Senior Lifecycle Marketing Manager

WHO ARE WE?

Firstleaf is transforming the $70B US wine market by empowering consumers to experience wine in a personalized way. We understand that wine is a complicated and intimidating category to shop, especially for new wine drinkers. That’s why we exist to make it easy for consumers to confidently try new wines and discover what they love.

Firstleaf launched in 2016 with the vision to be the world’s most customer-centric wine company. With a flexible direct-to-consumer model, we combined the roles of winery, importer, and retailer into one vertically integrated company. Our award-winning and talented Winemaking and Operational teams work closely with the finest vineyards and wineries in over a dozen countries to source the best wines possible. By eliminating the middleman, we provide our members with an exclusive selection of world-class wines that have won thousands of awards from notable critics and competitions. 

Founded and led by Philip James, a wine industry veteran and Oxford-educated chemist, our personalized subscription service unites the art and science of wine. Our patented algorithm uses millions of data points to curate each shipment of wine so members can discover wines matched to their tastes while exploring bottles from around the world.

This process begins by analyzing the chemical components of each wine so that we understand what’s in every bottle at the molecular level. As a result, after a member takes our quiz and rates a few bottles, we know exactly what they like or don’t like, enabling us to refine their wine profile and recommend wines with over 95% accuracy. This data also informs which types of wines we produce for our members.

We were recognized by Fast Company’s Annual List of the World’s Most Innovative Companies in 2022, named to Quartz’s Best Companies for Remote Workers in 2022, and ranked in the Top 50 Wineries of the Year three years in a row by Wine Business Monthly. Over one million people have tried Firstleaf since our inception, and we continue to disrupt an industry that hasn’t changed in centuries.

JOB PURPOSE

We are seeking a highly motivated and experienced Senior Lifecycle Marketing Manager to join our dynamic marketing team. In this cross-functional leadership role, you will be responsible for developing and executing comprehensive lifecycle marketing strategies that maximize customer lifetime value and minimize churn across our two wine brands - Firstleaf (subscription) and Swirl (non-subscription). You’ll be the architect of our lifecycle journeys, guide our segmentation approach, and develop personalized and effective contact strategies across a range of channels (email, SMS, web site, push notifications, and referral program). You will also play a key role in our overall promotional strategy, working closely with our Email Marketing Manager to shape campaigns while rolling up your sleeves to execute them across channels. You’ll advise on our tech stack and current trends to ensure that we deliver the seamless, on-brand experiences to delight customers and profitably grow our business. And you’ll clearly tell our performance story by tying campaign performance to business results.

This is a fully remote position. Occasional travel for team meetings (up to 2x/year)

WHAT YOU’LL DO 

I. Strategic Lifecycle Management:

• Design and optimize lifecycle programs: Conceptualize, develop, and optimize lifecycle programs to deliver a holistic, customer-focused experience for both our Firstleaf and Swirl brands.
• Create and implement a comprehensive customer journey roadmap: Define messaging and contact strategies targeted at key points in the customer’s lifecycle, including lead capture and lead nurturing, onboarding, club engagement (Firstleaf), repeat purchase (Swirl), and long-term retention & loyalty.
• Drive customer retention and LTV: Identify churn drivers and implement strategies that proactively improve satisfaction and retention rates, including customer reactivation.
• Oversee Next Best Action programs: Drive thinking around each brand’s “next best action” based on customer segmentation, lifecycle, and business goals.
• Lead quarterly planning: Orchestrate quarterly campaign planning process, focused on our key initiatives and biggest opportunities, by laying out target segments, actions, promos, and campaign themes.
• Partner with cross-functional teams: Collaborate with Acquisitions, Product, Member Services, Design Services, and other teams to ensure consistent messaging and to optimize conversion rates for each lifecycle behavior.
• Advise on and optimize marketing tech stack: Evaluate and improve ESPs, personalization tools, and other lifecycle marketing platforms (e.g., next best action engine).
• Manage external relationships: Serve as main POC and strategic lead managing a variety of vendor relationships.

II. Segmentation, Personalization, and Optimization:

• Develop and implement segmentation strategies: Utilize data to formulate a segmentation strategy within our current customer base, then activate against that to drive results.
• Design and implement tests: Develop and execute rapid test-and-learn programs across the customer lifecycle, using results to drive incremental revenue through continued marketing optimization. Testing will include channels, promos, triggers, audiences, creative, messaging, and communications timing.
• Optimize campaign performance: Codify best practices in lifecycle marketing, and leverage campaign and business data to identify campaign improvement opportunities.
• Architect and deploy a personalization framework: Create personalization guidelines around channel use, promos, and content leveraging existing platforms and tech.
• Identify gaps: Analyze existing marketing campaigns and journeys to identify gaps in our personalization and segmentation approaches.

