Marketing Director
Location: Sessions by the Bay, 700 Bay Marina Drive, National City, CA 91950
Job Type: Full-time, primarily on-site
Classification: Salaried, exempt, subject to final HR classification review
Compensation: $90,000 annually
The opportunity
Sessions by the Bay isn't a dispensary running some ads. We're a first-of-its-kind cannabis-hospitality destination: a consumption lounge, a dining room, an immersive art world, and a stage. We're hiring a Marketing Director to turn all of it into demand.
Everything that happens here is raw material. Events, food, drinks, cannabis, partnerships, the whole guest experience. Your job is to turn it into campaigns that fill the room, book the tables, move product, and bring people back. Not awareness for its own sake. Not another content calendar. Behavior: visits, reservations, spend, repeat.
We're direct about what this is. It's hands-on, and it's not for everyone. You'll have an Entertainment Manager, creative support, but you personally build the plans, write the briefs, run the CRM, launch the campaigns, and answer for the numbers. Bring the strategy and the willingness to execute it yourself.
About Sessions by the Bay
Sessions blends cannabis, hospitality, food, music, art, and culture into one unapologetically original destination in San Diego: Moroccan-Tulum interiors, immersive art rooms, a real culinary program, and a calendar that never sits still.
We're past "get people in the door once." We want to be the answer when San Diego asks "What's happening this week?", and the reason they come back.
What you'll own
Integrated marketing strategy. Develop and manage the overall marketing plan: weekly priorities, seasonal campaigns, major events, food and beverage promotions, cannabis campaigns, loyalty initiatives, and guest-growth programs. Translate business goals into clear campaigns with defined audiences, offers, messages, channels, timelines, and success metrics.
Campaign execution. Own the marketing calendar across email and SMS; app and loyalty communications; website and social media; Syndication providers, OpenTable and Eventbrite; digital signage and in-store materials; influencer and partner outreach; and staff-facing promotional communication. Ensure campaigns launch accurately, on time, and with a clear business objective.
CRM, loyalty and customer retention. Own or oversee AIQ and other customer communication platforms. Develop campaigns that improve first-time-to-second-visit conversion, retention, loyalty participation, event attendance, VIP engagement, birthday and special-occasion visits, win-back activity, and customer lifetime value. Use behavior and campaign performance to improve segmentation, messaging, offers, and frequency.
Hospitality and event marketing. Work with the Entertainment Manager to turn the event calendar into campaigns that drive reservations, ticket sales, attendance, and on-site spending. The Entertainment Manager owns entertainment, talent relationships, booking, and event concepts; you own how those experiences are positioned, promoted, and measured. Build campaigns around entertainment, dining, beverages, lounge experiences, cannabis activations, seasonal programming, nightlife, brunches, private events, and recurring experiences.
Creative and content direction. Direct internal, remote, and freelance creative resources. Develop clear briefs for social content, flyers, website banners, email graphics, digital signage, event materials, menus, partner assets, and promotional campaigns. You need not design every asset, but you must have strong creative judgment, the ability to create your own assets utilizing Canva, Photoshop, or AI models, and turn a business objective into an effective message and visual direction.
Sales and operational alignment. Create a clear weekly/monthly promotional focus so retail, lounge, kitchen, beverage, events, and management teams understand what we are promoting, who we are targeting, what offer or experience matters most, what staff should communicate, and what customer action we are driving. Regularly observe the guest experience and identify friction points and missed opportunities.
Partnerships and local market growth. Build campaigns and relationships with hotels, tourism organizations, local businesses, influencers, cannabis brands, community groups, nightlife partners, sponsors, and event collaborators. Turn partnerships into measurable awareness, attendance, reservations, referrals, or sales.
Performance and accountability. Track and report the business impact of marketing: guest traffic; reservations and ticket sales; event attendance; repeat visits; CRM and loyalty engagement; retail and lounge sales; food and beverage sales; campaign redemptions; marketing spend and return. Recommend what to repeat, improve, expand, or discontinue.
How the team works together
- Marketing Director (you): create demand. Strategy, campaigns, channels, CRM/retention, creative direction, partnerships, and the numbers behind them.
- Entertainment Manager: creates the programming product: calendar, talent, event concepts, on-site energy. You position, promote, and measure it; you don't book the talent.
- Creative support: produces the graphics, branded assets, and digital materials to your brief.
- Buyer / Operations / GM / : own cannabis purchasing and on-site delivery; you align campaigns to what they can actually execute.
