Director of Growth & Retention (AI-Native)

About Magic Story

Magic Story is an AI-powered kids’ media platform where every child becomes the hero of their own franchise. We create deeply personalized books and digital experiences that build emotional intelligence and turn bedtime into a ritual families love. Our proprietary AI engine produces studio-quality, one-of-one content at scale — redefining what personalized kids’ entertainment can be. Backed by Point72 Ventures and The House Fund, we’re a small, high-output team scaling fast.

The Role

We’re hiring a Director of Growth & Retention (AI-Native) to own the systems, execution, and performance that drive subscriber growth and long-term retention.

This is not a reporting role. It’s an operator role.

You will be accountable for improving conversion, reducing churn, increasing LTV, and building a lifecycle engine that compounds over time. You’ll partner closely with our CMO on brand and creative direction, while owning the growth infrastructure and experimentation that moves revenue.

If you like ownership, autonomy, and measurable impact — this role is for you.

What You’ll Own

Growth & Retention Outcomes

You are accountable for:

• Subscriber growth efficiency

• Onboarding activation

• Churn reduction

• LTV expansion

• Win-back performance

• Lifecycle revenue contribution

You own numbers — not just campaigns.

Lifecycle Marketing (Email, SMS, Push)

• Own Klaviyo end-to-end (flows, segmentation, automation, deliverability)

• Build and optimize acquisition → onboarding → retention → upsell → win-back journeys

• Integrate support data (Gorgias) into lifecycle logic

• Run continuous testing on messaging, timing, sequencing, and segmentation

• Increase lifecycle velocity — more experiments, faster iteration, clearer learnings

Marketing Systems, Reporting & Data Infrastructure

• Own the marketing stack (Klaviyo, Segment, Amplitude, BigQuery, Fivetran)

• Design and improve event tracking across the customer journey

• Ensure clean, reliable data flows across systems

• Build dashboards that clearly show what’s working

• Write SQL in BigQuery when needed

• Fix broken pipes without waiting on engineering

You should be technical enough to operate independently.

Performance & Experimentation

• Partner with the CMO on paid channel optimization and creative testing

• Identify bottlenecks in funnel conversion and fix them

• Develop and ship growth experiments weekly

• Build repeatable systems for testing and iteration

AI-Native Operating Standard

We are an AI-first company. We expect you to operate the same way.

You should:

• Use AI daily to generate campaign variations and hypotheses

• Automate repetitive analysis and reporting

• Mine churn reasons and customer feedback using AI

• Build lightweight workflows that increase output without increasing headcount

• Move 2–3x faster than traditional marketing teams

AI is leverage. We expect you to use it.

What We’re Looking For

We value:

• Agency

• Resourcefulness

• Ownership

• Bias toward action

• High standards

• Hard work

Technical chops matter. You should have strong hands-on experience with lifecycle tools and analytics. But if you wield AI like a weapon and can ramp quickly, we care more about output than perfect tool overlap.

Strong candidates typically have:

• Deep Klaviyo experience

• SQL proficiency (BigQuery preferred)

• Experience with Segment or similar CDPs

• Analytics expertise (Amplitude, Mixpanel, etc.)

• Subscription or DTC experience

But above all: you’ve materially improved growth metrics before.

What Success Looks Like (First 3 Months)

• Clear visibility into the full customer journey

• Improved lifecycle conversion and measurable churn reduction

• Faster experiment cycles and cleaner analytics

• Growth systems that scale without founder micromanagement

• A marketing engine that feels sharp, not chaotic

Why This Is a High-Impact Role

You’ll join a small, AI-native team building a category-defining company. You’ll have autonomy, responsibility, and direct influence on growth and retention.

If you want to build something meaningful — and see your work move numbers every week — we’d love to talk.