Lifecycle and Retention Marketing - Freelance Contract

Detailed Description From Employer:

Background

The School of Life is a global organisation dedicated to emotional intelligence and self-knowledge. One of our key business units is our Membership programme which offers two ways to become a member of TSOL and experience everything we have to offer across our library of content, community and events - as a Content Member at £49.99 a year, and as a Community Member at £79.99 a year. For more info on our Membership offering, see here: We are looking to significantly scale our already large Member-base, and this role focuses on optimising our lifecycle activity to engage our large existing audience and increase our renewal rate. We are looking for someone with significant experience and expertise in building out successful lifecycle and retention strategies and tactics - ideally for content subscription products or lifestyle apps - to come and work with the team to start building out this function with us.

The Role

We are looking for an experienced lifecycle and retention marketer to shape our strategy and optimise our lifecycle and retention activity. This is a strategic role combined with meaningful hands-on delivery in Iterable (CRM). The right person thinks clearly about the full member journey for each type of membership - from Day 1 of starting a trial through to renewal and post-churn winback - and can translate that thinking into working journeys and engagement opportunities. You will not be operating in isolation. You will work closely and collaboratively with our Web & UX Manager (who is setting up the data foundations work in Iterable), our Product Lead (who owns the product roadmap and leads the app experience), our Head of Marketing and with our Senior Digital Marketing Executive to ensure all journeys across acquisition and retention work coherently alongside each other. You will need to think at the level of member psychology and business strategy - why does someone renew? Why does a Content member upgrade to Community Membership? What makes them feel the value? How do we reach them at the right moment? How do we make our product and lifecycle tactics work cohesively together to create a truly engaging experience that will reduce churn and maximise customer lifetime value?

What you will deliver

Iterable audit Review existing journeys, lists, segments, templates, suppression logic, field/event availability. Identify any gaps that will affect what can be built, in order of priority. Lifecycle Strategy document Full member lifecycle journey map, from trial through to renewal and winback; recommended journey priority order, with rationale, as well as channel plan (lifecycle email, push); segmentation approach: how members should be grouped and what data drives that; Naming conventions, folder structure, and journey architecture in Iterable; A measurement framework: KPIs per journey, UTM structure, reporting template. This requires close collaboration and communication with Marketing team. Data & event roadmap Work with the Web & UX Manager to scope any additional required fields and events for Iterable to enable us to execute the proposed journeys. You will be working with a data infrastructure that is being improved in real time. Good judgement about what to build now versus what to wait for is part of the brief. Build out Implement the highest priority automated and triggered journeys and flows in Iterable (designed to work cohesively alongside wider marketing campaign calendar) Reporting framework Weekly / monthly reporting framework to track performance of lifecycle activities on a cohort basis (acquisition month, platform, membership type) with particular focus on tracking renewal rates, churn, upgrade conversion, trial conversion, LTV, engagement rates and understand the impact of your strategy.

Must haves

Experience: Demonstrable experience designing and building lifecycle or CRM programmes for a subscription or membership product for both email and push Proven track record of building journeys that moved a measurable metric - renewal rate, trial conversion, churn reduction. We will ask you to walk us through a specific example. Strong working knowledge of Iterable (or equivalent platform like Braze) including journey logic, segmentation, and dynamic content Experience working with behavioural data to inform segmentation and personalisation Ability to write clearly - strategy documents, journey briefs, and member-facing copy should all be things you can turn your hand to. You’ll work with the brand tone of voice guidelines and define messaging in collaboration with the Head of Marketing. Approach: Strategic clarity: able to cut through ambiguity and produce a clear, prioritised plan Practical delivery: able to move quickly from strategy to working journey Documentation discipline: insights, journey maps, data field mapping, strategy - these all need to be clearly documented for multiple stakeholders to be able to read and interpret Good commercial instinct: you understand that this programme exists to move renewal rate and upgrade rate, and you make decisions through that lens