Digital Experience Manager Roles, Responsibilities, & Salary
Digital experience manager is a newer role in the world of online customer care, in comparison to other longer established IT and customer service roles.
As digital experiences become more and more important to overall customer experience, a digital experience manager is an essential member of the team. Their role is to make sure a company’s online presence is high quality, easily accessible, and meets customer needs.
This article will cover what the digital experience manager position entails, responsibilities, salary expectations, and more.
Digital Experience Manager Role
A digital experience manager’s role is an integral part of a company. Their goal is to create the best customer experience possible in relation to their brand. The digital experience manager needs to be able to bridge any online gaps that occur between the customer and the product or brand.
They are responsible for creating a stellar and successful digital experience for customers, ensuring that each touchpoint of the customer journey is not only effective but engaging as well. The role of a digital experience manager is to:
- Improve customer satisfaction metrics
- Build customer loyalty
- Boost referrals from loyal customers
In some cases organizations may have a digital experience manager as part of the customer experience management team. In other cases, the digital experience manager might lead this team, or work closely with a customer experience manager (CX manager) to lead the team.
Organizations might have one of a CX manager or a digital experience manager or both, but in either case, digital experience managers can expect to take on some of the responsibilities that a CX manager might hold.
Digital experience managers might also work closely with account managers. These two roles need to be aligned in terms of goals and customer needs, as ensuring a positive digital experience is important to meeting the overall goals and needs of the customer, which the account manager is responsible for.
Digital Experience Manager Responsibilities
A digital experience manager’s job description and responsibilities revolve around having a clear understanding of who the company’s customers are, the target demographics, and what digital experiences customers and prospects are looking for.
Once this information is identified, it needs to be translated into the digital user experience. This might be the job of one person or someone who oversees a team of people, depending on the company and the complexities of the job. This is the main role of the digital experience manager.
Digital experience manager jobs include a host of other responsibilities as well, which revolve around understanding and using customer data to create a digital strategy that not only offers a personalized experience but leads to customer satisfaction. They might responsible for some or all of the following:
- Evaluating website traffic according to metrics such as number of visitors, visitor demographics, session length, conversion rate, new customer acquisition cost, and more.
- Using a digital experience platform to assess customer feedback, data, and analytics, as well as improve the overall digital experience and customer experience based on analytics and derived insights.
- Improving and managing the UX of the website and other digital channels.
- Creating an ecommerce strategy and other digital sales strategies.
- Working closely with the digital marketing team to ensure alignment on key messages, goals, and overall experience.
- Evaluating customer purchase trends over time, both short-term and long-term, and assessing the impact of various economic situations (ex. COVID-19).
- Analyzing consumer behavior on current platforms.
- Managing and assessing the customer life cycle and the digital experience life cycle.
- Monitoring customer interactions for insights and data.
- Managing customer relationships, or working with the account manager to do so.
- Creating the digital experience strategy and assisting with the customer experience strategy.
- Assisting with the organization’s digital transformation efforts.
- Coordinating their efforts with their organization’s human resources department, operations manager, project management teams, and more departments as needed.
Whether the digital experience manager carries out their responsibilities on their own or as leader of a team, it will include not only the responsibilities listed above, but it will also include working with the company’s other business apps and workflows. This might include visual design, digital asset management, storyboards, flowcharts, and any other charting and documentation supporting content design.
Digital Experience Manager Requirements
There are a range of skills and types of experience that a digital experience manager should have. These are outlined below.
Being A Team Player
There may be a crossover between the digital experience manager role and IT, ecommerce personnel, graphic design, and customer experience managers. A digital experience manager will have to work with all of them to create a process and flow around streamlining experiences and optimizing processes to meet customer needs and grow sales.
Depending on the company and staff availability, the role may also involve conducting tests to make sure that all content on digital platforms works properly. They will also have to continue to analyze website traffic before and after changes go live.
Being flexible in the role and willing to build bridges with other departments is critical as a digital experience manager.
Background
This role requires a combination of education and experience. Most positions require a bachelor’s degree, as well as supplemental courses in digital marketing, communications, business, product management, operations, and more. A degree in any of these areas is a bonus.
Employers will be interested in any ongoing education as well. The online world is changing quickly and staying on top of technical, digital, and marketing changes is paramount to understanding the job.
Digital experience managers are also going to need experience. A person would rarely go straight from school into a role with a managerial job title. Typically, digital experience managers have 4 to 5 years of experience.
Skills And Proficiencies
Digital experience managers should have experience and skills in a variety of disciplines. This can include, but isn’t limited to, the following.
- Technical ability in building websites, often with WordPress or other content management systems.
- Experience working with content management systems and web content management.
- Concrete understanding and background in SEO.
- Working knowledge of programming languages, such as CSS or HTML.
- Project management, which requires strong skills in organization and time management.
- Working knowledge of new tools in digital monitoring and customer experience, along with established tools such as Google Analytics, Tag Manager, and Webmaster tools.
- Strong understanding of digital marketing principles.
- Relationship management and an ability to communicate with all relevant stakeholders, like customers, clients, and other employees.
- Performance analysis skills to interpret website data such as load times, conversion rates, site visits, and bounce rates.
- Knowledge of best practices and trends in digital channels for sales and customer feedback such as social media, chatbots, ecommerce, websites, and digital advertising.
- Basic computer skills and proficiency in Microsoft Office, Google Docs, and spreadsheets.
Role Growth And Potential
Though jobs are rapidly growing in numbers, the digital experience manager role is still establishing itself in many companies. It is not an occupation that is acknowledged even in the employment statistics of the US Bureau of Labor. However, this will change as more companies continue to realize the benefit of having a trained person in this position.
As companies rely more on enhancing their digital presence, this position will be in demand. Not only has the exploding growth of online sales pushed the need for it forward, but decreased in-store traffic following COVID-19 has forced brands to shift their focus to digital sales and experiences.
Salary Expectations
A few years ago, the role of Digital Experience Manager wasn’t as highly recognized, and available salary data was limited. Now, the results are in, and prospects for this in-demand position are looking pretty impressive.
As of 2023, the average US total pay (salary plus commissions, profit shares, bonuses, and tips) for a digital experience manager is around $96,000. On the lower end of the scale, you can expect to make about $52,000 if you’re starting out with a smaller company. Digital experience managers with considerable experience can make well over $200,000, especially in big cities along the coast.
Final Thoughts
As the online digital markets continue to surge, the need for a digital experience manager in a company becomes more critical. The position encompasses many responsibilities and disciplines, including marketing, customer experience, sales, and more.
An ability to design and make the customer experience better through a clear vision and strong client relationship is crucial, as is working towards building customer satisfaction, loyalty, and referrals. Using data from customer experiences to get insight into their perspective is imperative when looking to grow and improve the digital customer experience and build customer loyalty to the brand.
For more about digital experience management and customer experience management, subscribe to The CX Lead newsletter. You can also sign up for the waitlist for the CX community launching soon!