Growth Strategy Lead

Established in 2004, OLIVER is the world’s first and only specialist in designing, building, and running bespoke in-house agencies and marketing ecosystems for brands. We partner with over 300 clients in 40+ countries and counting. Our unique model drives creativity and efficiency, allowing us to deliver tailored solutions that resonate deeply with audiences.  As a part of The Brandtech Group, we're at the forefront of leveraging cutting-edge AI technology to revolutionise how we create and deliver work. Our AI solutions enhance efficiency, spark creativity, and drive insightful decision-making, empowering our teams to produce innovative and impactful results.  Role: Growth Strategy Lead   Location: Baltimore, Maryland   THE OPPORTUNITY:    This is an opportunity to join OLIVER's dedicated in-house studio, embedded with a leading healthcare education institution, as Growth Strategy Lead — the growth intelligence function for a fully integrated creative production studio serving a large enrolled population across a broad, multi-brand portfolio of students, professionals, and enterprise audiences in the healthcare education sector.  The constraint on the next phase of growth is not a lack of strategy — it is content velocity, content relevance, and the ability to test and personalize at scale. Your role is to make sure the studio is always working from the sharpest possible growth foundation, turning audience insight, funnel performance, and market intelligence into clear direction for creative and CRM execution.  Based in Baltimore, you will own the end-to-end growth strategy for the email and CRM program — the studio’s most commercially critical workstream — while providing growth direction and optimization across paid, social, owned, and emerging channels. This is supported by a platform architecture where OMG organizes and orchestrates the work, Pencil is where the work gets created and optimized, and Share of Model is how our client stays one step ahead in AI-driven discovery. You will be one of the primary users of all three.  We support flexible working and are open to different arrangements. We offer reasonable adjustments throughout the process.    ABOUT THE ROLE:    The Growth Strategy Lead is the growth backbone of the OLIVER studio. Approximately 60% of your focus sits on lifecycle, CRM, and email — owning the strategy, audience architecture, and optimization roadmap for enrollment growth programs. The remaining 40% spans the broader funnel: paid social, organic social, owned content, web, and performance marketing — providing growth direction, experimentation frameworks, and optimization that ensures the studio is always creating the right content for the right audience in the right channel.  You are the person who connects insight to growth. You work closely with the Business Director on client strategy, with CRM Campaign Managers on lifecycle performance, with the Associate Creative Director on content strategy, and with the Data Analyst on measurement. The studio is measured on outcomes such as cost per asset, speed to delivery, and creative effectiveness in market — and your growth direction should be visibly improving the last of these.    WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING:    Lifecycle & CRM Growth   * Own the end-to-end CRM and email growth strategy for enrollment programs across the portfolio — lead nurture, application, enrollment, and early-retention journeys  * Define and maintain audience segmentation frameworks, personalization strategies, and lifecycle contact architectures across a multi-brand portfolio of institutions, tailored to each brand’s maturity  * Drive the shift from reactive, one-off sends toward planned, reusable growth programs — targeting a majority-planned mix, refreshed evergreen nurtures, and a reusable, modular content library  * Build and own the experimentation and optimization roadmap — A/B and multivariate frameworks, cadence strategies, personalization logic, and subject-line and conversion analysis  * Partner with the Data Analyst and CRM Campaign Managers to build closed-loop measurement and attribution, translating performance into clear growth recommendations that feed the next cycle  * Maintain deep fluency across the CRM, marketing automation, and CDP stack; advise on platform utilization, automation and decisioning opportunities, and data quality requirements  Full-Funnel Growth & Optimization  * Provide growth direction and optimization across the broader funnel — paid social, organic social, owned content, web, and performance marketing — ensuring channel strategies are coherent, audience-relevant, and aligned with institutional enrollment goals  * Design growth loops and cross-channel experiments that connect acquisition, activation, and retention into a measurable, compounding system  * Use Share of Model to understand brand visibility in AI-generated answers, optimize AI search visibility, identify share of voice across models, and surface brand strengths and weaknesses — translating these real-time insights into growth and content priorities  * Develop content and channel testing frameworks that let the studio learn faster, optimize more efficiently, and prove creative effectiveness across formats  * Partner with the Associate Creative Director to translate growth insight into creative direction — ensuring campaigns are rooted in audience understanding and funnel intelligence  * Lead brand and audience insight work: analyze conversations, sentiment, behavior, and content resonance; identify barriers (such as cost), motivators (such as career outcomes), and engagement triggers (such as authentic narratives) to prioritize messaging and growth opportunities  * Monitor competitor positioning, category trends, and audience signals across higher education to inform ongoing growth recommendations  * Contribute to QBR preparation alongside the Business Director, bringing a growth performance narrative and forward-looking, full-funnel recommendations to senior client stakeholders  Account-Wide Growth Leadership  * Serve as the studio’s primary growth voice — connecting client ambitions to studio capability, and ensuring every workstream has a clear, insight-driven growth foundation  * Work across the studio’s full team to embed growth thinking in briefing, production, and review — not just in planning documents  * Develop optimization frameworks the whole studio can use, from creative testing protocols to content scoring via Pencil’s performance intelligence    WHAT YOU NEED TO BE GREAT IN THIS ROLE:    * Proven experience in a senior growth, strategy, planning, or integrated marketing role — with a track record of driving measurable results across multiple channels, not just one  * Deep expertise in CRM, email, and lifecycle growth in a complex, multi-program environment; experience with enterprise marketing automation platforms (Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Marketo, Eloqua, or equivalent) is essential  * Strong working knowledge of paid social, organic social, owned content, and/or performance marketing — with the ability to build testing and optimization frameworks across the funnel  * A growth operator’s mindset: fluent in funnel metrics, experimentation, cohort/retention analysis, and CAC/LTV thinking  * An understanding of the higher education landscape is a meaningful differentiator: students are increasingly ROI-conscious and looking for clear career pathways; adult learners and working professionals are now central growth audiences; persistent healthcare workforce shortages drive demand for specialized programs  * Strong analytical capability: comfortable with performance data, attribution modelling, A/B testing analysis, and translating insight into clear growth direction  * Experience working with data and analytics teams to build measurement frameworks and performance dashboards  * Confident communicator and presenter; able to articulate growth thinking clearly to senior marketing stakeholders  * A proactive, insider mindset: you don’t wait for briefs — you anticipate needs, surface growth opportunities, and bring the studio’s thinking to the table before it’s asked for  * Collaborative working style with the ability to coordinate across creative, CRM, delivery, and client teams in a distributed, multi-location studio  Gen AI & Agentic Thinking  * Strategic command of the studio’s three core platforms: OMG (where the work is organized and orchestrated), Pencil (where the work is created and optimized), and Share of Model (how our client stays one step ahead in AI-driven discovery)  * Experience using AI tools to accelerate research, audience insight, content strategy, and growth planning — with rigorous human judgment applied to all outputs  * Ability to leverage Pencil’s direct connection to live ad accounts — pulling creative performance data back into the production workflow in real time, with every asset scored, tracked, and fed back into the next brief; this is the intelligence layer most agencies don’t have  * Agentic leadership: systematic, hypothesis-led thinking applied to complex, multi-channel growth challenges  * Ability to set AI-informed quality standards and testing frameworks the broader studio can adopt    REQ ID: 17803 #LI-DIRECTOR  At the time of this posting, the base salary for this position may range according to what's stated below. Individual compensation varies based on job related factors, including location, business needs, level of responsibility, experience, and qualifications. The range listed is just one component of OLIVER’s total compensation package. Salary Range $127,500—$142,500 USD Our values shape everything we do:  Be Ambitious to succeed    Be Imaginative to push the boundaries of what’s possible    Be Inspirational to do groundbreaking work    Be always learning and listening to understand    Be Results-focused  to exceed expectations    Be actively pro-inclusive and anti-racist across our community, clients and creations     OLIVER, a part of the Brandtech Group, is an equal opportunity employer committed to creating an inclusive working environment where all employees are encouraged to reach their full potential, and individual differences are valued and respected. All applicants shall be considered for employment without regard to race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, neurodivergence, disability status, or any other characteristic protected by local laws.     OLIVER has set ambitious environmental goals around sustainability, with science-based emissions reduction targets. Collectively, we work towards our mission, embedding sustainability into every department and through every stage of the project lifecycle.

