I joined MailChimp as a member of the marketing organization in a role that was being called "Director of Marketing Optimization." It was a leadership role with no team and an ambiguous set of problems. I came in and as I started to really understand what the problems were and translate them to the right approach, I realized that this role didn't need to be a "Director of Marketing Optimization" that sits in Marketing. We actually needed to launch a formal Growth discipline. Within a little less than a year of me being in the company, leadership decided, "Let's do it. Let's invest in Growth."

There was an existing product team that was in place that was called "the continuous onboarding product team," and they were basically trying to redesign the dashboard, but that was the completely wrong approach to thinking about growth. My argument was that we needed to take a completely different approach to what we were trying to accomplish, which was creating awareness for different features and getting people to adopt more inside of MailChimp.

And so, the SVP of Product at the time and I worked together to write this job description of what it would mean to have a Director of Growth that sits in the Product Management organization.

This was from about 4-5 years ago. I had started hiring some folks while I was in Marketing; I had hired someone to focus on analytics and someone who was part PM/part marketer/part analyst. They could both flex which is why I hired them. Those two reported directly to me and we had one internal person who came over to me. We had a design resource and worked with the web team for a few other resources.

The intention was to merge that team with the existing onboarding product team (1-2 PMs, ~8 engineers, design, UX research). We merged those teams, but I ended up hiring anew on the PM front because the PMs on the original team transitioned to other projects. I hired 2 more growth PMs and a GPM.

Once we made the decision to form the Growth Product team, it was pretty quick and in a month or two we made the merge. However, it took time to merge the teams culturally. Most of the folks there weren't familiar at all with a growth practice at this point in time. There was a lot of teaching, learning, and evangelizing to do not only with the team, but with the company.

I'm describing what Growth is to the team here. At the time I was writing this (about 4-5 years ago), it was a bit more necessary to explain. Now with the rise of PLG, it's probably less necessary to describe what "Growth" is like this.

This is actually probably a Director of Growth and Experimentation role. Some orgs use "Growth" and "Experimentation" synonymously, and they don't think of the Growth role as having a larger strategic mandate beyond experimentation.

In this situation, I took the approach of leaning into experimentation and optimization because that was the language the leadership team was speaking. The irony of MailChimp is they were PLG from the very beginning but they didn't realize it. The thing they were willing to invest in was more of the experimentation and optimization because there was a lot of low-hanging fruit. I ultimately took the role in a more strategic direction, but I had to prove the value of this team and my role within Product first. Emphasizing experimentation was the way to do that. I had to find my way in and start there.

When I was trying to describe the differences between experimentation and Growth in Product, people just thought I was describing a good data-driven PM. It wasn't until I started describing the frameworks and the business sense required for Growth that people began to understand that these disciplines are different.

If I were writing this JD today, I would delete this because it seems duplicative with the "build an integrated program" bullet above.

If I were rewriting this JD, this bullet should just be part of the process and is likely included in "explore, analyze, and synthesize data..." bullet.

We included this part in the job description because working within and adapting the product management process to suit growth initiatives was one of the biggest challenges we were encountering. Product had been building out a project management organization and we had project managers on every product team. They were effectively Scrum masters and were very engaged. They were really into rolling out Agile the right way and doing proper Agile methodology with the product teams.

Then I came in and was like, "Actually, we can't do this the way we do normal product. We have to be flexible to do what's right to solve these kinds of problems."

This created a lot of friction in the beginning with the project management team. We were trying to break rules and show that there was another way, but there was a sentiment that we should standardize to what the other product teams were doing. My argument was that we should take the elements of the product management process that worked for us, but we shouldn't be afraid to challenge and change things that don't. Ultimately we had to work with a different project manager than we originally had on the team because we needed someone who would be more flexible and willing to help us find the right solutions and experiment with the process.

With an internal job description, you may be trying to get alignment and buy-in for new roles and teams, which sometimes requires navigating political challenges. We included this line in the job description to show that we would collaborate with Project Management, but we also needed flexibility.

This was teeing me up for what became my broader job. I ended up building out a product analytics function and taking on the user research team. I wouldn't expect that normally from a Director of Growth; they should surface what's necessary but shouldn't necessarily lead those functions long-term. At Mural, I came in and identified the product analytics need and hired for it, but I don't lead Product Analytics.

