Senior Manager, Consumer Lifecycle Marketing

Credit Acceptance is proud to be an award-winning company recognized both locally and nationally across multiple workplace categories. Our world-class culture is shaped by dedicated team members who are driven to succeed as professionals individually and together as a team. Backed by a strong product, exceptional people, and a stable financial foundation, we’ve grown into a leading provider of used and new car financing across the country.
Our Support teams work with multiple departments in a dynamic environment that promotes flexibility and autonomy, while offering the opportunity to collaborate with a diverse group of professionals. We work to comply with our company standards, exceed customer expectations, and drive our Great Place to Work culture. We deliver high-quality services aligned to business needs, driving innovative improvements that support our company strategy and modern operating principles.
We are seeking a Senior Manager, Lifecycle Marketing to join the Credit Acceptance marketing team, reporting to the Director of Customer Loyalty & Retention. Credit Acceptance helps people with credit challenges buy a vehicle and build a stronger financial future. Once a customer drives off the lot, the relationship runs for years, and every message we send shapes whether they stay on track and come back for their next vehicle.
This role owns that conversation. The role sets the customer contact strategy across email, SMS, push and in-app messaging: who we talk to, what we say, when, through which channel, and how often. It owns the journeys that matter most across the life of the loan, starting with onboarding and the first payment, and the segmentation, targeting and testing behind them. It is a new role on a new team, with the chance to build the program from the ground up.
This is a performance marketing role applied to our customer base. The primary job is to increase customer lifetime value, and every journey, segment and message is judged by the incremental value it creates against a holdout — not by opens, clicks or the volume of messages sent. This position is expected to define what great lifecycle marketing should look like here over the next several years, prove it with disciplined testing, and work closely with the people who build our app and web portal, create our campaigns and design our benefits and rewards. Success requires sharp critical thinking and business judgment, the habit of framing problems in numbers first, and comfort moving between strategy and hands-on execution.
Outcomes and Activities:
This position will work from home; occasional planned travel to our Southfield, Michigan office may be required. However, this position is permitted to work at our Southfield, Michigan office if requested by the team member.
Own the lifecycle marketing strategy and roadmap with a primary goal of increasing customer lifetime value, directly accountable for incremental lifetime value from lifecycle programs, supported by first-payment on-time rate and action rate by channel.
Set the contact strategy and the rules every customer message follows — cadence, channel selection, frequency limits and priority when messages compete — so customers hear from us as one company, not several.
Design and run onboarding and first-payment journeys that help new customers get set up, understand their loan and make their first payments on time.
Develop business cases and recommendations across the life of the loan, including digital adoption, benefits and rewards enrollment, and the path to a customer’s next vehicle.
Own segmentation and targeting for the customer base, using behavior, tenure and engagement data to decide who receives what and when.
Run lifecycle like a performance portfolio: size the expected value of each journey, put contact capacity and effort behind what creates the most incremental lifetime value, cut what does not, and report the value created and where to invest next.
Own the lifecycle testing agenda: form the hypothesis, design the test with a holdout, read the results against it, and scale what works.
Brief and partner with the teams that build and deliver the work — digital product (app, web portal and messaging capabilities), creative (copy and assets), marketing operations (audiences, platforms and deliverability) and analytics (measurement) to align priorities, shape capabilities and deliver lifecycle programs that maximize customer lifetime value.
Partner with servicing strategy so marketing and servicing communications work together as one cohesive customer experience, and with Legal and Compliance so every message meets communication rules.
Other duties as assigned.
Knowledge and Skills:
Lifecycle & CRM Expertise: Proven ownership of multi-channel lifecycle programs across email, SMS, push and in-app, including journey design, contact strategy and hands-on segmentation in customer data and automation platforms.
Critical Thinking & Business Judgment: Breaks ambiguous problems into their parts, forms a clear point of view with incomplete information, and makes sound calls on tradeoffs between engagement, customer experience and cost.
Quantitative Framing & Problem Solving: Frames every problem in numbers first — sizes the opportunity, sets the baseline and states what result would change the decision; comfortable with napkin math.
Performance Marketing Mindset: Treats lifecycle as a performance channel — measures incremental lifetime value, weighs return against cost and customer fatigue, and optimizes to outcomes rather than activity.
Experimentation & Measurement: Designs tests with clear controls, measures incremental impact, and reads results honestly.
Executive Communication: Clear, confident communicator with senior leaders.
Cross-Functional Collaboration: Builds strong partnerships across digital product, creative, operations, analytics, servicing and compliance.
Customer Focus: Genuine commitment to treating customers well, and to communication that helps rather than overwhelms.
Requirements:
Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
7+ years of experience in lifecycle, CRM, retention or customer marketing.
Proven track record increasing customer lifetime value, retention or repeat purchase through lifecycle or CRM programs, measured incrementally.
Hands-on experience with marketing automation and customer engagement platforms across email, SMS, push and in-app.
Experience running a testing program and measuring incremental impact with holdouts or control groups.
Demonstrated problem solving and business judgment, with a track record of framing ambiguous problems quantitatively and making sound recommendations.
Experience taking programs from brief to launch with product, creative and analytics partners.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
Preferred:
Experience in financial services, fintech, or subprime/near-prime lending.