cross-selling and also a passion for data, metrics, and reporting with a bias towards action. The best candidate will think like a general / P&L manager and be high energy with an infectious, can-do aura. :-)
We look forward to meeting you!
Role Requirements
- 10 years minimum of B2B2C and direct-to-consumer marketing experience. The best candidate will have taken a company through a scaling phase (people, product, and volume) either as marketing head or #2 marketing person and with many examples of success.
- Direct experience with building and managing a marketing budget including headcount and non-headcount resources
- Possess the presence and intellectual strength to influence and align internal partners around marketing and go-to-market strategies
- A hands-on leader who can strategize at an executive level and can also precisely execute on their own and through others
- An impeccable communicator who can distill complex information and translate into simple, easy-to-understand language
- Brand marketing experience
Preferred Qualifications
- Bilingual in Spanish
- Experience working in a startup environment