Director, Demand Generation Marketing

Position Overview

This leader owns the full-funnel journey infrastructure at Zelis: top-of-funnel awareness and lead generation, mid-funnel nurture and qualification, and bottom-of-funnel conversion and pipeline acceleration. They will architect and operate the marketing automation systems, audience data activation layer, and digital experience capabilities that make that infrastructure run—including HubSpot (or its replacement), a Snowflake-based composable audience platform, and a forthcoming Digital Experience Platform (DXP).

Reporting to the SVP of Digital Marketing, the Director of Demand Generation Marketing is a newly created, high-impact role at the intersection of marketing automation, demand generation, and revenue strategy. Zelis needs a leader who can transform disconnected campaigns into a unified, intelligent system—one that guides buyers from first awareness through consideration, evaluation, and expansion with the technical automation across every channel.

This leader owns the full-funnel journey infrastructure at Zelis: top-of-funnel awareness and lead generation, mid-funnel nurture and qualification, and bottom-of-funnel conversion and pipeline acceleration. They will architect and operate the marketing automation systems, audience data activation layer, and digital experience capabilities that make that infrastructure run—including HubSpot (or its replacement), a Snowflake-based composable audience platform, and a forthcoming Digital Experience Platform (DXP).

Journey orchestration at Zelis is not a campaign function. It is a business discipline. This role will build and govern the systems, models, and measurement frameworks that make the customer journey our competitive operating system—tying every buyer touchpoint to measurable outcomes including MQL volume, pipeline conversion, engagement and behavioral data capture.

Responsibilities

Journey Architecture & Full-Funnel Orchestration

• Working with Business Marketing strategy and Creative Content, design and operationalize dynamic, multi-channel buyer journeys across the full demand funnel—from top-of-funnel awareness and lead capture, through mid-funnel nurture and qualification, to bottom-of-funnel pipeline acceleration and closed-won conversion.
• Implement “next best action” logic that responds to real-time behavioral signals, intent data, and funnel stage—ensuring every touchpoint is contextually relevant and commercially grounded, whether a buyer is discovering Zelis for the first time or evaluating a shortlist.
• Define and maintain journey maps at both the individual lead and buying-group level, reflecting the full spectrum of B2B buying dynamics across Zelis’s target segments and personas.
• Integrate account-based marketing (ABM) as a targeted layer within the broader journey architecture—deploying account-level signals and buying-group engagement data to prioritize and personalize outreach for high-value opportunities without sacrificing full-funnel coverage.
• Own the governance model for journey design, including naming conventions, versioning, access controls, and cross-functional review cadences.

Marketing Automation & Technology Platform

• Own the strategy, configuration, and ongoing optimization of HubSpot (or it’s replacement) as Zelis’s primary marketing automation platform—including lead scoring models, lifecycle stage management, journey automation, email programs, and campaign tracking across the full funnel.
• Partner with the Data & Analytics team to complete the activation of Zelis’s Snowflake-based composable audience data layer, translating first-party data assets into actionable, real-time audience segments that power personalized journeys across paid, owned, and email channels.
• Partner with the Digital Experience team on the strategy and execution of journey integration into the forthcoming Digital Experience Platform (DXP)—ensuring behavioral data, personalization logic, and content targeting are connected to the broader journey architecture.
• Deploy AI and machine learning capabilities within the journey stack to predict drop-off risk, accelerate lead scoring, and surface next-best-action recommendations at scale.
• Work in close partnership with the Marketing Data & Technology team to ensure seamless data flow between HubSpot, Snowflake, Salesforce CRM, the DXP, and ABM platforms—maintaining a single source of truth for lead and account data.
• Evaluate and implement emerging automation and orchestration tools, identifying capabilities that deliver measurable business impact and integrate cleanly with the existing stack.

Demand Generation & Sales Alignment

• Own the operational connection between marketing-generated demand and sales action—defining lead scoring thresholds, MQL-to-SQL handoff criteria, and SLA frameworks that keep Marketing and Sales accountable to shared pipeline goals.
• In partnership with Business Marketing, design and execute top-of-funnel programs that build awareness and generate net-new leads across target segments, working in close coordination with paid media, content, creative and digital experience marketing teams.
• Build mid-funnel nurture infrastructure that moves leads through the consideration stage efficiently—deploying the right content, cadence, and channel mix based on persona, segment, and behavioral signals.
• Partner with Revenue Operations and Sales leadership to maintain shared visibility into funnel health, velocity metrics, and conversion rates at every stage—and drive coordinated action when gaps emerge.
• Lead regular cross-functional reviews of journey and demand gen performance, translating data into prioritized recommendations for Sales and Marketing leadership.

