Director Lifecycle Marketing

Ascend Learning • Chicago, IL

68d • Remote

About The Position

We Impact Lives Through Purpose-Driven Work in A People First Culture. Ascend Learning is the connection between a powerful portfolio of brands serving students, educators, and employers with outcomes-based, data driven solutions across the lifecycle of learning. Our values-driven culture unifies our teams and inspires a mindset of action, innovation, and collaboration, with a relentless focus on customers. We're always looking for talented, passionate professionals to join us in our mission to help change lives. If this sounds like an environment where you'd thrive, read on to learn more. We are seeking an enterprising, energizing and data-driven Director of Lifecycle Marketing to deliver email and SMS marketing that strongly differentiates us, attracts customers, and compels them to stay with us for life. At the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM), our mission is to provide world-class fitness and wellness professionals with the knowledge and tools to transform lives. We help personal trainers, coaches, their clients, and fitness and wellness enthusiasts live healthier and happier lives. Possessing exceptional leadership, analytic and strategic thinking skills, the Director of Lifecycle Marketing will build out and elevate our lifecycle marketing capability, ensuring it is powerfully segmented, strongly lands our points of competitive differentiation, and compels consumers to purchase and keep coming back. Reporting to our VP Marketing, the Director of Lifecycle Marketing will be responsible acquiring customers, converting them to members, and inspiring them to expand their credentials with us. This role will develop and mentor a high-performing team focused on reinforcing and growing our position as an industry leader, leveraging our unique and highly differentiated products, and securing customers for life.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree required.
• 8+ years' experience in lifecycle marketing, driving growth for national consumer brands.
• Deep expertise in Hubspot and enterprise CRM and how to use them to execute and continuously optimize results.
• Proven experience in advanced analytics and reporting, including building automated dashboards (like Tableau, Power BI, Google Data Studio, etc).
• Demonstrated expertise in user personalization and behavioral segmentation, with a track record of using data to create dynamic, one-to-one customer journeys.
• A strong understanding of the entire marketing technology ecosystem, with direct experience in implementing and leveraging platforms beyond basic email service providers (ESPs).
• Familiarity with marketing automation best practices and a history of using technology to streamline workflows and scale lifecycle programs.
• An inspirational leader skilled in leading teams, securing cross-functional support and motivating others to achieve what no one thought possible.
• Demonstrated ability to identify differentiating strategies that fuel overall company and product sales.
• A beautiful writer, adept editor and persuasive speaker.
• Must be a curious thinker who loves problem solving: asking questions, digging deeper, and getting to the why.
• Drives innovation and makes decisions based on deep understanding of the data.
• Deep knowledge of lifecycle marketing analytics and testing methodologies.
• Familiarity with email and SMS compliance regulations (e.g., CAN-SPAM, GDPR).
• Strong sense of ownership, urgency and drive.
• A positive, 'what's possible' thinker who thrives in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.

Responsibilities

• Deliver an integrated lifecycle marketing strategic roadmap and plan that drives lifetime value, encompassing overall brand, personal training, performance, corrective exercise, membership, nutrition and wellness certifications, and new products.
• Achieve a deep understanding of these businesses.
• Lead all email and SMS marketing work, ensuring it is uniquely insightful, persuasive, motivating and clearly establishes how we are different and better than competition.
• Develop and implement a robust reporting and analytics framework to measure campaign performance, with a focus on building automated dashboards that provide real-time insights for key stakeholders.
• Lead the strategy for user personalization across all lifecycle marketing efforts, using behavioral triggers, predictive models, and customer data to deliver highly relevant and timely communications.
• Leverage and integrate advanced marketing technologies to build a unified customer view and power sophisticated segmentation and automation.
• Act as the primary owner of our lifecycle marketing tech stack, identifying new tools and systems to enhance personalization, improve efficiency, and drive incremental revenue.
• Responsible for flows aimed at acquiring customers, converting them to members, and retaining them (including at risk and win back).
• In support of our enterprise-wide product-led operating model, partner with product leadership to ensure our fitness and performance, nutrition and wellness and membership and professional enablement lifecycle marketing accelerates sales.
• Use data to drive all decisions.
• Develop and regularly share the results of all programs, including KPIs (open rate, CTR, conversion), tests, key learnings and indicated actions.
• Leverage customer insights, behavioral data, and testing to segment and continuously improve our lifecycle marketing and optimize the customer journey.
• Understand and refine key target segments and use this insight to customize our customer flows to make them as compelling and effective as possible.
• Partner with the brand and product marketing and creative teams to ensure strategies are executed in the most persuasive, breakthrough and effective way.
• Lead, mentor and develop a high-performing team, including 2 lifecycle marketing managers and a specialist agency, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration and accountability.
• Partner with the broader marketing team to support marketing and promotional calendars that ensure our efforts are cohesive and leverage seasonal trends to drive relevance and revenue.
• Monitor competitive lifecycle programs, including analysis and action-planning.
• Stay current with consumer and industry trends, emerging technologies and new marketing tactics to ensure our lifecycle marketing remains in tune with our evolving consumer and reflects the latest best practices.
• Adeptly manage multiple workflows and prioritize projects across teams.

Benefits

• Flexible and generous paid time off
• Competitive medical, dental, vision and life insurance
• 401(k) employer matching program
• Parental leave
• Wellness resources
• Charitable matching program
• Hybrid work
• On-site workout facilities (Leawood, Gilbert, Burlington)
• Community outreach groups
• Tuition reimbursement

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Industry: Management of Companies and Enterprises
• Education Level: Bachelor's degree