POSITION OVERVIEW

The Manager of Loyalty & Owned Channels architects the overarching vision and strategic framework for loyalty and owned channels, driving enterprise-wide customer retention and lifecycle growth. This leader orchestrates strategy across the Express Insider Loyalty program, Express Credit Card, and owned channels (Direct Mail, Email, SMS & App Push) with a focus on driving customer engagement and long term loyalty. By synthesizing brand and business objectives, they drive high-level optimization across all touchpoints to accelerate customer spend and retention in partnership with leadership and external partners.

This individual owns channel and program strategy, audience segmentation, contact cadence, and campaign orchestration across all owned channels to support Ecommerce and Stores performance. They are accountable for establishing, tracking, and achieving key KPIs, including customer-level goals, last-touch attribution, channel-level file growth and store marketing initiative performance.

They collaborate closely with Brand Marketing, CRM Execution, Ecom, Creative, Store Operations, Digital, and Loyalty/CRM, Analytics and external partners to bring campaigns to life while continuously improving performance through a robust test-and-learn agenda.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Architect and define comprehensive marketing strategies across Loyalty, Credit, Direct Mail, and Digital Owned Channels, ensuring alignment with long-term brand equity and business objectives.
• Support the development of strategic initiatives including lifecycle journeys, brand campaigns, and omni-channel activations, proactively identifying opportunities to drive engagement and customer retention.
• Oversee the strategy of the owned channels calendar, ensuring optimal contact frequency, customer experience, and alignment with critical business priorities.
• Lead and mentor a team of Specialists, fostering a culture of strategic thinking, agility in execution and performance optimization across Direct Mail, email, SMS, and app push campaigns.
• Champion a data-informed decision-making framework, translating complex performance metrics and competitive benchmarking into actionable strategic recommendations that drive continuous improvement.
• Partner with cross-functional leadership to define audience segmentation, personalization, and messaging strategies, ensuring a cohesive and elevated customer experience across all touchpoints.
• Drive the long-term test-and-learn roadmap, continuously evolving program strategies and innovation based on rigorous analysis of campaign-level engagement and customer behavior.
• Direct the strategic communication of campaign objectives, offer architecture, and success measurement to ensure cross-functional alignment and flawless operational execution.
• Engage in strategic team and vendor discussions to evolve the strategy of these programs connected to our core business objectives. Supports relationships with external partners to ensure timely, high-quality output.
• Establish, monitor, and optimize performance against set business plans and key KPIs including last-touch performance metrics, campaign-level engagement, and customer-level behavior.

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE & QUALIFICATIONS

• 8 610+ years of progressive experience in Loyalty, CRM, lifecycle marketing, or owned channels, with a proven track record of driving enterprise growth in retail or eCommerce environments.
• Demonstrated success in architecting and scaling lifecycle marketing strategies, moving beyond channel management to holistic customer retention and lifetime value (CLV) optimization.
• Proven experience managing email, SMS, app push, or lifecycle marketing programs at scale.
• Expertise in defining and executing audience segmentation and personalization strategies that integrate across multiple touchpoints to drive incremental revenue.
• Experience setting and managing KPIs tied to engagement, traffic, conversion, trips, spend, retention, and revenue.
• Experience working with store operations and retail store teams on marketing initiatives that drive traffic, conversion and engagement.
• Bachelors degree or equivalent professional experience preferred.
• Advanced proficiency in leveraging enterprise-grade marketing technology (e.g., Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Adobe Campaign, Braze, Klaviyo) to drive automation, scalability, and data-driven insights..
• Familiarity with JIRA, Confluence, Microsoft Office, Excel, Google Analytics, in-platform reporting dashboards, and campaign performance tools.

CRITICAL SKILLS & ATTRIBUTES

• Strategic Architect: A forward-thinking leader who envisions the future of loyalty and owned channels, proactively identifying opportunities to build brand equity and drive long-term retention.
• Commercial Acumen: Deeply data-driven with the ability to synthesize complex performance analytics into strategic business recommendations that move the P&L.
• Programmatic Leadership: Capacity to orchestrate complex, multi-layered initiatives across internal teams and external partners while maintaining high operational standards.
• Executive Presence & Influence: Ability to translate complex marketing strategies into clear business cases, influencing cross-functional stakeholders and leadership to gain buy-in for key initiatives.
• Agile & Adaptive: Thrives in a fast-paced environment; skilled at pivoting strategies based on data-informed testing and evolving market conditions.
• Customer Advocate: Passion for elevating the customer experience; keeps the customer at the center of all strategic decisions to ensure communications are always relevant, timely, and brand-aligned.
• Highly organized and detail-oriented: Ability to manage multiple campaigns, priorities, and stakeholders.
• Clear, proactive communicator who can influence and collaborate across cross-functional teams.