Audience Growth & Lifecycle Manager

About The Role

The Dispatch is hiring an Audience Growth & Lifecycle Manager to run the day-to-day engine of our membership business. This role is the execution layer of our growth program, covering the entire funnel: audience development at the top, lifecycle marketing through the middle, and retention at the end. You will build and launch campaigns, run conversion and paywall tests, own our lifecycle email flows, and turn data into decisions. You will work directly with senior leadership and own outcomes rather than tasks.

We are a small team, so this role has a wider surface area than similar titles at larger companies. You will touch acquisition, conversion, retention, and reporting. The ideal candidate has worked at a company of similar size or stage, understands the creativity required to build with limited resources, and wants the ownership and upside that comes with it.

Why This Role Matters Now

Our fundamentals are strong: high-quality editorial, a trusted brand, a loyal paying audience, and steady organic growth. However, we have not yet built sustainable systems to regularly reach new audiences. Big news moments drive traffic spikes we could convert more effectively. Our email, paywall, and retention programs work independently but are not yet coordinated. We have invested in robust data infrastructure that needs someone to operationalize it. That is the job.

Responsibilities

• Drive audience development. Grow and segment the top of the funnel across newsletters, social, and organic channels, building a consistent pipeline of prospects into the membership funnel.
• Own lifecycle execution. Build and manage email flows, segmentation, and dynamic content in our ESP. Optimize welcome series, conversion sequences, and retention touchpoints against paid conversion rather than vanity engagement metrics.
• Run the testing program. Execute a continuous pipeline of experiments across paywalls, offers, landing pages, onboarding sequences, and lifecycle triggers.
• Move on editorial moments. News cycles create acquisition windows that close quickly. When traffic surges, stand up campaigns to capture attention while it lasts.
• Report with rigor. Maintain daily reporting on conversion, churn, and campaign performance, ensuring data drives decisions.

Requirements

• 3+ years in subscription marketing, growth marketing, or audience development.
• A genuine understanding of The Dispatch and its unique place in the media ecosystem—or a willingness to learn quickly.
• Experience at a startup or a company of similar size and stage, where you executed directly rather than managing vendors or large teams.
• Ability to digest large amounts of data—spreadsheet analysis, cohort reporting, and A/B test interpretation—and distill them into clear, actionable insights.
• Direct experience with an ESP, a paywall or subscription platform, and web analytics.
• Strong copy instincts and attention to detail.

Qualifications

• You have launched campaigns end-to-end, from segmentation through creative to reporting.
• You can spot the difference between correlation and causation in data and avoid drawing incorrect conclusions.
• You are comfortable designing and configuring tests.
• You prefer owning a wide surface area with real autonomy over a narrow one with more oversight.

A note on level: We are growing this team and may hire more than one candidate at different levels. The scope of this role can flex with the right candidate. If your experience exceeds this posting, apply anyway and tell us where you think you’d fit.

Benefits

• Health insurance
• 401(k) match
• Disability coverage
• Equity participation
• Additional standard benefits