Lifecycle Marketing Manager

The Role

At Stepful, we’re transforming how people enter and grow in healthcare careers and you’ll be at the heart of that journey. As our Lifecycle Marketing Lead, you will own how we communicate with our students and clients across email, SMS, and in-app channels to drive engagement, motivation, progression, and ultimately outcomes. This is not solely a brand marketing role or performance acquisition role; it’s a product experience role. You’ll be responsible for architecting communication journeys that directly influence behavior, improve student and customer success, and drive business impact.

This role is a part of our Product team, but you’ll work closely with Product, Operations, and Growth to ensure every message we send is timely, personalized, and part of a cohesive lifecycle strategy, not just a standalone campaign. If you love using storytelling, segmentation, and experimentation to solve real user problems at scale,you might be a great fit. This is a rare opportunity to shape the lifecycle engine of a rapidly scaling, mission-driven company.

What You’ll Do

As the Lifecycle Marketing Lead for the entire Stepful ecosystem, you will own all of the communication between the product experience and our customers. In this role, you can expect to:

• Own Stepful’s lifecycle marketing strategy for students and healthcare providers across email, SMS, and in-app, from strategy to execution to iteration (not just initial acquisition).

• Design and optimize multi-channel journeys that increase activation, engagement, retention, and completion across both our direct-to-consumer (student) and B2B (employer) products.

• Deepen our understanding of our core student audience (primarily early career, mobile-first learners ages 18–24) and translate their motivations and preferences into communication strategies that actually resonate.

• Leverage data to identify friction points and opportunities to influence behavior through lifecycle touch points.

• Write and QA high-impact communications with exceptional attention to detail, ensuring every message reflects our brand, drives clarity, and compels action.

• Collaborate closely with Product, Operations, Growth, Data, and Client Success to ensure communications support core product experiences, not compete with them.

• Continuously test, measure, learn, and iterate using a hypothesis-driven approach to improve lifecycle performance and communicate results clearly to stakeholders.

This job is for you if:

• You have 6+ years of experience owning end-to-end lifecycle marketing across email, SMS, and in-app channels in a high growth environment.

• You have meaningful experience driving activation and renewal/retention for existing customers or users, not just new customer acquisition.

• You are fluent in marketing automation tools (e.g., Customer.io, HubSpot) and able to build, launch, and manage complex journeys independently.

• You are an exceptional writer who can tailor messaging to different personas while maintaining clarity, empathy, and persuasion.

• You have a strong analytical mindset - comfortable building dashboards or pulling data to inform strategy, evaluate campaign performance, and identify opportunities. You're also energized by testing and experimentation, constantly seeking ways to improve conversion, engagement, and outcomes.

• You have proven experience influencing product behavior and driving retention through lifecycle strategies, not just promotional campaigns.

• You thrive in cross-functional environments where you must balance stakeholder needs while advocating for the user and product experience.

Bonus points if:

• You’ve worked in operations-heavy businesses where product communications play a meaningful role in driving real-world behavior.

• You have experience building lifecycle programs for younger or non-traditional learners (e.g., early-career, vocational, or community college populations), or similar 18–24 mobile-first audiences.

• You’ve helped teams go beyond acquisition by building programs that increase activation, cross-sell/upsell, renewal, or ongoing product usage.

• You’ve worked closely with Product teams to influence roadmaps and integrate lifecycle messaging within product experiences.

• You have familiarity with SQL or other analytical tools and can self-serve performance insights.

• You’re passionate about education, workforce development, or healthcare access and want to be part of a company making a measurable impact on people’s livelihoods.

Interview Process

Step 1: Intro Call with a Talent Acquisition Partner (20-30 mins)

Step 2: Interview with the Hiring Manager (45 mins)

Step 3: Case Study (45 mins)

Step 4: Onsite interview at Stepful HQ in SoHo, NYC (2 hours)

Stepful is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate in hiring or any employment decision based on race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex, marital status, ancestry, disability, genetic information, veteran status, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, pregnancy, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.