This bullet feels like a no brainer and could be removed.

If I were to rewrite this JD, I would reword this to "be the leader of the matrix org." You need to be the leader of the cross-functional team and you need to mentor, train, grow, and ultimately hire the teams. I actually did a lot of hiring in this role, but at the time, we didn't know how much we would invest or build out the Growth team.

We weren't even using "PLG" at the time we wrote this; I would reword this today.

MailChimp was actually really against specifying degrees in job descriptions, and I would question how important it is and if it's even necessary to include. There's a person I hired at MailChimp who I've hired again at Mural and she never completed her degree. I think it's a good thing to debate whether to include a line like this, and I wonder how much value it actually provides as a requirement.

Lauren Schuman

I created this job description to set expectations for my role and drive alignment around the creation of a Growth function within the Product organization at MailChimp.

MailChimp is the world's largest email marketing and advertising platform. More than 15 million people and businesses use MailChimp to design and send 1 billion emails a day. We empower small businesses with a suite of powerful and easy-to-use email, advertising, automation, and analytics tools that integrate with hundreds of popular applications and services.

We’re looking for a Director of Growth to join the Product Management team 

to build out and lead cross-functional Growth teams

 tasked with driving user engagement, conversion and retention.  

This role will develop the strategy for engagement, conversion and retention across the entire customer experience by deploying a process of continual analysis and rapid experimentation and will be responsible for implementing winning results.

The Director of Growth will also be responsible for driving and enabling experimentation across the entire organization by educating, training and serving as a subject matter expert.

 The ideal candidate will have experience in growth and optimization that spans across marketing and product domains and be a leader who’s able to effectively build relationships to work across departments and disciplines.


Lead efforts to build a strong data-driven and experimentation-oriented culture through storytelling with data, kick-starting the growth initiative

Design and execute a growth strategy to drive MailChimp toward its paid user goal  including building a retention strategy through a deep understanding of MailChimp’s segments and cohorts

Build an integrated customer onboarding program that includes triggered lifecycle marketing initiatives (i.e.- triggered email program, notifications, in app messaging)

Dissect and analyze the current onboarding experience

Propose, design and launch A/B tests that drive engagement, conversion and retention

Coordinate with research and design to collect user feedback to create best-in-class user experiences

Explore, analyze and synthesize data from multiple sources (qualitative and quantitative) to identify opportunities for testing

Leverage experimentation learnings and customer insights to influence product and market strategy

Execute growth initiatives within the product management process, and partner with the Director of Project Management to integrate process changes that better facilitate MailChimp’s growth goals where possible

Will work closely with peers on the Product Management team (Director of Research, Director of Project Management, and Senior Director of Product Management) to align growth initiatives with other efforts on the product management team, maintain broader team cohesion and efficacy, and to present a unified, helpful face to the company writ large.

Develop and lead a cross-functional Experimentation Task Force to scale experimentation across other functions (marketing, product, support)

Partner with marketing analytics and data research to leverage existing practices as well as make recommendations for incremental investments to improve analytic capabilities

Collaborate effectively across design, product marketing and content teams to create a cohesive customer experience

Provide regular executive updates on the growth strategy and the results of experimentation efforts

Develop reporting to track key metrics related to retention and illustrate the impact of growth initiatives

Product manage cross-functional multidisciplinary growth teams

SaaS marketing and experience optimization

Bachelor’s or Graduate degree in a technical or analytics oriented discipline

Experience managing multi-disciplinary and cross-functional teams

Strong communication, collaboration, and problem-solving abilities

Proven experience in generating and presenting recommendations to senior leadership

MailChimp is a founder-owned, highly profitable, and private company located in the heart of Atlanta. We offer our 500+ employees an exceptional workplace, extremely competitive compensation, fully paid benefits (for employees and their families), and generous profit sharing. We hire humble, collaborative, and ambitious people, and give them endless opportunities to grow and succeed.

We love our hometown and support sustainable urban renewal. Our office is in the historic Ponce City Market, right on the Atlanta Beltline. If you'd like to be considered for this position, please apply below. We look forward to meeting you!

MailChimp is an equal opportunity employer, and we value diversity at our company. We don't discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

Director of Growth Job Description at MailChimp

Director of Growth

Responsibilities:

Sign up to see more