Director of Lifecycle & Retention

Chicago Public Media•Chicago, IL

1d•Onsite

About The Position

Chicago Public Media is one of the nation’s largest local nonprofit news organizations, reaching over 3.3 million people weekly across broadcast, print, and digital platforms. As a mission-driven organization, they aspire to be the most trusted news source in Chicago. They believe independent journalism is essential to a healthy democracy and serve the public interest by creating diverse content that informs and enriches the community, supported by approximately 250 professionals. The Opportunity: The Director of Lifecycle & Retention leads Chicago Public Media’s enterprise lifecycle strategy across brands, platforms, and audience touchpoints. This role is responsible for designing the systems, frameworks, and strategies that strengthen retention, loyalty, participation, and long-term supporter value following acquisition. The Director establishes the lifecycle architecture, audience segmentation, performance goals, and optimization priorities that guide onboarding, engagement, renewal, sustainer conversion, upgrades, reactivation, advocacy, and long-term relationship development. The role partners closely with Product, Marketing, Insights, Development, Editorial, and the Membership team to translate audience behavior and supporter data into coordinated lifecycle strategies across WBEZ, the Chicago Sun-Times, Vocalo, and future platforms.

Requirements

Experience leading lifecycle, retention, subscription, membership, CRM, loyalty, or audience relationship strategy.
Demonstrated ability to design lifecycle frameworks across multiple audience segments, products, channels, or brands.
Strong understanding of retention strategy, cohort analysis, churn reduction, segmentation, and lifetime value optimization.
Experience translating behavioral, transactional, and engagement data into audience strategies and organizational decisions.
Experience establishing KPIs, performance frameworks, experimentation programs, and optimization roadmaps.
Experience leading complex cross-functional initiatives across Product, Marketing, Insights, Development, Editorial, technology, or comparable functions.
Ability to move between enterprise strategy, analytical insight, and implementation through specialized teams.
Experience building personalization, loyalty, engagement, or member experience strategies.
Strong people leadership, strategic communication, and organizational planning skills.
Demonstrated ability to build new capabilities, systems, or operating models rather than solely manage established programs.

Responsibilities

Owns the strategic framework governing the post-acquisition relationship, including defining how supporter cohorts move through lifecycle stages, where retention risks and opportunities exist, and how programs and channels work together to strengthen long-term audience value.
Establishes the lifecycle framework, which includes: Onboarding & Early Member Experience, Sustainer Conversion, Renewal & Retention, Upgrade & Philanthropic Development, Reactivation, and Advocacy & Community Participation.
Designs and continually improves a scalable lifecycle system that strengthens long-term supporter loyalty and retention, identifies and reduces preventable churn, increases sustainer conversion and long-term giving stability, expands lifetime value across supporter segments, uses behavioral, transactional, and engagement signals to improve lifecycle decision-making, and creates pathways for deeper participation and philanthropic progression.
Develops lifecycle strategy and modeling, including designing and optimizing lifecycle frameworks across brands, platforms, and audience segments; establishing lifecycle stages, audience strategies, and performance expectations; developing retention, churn, and lifetime value models; identifying retention risks, lifecycle drop-off points, and opportunities for deeper engagement; and establishing lifecycle KPIs, dashboards, and performance reporting frameworks.
Develops audience intelligence and optimization strategies, including developing lifecycle segmentation frameworks, identifying behavioral signals associated with retention, churn, conversion, upgrade potential, and long-term loyalty, defining priority lifecycle cohorts and differentiated relationship strategies, and establishing testing standards and a lifecycle experimentation roadmap.
Defines engagement and loyalty strategies that strengthen retention, participation, and long-term supporter value, identifies the experiences and behaviors most strongly associated with loyalty and retention, and establishes audience priorities that inform member programs, benefits, communications, and experiences.
Establishes retention and revenue strategies, including retention strategy and performance goals across supporter segments, strategic frameworks for sustainer conversion, renewal, upgrade, philanthropic progression, and reactivation, and differentiated retention strategies for specific cohorts.
Establishes lifecycle messaging strategy, including messaging frameworks for onboarding, stewardship, retention, upgrade, and reactivation, and defines audience objectives, segmentation priorities, behavioral triggers, and measurement expectations for lifecycle communications.
Leads lifecycle strategy across Product, Marketing, Insights, Editorial, Development, Revenue Operations, and technology teams.
Manages and develops team members responsible for specialized functions within Lifecycle & Retention.
Ensures membership programs, communications, and engagement efforts operate within a unified lifecycle strategy while maintaining clear functional ownership.