DEPT® is a Growth Invention company built to help the world’s most ambitious brands grow faster. Operating at the intersection of technology and marketing, our 4,000+ specialists deliver growth invention services across Brand & Media, Experience, Commerce, CRM, and Technology & Data. We’re 50|50 tech and marketing, partner-led, and first to move. Clients include Google, Lufthansa, Meta, eBay, and OpenAI. We have been certified B Corp and Climate Neutral since 2021. JOB PURPOSE As a Customer Growth Strategy Lead (CRM, Loyalty, Audience) at DEPT®, you are the architect of the client’s relationship strategy. You aren't managing email campaigns; you are owning the Loyalty and Audience agenda. You will act as the strategic lead for well-known brands, translating goals into sophisticated, data-driven relationship (CRM) roadmaps. Through a loyalty and an audience-first lens, you will navigate complex corporate landscapes to defend CRM investments, optimize customer relationships and ensure that every interaction is a step toward long-term brand engagement. WHAT YOU'LL DO * CRM Visionary: own the end-to-end loyalty narrative for the client, defining the customer agenda and ensuring ambition across all marketing activities. * Strategic Relationship/Lifecycle Management: Develop end-to-end loyalty propositions and customer experience strategies to cultivate long-term brand engagement. * Data-Driven Insights: Analyze customer behavior, preferences, and lifetime value to identify target audience segments and frameworks. * Stakeholder Navigator: Serve as a primary point of contact for strategy, navigating complex client environments with sensitivity, authority, and confidence.  * Performance Optimization: Critically analyze and interpret strategy effectiveness through metrics such as customer retention rate, repeat purchase rate, and ROI.  * Cross-Disciplinary Orchestration: Act as the vital link between CRM, data, creative, and tech to create truly integrated, full-funnel experiences.  * Growth Invention: Proactively spot opportunities to expand the scope of work into broader strategic territories, participating in new business pitches locally and globally. * Practice Leadership: Drive our internal knowledge, staying ahead of industry trends to ensure our Relationship & CRM Strategies remain cutting-edge. WHAT YOU BRING * A seasoned digital marketing strategist with extensive experience in CRM, loyalty propositions, programs, and audience-centric strategies, preferably at an agency. * A full-funnel architect with a deep understanding of CRM and marketing automation, with a solid foundation in the interplay between creative, data and performance. * You can help clients go from business strategy to implementation by giving advice, creating roadmaps, and proposing innovative concepts.  * You can explain complex data and information in an easy and understandable manner to senior client leadership. * You approach tasks proactively and possess the critical ability to distinguish between theoretical strategy and immediate action.  * You are a natural networker who brings together different disciplines and specialists to deliver a unified vision. * You are located and are directly available to start working from our Dutch or German offices; * You are fluent in both German and English, capable of leading high-level strategic discussions in both languages.   WE OFFER Please note that benefits may vary by location. Feel free to reach out to your recruiter for more details * Hybrid working policy * Stay happy and healthy with a contribution to your health through the OpenUp platform, and a multisport programme; * A reputation for doing good. DEPT® has been a Certified B Corp® since 2021. * Awesome clients. Whether big, small, local or global — at DEPT® you’ll get the opportunity to work with all of them. And we celebrate all of our successes together! * The opportunity for possibility. We want to enable you to do what you do best and help you develop your skills further with training, development and certifications. * Global annual DEPT® Cares Month in which employees come together and donate their skills to support local charities. WHY DEPT®? We are a Growth Invention company built to help the world’s most ambitious brands grow faster. Operating at the intersection of technology and marketing, we create what is next by pioneering ideas, acting fast, and moving further because standing still just is not in our DNA. We are drawn to people who stay curious, move with intent, and never stop inventing. Our culture runs on three values: better together, relentlessly curious, and get sh*t done. It is how we work, how we grow, and how we make things that matter. At DEPT®, you will find the freedom to explore, the space to collaborate, and the trust to make a real impact for our clients, for each other, and for the world we are helping to build. DIVERSITY, EQUITY & INCLUSION  At DEPT®, we take pride in creating an inclusive workplace where everyone has an equal opportunity to thrive. We actively seek to recruit, develop, nurture, and retain talented individuals from diverse backgrounds, with varying skills and perspectives. Not sure you meet all qualifications? Apply, and let us decide! Research shows that women and members of underrepresented groups tend not to apply for jobs when they think they may not meet every requirement, when in fact they do. We believe in giving everyone a fair chance to shine. We also encourage you to reach out to us and discuss any reasonable adjustments we can make to support you throughout the recruitment process and your time with us. Want to know more about our dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusion? Check out our efforts here.