Membership & Audience Growth Manager

Reports to: CEO Ken Doctor
Location: Santa Cruz, Calif., open to remote
Staff: Halftime to full-time position
Pay: Compensation dependent on experience

Lookout Santa Cruz‘s Manager of Membership & Audience Growth drives the tactics, the operations and the success of Lookout’s readership and engagement growth. A key member of the Community & Commerce team, this manager’s job requires both excellent problem-solving and organizational abilities, and demonstrated collegial work habits. The manager will work directly with Lookout CEO Ken Doctor in driving our strategies, as well as our leadership team.

As Lookout approaches its third year, and eyes expansion to other cities, we are now moving into Membership 2.0. We are building a diversified, nuanced membership system, involving higher-priced premium membership, entry pricing, enterprise sales and a major student/teacher/faculty initiative. We see membership re-defined and growing well beyond the confines of early one-size-fits-all paywall programs. We have a robust – and growing – set of email programs, including five newsletters, with marketing and membership newsletters in the works as well. We aim to convert 10% of our email lists to membership.

We seek good experience with daily operation of ESPs, and best Active Campaign; experience with Piano Media is a major plus. Subscriber management experience, whether in news or other industries, is valued.

This management role sits with the Commerce & Community group, supporting both Marketing Partnership (advertising) and Student Engagement revenue lines and missions. Both our audience and membership initiatives are deeply intertwined with our unique local content strategy, as well as our advertising and student programs.

What you’ll be doing:

DRIVE AUDIENCE-BUILDING, READER REVENUE STRATEGY

• Responsible for managing 2022-2023 reader revenue strategy.
• Responsible for audience funnel, converting anonymous to registered to members, through a spectrum of activities, managing renewed and targeted search and social programs. Work and assess in real time best practices, optimizing social and search methods and programs and work with community groups, Marketing Partners, in association with C&C partners.
• Key point person for key vendors: Piano Media, Parsley, Mather Consulting and Active Campaign in maximizing value/potential of these systems, proactively seeking better practices and improving our result.
• Use social media as an audience driver and brand builder across various platforms.
• Drives learning and application by focus, and sharing, on key actionable metrics.
• Creates ongoing Reader Revenue Playbook to advance expansion planning and execution.

GROWING MEMBERSHIP REVENUE, ARPU AND VOLUME

• Meet or exceed membership and registration targets, with a goal of 10% conversion rate from audience to members.
• Focus on three key areas:

1) Newsletter-driven audience and membership building, mainly via Active Campaign, creating programs, language and sending membership emails for retention and new membership promotions.

2) Continuous deployment of segmentation/pricing tests on site, mainly via Piano, with ongoing testing of multiple segmented campaigns, including Piano segmentation, & differing price/duration offers.

3) Local, private sales deployed through local business, non-profit partners, using their lists and relationships.

DEVELOP AND MANAGE BEST-IN-CLASS STEWARDSHIP PROGRAM

• Build 1:1 thank you, onboarding, planned contact and surveying program for all individual members.
• Reduce churn to miniscule numbers, and reactivate winback programs.
• Work with C&C partners to launch and manage Membership Perks program, aligning special offers/deals/giveaways with Marketing Partner programs.
• With new Membership Center ready to launch, and member branding better presented through site/newsletters, create membership-affirming, churn-reducing fun membership perks program and deploy it, including Membership Perks (along with C&C partners). Segmenting top/premium members and others and track success.

• Developing reader surveys, online and in-person.

MANAGES AND RESPONDS MEMBER COMMUNICATION

• Responds to members with prompt helpful audience-saving, member-saving responses within 24 hours, cataloging any ongoing issues toward solution.

Most fitting experience:

We have recently switched to Piano Media, as our access provider, and are beginning to harness its power. We use Active Campaign as our ESP. For this position, we seek good experience with daily operation of ESPs, and best Active Campaign; experience with Piano Media is a major plus. Subscriber management experience, whether in news or other industries, is valued.

It is a role in which our best ideas, expressed in daily tracked strategy and tactics, are accompanied by painstaking execution, and continuing refinement of best practices, self-learned and applied from around the country. High organizational skills and the ability to work on multiple ongoing projects at one time is a must.

Skills Needed:

• Experience with an ESP (MailChimp, Active Campaign,etc), Piano Media experience a plus
• Demonstrated organizational skills, and ability to work on multiple ongoing projects at one time
• Subscriber acquisition and development experience preferred
• Ability to work independently, but enjoys working on a team
• Supervisor skills and experience managing other team members
• Experience working with social media to grow audiences

How to apply: Please send a detailed cover letter, resume and fitting work to jobs@lookoutlocal.com and ken@lookoutlocal.com

Lookout Local is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or veteran status.

As we interact with the public on a regular basis, a vaccination against COVID-19 is required for employment absent documented disability or religious reasons.