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CRM and Email Marketing Manager Job Description
One person, two halves of the same loop. Here is what the role owns, what to put in the posting, and how to tell when it has become two jobs.
Two job titles, one loop that has to close.
Most job descriptions for this role list two sets of tasks side by side and leave the reader to work out how they connect. They connect in a loop, and the loop is what one person is being hired to hold.
The customer database decides who is in each audience. The lifecycle programs decide what those audiences hear and when. What comes back from the sends (who opened, who bought, who went quiet, who unsubscribed) writes back into the database and changes the next audience. One person holding all three keeps the loop tight: the segment that underperforms gets fixed by the same person who built the email that went to it.
That is why this is a real single role and not two jobs stapled together. Write the posting around the loop and a candidate can tell you where they have closed it before.
What the job actually does.
Write responsibilities as things you could later verify, not as activities. “Manage the CRM” cannot be checked at the end of a quarter. “Keep every lifecycle segment current enough to send from without a manual pull” can.
The customer database half
Everything that decides who is in an audience before a single email is written.
- Keeps the customer record accurate enough to send from: deduplication, field hygiene, and a subscription status you can trust.
- Defines and maintains the segments the programs run on, such as new signups, trials that never activated, lapsed buyers, and high-value repeat customers.
- Owns the attributes that describe a customer, including lifecycle stage, acquisition source, and the product or purchase behavior flowing in from other systems.
- Owns consent and preference management: how someone subscribes, what they can opt down to instead of out of, and how that is honored everywhere.
The lifecycle email half
Everything those audiences actually receive, and whether it arrives.
- Owns the always-on programs end to end: welcome, onboarding or activation, nurture, post-purchase, win-back, and retention or renewal.
- Owns the send calendar, so campaign sends and always-on programs do not land on the same person in the same hour.
- Owns deliverability: authentication, sending reputation, list hygiene, and suppressing the disengaged before they cost you the inbox.
- Runs tests with a stated hypothesis, on subject line, creative, timing, and audience, and retires the ones that did not answer anything.
The reporting that joins the two
The part most postings leave out, and the part that makes the role one job.
- Reports each program on revenue, retention, or activation rather than on open rate.
- Attributes results back to the segment, so a weak program can be told apart from a weak audience.
- Keeps one definition of an active customer that the CRM and the sending platform both agree on. Two definitions is how a team ends up arguing about whose number is right.
The tools the role is expected to own.
A posting that lists platforms without saying what they are for screens for the logo instead of the work. Ask for the category, name examples, and let a candidate who did the same job in a different tool through the door.
| What it does | Why the role needs it | Names you will see in postings |
|---|---|---|
| Marketing automation and sending | Builds and runs the lifecycle programs, templates, and journeys. | Klaviyo, Braze, Iterable, Customer.io, HubSpot Marketing Hub, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Mailchimp |
| CRM and the customer record | Holds the customer, the lifecycle stage, and the history the segments are built from. | Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, Microsoft Dynamics |
| Data plumbing | Moves product, billing, and web behavior into the record so a segment can use it. | Segment, a warehouse such as Snowflake or BigQuery, reverse ETL, and enough SQL to answer a question without waiting |
| Reporting | Ties programs to revenue and retention, and reconciles with the rest of marketing. | GA4, plus a BI layer such as Looker, Tableau, or Metabase |
| Deliverability and consent | Keeps the mail arriving and the consent record defensible. | SPF, DKIM, and DMARC setup, suppression and preference handling, and the regional rules that apply to your list |
The SQL line is the one worth deciding before you post. If your customer data lives in a warehouse and the segments are built there, the role needs it and you should say so. If everything lives inside the sending platform, asking for SQL narrows your pipeline for no return.
When the two halves split.
The role holds together while one person can carry both the data model and the calendar. Four signals say it no longer does.
1. The backlog queues behind the calendar
Segmentation and data work only happen in the gaps between sends, so the data work never happens.
2. The data half turns into engineering
Warehouse models, reverse ETL, and identity resolution are a different job with a different day.
3. Nobody is building the next program
Running what already exists takes the whole week, and the roadmap stops moving.
4. The two halves stop agreeing
The customer counts in the CRM and in the sending platform drift apart, and nobody owns the reconciliation.
When it splits, the customer database half becomes a CRM marketing manager, owning segmentation, lifecycle strategy, and retention. The channel half becomes an email marketing manager, owning production, creative, the calendar, testing, and deliverability. Neither reports to the other in most teams. If you are weighing which of the two to hire first, our email marketing manager vs. CRM marketing manager comparison puts them side by side.
