Sailthru Platform Administrator (Part-time)

TED is on a mission to discover and spread ideas that spark imagination, embrace possibility and catalyze impact. Our organization is devoted to curiosity, reason, wonder and the pursuit of knowledge — without an agenda. We welcome people from every discipline and culture who seek a deeper understanding of the world and connection with others, and we invite everyone to engage with ideas and activate them in your community.

About the Role

TED is looking for a part-time Sailthru specialist to own the operational layer of our Sailthru implementation across email/newsletters, onsite banners and subscriber data. This role serves as TED’s day-to-day Sailthru expert, fielding requests from internal teams, each with their own newsletters, lists and audience segments. The ideal candidate has hands-on Sailthru experience, is comfortable navigating the platform’s admin, campaign and automation tooling independently, and can context-switch across teams.

What You’ll Do

Platform Administration & User Support

• Serve as the primary point of contact for Sailthru across all TED teams. Triage incoming requests and resolve or escalate.

• Onboard and train new Sailthru users, including account setup, template and list assignment, permission scoping and team-specific content visibility configuration.

• Handle MFA resets, login troubleshooting and general access issues.

• Authorize and verify new sending email addresses and manage sender configuration.

• Attend the monthly Sailthru vendor check-in as TED’s representative; summarize product updates and flag items requiring internal action. 

List Integrity & Data

• Own the health of TED’s subscriber lists. Diagnose and fix list integrity issues – such as users not being correctly added to lists after signup, discrepancies between Lifecycle Optimizer counts and snapshot reports, or broken unsubscribe flows – and escalate to the Technology team when a platform-side code fix is required.

• Build and maintain Lifecycle Optimizer flows that align with editorial strategy, so signup behavior adds users to the right lists and vars are set correctly. Fix or create flows as needed.

• Clean up lists: identify and archive unused or duplicate lists, manage natural and smart list relationships, and ensure lists are configured correctly.

• Create backfill audiences using Audience Builder or Smart Lists for impacted users when subscription bugs are discovered, and execute bulk imports to correct the data.

• Support teams in downloading list exports, including managing variable selection and encryption.

Campaign & Banner Execution

• Build and configure newsletter campaigns and onsite banner/overlay campaigns in Sailthru per team briefs. This includes audience selection, segmentation logic, frequency and display rules, and language-based targeting.

• Execute targeted, segmented and retargeting email campaigns.

• QA campaigns prior to send: check rendering across clients, link integrity, personalization variables (Zephyr), audience targeting logic and footer/UTM accuracy.

• Make template-level design edits within Sailthru’s email composer when needed, such as updating banner layouts, adjusting imagery, fixing copyright dates or correcting footer links.

• Configure newsletter signup embed code parameters and subscription flow behavior for teams implementing signups on external or internal web pages.

 

• Hands-on Sailthru experience across user administration, campaign setup, list management, Lifecycle Optimizer flows and Audience Builder. This is not a learning-on-the-job role – we need someone who can navigate the platform confidently from day one.
• Working knowledge of Sailthru’s onsite tools (overlays/banners) – including targeting rules, display frequency and audience segmentation.

• Familiarity with Zephyr (Sailthru’s scripting language) for personalization variables, conditional content and dynamic campaign logic.

• Solid understanding of email marketing operations: segmentation, send logic, deliverability fundamentals, list hygiene and opt-in/opt-out compliance.

• Strong attention to detail and ability to follow established processes consistently – this role involves a lot of precise configuration work where small mistakes have real impact.

• Comfortable working across many stakeholder teams with varying levels of technical fluency, from experienced Sailthru marketers to program managers who have never logged in.

• Able to work independently, manage async requests (primarily via Slack) and communicate clearly about status and blockers.

Nice to Have

• Experience with Sailthru’s content library and recommendation engine.

• Familiarity with hosted pages and subscription flow configuration.

• Exposure to Sailthru’s API (User API, List API) for troubleshooting integration issues with engineering teams – you won’t be writing code, but understanding how the API works helps when diagnosing signup bugs or coordinating with developers.

• Experience with email deliverability troubleshooting at scale.

Hourly rate:  $40-60/hour

Application deadline: March 31, 2026

TED Conferences LLC is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We invite all qualified candidates to apply online with their resume and cover letter.