CUSTOMER LOYALTY AND LIFECYCLE MARKETING MANAGER
The Customer Loyalty and Lifecycle Marketing Manager is responsible for strengthening customer relationships, increasing loyalty participation, and improving customer retention, engagement, frequency, and lifetime value.
This position translates Gelson’s approved loyalty and membership strategy into detailed programs, implementation plans, customer communications, platform requirements, and ongoing execution. The role uses customer insights and business objectives to develop relevant communications, offers, benefits, recognition, and experiences across the customer lifecycle
The Customer Loyalty and Lifecycle Marketing Manager manages the planning and execution of customer communications and lifecycle programs across email, SMS, loyalty, digital offers, direct mail, and other owned customer channels. The role partners with Marketing, Merchandising, Operations, Digital, IT, Finance, enterprise analytics, store teams, and external vendors to deliver coordinated customer experiences.
E-commerce operations are owned by the appropriate commerce business owner. This role partners with the commerce team to support customer communications, loyalty integration, promotional alignment, and the customer journey but does not own day-to-day e-commerce operations, platform merchandising, order fulfillment, or operational performance.
ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES
LOYALTY AND MEMBERSHIP PROGRAM MANAGEMENT
- Support the development, launch, and ongoing evolution of Gelson’s loyalty and membership program.
- Translate the loyalty strategy and member promise into clear benefits, communications, recognition, access, offers, and experiences.
- Help manage loyalty-program initiatives across member acquisition, onboarding, engagement, retention, recognition, and reactivation.
- Coordinate the development and execution of member benefits, tier recognition, personalized offers, birthday programs, exclusive access, events, partner benefits, and other loyalty initiatives.
- Maintain the loyalty program calendar, implementation plans, dependencies, decisions, and milestones.
- Coordinate with internal stakeholders and external partners to support program readiness and consistent execution.
- Ensure loyalty communications and experiences reflect Gelson’s brand positioning and premium customer experience.
- Identify opportunities to improve program simplicity, relevance, participation, and perceived customer value.
- Support the development of program materials, employee communications, store tools, FAQs, training resources, and customer-service guidance.
- Monitor member feedback, participation, engagement, and program performance to identify opportunities for improvement.
CUSTOMER LIFECYCLE MARKETING
- Develop and manage customer lifecycle programs that support acquisition, onboarding, engagement, frequency, retention, reactivation, and loyalty.
- Create customer communication strategies based on customer needs, lifecycle stage, behavior, preferences, and business priorities.
- Manage automated and triggered customer journeys such as welcome, onboarding, birthday, lapsed-customer, recognition, milestone, and re-engagement programs.
- Coordinate communications across email, SMS, loyalty, digital offers, direct mail, website, and other owned customer channels.
- Develop clear objectives, audiences, offers, timing, messaging requirements, and success measures for lifecycle campaigns.
- Partner with Content, Creative, Campaign Strategy, Merchandising, and other teams to develop relevant customer-facing communications.
- Maintain a coordinated lifecycle marketing calendar that reflects promotional priorities, loyalty initiatives, seasonal needs, and customer communication frequency.
- Help manage customer contact frequency and channel coordination to reduce duplication, fatigue, and conflicting messages.
- Identify opportunities to improve personalization, relevance, and customer response.
- Ensure customer communications comply with applicable privacy, consent, preference, and opt-out requirements.
CUSTOMER SEGMENTATION AND PERSONALIZATION
- Define business requirements for customer segmentation and personalized communications.
- Partner with enterprise analytics, Finance, IT, loyalty technology partners, and other data owners to use approved customer information and reporting.
- Develop practical customer segments based on factors such as lifecycle stage, engagement, shopping behavior, value, preferences, loyalty participation, or campaign eligibility.
- Translate customer insights into audience strategies, communication plans, offers, and customer experiences.
- Help determine when communications should be broad, segmented, personalized, triggered, or suppressed.
- Identify gaps in customer information, segmentation, or reporting that limit Marketing’s ability to deliver relevant communications.
- Clearly communicate the business need, intended use, and timing for required customer data or analysis.
- Maintain documentation of key audiences, segment definitions, eligibility rules, exclusions, and communication strategies.
- Partner with appropriate data owners to ensure that customer segments and campaign audiences use approved sources and definitions.
CAMPAIGN AND COMMUNICATION EXECUTION
- Manage the end-to-end execution of assigned loyalty and lifecycle campaigns.
- Develop campaign briefs that clearly define the objective, target audience, offer or benefit, customer journey, channel plan, timing, dependencies, and measurement requirements.
- Coordinate copy, creative, offer setup, segmentation, testing, approvals, deployment, and post-campaign review.
- Review customer communications for accuracy, clarity, consistency, brand alignment, and customer relevance.
