Senior Copywriter - Performance Marketing

About the role

Someone is standing at the mailbox, sorting bills from junk. Someone else is thumbing through their feed with half their attention. You get about three seconds with each of them, and the topic is life insurance. We're looking for the writer who wins those three seconds, then earns the rest of the read and the response.

This is the writer we’re looking for. Someone who thinks like a journalist and converts like a direct response marketer. Someone obsessed with the question: what's the angle that makes this actually worth reading? This role is focused on performance channels, primarily Direct Mail and paid social statics and text-overlay ads, and is for someone who understands that a great headline isn't just a sentence, it's a strategy that has to earn its response rate.

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Concept and write copy for Direct Mail, including envelope teasers, letters, postcards, self-mailers, and inserts, from brief through final delivery.
• Concept and write headlines, body copy, and CTAs for paid social statics and text-overlay ads across Meta and other social platforms, built to stop the scroll and drive action.
• Develop original angles, offers, and messaging territories that push beyond what's already running and find new ways to make Ethos feel urgent and worth people's attention.
• Write against clear test hypotheses (control vs. challenger, headline, offer, hook, CTA) and turn results into the next round of copy.
• Collaborate closely with designers, the Creative Director of Paid Social, and performance marketing to understand what's working and use those insights to inform what to write next.
• Partner with compliance and legal to make sure copy meets the requirements of a regulated industry without losing its persuasive edge.
• Use AI fluently as part of your concepting and writing process, generating ideas at volume, exploring new angles, and iterating fast without losing the quality filter.
• Write with a performance lens: every piece should have a clear hook, a compelling argument, and a specific reason to act now.

Qualifications and Skills:

• 8+ years of experience writing direct response or performance copy, with a strong portfolio that includes Direct Mail and paid social, with results you can speak to.
• You think like a journalist with a beat. You know how to find the angle that makes something genuinely interesting, and you're always scanning for it.
• Deep command of direct response principles: offer construction, headline and hook writing, long-form and short-form persuasion, urgency, and clear calls to action. You know the difference between copy that gets attention and copy that gets a response, and you can write both.
• Comfort with testing and metrics. You understand response rate, CPA, and ROAS, and you use test results to sharpen your work.
• Instinct for what motivates different audiences, across ages, income levels, and genders, to consider life insurance, and the ability to craft messages with the right tone, clarity, and trust for each segment, especially on a topic as sensitive as protecting your family.
• Comfort writing for older and mid-life audiences (for example, 55+), where clarity and trust carry extra weight.
• Ability to write tight, high-impact copy within the constraints of a static ad or a mail piece, where every word has to earn its place.
• Experience working in a regulated category such as insurance, financial services, or healthcare, and the ability to write persuasively within compliance guardrails. Preferred, not required.
• Fluent in AI tools for concepting, ideation, and writing. You use them to generate at scale and iterate fast, but your taste is the filter.
• Ability to generate a high volume of concepts without losing creative sharpness.
• Collaborative and fast-moving. You work well with designers, creative leads, and performance teams and don't need a lot of hand-holding to deliver.

#LI-Remote #LI-CM1

The US national base salary range for this full-time position is $127,000 - $223,000. Our salary ranges are determined by role, level, and location. The range displayed on each job posting reflects the minimum and maximum target for new hire salaries for the position across all US locations. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training. 

Please note that the compensation details listed in US role postings reflect the base salary only and do not include applicable bonus, equity, or benefits. 

You can find further details of our US benefits at https://www.ethoslife.com/careers/