The split is about capacity, not seniority. A combined manager who has run both halves is often the person you promote to lead both after you hire the second pair of hands.
A CRM and email marketing manager posting.
Copy this, replace the bracketed parts, and cut anything you cannot honestly commit to. Our AI job description generator will do the same job with your company details filled in, and the wider example job description library covers adjacent roles.
Job title
CRM and Email Marketing Manager
About [Company]
[Two or three sentences on what you sell, who buys it, and how many customers are on the list today. A candidate for this role is working out how much data and how much volume they would be inheriting, so a number here does more than an adjective.]
About the role
You will own the customer database and the lifecycle email that runs off it. That means the segments, the always-on programs, and the reporting that tells us what those programs are worth. You will be the [first / second] person on lifecycle marketing here, working with [team] and reporting to [role].
What you will do
- Own our lifecycle programs end to end, including welcome, onboarding, nurture, win-back, and retention.
- Build and maintain the segments those programs run on, and keep the underlying customer record clean enough to send from.
- Own the send calendar across always-on programs and campaigns.
- Report each program on [revenue / retention / activation], and tell us which audiences are working and which are not.
- Own deliverability and consent, including authentication, list hygiene, and preference handling.
- Run a testing plan with a stated hypothesis, and act on what it says.
What we are looking for
- [Number] years running lifecycle or CRM email in a [B2C / B2B / ecommerce] business.
- Hands-on ownership of a marketing automation platform in the class of [named examples]. We care that you have run programs in one, not that it is the same one we use.
- Comfort with the customer record itself: segmentation, data hygiene, and the definitions behind them.
- [Include only if true: SQL, or the ability to build audiences from a data warehouse.]
- Evidence that you have connected email work to a business result, and can talk about a program that did not work and what you changed.
Nice to have
[Experience in your category, a second channel such as SMS or push, or a specific platform migration you know is coming.]
Compensation and benefits
- [Salary range. Say the number. Postings with a range get better candidates and fewer wasted conversations.]
- [Bonus or equity, health cover, time off, and anything genuinely unusual about how you work.]
Location
[Onsite, hybrid, or remote, with the time zone or travel expectation stated plainly.]
Equal employment opportunity
[Your standard EEO statement.]
The definition you write here is the thing you interview against.
A posting that names the loop, the segments, and the reporting gives you three questions you can score every candidate on.
Has this person closed the loop before?
Ask for one program they built, the segment it ran on, and what they changed after the first month of results. Someone who only ran the send half will tell you about the creative.
Can they hold the data model?
Ask how they defined an active customer at their last company, and who disagreed with them. The answer tells you whether they owned the definition or inherited it.
What did it earn?
Ask for a program that failed and what it cost to find that out. Candidates who report only on opens are telling you what they were measured on.
Yardstick designs the interview guide for the role before anyone is scheduled, so the interview asks about this job rather than about email marketing in general, and every candidate is scored on the same scale with a written description of what each score looks like. Our AI interview question generator drafts a first set from your posting, and how to build an interview scorecard covers the method if you would rather write it yourself.
Common questions about the combined CRM and email role.
Is CRM marketing the same as email marketing?
No, though one person often does both. CRM marketing is about the customer record and the segments built from it. Email marketing is about the channel those segments are reached through. A combined role owns the loop between them, which is why it is a single job at many companies.
Should I hire one person for both, or two?
Start with one if a single person can carry both the data model and the send calendar. Split it when segmentation and data work only happen in the gaps between sends, when the data half turns into engineering, or when running the existing programs takes the entire week.
What should a CRM and email marketing manager already know?
Ownership of a marketing automation platform, segmentation and data hygiene inside a CRM, deliverability basics such as authentication and list hygiene, and reporting that goes past open rate. Warehouse SQL matters only if your segments are built from a warehouse.
What does this role own that a demand generation manager does not?
The existing customer. Demand generation is measured on new pipeline; this role is measured on what happens to people already in the database, which is activation, repeat purchase, and retention.
What do you measure a CRM and email marketing manager on?
Program level revenue, retention, or activation, attributed back to the segment, plus list health over time. Open and click rates are diagnostics for the person doing the work, not the number the role is judged on.
Does this page work as a job posting on its own?
The template section is written to be copied and edited. Fill in the bracketed parts, cut what does not apply, and state a salary range before it goes live.
Write the posting, then interview against it.
Yardstick turns the role you just defined into an interview guide and a scorecard, so the same definition carries from the job description through to the hiring decision.