Lifecycle Creative Director

Lifecycle Creative Director

Compensation: $160,000–$180,000 annually

Monthly Equivalent: $13,333–$15,000/month

Location: US Remote

Employment Type: Full-Time

About the Role

We are looking for a Lifecycle Creative Director to own and elevate the creative expression across our retention and lifecycle ecosystem.

This person will oversee the creative output across email, SMS/MMS, direct mail, and supporting digital and social assets, ensuring every customer touchpoint feels cohesive, premium, high-performing, and distinctly on-brand.

This is not a purely managerial Creative Director role. We are looking for a true player-coach — someone who knows how to lead and guide a creative team, provide thoughtful and actionable feedback, and maintain a high creative bar, while also being comfortable getting directly into the work when needed.

The ideal candidate is highly organized, decisive, execution-oriented, and proactive. You should be someone who can take a strategy or brief and turn it into strong creative without needing excessive direction or spending too much time in ideation without execution.

You’ll work closely with Lifecycle/Retention, Brand, Product, Copy, and Design to translate customer insights, offers, product priorities, brand strategy, and performance data into creative that drives engagement, retention, and revenue.

What You’ll Do

Own Lifecycle Creative Direction

• Own the creative vision and execution across the lifecycle ecosystem, including email, SMS/MMS, direct mail, and supporting digital/social assets.
• Establish and maintain a cohesive visual and creative language across retention touchpoints.
• Ensure creative consistently reflects the brand's positioning, personality, and premium customer experience.
• Set a high creative bar while balancing brand quality with performance and business objectives.

Lead & Direct the Creative Team

• Provide clear, actionable creative direction to designers and other creative contributors.
• Review creative work and provide feedback that designers can immediately act on.
• Help the team understand not only what needs to change, but why.
• Establish creative standards, workflows, and expectations that enable the team to execute efficiently.
• Coach and develop creative talent while maintaining accountability for quality and deadlines.
• Know when to step in, make a decision, or get directly involved in execution.

Be a Player-Coach

• Stay close enough to the work to understand what is actually being produced.
• Jump into creative execution when needed rather than simply delegating work.
• Help refine layouts, visual concepts, messaging presentation, creative systems, and campaign assets.
• Work hands-on with designers and cross-functional partners to get projects across the finish line.
• Troubleshoot creative challenges and unblock the team when execution gets stuck.

Translate Strategy Into Execution

• Partner with Lifecycle/Retention to understand customer segments, lifecycle stages, offers, campaigns, and retention objectives.
• Work with Copy to ensure messaging and visual execution work together.
• Partner with Brand and Product to ensure creative accurately represents the brand and product experience.
• Translate customer insights and performance data into practical creative decisions.
• Turn briefs and strategic direction into clear creative execution without overcomplicating the process.

Drive Performance

• Use performance data and customer behavior to inform creative decisions.
• Evaluate what creative is working, what isn't, and where opportunities exist to improve.
• Identify patterns across campaigns, customer segments, offers, and creative formats.
• Balance creative excellence with measurable business impact.
• Continuously improve lifecycle creative based on performance, testing, and customer insights.

Manage Creative Execution

• Maintain visibility across the lifecycle creative pipeline and ensure projects move efficiently from brief to final asset.
• Establish clear creative priorities and help the team focus on the highest-impact work.
• Identify bottlenecks, gaps, or quality issues before they impact launches.
• Ensure creative is delivered on time and to the expected standard.
• Build repeatable creative systems and processes that allow the team to scale.

What We're Looking For

Required

• 7+ years of experience in creative, design, art direction, or a related field, with significant experience leading creative work.
• Experience leading or directing lifecycle, retention, CRM, or direct-to-consumer creative.
• Strong understanding of creative across email, SMS/MMS, direct mail, and digital/social channels.
• Demonstrated experience directing designers and providing actionable creative feedback.
• Strong visual and creative judgment with a high attention to detail.
• Ability to balance brand, performance, customer experience, and business objectives.
• Strong understanding of consumer-facing creative and what makes an asset effective.
• Excellent communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Strong organizational and project management abilities.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced environment with multiple priorities.
• Ability to make decisions quickly and move projects forward.
• Strong ownership mentality and ability to operate independently.

You’ll Be Especially Strong If You Have

• Experience in DTC/e-commerce, health & wellness, beauty, consumer products, or subscription businesses.
• Experience working closely with Lifecycle Marketing, Retention, CRM, or Growth teams.
• Experience using performance data to influence creative direction.
• Experience developing creative systems or scalable design frameworks.
• Hands-on experience with tools such as Figma, Adobe Creative Suite, Photoshop, or similar.
• Experience working with AI-assisted creative tools and modern creative workflows.
• Experience managing distributed or remote creative teams.

The Type of Person We’re Looking For

We're looking for someone who is:

A doer, not just an ideator.

You should be comfortable taking an idea, brief, or business objective and turning it into something tangible. We value strong creative thinking, but this role requires someone who can execute, make decisions, give direction, and keep things moving.

Highly organized and structured.

You know how to prioritize, establish clear expectations, manage deadlines, and keep a creative team focused. You don't need constant direction to figure out what needs to happen next.

Decisive and action-oriented.

You're comfortable making creative calls, giving direct feedback, and moving forward without getting stuck in endless rounds of discussion.

A strong team leader.

You know how to guide designers and creative contributors, hold a high standard, and give feedback that actually helps people improve.

Hands-on when necessary.

You don't believe that being a Creative Director means you're above the work. You're comfortable getting into the details, jumping into execution, and helping the team get the work over the finish line.

Performance-minded.

You understand that beautiful creative isn't enough. You care about whether the creative actually works — and you're willing to use data, testing, and customer insights to improve it.

What Success Looks Like

In this role, success means:

• Lifecycle creative feels cohesive, premium, and unmistakably on-brand.
• Designers have clear direction and consistently produce stronger work.
• Creative moves from brief to execution efficiently.
• Lifecycle campaigns launch on time with a high creative standard.
• Creative decisions are informed by both brand principles and performance data.
• The team has clear processes, priorities, and expectations.
• Creative quality improves over time rather than becoming repetitive or stagnant.
• Lifecycle creative contributes meaningfully to engagement, retention, conversion, and revenue.
• The Creative Director is actively involved in the work rather than operating purely at a managerial level.

Work Arrangement

Location: US Remote

Employment: Full-Time

Why This Role

This is an opportunity for a creative leader who wants to have real ownership over how a brand communicates with customers throughout their lifecycle.

You’ll have the opportunity to shape the creative direction across multiple retention channels, work closely with cross-functional leaders, develop creative talent, and directly influence how creative contributes to customer engagement and business growth.

If you're the type of Creative Director who leads from the front, has strong creative judgment, knows how to guide a team, and still wants to be close to the work, this role is built for you.