Director, Lifecycle Marketing

About the Role

We're seeking a Director of Lifecycle Marketing to own how Apartment List engages millions of renters, and to shape what lifecycle becomes here. Lifecycle is one of our highest-leverage growth channels: it drives revenue directly and moves renters toward leases at a fraction of the cost of paid acquisition. This is the consumer growth side of our marketplace: your focus is the renter, and the foundation you build should be one the whole marketplace can grow into.

It's a builder's seat with high growth potential. The core program (email, push, and SMS) is shifting from high-volume sends to something segmented, personalized, and forecast-driven, unlocking growth the old model left on the table. Alongside it, you'll stand up what doesn't exist yet: a lifecycle partnerships program from scratch, cross-sell across our brands, and the infrastructure that lets new brands launch. You'll set the strategy, build the team and systems to deliver it, and stay close enough to the data and the platform to lead from the details, not above them.

This is a player-coach role. You'll lead and develop a small team while staying hands-on yourself in the platform and in the numbers. If you want to step out of execution, this isn't the seat. If you want to build a program and a team from the ground up without letting go of the craft, keep reading.

Here's what you'll do

Build what's next

• Set the vision for lifecycle at Apartment List, taking full ownership of redesigning our end to end lifecycle program across the entire renter lifecycle
• Drive the modernization of our program, integrating data science and machine learning capabilities to drive relevance and personalization, including integrating a combination of proprietary models and off the shelf 3rd party solutions
• Leverage our growing partnerships program to build new retention and engagement opportunities from the ground up: the strategy, the operating model, the measurement, and the first wave of execution. A true zero-to-one build
• Establish the lifecycle foundation that supports a multi-brand portfolio, helping launch and scale new brands, and design the cross-sell that moves renters between them

Run the program

• Set strategy across email, push, and SMS, and own the lifecycle program's revenue and volume forecasts and budget with Finance, bringing a clear point of view on contribution, growth, and risk into planning
• Advance the shift to segmented, personalized, forecast-driven sends. Design the frameworks that decide who gets what message when, balancing revenue against deliverability, frequency, and renter experience
• Drive experimentation and holdout-based measurement, and keep the learning base that guides where lifecycle invests next

Lead the analytics

• Partner closely with our dedicated marketing analytics and MarTech teams - as well as run your own performance deepdives - to assess the overall state of the program, identify priority growth levers and rapidly test and iterate on solutions
• Define and build the measurement system that assesses overall performance, including leading indicators of revenue and health metrics on the long-term outlook for the program.

Stay hands-on

• Build and troubleshoot journeys, templates, dynamic content, and audience logic directly, debugging alongside Engineering and Analytics when feeds or triggers misbehave
• Self-serve in SQL to build your own analyses, and partner with Analytics and Data Science on channel health, revenue attribution, and forecasts that make performance predictable rather than reactive
• Be the program's investigator: monitor engagement, conversion, deliverability, and send volume, and chase every anomaly to root cause before it becomes a question

Lead and align

• Manage and develop a team of two, delegating ownership and building a high-performance culture
• Represent lifecycle with senior leadership, translating program depth into clear priorities and tradeoffs, and partner with Engineering, Product, Analytics, and Design on the roadmap
• Manage our relationship with Iterable, building a close partnership that allows us to maximize value and breadth of use of the functionality available

What We're Looking For

Must Have

• 9+ years in lifecycle, engagement, or email marketing, with expert command of an enterprise automation platform (Iterable, Braze, or similar)
• Deep B2C experience. This role owns the renter side of our marketplace, and direct-to-consumer lifecycle experience is required
• A builder who has stood up programs from the ground up or transformed programs, not just optimized existing ones, and is ready to do the building hands-on
• Analytically self-sufficient: self-serves in SQL to build their own analyses, and treats reporting tools and AI as multipliers on their thinking
• Technically fluent in how data feeds, events, and APIs power a lifecycle program, hands-on in HTML and CSS for email, and credible debugging alongside engineers
• Investigative by nature, with a record of chasing anomalies in the data to root cause and fixing the mechanism, not the symptom
• A people leader who has managed and developed marketers, and who keeps senior leadership clear on performance, risks, and tradeoffs
• Marketplace experience strongly preferred: familiarity with two-sided dynamics and how consumer growth connects to supply

Nice to Have

• Familiarity with workflow orchestration or ETL tooling (Airflow or similar)
• Experience at a marketplace or high-volume consumer tech company
• Familiarity with email and SMS compliance requirements

Here's the Pay Range:

At Apartment List, we carefully consider a variety of factors to determine compensation for each position, including the role, level, and work. The US Total Target Compensation (TTC) for this position is:

• Zone 1: $182,000 - $235,000 TTC (including $160,000 - $206,000 base salary) + equity
• Zone 2: $168,000 - $217,000 TTC (including $147,000 - $191,000 base salary) + equity
• Zone 3: $154,000 - $200,000 TTC (including $135,000 - $175,000 base salary) + equity

This reflects the compensation target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations. Please note, the compensation details provided do not include benefits and perks that we offer.

We also rely on market indicators along with considering your work location, job related skills, experience and relevant education and training, to determine compensation that is fair and competitive for you. Apartment List will consider paying compensation near the higher of the range in exceptional circumstances, where candidates have the experience, credentials or expertise that would warrant such consideration. It is always our goal to hire exceptional talent and we would be happy to share more about compensation during the hiring process.