Director, Owned Channel Strategy

About the role

New York Life Investments (NYLIM) is seeking a Director, Owned Channel Strategy to build and advance the firm's email, lifecycle, social, and owned audience engagement strategy.

Responsibilities

• Own the email and owned-channel strategy for NYLIM, with a focus on lifecycle engagement, nurture programs, segmentation, personalization, testing, automation, and performance optimization.
• Lead, coach, and prioritize work for the Manager, Email Marketing and Manager, Organic Social Media, ensuring both roles have clear goals, strong execution standards, and a shared approach to audience engagement.
• Develop audience-centered contact strategies for financial advisor, institutional investor, client, and prospect audiences, including frequency, prioritization, suppression, segmentation, and journey logic.
• Design and evolve nurture journeys, triggered communications, newsletters, campaign sequences, event follow-ups, and content engagement programs that support business priorities and deepen audience relationships.
• Serve as the business lead for marketing automation use cases, helping define requirements for CRM, marketing automation, audience data, dynamic content, journey orchestration, and measurement capabilities.
• Identify responsible AI-enabled opportunities to improve owned-channel planning, content adaptation, audience segmentation, QA, reporting synthesis, and journey performance.
• Lead the development of email testing strategies, including subject lines, content hierarchy, calls to action, personalization, audience splits, send timing, templates, and journey optimization.
• Establish email and owned-channel governance standards, including contact strategy, template strategy, content hierarchy, brand alignment, accessibility, compliance considerations, approval requirements, and performance reporting practices.
• Monitor and analyze owned-channel performance, audience behavior, list health, deliverability, engagement quality, social signals, website engagement from owned traffic, and conversion indicators, translating insights into recommendations for ongoing improvement.
• Partner with Product Marketing, Segment Marketing, Brand, Content, Sales, BI, Technology, Marketing Operations, Compliance, Website Strategy & Operations, and the Director, Cross-Channel Activation to translate priorities into effective email, social, and owned-channel programs.
• Partner with Global Data & Tech Solutions on platform capabilities, tagging, campaign setup, QA processes, data hygiene, and execution readiness.
• Ensure email, social, and owned-channel activation reinforces the NYLIM brand story and creates a consistent, relevant experience across audience touchpoints.

Requirements

• 7 to 10+ years of experience in email marketing, lifecycle marketing, CRM, marketing automation, owned-channel strategy, or digital engagement, preferably in financial services, asset management, B2B, or another regulated environment.
• Experience managing or mentoring marketing team members, with the ability to set direction, improve standards, prioritize work, and help channel specialists grow.
• Proven ability to develop email strategies, nurture journeys, segmentation approaches, testing plans, contact strategies, and performance optimization routines.
• Hands-on experience with email or marketing automation platforms, CRM systems, audience data, campaign tagging, email reporting, deliverability, and compliance-aware campaign execution.
• Understanding of advisor, institutional, intermediary, professional buyer, or complex B2B audience journeys preferred.
• Ability to translate business and content priorities into audience-centered email, social, and owned-channel programs that are measurable, compliant, and aligned to brand standards.
• Experience partnering with cross-functional internal teams and external partners.
• Comfort using AI and automation tools to improve planning, personalization, testing, QA, reporting, content adaptation, and workflow efficiency within appropriate governance standards.
• Strong analytical judgment, attention to detail, writing instincts, and ability to interpret performance data into practical recommendations.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in marketing, Communications, Business, Finance, or a related field preferred.