- Maintain detailed campaign calendars, timelines, status reports, and approval requirements.
- Coordinate with internal teams and external partners to ensure campaigns launch accurately and on schedule.
- Conduct appropriate quality-assurance reviews before deployment.
- Identify execution risks, missing inputs, or conflicting priorities and escalate them promptly.
- Support testing plans for subject lines, messaging, offers, audiences, timing, creative, and customer journeys.
- Document campaign results, lessons learned, and recommendations for future improvement.
DIGITAL OFFERS AND PROMOTIONAL ENGAGEMENT
- Support the planning and execution of digital offers and member promotions.
- Partner with Merchandising, Marketing, Finance, Operations, and external platform providers to coordinate offer objectives, audiences, funding, communication, and timing.
- Help ensure that customer-facing offers are clear, relevant, operationally executable, and aligned with program objectives.
- Coordinate manufacturer-funded and partner-funded offer opportunities with the appropriate internal stakeholders.
- Maintain visibility into planned offers, eligibility requirements, funding, placement, timing, and customer communications.
- Review available offer and redemption reporting to identify participation trends and opportunities for improvement.
- Support post-promotion reviews and provide recommendations for future offers.
- Identify customer-experience issues involving offer discovery, activation, redemption, or communication and coordinate resolution with the appropriate owners.
E-COMMERCE AND DIGITAL CUSTOMER-JOURNEY PARTNERSHIP
- Partner with the designated commerce owner to support a coordinated customer experience across loyalty, lifecycle communications, digital offers, and e-commerce touchpoints.
- Help align customer communications and promotional messaging across owned channels and third-party commerce platforms.
- Support loyalty integration, customer recognition, audience strategy, and promotional coordination related to e-commerce.
- Identify customer journey gaps or inconsistencies between Marketing communications and the e-commerce experience.
- Provide customer and lifecycle marketing requirements to the commerce owner and relevant technology partners.
- Support communications for e-commerce customer acquisition, retention, reactivation, and relevant promotional initiatives.
- Participate in e-commerce business reviews when customer behavior, loyalty, communications, or promotional performance is relevant.
- The role does not own platform operations, digital shelf management, item setup, pricing, fulfillment, delivery operations, customer-service operations, or day-to-day e-commerce performance.
LOYALTY AND MARKETING TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIP
- Serve as a primary Marketing business user for assigned loyalty, CRM, email, SMS, digital-offer, or customer-engagement platforms.
- Define Marketing requirements for customer journeys, campaigns, offers, segmentation, personalization, and reporting.
- Partner with IT, enterprise analytics, vendors, and other technical owners on integrations, data requirements, testing, implementation, and issue resolution.
- Coordinate business-user testing and document findings before new programs, journeys, offers, or platform capabilities launch.
- Maintain visibility into open platform issues, enhancement requests, dependencies, and implementation timelines.
- Help ensure platforms are used effectively and consistently by the Marketing team.
- Maintain documentation of key processes, campaign requirements, platform capabilities, and business-user procedures.
- Support vendor meetings, platform reviews, training, and roadmap discussions.
- Identify underutilized features or capabilities that may improve customer engagement or team efficiency.
CUSTOMER PERFORMANCE AND PROGRAM IMPROVEMENT
- Review approved reporting for loyalty participation, customer engagement, campaign performance, redemption, retention, reactivation, frequency, and other relevant measures.
- Partner with the Marketing Business Performance Manager, Finance, and enterprise analytics to establish appropriate KPIs and reporting requirements.
- Translate available customer and campaign reporting into practical recommendations for future communications, offers, benefits, and experiences.
- Identify meaningful changes in customer behavior or program participation requiring further investigation.
- Support test-and-learn plans and document objectives, audiences, variables, and expected outcomes.
- Conduct post-campaign and post-program reviews to identify lessons learned and opportunities for improvement.
- Distinguish between communication activity and meaningful customer or business outcomes.
- Clearly communicate reporting limitations, data gaps, or unresolved questions.
- Recommend improvements to customer journeys, program benefits, communications, segmentation, or execution based on available results.
CROSS FUNCTIONAL PARTNERSHIP
- Partner with Marketing, Merchandising, Operations, Digital, IT, Finance, enterprise analytics, Hospitality, store teams, and other departments to support coordinated customer initiatives.
- Build effective working relationships with loyalty, CRM, digital-offer, communication, commerce, and technology vendors.
- Coordinate Marketing requirements, timelines, dependencies, and decisions across stakeholders.
- Ensure that impacted teams understand program objectives, customer expectations, operational requirements, and launch timing.
- Support store readiness by developing clear communications, instructions, reference materials, and escalation processes.
- Identify unclear ownership, conflicting direction, or missing decisions that may affect the customer experience or program launch.
- Escalate material risks and recommend practical paths forward.
