Product Manager: Email, Newsletter & SMS Growth

Suntimes; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 104,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Chicago Public Media is seeking a strategic Product Manager to lead the organization’s email, newsletter, and SMS strategy across WBEZ, the Chicago Sun-Times, Vocalo, and chicago.com.

You will partner with editorial, audience, and business teams to turn goals into effective products and audience journeys, while building a coherent strategy across Chicago Public Media. The role requires strong product management and data-driven decision making, with a focus on audience growth and revenue.

Qualifications

• Experience in product management, audience strategy, lifecycle marketing, CRM, marketing automation, digital media, or a related field.
• Strong knowledge of email and/or SMS platforms, including segmentation, automation, personalization, list management, deliverability, and testing.
• Ability to translate stakeholder goals into clear product problems, priorities, scalable solutions, and measurable outcomes.
• A strategic, audience-centered approach that connects editorial, business, technical, and audience needs.
• Experience using data and audience insights to improve engagement, conversion, retention, or revenue.
• Excellent collaboration, facilitation, and communication skills, including the ability to build alignment across teams with different priorities.
• A commitment to Chicago Public Media’s public-service mission and to serving Chicago’s diverse communities with relevance, care, and integrity.

Responsibilities

• Set strategy and priorities for email, newsletters, and SMS, balancing immediate needs with audience growth and revenue opportunities.
• Partner with editorial, audience, marketing, membership, circulation, events, analytics, technology, and business teams to translate goals into audience products.
• Help define chicago.com’s email and newsletter strategy, audience needs, and measures of success.
• Facilitate cross-functional planning and decision-making to clarify priorities and tradeoffs.
• Serve as a central resource for email and SMS platforms, guiding tool selection and implementation.
• Oversee platform configuration, templates, lists, segments, permissions, integrations, automation, and workflows.
• Develop audience journeys across acquisition, onboarding, engagement, conversion, retention, recapture, and reactivation.
• Identify opportunities for segmentation, personalization, and automation to enhance relevance.
• Coordinate cadence and audience overlap to reduce duplication and fatigue.
• Establish goals and measures tied to engagement, conversion, revenue, and audience value.
• Monitor list health and performance, addressing opportunities and problems with teams.
• Develop a continuous testing program (A/B, send-time, personalization).
• Partner with analytics to translate performance data into actionable insights.

Skills

Product management

Audience strategy

Lifecycle marketing

CRM

Marketing automation

Digital media

Collaboration

Data analysis

Job description

Chicago Public Media is seeking a strategic Product Manager to lead the organization’s email, newsletter, and SMS strategy across WBEZ, the Chicago Sun-Times, Vocalo, and chicago.com.

You will partner with editorial, audience, and business teams to turn goals into effective products and audience journeys, while building a coherent strategy across Chicago Public Media. The role requires strong product management and data-driven decision making, with a focus on audience growth and revenue.