Associate Director, Retention

Darkroom•New York, NY

2d•$100,000 - $120,000•Remote

About The Position

We are looking for a highly analytical, commercially-minded Associate Director who is motivated by the challenge of building a retention program for a high-growth consumer technology company. You will lead a team of lifecycle marketing experts to drive subscriber growth and revenue, and partner with cross-functional colleagues to go deeper on customer behavior — with a specific focus on activation, loyalty, and long-term customer value. You are building this program from the ground up rather than optimizing one that already exists. The list starts near 20,000 and scales rapidly behind a significant acquisition investment. Sending volume ramps to 40–60 emails a month, and increasingly granular segmentation is what drives that output. Automation is the engine: lead capture, welcome series, and the first-conversion funnel come first, then subscription activation, loyalty, and repeat purchase. The program runs on enterprise tooling — Braze, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Iterable, Customer.io, or comparable. You own the top-line retention revenue number for your client. You build the forecast, defend it, and lead the team that hits it. We are open to candidates in NYC, NJ, Florida and Texas.

Requirements

You are a growth marketer first and a lifecycle marketer second. You think in cohorts, conversion rates, and payback periods. You are energized by a program that does not exist yet and a list that is about to grow 10x.
7+ years of experience in digital, growth, or lifecycle marketing, including time spent on subscription or SaaS products.
You have owned a revenue or subscriber target and built the forecast behind it — you can model list growth, conversion, activation, and churn and explain what moves each one.
You have scaled a lifecycle program through a period of rapid list growth, and you know what breaks when volume goes from a handful of sends to 40–60 per month.
You have built the funnel that matters here: lead capture, welcome series, first conversion, and subscription activation. You know the difference between a welcome flow that greets people and one that converts them.
You are fluent in subscription economics — trial-to-paid, activation, free-to-paid, upgrade and downgrade paths, involuntary churn, and win-back.
You have developed loyalty, referral, or rewards programming that measurably improved repeat purchase and LTV. Driving loyalty and repeat purchase is a core outcome of this role, not a side project.
You have worked in an enterprise-grade ESP such as Braze, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Iterable, or Customer.io, and you understand what these platforms make possible: complex segmentation, event-driven journeys, in-app and push alongside email, and integration with a real product data stream.
You love making data-driven decisions and excel at turning analysis into lifecycle strategy that drives revenue. You are comfortable building the reporting yourself when you need to.
You are used to a fast-paced environment and can project manage multiple workstreams for yourself, your team, and your client.
You have had at least one direct report before, or exceptional leadership skills working with cross-functional teams.
Excellent verbal and written communication and presentation skills, plus the ability to articulate complex and sometimes technical ideas to a wide variety of people at any level.
You dedicate time to staying on the cutting edge of consumer technology, subscription, and lifecycle marketing.

Responsibilities

Serve as the senior point of contact for your client, meeting weekly to review performance and shape current and future initiatives.
Own the retention revenue forecast — build it, update it, and bring the recommendations that close any gap to plan.
Set the segmentation and lifecycle strategy that drives the program's output, and prioritize the roadmap of flows, campaigns, and tests behind it.
Own subscription activation and retention: the trial and onboarding journeys, the conversion moments, and the loyalty, repeat purchase, and win-back programming that extends customer lifetime.
Conduct weekly 1:1s with your direct reports, manage workload and capacity, and train the team to help them grow into experts.
Develop the strategic campaign calendar and partner with your specialists to deliver it at volume.
Review all client briefs and creative for approval before they reach the client.
Set the client's KPI framework and work with the team to turn results into insights and actionable recommendations.
Coordinate cross-departmentally with the Performance Marketing and Strategy teams so that acquisition investment and lifecycle programming reinforce each other.