Senior Marketing Strategist, App

OVERVIEW

A thriving, mission-driven multimedia organization, NPR produces award-winning news, information, and music programming in partnership with hundreds of independent public radio stations across the nation. The NPR audience values information, creativity, curiosity, and social responsibility – and our employees do too. We are innovators and leaders in diverse fields, from journalism and digital media to IT and development. Every day, our employees and member stations touch the lives of millions worldwide.

Across our organization, we’re building a workplace where collaboration is essential, diverse voices are heard, and inclusion is the key to our success. We are committed to doing the right thing in our journalism and in every role s means that integrity, adherence to our ethical standards, and compliance with legal obligations are fundamental responsibilities for every employee at NPR.

We are seeking a data-driven and highly creative marketing strategist to grow our audience for NPR’s owned platforms, with a focus on The NPR app. You will act as a guiding force behind NPR’s mobile growth, leveraging data and insights to inform strategies and tactics that migrate audiences to the core digital experience that will define NPR for years to come.

You will manage a dedicated advertising budget, and will also be expected to make the most of NPR’s own channels like our podcasts, broadcast, website, and of course the NPR app’s messaging and UX. You will work closely with the app and web product teams, the audience insights and analytics teams, the content teams and the Network growth teams, and many others while you seek to find loyal users, keep them engaged, and transform this platform into an indispensable daily habit that sustains our journalism and mission.

You will lead test-and-learn campaigns, making data-informed decisions on where we should invest our resources next. Your goal is to understand our audience’s needs, deepen their engagement with our content, and identify exactly where NPR’s app stands out in a crowded landscape, ultimately shaping how public media thrives in a mobile-first world.

This is a union-represented role covered under the terms of a collective bargaining agreement with:
NABET-CWA DMU
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• Execute Marketing Campaigns: Plan the strategy and messaging for campaigns that give people a clear, compelling reason to download and use the NPR app, translating our trusted journalism into a dynamic, modern mobile experience.
• Manage Paid and Free/Owned Media: Run ads across social media, search, and video platforms, while also creating promotions for NPR's own radio broadcasts, podcasts, and newsletters to ensure our public service journalism reaches audiences wherever they are.
• Manage the Budget: Decide how to spend our advertising money effectively to get the best return on investment and the lowest cost per download, helping build a sustainable, digital-first growth engine for the network.
• Lead Across Teams: Bring together people from the product, analytics, content, and broadcast teams in order to execute campaigns that feel cohesive and true to NPR.
• Keep Users Coming Back: Build plans (using tools like push notifications, in-app-messages, and emails) to turn first‑time down loaders into dedicated returning users, elevating our listeners’ daily routines by making the app an indispensable companion.
• Understand Our Audience: Research the app landscape to see trends, what others are doing right, figure out where NPR stands out, and make sure our marketing speaks directly to what our audience needs.
• Test and Improve: Always…