About this Lifecycle Marketer role at AI Fund
AI is the new electricity, transforming every aspect of our lives. DeepLearning.AI is on a mission to empower everyone to build with AI. We offer world-class education, hands-on training, access to AI news, a collaborative community and global in-person conferences.
We are looking for a Lifecycle Marketing Manager to own the full journey a user takes from first sign-up to loyal paying subscriber. This role starts with a clear, urgent mandate: reduce churn and improve our free-to-paid conversion rate. You will own the strategy, automation, and measurement behind improving conversion of free users to our Pro offering, then expand upward into onboarding, nurture, and re-engagement as the foundation is built.
This is one of the highest-leverage hires on the marketing team right now. You will work closely with Growth, Product Marketing, and Marketing Engineering to instrument, automate, and continuously improve the parts of the funnel that convert interest into revenue. You will report to the Head of Marketing and collaborate daily with Engineering and Data on instrumentation and measurement.
What You'll Do
Churn & Retention
Own the win-back and re-engagement strategy for lapsed free users and at-risk paid subscribers
Diagnose the drivers of our current subscriber plateau using Stripe, PostHog, and CRM data, and build the first corrective campaigns within 30 days
Design and ship lifecycle flows that recover users who abandon checkout which is currently our single largest funnel drop-off at roughly 80%
Build a recurring churn cohort analysis and present findings to marketing and product leadership monthly
Trial & Conversion
Own the trial-to-paid journey end to end including timing, messaging, and incentive structure for every touchpoint between sign-up and subscription
Partner with Product Marketing to align in-platform messaging with lifecycle email and notification sequences
Run structured A/B tests on trial length, onboarding sequencing, and conversion offers, and scale what works
Build segmentation logic across our CRM contacts so every message reflects where a person actually is in their journey whether free, trial, lapsed, or paid
Email & CRM Strategy
Set the strategic roadmap for all lifecycle and nurture email, partnering with the Marketing Operations Coordinator who owns execution and tooling
Define the audience segments, triggers, and journey logic inside our CRM platform (Customer.io)
Own subject line, send time, and frequency strategy across the lifecycle calendar, balancing conversion goals against list fatigue and unsubscribe risk
Partner with Editorial on how The Batch and other newsletters feed into lifecycle journeys rather than existing as a disconnected channel
Measurement & Reporting
Own lifecycle KPIs including free-to-paid conversion rate, checkout completion rate, 30/60/90-day retention, and churn rate. Report on them with a consistent cadence
Build the LTV and cohort retention views our current dashboard is missing, partnering with Data Engineering on the underlying instrumentation
Translate lifecycle performance into a clear narrative for leadership: what's improving, what isn't, and what you're doing about it
What You Bring
Required
3–6 years of experience in lifecycle, CRM, or retention marketing, with direct ownership of conversion or churn metrics,
Experience in subscription, edtech, or freemium-to-paid business models
Hands-on experience with a marketing automation or CRM platform (Customer.io, Braze, Iterable, HubSpot, or similar)
Demonstrated ability to read funnel and behavioral data (PostHog, Amplitude, Mixpanel, or similar) and translate it into a campaign strategy
Experience designing and analyzing A/B tests with a clear hypothesis, control, and success metric
Comfort working with subscription billing data (Stripe or similar) to understand the relationship between marketing activity and revenue
Strong, clear writing, you will write or closely direct the copy for every lifecycle touchpoint
A bias toward diagnosis before action, you investigate root cause before shipping a fix
Nice to Have
Familiarity with the AI/ML or technical education landscape
Experience partnering with engineering on event tracking and instrumentation
Working knowledge of SQL for self-serve data exploration
Experience with checkout or payment flow optimization specifically
What Success Looks Like
In your first 30 days, you will have audited the current lifecycle and CRM setup, diagnosed the leading drivers behind our checkout abandonment and subscriber plateau, and identified the two or three highest-leverage fixes. Within 30 days, you will have shipped your first churn and win-back campaigns, established a recurring reporting cadence, and have early data showing directional improvement in free-to-paid conversion. In 6 months, you will have measurably improved retention and conversion, built a durable lifecycle infrastructure with the Marketing Engineer and Marketing Operations Coordinator, and become the team's authority on what drives a user from sign-up to loyal subscriber.
