Manager, Growth Marketing

Sesame Workshop•New York, NY

13d•Hybrid

About The Position

Sesame Workshop is building a growth marketing function from the ground up. This role will focus on scaling the growth of high-quality leads to drive email newsletter sign-ups, recurring individual donations, viewership of Sesame Street, and engagement with educational resources on Sesame.org. The Manager, Growth Marketing manages Sesame Workshop’s paid media program, currently anchored in Meta, with a mandate to expand platforms and strategy as necessary. This individual will manage day-to-day contact with the paid media agency, own the internal strategy and accountability layer, and lead the development and optimization of creative assets and copy. Collaboration with teammates across Marketing & Communications on conversion optimization and the holistic D2C strategy is also key. The Manager, Growth Marketing reports to the Audience Development Strategy Director.

Requirements

3-5 years of experience in paid media, growth marketing, or digital advertising — with hands-on platform experience.
Demonstrated experience managing Meta and programmatic campaigns: campaign setup, audience targeting, optimization, and reporting.
Experience managing an external agency or vendor relationship, with accountability for their output.
A technical marketer who has a strong understanding of and proficiency in personalization, segmentation, data analysis, and multi-touch attribution models.
Experience with first-party data acquisition as a campaign objective— email list growth, lead generation, user registration — in addition to traditional brand or conversion goals.
Strong analytical instincts — you live in the data, you know what the numbers mean, and you can explain them clearly to people who don’t.
Copy fluency — you can write and edit paid copy that converts, and you understand how copy and creative work together.
Platform literacy across the paid ecosystem — Meta, TikTok, and Google (YouTube and programmatic display).
Budget management discipline — you track spend carefully, flag pacing issues early, and think about efficiency as seriously as scale.
Clear, direct communication — you work with creative teams, agency partners, analytics colleagues, and senior leaders; you can adjust register without losing substance.
Comfort with ambiguity — this function is being built, not inherited; you’ll need to set up systems and processes, not just operate ones that already exist.

Nice To Haves

Nonprofit or media experience is a plus.

Responsibilities

Manage Sesame Workshop’s paid media strategy across all channels.
Manage the paid media agency relationship day-to-day: delivering campaign materials, setting direction, reviewing plans, holding them accountable to KPIs, and ensuring timely execution.
Develop and maintain media plans — audience targeting, budget allocation, flight schedules, channel mix — in collaboration with the agency and the Audience Development Strategy Director.
Stay current on platform changes, emerging ad products, and shifts in the paid landscape; bring recommendations proactively rather than reactively.
Own paid media budget tracking and pacing, ensuring spend is deployed effectively and efficiently and reported clearly.
Concept and build audience segments, and upload to platforms as directed or needed.
Lead the development of paid assets and copy— briefing Brand Creative, writing or editing copy and scripts, tracking best practices, and curating or adapting organic content for paid use.
Run creative testing programs: A/B testing of copy, creative formats, audience segments, and calls to action with a disciplined approach to learning and iteration.
Ensure paid creative is consistently on-brand while also built to convert.
Manage the paid strategy layer of Sesame’s first-party data ambition — using paid media to drive traffic to owned properties where email and other data capture happens.
Work closely with the Director, Web Strategy & Email Marketing on landing page strategy and conversion optimization.
Track cost-per-acquisition of first-party data relationships — email addresses, registered users, event sign-ups — as a primary performance metric alongside traditional paid KPIs.
Contribute to the broader D2C strategy: which audiences are most valuable to capture, which campaigns generate the highest-quality relationships, and what paid mechanisms drive recurring rather than one-time engagement.
Own paid media performance reporting: CPM, CPC, CTR, CPLPV, ROAS, etc.
Build and maintain reports, as needed, that give the team clear, real-time visibility into what’s working.
Synthesize performance data into actionable recommendations — not just reporting on what happened, but driving decisions about what happens next.
Collaborate with the Manager, Audience Analytics on cross-channel attribution and campaign measurement.
Serve as a key stakeholder in the cross-functional Individual Giving team, under the leadership of the Director of Individual Giving.
Coordinate with Brand Creative on paid asset production — briefing clearly, respecting creative expertise, and advocating for what the data says works.
Support the Strategy Director on how paid and other growth levers amplify specific campaign and content objectives.
Serve as the internal expert on paid media for the broader organization— educating colleagues on what paid can and can’t do, and helping teams understand performance in plain language.
This role may perform other related duties as needed to support team and organizational priorities.