Associate Director - Direct Marketing

Optum is a global organization that delivers care, aided by technology to help millions of people live healthier lives. The work you do with our team will directly improve health outcomes by connecting people with the care, pharmacy benefits, data and resources they need to feel their best. Here, you will find a culture guided by inclusion, talented peers, comprehensive benefits and career development opportunities. Come make an impact on the communities we serve as you help us advance health optimization on a global scale. Join us to start Caring. Connecting. Growing together.

The Channel Lead - Direct Marketing is a senior offshore leadership role responsible for owning 1:1 direct marketing content strategy across email, SMS, and direct mail for B2B, B2C, and Provider audiences. This role serves as the enterprise owner for direct marketing channels, ensuring scalable, compliant, and personalized communications that drive measurable business outcomes. The role operates as a channel center of excellence, balancing speed, personalization, and regulatory rigor within a global, matrixed environment.

Primary Responsibilities

• Channel Strategy & Ownership
• Own the 1:1 direct marketing content strategy across email, SMS, and direct mail for B2B, B2C, and Provider audiences
• Align direct channel strategies to enterprise brand positioning, product narratives, and campaign objectives
• Serve as the global subject-matter expert for direct marketing content and channel best practices
• Content Planning, Governance & Operations
• Lead planning, creative briefing, and content development in partnership with creative and campaign teams
• Build and govern the direct marketing content operating model, including calendars, workflows, QA, approvals, and version control
• Establish and maintain channel-specific content standards, templates, and reusable assets
• Personalization, AI & Automation Enablement
• Advance efficiency and personalization through AI-assisted copy development, dynamic content, and modular templates
• Define responsible AI guardrails ensuring human review, compliance, and medical accuracy
• Partner with MarTech and Data teams to ensure content structures support targeting and personalization logic
• Cross-Functional Partnership
• Partner closely with Campaign, MarTech, Data & Analytics, Product, Technology, Compliance, and Legal teams
• Ensure segmentation, targeting, journey design, and measurement frameworks are fit-for-purpose
• Act as a trusted advisor on direct marketing content implications across initiatives
• Testing, Measurement & Optimization
• Establish and own testing frameworks including MVPs, A/B testing, and multivariate testing within regulatory guardrails
• Define and maintain a test-and-learn roadmap, codifying insights into reusable playbooks
• Own performance reporting across deliverability, engagement, conversion, list health, and opt-out metrics
• Compliance & Risk Stewardship
• Ensure full compliance with HIPAA, TCPA, CAN-SPAM, ADA accessibility standards, and enterprise policies
• Steward approval processes, documentation, and audit trails for all direct marketing communications
• Proactively identify and mitigate content-related compliance and reputational risks
• Comply with the terms and conditions of the employment contract, company policies and procedures, and any and all directives (such as, but not limited to, transfer and/or re-assignment to different work locations, change in teams and/or work shifts, policies in regards to flexibility of work benefits and/or work environment, alternative work arrangements, and other decisions that may arise due to the changing business environment). The Company may adopt, vary or rescind these policies and directives in its absolute discretion and without any limitation (implied or otherwise) on its ability to do so
  

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree (Advanced degree preferred)
• 13+ years of overall experience with 8+ years of experience in direct marketing, CRM, or relationship marketing at enterprise scale
• Hands-on experience with MarTech stacks including ESPs, journey orchestration, CDPs, A/B testing, and dynamic content
• Experience leveraging AI in content operations with clear guardrails and human-in-the-loop review
• Solid understanding of healthcare and regulated marketing environments, including consent and PHI handling
• Demonstrated success driving personalization, content governance, and measurable business outcomes
• Proven excellent stakeholder management skills with experience influencing senior, US-based leaders
  
  

At UnitedHealth Group, our mission is to help people live healthier lives and make the health system work better for everyone. We believe everyone-of every race, gender, sexuality, age, location and income-deserves the opportunity to live their healthiest life. Today, however, there are still far too many barriers to good health which are disproportionately experienced by people of color, historically marginalized groups and those with lower incomes. We are committed to mitigating our impact on the environment and enabling and delivering equitable care that addresses health disparities and improves health outcomes - an enterprise priority reflected in our mission.