Head of Lifecycle Marketing

Happy Money

10d•$155,000 - $220,000•Remote

About The Position

Happy Money is hiring a Head of Lifecycle Marketing to own the borrower relationship and grow the lifetime value of every customer we acquire. Reporting to the Chief Revenue Officer, this is a senior individual contributor role: you set the strategy for how we keep, re-engage, and grow borrower relationships, and you're the person other teams come to on retention economics, repeat origination, and LTV. This is a leader who is driven to maximize the value of every lead and borrower, and who mobilizes the organization around strategic initiatives that grow the profitability of each relationship. This role will evolve Happy Money’s business to a point where the initial loan isn’t the last thing we do for a borrower. We view the payoff moment as the start of a relationship, not a single transaction. This person will lead a strategy to match every borrower with the next product that helps them, whether it's a Happy Money product or a partner's. Further, when a lead isn't right for our core loan yet, they’ll create value by referring that borrower to a partner product that fits their needs. The Head of Lifecycle Marketing will own the economics of the full relationship and decide what to offer, to whom, and when. The scope of this role will grow as our business scales lead generation and as we expand into other products and asset classes. The Head of Lifecycle Marketing will develop and drive the initiatives that will deliver new products to our borrowers and proprietary leads. Core to this expansion strategy will be the deployment and evolution of both proprietary and partner-based solutions. You'll partner closely with the Head of Acquisition Marketing so marketing runs as one loop: acquisition feeds lifecycle segmentation from day one, and lifecycle compounds revenue and LTV across the base.

Requirements

8+ years in lifecycle, CRM, retention, or growth marketing, with meaningful time in lending or fintech (personal lending, credit cards, or mortgage preferred)
Owned an LTV or retention strategy and tactics, not just campaign delivery, and know how the business makes money well enough to treat repeat-borrow rate and portfolio yield as P&L levers
Strong analytical and financial fluency (CAC, funnel conversion, lead scoring, forecast modeling, LTV economics) and the judgment to make high-quality decisions and challenge assumptions without waiting to be directed
Deep lifecycle expertise (journey design, automation workflows, next-best-offer logic, PIF/win-back) plus the behavioral-data and segmentation fluency to work directly with analysts and data scientists on cohort, propensity, and uplift models
Think across disciplines and stay comfortable with complexity, ambiguity, and pushback, learning fast from both wins and misses
Experience building or operating shared eligibility/trigger layers with Credit or Risk
Track record running rigorous experiments (holdouts, multivariate, incrementality) and acting on the results
Drive execution and communicate clearly, making complex segmentation and next-best-action logic understandable to key stakeholders, prioritizing the right things, and resolving competing priorities without defaulting to escalation
Hands-on with modern lifecycle tooling (automation, email/SMS/in-app/push, journey orchestration) and comfortable operating through platform transitions (we're mid-migration to HubSpot)
Anticipate where the market and portfolio are heading and translate it into credible strategy, with a defensible point-of-view
Ready to build and lead a team: this role starts without direct reports, but you bring the instincts to assemble the right mix of talent, partners, and AI agents and hold a high-performing team to a high bar as the function scales

Responsibilities

Set post-funding lifecycle strategy end-to-end from first payment through payoff, refinance, top-up, second loan, and adjacent products. Anticipate where the portfolio and competitive landscape are heading and bring a defensible, data-backed point-of-view on where the next dollar of LTV comes from proactively.
Make the next-best-offer calls of which product, channel, and moment to surface, and to whom, grounding them in behavioral signal (on-time payments, paydown, income, credit evolution) and real cohort and propensity models with Data Science rather than instinct, while balancing risk-adjusted return against customer response.
Treat LTV, repeat-borrow rate, and portfolio yield as the P&L levers they are. Own them as primary metrics, connect them to CAC and funnel economics with Finance and Credit & Risk, and make the trade-offs that actually move performance.
Reframe the payoff moment, a natural exit, into our most valuable re-engagement event. Build the re-acquisition workflow that activates as a loan approaches and crosses payoff, plus pre/post-payoff and win-back programs that convert it into the next product fit.
Operate confidently in ambiguity as the portfolio expands. Own lifecycle activation for new products (marketplace relaunch, deposit and partner cross-sell), run the lifecycle stack across HubSpot (post-SFMC migration), and apply AI for next-best-action, propensity scoring, and journey optimization where it earns its place.
Optimize acquired leads across Happy Money and partner products. Own lead scoring, qualification frameworks, and routing logic — ensuring the right prospects reach the right journeys at the right time. Integrate predictive data signals into lead prioritization and channel optimization.
Hold an honest, evidence-first perspective. Prove what works with rigorous experimentation (holdouts, incrementality), learn fast from what fails, and let results change the strategy and tactics.
Drive a disciplined operating cadence with weekly/monthly reviews, budget pacing, and quarterly LTV/retention/repeat-origination forecasts. Make complex segmentation and next-best-action logic legible to senior leaders and clear roadblocks across functions without defaulting to escalation.
Turn routine servicing touch points into brand and growth moments (reminders, milestones, payoff celebrations) with Communications, Servicing, Product, and CX, while protecting attribution, tracking, and dashboard integrity building trust in the numbers.
Build the capability, then the team. Operate first as a force multiplier across analysts, data scientists, martech/agency partners, and AI agents, knowing when to leverage each, then stand up and lead the lifecycle team as scope expands, holding a high bar for talent and for what reaches customers.
Keep a sharp external point-of-view. Track lifecycle and retention moves at peer lenders (SoFi, Upgrade, LendingClub, Best Egg) and adjacent fintechs and translate them into roadmap implications, acting with urgency rather than waiting for consensus.