Associate Director, Audience Development - The Orchard

The Orchard•New York, NY

2d•$85,000 - $100,000•Onsite

About The Position

The Orchard is a leading global music distributor and Artist & Label services company operating in 50+ markets worldwide. The Orchard empowers creators and businesses to grow and adapt in the dynamic global music industry. We specialize in being artist focused, blending industry expertise and technology, leveraging data to drive success, and providing streamlined digital and physical distribution solutions. The Orchard’s comprehensive artist & label services offerings include marketing, sync licensing, premium video services, transparent data analysis, advertising, rights management, radio promotion, D2C, and more. The Orchard focuses on providing a comfortable, social, and engaging environment to encourage productivity and creativity. We are seeking an experienced and innovative Associate Director of Audience Development to join our New York-based Marketing Strategy & Audience Development team. This role will lead the day-to-day strategy and hands-on execution of first-party fan data acquisition campaigns (email & SMS), with a particular focus on building high-intent email and SMS audiences that can be converted into e-commerce merchandise buyers & beyond. Reporting to the Vice President, Audience Development, this role combines strategic thinking, hands-on campaign execution and data-driven performance optimization. You’ll leverage proprietary technology, paid and organic marketing channels, live events and third-party audience tools to deliver measurable growth for artists and label partners across multiple genres and career stages. Please note: This is a hands-on role that will occasionally require evening or weekend work to support priority releases & live events.

Requirements

5+ years of audience development, digital marketing, fan acquisition, growth marketing or related experience within music, entertainment or another consumer-focused industry, including e-commerce experience.
Proven track record of growing first-party email and SMS audiences and connecting that growth to measurable business outcomes.
Hands-on experience developing and executing lead-generation campaigns across paid, organic, artist-owned and partner channels.
Experience with audience and marketing platforms such as Klaviyo, Laylo, Salesforce, Braze or similar tools, as well as e-commerce platforms like Shopify.
Understanding of conversion funnels, landing-page optimization, audience targeting, A/B testing and customer acquisition economics.
Deep understanding of first-party data strategy, including value exchange, audience segmentation, consent management and data privacy best practices such as GDPR and CCPA.
Strong analytical skills, with experience using dashboards and KPI reporting to evaluate acquisition quality and downstream conversion.
Excellent communicator and collaborator who can advise multiple stakeholders and translate complex audience strategies into clear, actionable plans.
Comfortable balancing strategic planning with detailed, hands-on campaign execution.
Passionate about music, fan behavior, e-commerce and the use of technology to build lasting artist-fan relationships.
Intrinsically motivated to find new and exciting ways to identify and acquire music fans, with a curious mindset and a strong desire to test, learn and scale successful approaches.
Comfortable working flexible hours when needed to support our partners, live events and high-priority releases.

Responsibilities

Lead the day-to-day development and execution of strategies that grow artists’ first-party fan audiences across email & SMS.
Use data to identify the right value exchange for each audience, including exclusive content, early merchandise access, contests, ticket presales, live-event activations and other fan experiences.
Develop scalable acquisition frameworks & benchmarks that can be adapted across artists, genres, & campaign types.
Partner closely with the Associate Director, Fan Engagement & CRM to ensure newly acquired fans enter CRM lifecycle journeys and receive a cohesive experience from initial sign-up through conversion and retention.
Own the end-to-end execution of fan acquisition campaigns, including campaign planning, audience strategy, platform setup, landing pages, sign-up flows, testing, launch and performance reporting.
Collaborate with Marketing Strategy & Global Paid Media teams to develop and optimize impactful paid lead-generation campaigns across Meta, TikTok and other relevant platforms.
Establish testing frameworks and best practices across landing pages, forms, incentives, messaging and acquisition channels to improve both the volume and quality of acquired fans.
Connect acquisition campaigns to downstream product discovery, sales conversion and repeat-purchase opportunities.
Use transactional and behavioral data to identify the channels, campaigns and fan segments most likely to generate merchandise revenue.
Build clear handoff strategies that move newly acquired fans into personalized welcome, nurture and conversion journeys.
Evaluate acquisition performance beyond initial sign-up volume, using metrics such as cost per acquired fan, subscriber quality, engagement, first-purchase conversion, revenue per acquired fan and return on investment.
Develop reporting frameworks that connect fan acquisition activity to downstream engagement, streaming, ticketing and e-commerce outcomes.
Define campaign KPIs and benchmarks across acquisition channels, markets, artists and campaign types.
Analyze fan behavior to identify high-value audience segments, acquisition sources and conversion patterns.
Translate performance data into clear, actionable recommendations for internal teams, artists and label partners.
Build case studies and best-practice guidance that can help scale successful acquisition strategies across the organization.
Oversee the strategic use of proprietary and third-party audience acquisition tools, landing-page platforms and CRM integrations.
Identify opportunities to improve fan sign-up experiences, progressive data collection, audience segmentation, consent management and data enrichment.
Guide the development of tools and features that improve first-party data acquisition and measurement.
Ensure acquisition campaigns comply with global privacy and consent requirements.
Evaluate and test new fan acquisition technologies, platforms and partners.
Monitor emerging audience-development trends within music and across industries such as gaming, sports, television, film and retail.
Integrate first-party data acquisition into artist campaigns.
Serve as an audience-development thought leader internally and as a trusted advisor to artist and label partners, providing best-practice guidance and data-driven recommendations.
Educate internal teams and clients on the role first-party fan data can play in driving long-term audience ownership and commercial growth.
Educate marketers across global markets on acquisition strategies appropriate to their local audiences, platforms, cultures and privacy requirements.
Help establish repeatable processes that make audience acquisition a consistent component of priority artist and release campaigns.