III. Multi-Channel Strategy and Development:

• Optimize channel use and interactivity: Develop the optimal intra- and cross-channel strategies to drive the most value from each touchpoint without overwhelming the customer.
• Align channels with journeys and audiences: Develop a thorough understanding of what communication approaches resonate with customers within and across channels, and scale those approaches to maximize retention, repeat purchase, and LTV.
• Optimize referral programs: Manage and improve referral initiatives to drive new customer acquisition and engagement.
• Drive technology and platform optimization to enhance LTV: Collaborate with our Product Teams on the technology, programs, and features needed to reinforce lifecycle opportunities, particularly around merchandising, promo reinforcement, lead capture, referrals, cancellation / winback, and purchase completion.
• Collaborate with Member Experience (MX): Integrate MX outreach with lifecycle marketing efforts, developing programs and messages that target specific audience behaviors.
• Support Email Marketing Manager: Collaborate on effective email marketing strategies (transactional and marketing), aligning on journeys, target segments, and campaigns.
• Test and optimize new channels: Lead new channel testing to deepen customer relationships and unlock additional customer value.

IV. Performance Analysis and Reporting:

• Understand key retention and portfolio health metrics: Track and report on overall lifecycle program impacts over time, focusing on file health, retention and churn rates, repeat purchase behaviors, and LTV. Deep understanding of cohorting required.
• Track and analyze campaign performance: Track and report on campaign performance at the program, channel, and campaign levels, telling a story about how transactional and marketing initiatives drive growth.
• Establish and streamline performance monitoring: Partner with Data and Analytics to streamline reports and dashboards and new build metrics to track lifecycle program results.
• Analyze user behavior and performance: Track and analyze trends by cohort, acquisition source, and other factors to understand LTV, churn, and responsiveness.

REQUIREMENTS

You are a strategic and organized self-starter with experience leading lifecycle projects and developing initiatives that drive business outcomes. You have a strong CRM toolkit, using proven strategies to design multichannel member experiences, increase LTV, and reduce churn.  You have a strong understanding of customer journey mapping and behavior tracking that you use to drive changes in consumer behavior across a variety of well-defined segments. You are incredibly data-driven in your pursuit of getting the “right message at the right time” to customers at all lifecycle stages. And you bring a deep understanding of lifecycle and business metrics that you use to design promotions and prioritize customer engagement initiatives. You’re also creative in testing journeys, segments, and touchpoints in pursuit of business goals. You are highly collaborative and excel at working cross-functionally with other Marketing groups, Data and Analytics, Member Experience, and Product teams to execute best-in-class CRM campaigns.

ESSENTIAL EXPERIENCE & KNOWLEDGE

• 4+ years of experience in a lifecycle marketing role, preferably in a DTC subscription or e-commerce environment.
• Deep experience in email, CRM programs, and loyalty initiatives (e.g., referrals), with a deep understanding of lifecycle journeys, customer segmentation, personalization, and A/B testing and optimization methodologies.
• Proven track record of developing and executing successful retention marketing strategies across multiple channels (email, SMS, site, referral, push notifications).
• Experience in building marketing campaigns from the ground up, with a focus on driving  customer behaviors at key points in the customer journey.
• Proven ability to rigorously analyze quantitative and qualitative data, tying lifecycle tactics to churn, ROI, and LTV success measures. Must have prior experience tracking performance by user cohorts.
• Deep understanding of compliance and regulatory standards including CAN-SPAM, CCPA, and ARL.
• Excellent project management skills with relentless attention to detail.
• Proven ability to build and manage multiple vendor relationships.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and ability to present information clearly and concisely.
• Eligible to work in the United States.

DESIRABLE KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS

• It would be ideal to have a strong interest in wine, as well as knowledge of SQL, HTML, and Google Analytics.
• Prior experience with Shopify and Braze are strong plusses.
• Excited to work in a fast-paced startup environment
• Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, or similar field.
• Experience leveraging multiple data platforms and analyst tools (e.g., Google Analytics, Amplitude, Tableau).

BENEFITS

Salary: $115k-$130k/year dependent on relevant experience.

Working with the world's best wine company isn't enough? Seriously though, we offer remote work and unlimited PTO. We offer a competitive compensation package with stock options grants, plus multiple health insurance choices with medical, dental, and vision coverage, as well as HSA and FSA options, life insurance, 401(k) matching, employee assistance program, and discounted pet insurance. And to top it off: a monthly wine credit with our wine club!

Firstleaf is proud to be an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action employer. We do not discriminate based upon race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or other applicable legally protected characteristics. Firstleaf is committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities in our recruiting process.