Product Manager, Email & SMS

Chicago Public Media; Chicago (IL); Hybrid; USD 104,000 - 130,000; Full time

Job summary

Chicago Public Media in Chicago, IL is seeking a strategic, collaborative Product Manager to lead our email, newsletter, and SMS initiatives across WBEZ, the Chicago Sun-Times, Vocalo, and chicago.com. You will partner with editorial, audience, and business teams to turn goals into compelling audience products.

The role focuses on strategy, platform governance, audience journeys, experimentation, and building scalable processes.

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.
• Strong organizational judgment and an ability to create practical systems and shared standards.
• A commitment to Chicago Public Media’s public-service mission and to serving Chicago’s diverse communities with relevance, care, and integrity.

Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain an organization-wide roadmap for email, newsletters, and SMS.
• Collaborate with editorial, audience, marketing, membership, and analytics teams.
• Define chicago.com’s email and newsletter strategy.
• Facilitate cross-functional planning and decision-making.
• Serve as a central resource for email and SMS platforms.
• Oversee platform configuration and standards.
• Develop audience journeys across acquisition to reactivation.
• Identify opportunities for segmentation, personalization, and automation.
• Help teams coordinate cadence and audience overlap to reduce duplication and subscriber fatigue.
• Establish goals and measures tied to engagement, conversion, revenue.
• Monitor list health and deliverability.
• Develop a continuous testing program including A/B testing and personalization.
• Partner with analytics teams to turn performance data into insights.
• Create scalable processes, documentation, training, and shared standards for email and SMS.
• Develop intake and support process for teams using these channels.
• Train and support platform users through onboarding and office hours.
• Evaluate vendors, tools, and integrations.

Skills

Product management

Audience strategy

Lifecycle marketing

CRM

Marketing automation

Email/SMS platforms

Tools

CRM platforms

Marketing automation tools

Analytics tools

Job description

Chicago Public Media is one of the nation’s largest local nonprofit news organizations. Home to WBEZ 91.5FM, the Chicago Sun-Times, and Vocalo. Chicago Public Media reaches more than 3.3 million people weekly across broadcast, print, and digital platforms. As a mission-driven organization, we aspire to be the most trusted news source Chicagoans turn to for understanding the people, events, and ideas shaping our community.

Chicago Public Media is a 100% community-funded newsroom powered by nearly 97,000 members whose support makes our journalism possible. This sustained community investment helped drive nationally recognized work in 2025, including 29 awards from esteemed organizations, including the Public Media Journalists Association, the Edward R. Murrow Awards, and the National Association of Black Journalists.

We believe independent journalism is essential to a healthy democracy and that access to objective, fact-based news is a right for every citizen. We serve the public interest by creating diverse content that informs and enriches our community, supported by a dedicated staff of approximately 250 professionals.

For more information, please see the Chicago Public Media Annual Report .

The Opportunity

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

Email and SMS are essential ways we build relationships with audiences, connect people with journalism and community experiences, and advance goals in membership, circulation, engagement, and revenue. This role will partner with editorial, audience, and business teams to turn those goals into effective products and audience journeys while building a coherent strategy across Chicago Public Media.

The Product Manager will combine product strategy, platform expertise, audience insight, lifecycle thinking, and experimentation. They will also help define the emerging email and newsletter strategy for chicago.com.

What You'll Do

Set strategy and priorities

• Develop and maintain an organization-wide roadmap for email, newsletters, and SMS, balancing immediate needs with opportunities for audience growth, engagement, conversion, retention, and revenue.
• Partner with editorial, audience, marketing, membership, circulation, events, analytics, technology, and business teams to translate their goals into effective audience products.
• Help define chicago.com’s email and newsletter strategy, including audience needs, product opportunities, lifecycle journeys, and measures of success.
• Facilitate cross-functional planning and decision-making, bringing clarity to priorities and tradeoffs.

Guide products, platforms, and audience journeys

• Serve as a central resource for email and SMS platforms, helping teams select and implement solutions that meet their needs.
• Oversee platform configuration and standards, including templates, lists, segments, permissions, integrations, automation, naming conventions, and workflows.
• Develop audience journeys across acquisition, onboarding, engagement, conversion, retention, recapture, and reactivation.
• Identify opportunities for segmentation, personalization, dynamic content, and automation that create more relevant audience experiences.
• Help teams coordinate cadence and audience overlap to reduce duplication and subscriber fatigue.

Improve performance through experimentation

• Establish goals and measures tied to engagement, conversion, revenue, retention, and audience value.
• Monitor list health, deliverability, journey performance, and other key indicators and work with teams to address opportunities and problems.
• Develop a continuous testing program, including A/B testing, send-time optimization, and personalization experiments.
• Partner with analytics teams to turn performance data into actionable insights and share learnings across the organization.

Build organizational capability

• Create scalable processes, documentation, training, and shared standards for email and SMS.
• Develop an effective intake and support process for teams using these channels.
• Train and support platform users through onboarding, documentation, office hours, and other learning opportunities.
• Evaluate vendors, tools, and integrations to ensure the organization’s technology supports its evolving strategy.

What You'll Bring

• 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.
• Strong organizational judgment and an ability to create practical systems and shared standards.
• A commitment to Chicago Public Media’s public-service mission and to serving Chicago’s diverse communities with relevance, care, and integrity.

How You'll Measure Success

Teams across Chicago Public Media are more effective at using email and SMS to achieve editorial, audience, and business goals; the organization has a coherent and adaptable strategy for these channels; and chicago.com has a clear, audience-centered approach to email and newsletters as it grows.

Compensation

The expected pay range for this position is $104,000 to $130,000 per ANNUM.

Chicago Public Media provides pay ranges representing its good faith estimate of what the organization reasonably expects to pay for a position. The pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as (but not limited to the scope and responsibilities of the position, the qualifications of the selected candidate, departmental budget availability, internal equity, geographical location, and external market pay for comparable jobs.

Working at Chicago Public Media

At Chicago Public Media, we care deeply about our employees as we know attracting, developing, and growing talent is key to our success and enhancing our impact.

Our culture is one where collaboration, diversity of ideas, and innovation are encouraged. We value colleagues who will enhance our culture by bringing new ideas, divergent experiences, and talents to our dynamic workplace.

At Chicago Public Media we believe dedication to a great workplace includes supporting our employees and their families. As a result, we provide a broad and generous benefits package for employees at hire and in the years to come.

Our benefits include a competitive salary and benefits package which includes medical, dental, vision, vacation, holidays, life insurance, disability coverage, retirement savings, and a commuter benefits plan.
Chicago Public Media is an Equal Opportunity Employerand we actively seek and welcome people from all backgrounds, orientations, and life experiences to join our team.