Director, Lifecycle Marketing

What you'll do here:

• Serve as the owner and in-house expert for our email program. You'll set strategy, architecture, and execution, partnering with one junior direct report and minimal external agency support to orchestrate cross-functional teams to deliver results.
• Establish the company’s CRM strategy and lifecycle objectives in line with broader business goals, leading execution of high-impact initiatives that drive acquisition, retention, engagement, and loyalty, in partnership with Product, Content, Merchandising, and Brand Creative.
• Autonomously set email marketing strategies and testing roadmaps across audience segments and lifecycle stages, ensuring alignment with overarching business objectives.
• Audit, rebuild, and significantly expand our triggered email program, exercising independent judgment on which behavioral, transactional, and lifecycle flows to retire, restructure, or build from scratch, in order to grow it into a substantial contributor to the overall marketing mix.
• Initiate and lead cross-functional collaboration with Data, Product, and Product Marketing on onsite segmentation (e.g., homepage segmentation) and build a connected system of personalized on- and offsite experiences to drive retention, upsell, and cross-sell.
• Identify, pilot, and scale AI-powered capabilities across the email channel, including predictive segmentation, send-time optimization, and dynamic content personalization, establishing Paperless Post's initial framework for AI-driven lifecycle marketing.
• Define and own the methodology for applying AI tools (e.g., Claude, Google Gemini) to accelerate campaign production workflows, including copy generation, subject line testing, and creative iteration, while maintaining brand voice and quality standards.
• Partner with Product and Engineering to evaluate and integrate AI/ML capabilities within Sailthru and adjacent martech, building toward a personalization-at-scale infrastructure across the customer lifecycle.
• Utilizing your small team and AI, analyze performance, establish benchmarks, and continuously optimize messaging, targeting, and ROI, to share insights with cross-functional partners.
• Own and evolve email measurement, including attribution models and testing frameworks.
• Oversee day-to-day email operations, including strategy, segmentation, execution, QA, and reporting, while owning the ESP (Sailthru/Zeta) relationship and all related functions.
• Manage external email resources and tools and identify opportunities for automation to streamline and improve existing workflows.

Requirements:

• 7+ years in CRM/lifecycle marketing with a strong track record of driving business results through targeted, insights-driven programs.
• Proven experience building multi-branch, behavior- and transaction-driven flows—not just welcome series, win-back or blast campaigns—with demonstrated impact on triggered revenue and engagement.
• Hands-on experience scoping events, payloads, and identity resolution directly with internal Product and Engineering teams—not just vendor-to-vendor or agency-led coordination.
• Deep experience in audience segmentation, A/B testing and translating performance data into actionable strategy.
• Familiarity with email HTML and technical email requirements; comfort overseeing execution and troubleshooting with an external agency.
• Up-to-date knowledge of email marketing regulations (CAN-SPAM, GDPR).
• A proactive, accountable, hands-on leader who problem-solves creatively and thrives in a lean, fast-moving environment.
• An excellent communicator, comfortable presenting strategy, trade-offs, and recommendations to executive partners with a clear point of view, and able to stay anchored to the question being asked.
• Curiosity and hands-on experimentation with AI tools as applied to email marketing, including content generation, workflow acceleration, and predictive optimization. Formal AI expertise is not required, but a genuine growth mindset toward these tools is essential.
• Experience in high-growth startups or product-led companies.

Nice to Haves:

• Expertise with Sailthru (Zeta) through 3+ years of day-to-day hands-on experience.
• Experience with Looker or other BI/analytics tools.
• Experience managing or executing an ESP migration.
• Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, or a related field; relevant experience is more important.

Compensation:

The compensation range for this role is $144,400 - $165,000 USD. At Paperless Post, compensation is based on a number of factors, including geographic location, job-related skills, years of experience, and internal team banding. All full-time offer packages come with a base salary, equity component, and options for fully paid medical, dental, and vision benefits. The range posted here is based on the NYC market and may...