CRM Strategist

Location: Hybrid / Colston Ave, Bristol BS1 4ST
, UK

Job type: Permanent / Full-time

Sector and subsector: Commercial & Marketing | Marketing

Annual Fixed salary: £45,000.00

Job Title: CRM Strategist

Dept: Customer Marketing & Experience Team

Our Media is a leading special‑interest content business, based in the buzzing, creative city of Bristol. We’re home to market‑leading brands in craft, cycling, science and nature, homes and music.

We help our audiences pursue their passions through highly trusted, original content – in print, video and online. Our much‑loved brands include BBC Science Focus, BBC Wildlife Magazine, Your Home, Gathered.how, Bike Radar and Cycling Plus.

We also have an award‑winning content agency that works with major charities, brands and membership organisations to help them tell their stories and engage audiences better – in print, video, and online.

We are seeking a strategic and hands‑on CRM Strategist to lead our CRM strategy, audience segmentation, journey automation and data compliance. This role will shape how we communicate with our subscribers, new prospects and wider audiences, delivering timely, relevant and personalised experiences that drive loyalty, engagement, and revenue growth. Alongside this, the role includes line management responsibility for a direct report, supporting their development and day‑to‑day delivery.

As the CRM lead within the Customer Marketing & Experience team, you will work closely with lifecycle, campaign, brand and BI teams to design and execute CRM strategies that support subscriber journeys, audience growth and retention outcomes.

• Develop and lead a business‑wide CRM strategy that improves data collection, customer engagement, conversion and retention
• Design and deliver automated lifecycle journeys from onboarding through post‑acquisition engagement, renewal and cancellation that focus on engaging customers beyond a transaction.
• Own testing strategies (A/B, multivariate), measurement and optimisation frameworks.
• Identify and champion CRM best‑practice and innovation opportunities, keeping on top of industry insights.
• Collaborate with brand, commercial, editorial, loyalty, tech, activation and acquisition teams to align CRM with strategic goals.

• Own day‑to‑day management of CRM and email platforms
• Act as lead contact for CRM‑related support, platform changes and integration improvements
• Build and maintain scalable campaign templates, journeys, preference centres and trigger logic for optimal data collection
• Drive platform utilisation across multiple teams to maximise business value and ensure platform governance
• Work strategically with content and brand teams to support newsletter growth and optimisations
• Implement onboarding programmes and triggered journeys for new subscribers, to improve early‑life engagement, yield and retention to support lifetime value for all customers.
• Work closely with Business Intelligence, Tech and Data to develop reporting dashboards for newsletter and campaign performance to inform improvements

• Ensure all CRM activity complies with GDPR, PECR, and data protection best practices.
• Create internal guidelines and QA processes for CRM campaign compliance.
• Manage segmentation strategy across lifecycle stages and data collection sources to make recommendations to improve targeting, personalisation and long‑term value and engagement from our customer data.
• Maintain accurate and up‑to‑date customer records and data selection logic.
• Serve as liaison with Legal, BI, and Tech teams to ensure data structure supports compliant segmentation and personalisation.

• Proven experience in CRM strategy and execution within a digital, publishing, media or subscription environment.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to explain complex CRM concepts to non‑technical audiences.
• Strong stakeholder management experience; able to align CRM activity with the needs of editorial, marketing, commercial and data teams.
• Demonstrable hands‑on experience with CRM tools and email platforms.
• Strong technical…