- Represent the customer and member perspective in cross-functional planning and decision-making.
PROGRAM AND PROCESS MANAGEMENT
- Develop and maintain campaign calendars, program roadmaps, project plans, decision logs, status reports, and operating procedures.
- Coordinate multiple programs, campaigns, vendors, and stakeholders with competing priorities and deadlines.
- Establish repeatable processes for campaign intake, briefing, approvals, quality assurance, deployment, reporting, and optimization.
- Identify opportunities to reduce manual work, eliminate duplication, improve accountability, and streamline execution.
- Maintain accurate documentation of program rules, customer eligibility, benefits, offers, campaign requirements, and operating decisions.
- Support budget planning, invoice review, vendor tracking, and program forecasting for assigned loyalty and lifecycle initiatives.
- Assist with special projects and strategic initiatives as assigned by the Vice President Marketing.
SUCCESS MEASURES
Performance in this position will be measured by:
- Growth in loyalty-program participation and member engagement.
- Quality and timeliness of the loyalty-program launch and ongoing initiatives.
- Improvement in customer onboarding, engagement, frequency, retention, and reactivation.
- Effectiveness of lifecycle campaigns and automated customer journeys.
- Accuracy, relevance, and timeliness of customer communications.
- Successful execution of loyalty benefits, digital offers, recognition, and member experiences.
- Improved coordination across email, SMS, loyalty, direct mail, digital, and commerce touchpoints.
- Quality of customer segmentation, campaign briefs, testing plans, and post-campaign recommendations.
- Reduction in campaign errors, conflicting communications, and execution gaps.
- Effective use of loyalty, CRM, email, SMS, and digital-offer platforms.
- Quality of cross-functional partnership and store readiness.
- Ability to translate customer insights and performance reporting into practical improvements.
- Effective management of vendors, timelines, budgets, and program dependencies.
QUALIFICATIONS
EDUCATION
- Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, Communications, Customer Experience, Analytics, or a related field preferred.
- An equivalent combination of education and relevant professional experience may be considered.
EXPERIENCE
- Approximately four to seven years of progressive experience in loyalty marketing, lifecycle marketing, CRM, customer engagement, retention marketing, email marketing, digital marketing, or a related discipline.
- Experience developing and executing customer lifecycle campaigns and automated journeys.
- Experience with loyalty, CRM, email, SMS, customer-data, digital-offer, or marketing-automation platforms.
- Experience managing customer segmentation, campaign audiences, personalization, testing, and performance reviews.
- Experience coordinating cross-functional programs involving Marketing, Merchandising, Operations, IT, Analytics, or external vendors.
- Experience supporting loyalty-program launches, program enhancements, or complex customer initiatives preferred.
- Retail, grocery, hospitality, consumer, membership, or premium-brand experience preferred.
- Experience partnering with e-commerce teams or commerce platforms preferred; direct ownership of e-commerce operations is not required.
KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS
- Strong understanding of loyalty, customer lifecycle, retention, engagement, and personalization strategies.
- Understanding of customer acquisition, onboarding, frequency, retention, reactivation, and lifetime value.
- Experience developing customer journeys and triggered communications.
- Working knowledge of email, SMS, CRM, loyalty, digital offers, marketing automation, and customer segmentation.
- Ability to translate customer and business objectives into clear campaign and program requirements.
- Strong project-management skills with the ability to manage multiple programs, vendors, stakeholders, and deadlines.
- Strong attention to detail and commitment to accurate customer communications and campaign execution.
- Ability to review customer and campaign reporting and identify practical opportunities for improvement.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills.
- Ability to write clear briefs, requirements, instructions, and customer-facing communications.
- Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to work effectively across departments and with external partners.
- Ability to identify risks, resolve problems, and move programs forward in a changing environment.
- Proficiency with Microsoft Office applications.
- Experience with CRM, loyalty, email, SMS, marketing automation, project-management, or reporting platforms preferred.
PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS
- Ability to sit and work at a computer for extended periods.
- Ability to communicate effectively in person, by telephone, and through electronic communication.
- Ability to review detailed campaign, customer, and program information for extended periods.
- Occasional travel to Gelson’s stores, meetings, vendor locations, events, or other business-related locations may be required.
WORK ENVIRONMENT
- Primarily office-based in a professional corporate environment.
- Regular interaction with Marketing, Merchandising, Operations, Digital, IT, Finance, enterprise analytics, Hospitality, store teams, and external vendors.
- Occasional visits to Gelson’s stores, events, and other company locations may be required.
- May require occasional work outside normal business hours to support campaign launches, loyalty initiatives, events, testing, or other business needs.
Salary range: $87,000 - $95,000
Equal Opportunity Employer
This employer is required to notify all applicants of their rights pursuant to federal employment laws. For further information, please review the Know Your Rights notice from the Department of Labor.