Senior Marketing Strategist, Gaming & Subscriptions

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USA TODAY Co., Inc. is a diversified media company with expansive reach at the national and local level dedicated to empowering and enriching communities. We seek to inspire, inform, and connect audiences as a sustainable, growth focused media and digital marketing solutions company. Through our trusted brands, including the USA TODAY NETWORK, comprised of the national publication, USA TODAY, and local media organizations, including our network of local properties, in the United States, and Newsquest, a wholly-owned subsidiary operating in the United Kingdom, we provide essential journalism, local content, and digital experiences to audiences and businesses. We deliver high-quality, trusted content with a commitment to balanced, unbiased journalism, where and when consumers want to engage. Our digital marketing solutions brand, LocaliQ, supports small and medium-sized businesses with innovative digital marketing products and solutions. USA TODAY Co. open roles are featured on various external job boards. When applying to a position at USA TODAY Co., you should be completing an application on USA TODAY Co. Careers via Dayforce. Job postings directing you to complete an application on other external sites may not be valid. To connect with us, visit www.usatodayco.com


USA TODAY Co. Is looking for a Senior Marketing Strategist, Gaming & Subscriptions to own the end-to-end subscription growth model for PLAY—covering pricing and packaging, paywall and offer decisioning, registration to subscription conversion, onboarding, engagement/upsell, and churn mitigation. You’ll partner tightly with the PLAY business unit to deliver profitable subscriber growth, higher ARPU, and durable retention through experimentation and AI-enabled lifecycle programs.
USA TODAY PLAY is our casual entertainment destination that brings together crosswords, puzzles, horoscopes, comics, quizzes, and more. PLAY builds on a strong existing foundation from legacy Crosswords and is designed to significantly expand its share of the USA TODAY Network audience over the next several years. The long-term vision is for PLAY to become a major revenue driver through a combination of subscriptions, stacked bundles, and sponsorship opportunities.
What you’ll do
Own the PLAY subscription growth model
• Define the value proposition and pricing/packaging for PLAY in partnership with key leaders in Consumer and PLAY
• Build and iterate the known-to-paid subscription funnel, creating journeys that drive habit and, ultimately, purchase intent
Operate a rigorous experimentation program
• Stand up structured price/term tests for acquisition, stop save, and winback
• Maintain an always-on testing backlog (paywall friction, day passes vs. subscription constructs, landing pages, overlays, lifecycle) and publish read outs; scale winners into playbooks.
Launch and scale lifecycle programs
• Design and optimize full lifecycle journeys for PLAY, including lead acquisition, nurture, onboarding, engagement, upsell, and winback journeys
• Partner with Product to optimize PLAY checkout, stacked checkout experiences including PLAY, and PLAY account management experiences
• Define targeting and suppression logic with the CDP for real-time, segment-level decisioning and experiences across web/app/email
Reduce churn and improve save rates
• Deploy AI-assisted churn mitigation and dynamic stop save flows; align onsite intercepts with account management journeys and call center policies.
Partner and govern
• Work within the PLAY–Consumer model, clarify strategy, approvals, and delivery calendars; communicate progress and performance.
Success measures (primary KPIs)
• Subscriber growth (net adds) and conversion rate from known to paid
• ARPU lift from pricing, annualization, and stacked add ons
• Churn / save rate improvement
• Time to launch experiments and scale learnings to drive optimizations
• Penetration of PLAY within USA TODAY Network audience and product add-on rate contribution to portfolio revenue
What you’ll bring
• 5+ years in subscription growth, lifecycle marketing, with gaming/entertainment experience
• Hands-on experience with paywall strategy, dynamic offers, and churn mitigation (stop save, winback) at scale
• Proven success in developing and scaling multi-channel lifecycle programs that deliver measurable improvements in subscriber base and LTV
• Proficiency with A/B testing and experimentation frameworks; able to translate results into roll out playbooks
• Demonstrated fluency with marketing technology ecosystems (e.g., Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Braze, CDP, CRM platforms) and personalization at scale