Measurement, Optimization & Reporting

• Establish and maintain journey-level measurement frameworks that tie orchestration activity to commercial outcomes: pipeline velocity, conversion rates, retention lift, and cost-to-serve reduction.
• Design and execute A/B and multivariate experiments across journey branches, content, timing, and channel mix—with a disciplined methodology and a bias toward statistical rigor.
• Build and maintain executive-ready dashboards that communicate journey ROI, program health, and optimization priorities to senior stakeholders.
• Surface data integrity issues proactively and partner with the Marketing Data & Technology team to resolve discrepancies that could compromise journey accuracy or attribution.

Team Leadership & Cross-Functional Influence

• Lead and develop a high-performing team responsible for journey strategy, automation build, and performance analytics.
• Act as an internal center of excellence for journey orchestration, educating and enabling stakeholders across Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success on journey principles and shared accountability models.
• Champion the organizational shift from activity-based marketing to outcome-based journey management—influencing how teams structure priorities, funding, and measurement.

What You’ll Bring

• 10-12 years of experience in B2B marketing, demand generation, or marketing operations, with at least 3 years in a senior leadership role with direct accountability for pipeline outcomes.
• Demonstrated expertise enabling and technically executing full-funnel demand generation programs—top-of-funnel lead generation, mid-funnel nurture, and bottom-of-funnel pipeline acceleration—in complex, long-cycle B2B or B2B2C environments.
• Deep hands-on proficiency with HubSpot as a marketing automation platform, including lifecycle stage management, workflow automation, lead scoring, and multi-touch campaign execution.
• Experience with ABM platforms (6sense, Demandbase, or equivalent) and the ability to integrate account-level intent and engagement signals into broader full-funnel journey programs.
• Comfort working cross-functionally with data and analytics teams to activate composable audience segments from cloud data platforms (e.g., Snowflake)—translating first-party data assets into actionable marketing programs without requiring deep warehouse engineering experience.
• Familiarity with Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) and the ability to connect web personalization, behavioral data, and content targeting to the broader journey and automation infrastructure.
• Proven ability to implement “next best action” logic and event-triggered automation that responds to buyer behavior across stages, channels, and personas.
• Strong command of data strategy, including first-party data architecture, identity resolution, and integration of behavioral signals into journey systems.
• Experience working with AI and machine learning tools applied to marketing—particularly for predictive lead scoring, personalization, and drop-off modeling.
• Track record of building measurement frameworks that connect journey and demand gen activity to commercial outcomes, and communicating those outcomes clearly to executive audiences.
• Exceptional cross-functional leadership and influence skills; able to drive shared accountability across Marketing, Sales, RevOps, and IT without direct authority.
• Experience in healthcare technology, financial services, or other regulated, high-complexity B2B industries preferred.
• Strong analytical instincts with an ability to translate data into actionable strategy—and a habit of auditing data before drawing conclusions.

Keys to Success

The strongest candidates for this role will combine technical depth with strategic vision and commercial fluency. Specifically:

• You see journey orchestration as a business discipline, not a campaign tactic. You measure success in pipeline and revenue terms, not sends and opens.
• You can build and govern complex systems while keeping stakeholders—including Sales and executive leadership—aligned and engaged on shared outcomes.
• You treat AI as a catalyst, not a shortcut. You know how to scale insights and personalization while maintaining the shared mental models that prevent silo optimization.
• You’re a credible cross-functional leader who can influence without authority and make journey management a durable organizational capability, not a one-time project.
• You have a genuine bias toward measurement rigor: you lock methodology early, flag data issues when you see them, and build reporting that stands up to scrutiny.

Location and Workplace Flexibility

Zelis is headquartered in the U.S., with multiple locations across the country and in Hyderabad, India. Check out our to learn more about our offices. All employee work locations are based on the needs of the position and are determined by the Leadership team. In-office work and activities vary based on work and team objectives in accordance with Company policies.

While location expectations vary by role, candidates within approximately 50 miles of a U.S. office are generally preferred to support collaboration when needed. Our hybrid approach is flexible, and in-office presence is guided by team and business needs rather than a fixed weekly schedule.