- Restaurant Manager / Executive Chef: own the dining experience: menus, the kitchen, catering, and food and beverage execution. You turn the culinary program into demand: menu launches and chef specials, brunch and dinner-and-show campaigns, catering and private-event packages, and food-forward content, timed to what the kitchen can deliver on the night.
What we're looking for
- Five or more years of progressively responsible marketing leadership experience, manager and director level.
- Experience in hospitality, restaurants, bars, nightlife, hotels, entertainment venues, tourism, lifestyle brands, experiential retail, or a related guest-facing business.
- Demonstrated success driving physical traffic, reservations, ticket sales, repeat visits, customer retention, or revenue.
- Experience managing integrated campaigns across email, SMS, CRM, social media, websites, digital advertising, reservation platforms, and event platforms.
- Strong understanding of customer journeys, loyalty programs, audience segmentation, and retention marketing.
- Strong writing, messaging, creative direction, and campaign-planning skills.
- Ability to manage multiple campaigns, deadlines, partners, and departments.
- Comfort analyzing performance and connecting marketing activity to business outcomes.
- Willingness to work hands-on rather than relying on a large internal marketing team.
- Strong communication, organization, follow-through, and accountability.
- Must be 21 years of age or older.
Preferred experience
Experience marketing a restaurant group, hotel, nightclub, casino, entertainment venue, festival, hospitality brand, or destination business is strongly preferred. Experience with Email/SMS marketing platforms, OpenTable, Eventbrite, POS Systems, Google Analytics, Meta Business Suite, loyalty systems, or similar tools is helpful.
The ideal candidate
You know great marketing doesn't just get attention. It gives people a reason to show up, spend, come back, and bring friends. You can take an event, a new dish, a beverage drop, a cannabis promo, or a partnership and turn it into a campaign that moves numbers. You're strategic without being corporate, creative without being scattered, analytical without losing urgency, and you're as comfortable in the CRM at 9am as you are reading the room on a Friday night. If you need a big team and a slow approval chain to do your best work, this isn't your role. If you want to build the marketing engine for one of San Diego's most distinctive destinations, it is.
Success in this role
Success will be measured by growth in guest traffic and repeat visits; increased lounge reservations and event attendance; improved first-time-to-second-visit conversion; stronger email, SMS, app, and loyalty performance; increased revenue connected to marketing campaigns; consistent, on-time campaign execution; better alignment between marketing, events, retail, lounge, kitchen, and operations; and clear reporting on what is working and where Sessions should invest next.
Schedule and availability
This is a full-time, primarily on-site position. The role includes planning time, venue observation, team meetings, partner meetings, campaign execution, and presence during major events or high-priority hospitality moments. Some evening, weekend, and holiday availability will be required based on the marketing and event calendar.
Why join Sessions
You'll build the marketing engine for a first-of-its-kind destination at the exact moment it's defining itself: the systems, the campaigns, and the guest relationships that decide what Sessions becomes. No rigid corporate department to inherit. A real canvas, real ownership, and measurable growth to put your name on. If you want a quiet seat, this isn't it. If you want to build something people can't stop talking about, let's talk.
Sessions by the Bay is an equal-opportunity employer. We welcome candidates from diverse professional and personal backgrounds.
Pay: $90,000.00 per year
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- Dental insurance
- Employee discount
- Flexible schedule
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision insurance
Application Question(s):
- Optional but encouraged: Please provide a link to a professional website, LinkedIn profile, portfolio, or public social media account that helps us better understand your experience, work, or professional presence.
- Tell us about a physical venue or hospitality business you have marketed (restaurant, bar, hotel, nightclub, casino, entertainment venue, or destination). What was your role, what did you personally do to drive traffic, reservations, or repeat visits, and what measurably changed?
- Walk us through the strongest campaign you have personally built and run end to end: the objective, audience, offer, channels, budget, and the result in revenue, bookings, or attendance. Be specific about what was yours versus a team's or an agency's.
- Describe your hands-on CRM and retention work: which platforms you have personally operated (email, SMS, loyalty, app), one segment or automation you built yourself, and what it did to repeat visits or sales.
- Tell us about one number you moved: the baseline, what you did, the result, and how you knew your marketing caused it rather than something that would have happened anyway.
- Our marketing runs under cannabis advertising restrictions, so many paid channels are limited for us. How would you approach filling a slow weeknight at a venue like ours: the audience you would target, the offer or experience, the channels you would actually use, and how you would measure whether it worked?
Work Location: In person
