Head of CRM & Loyalty
The Head of CRM & Loyalty owns customer retention and repeat purchases. They build the loyalty program, segmentation, and email, push, and SMS communications, and are accountable for revenue from the existing customer base.
What a Head of CRM & Loyalty does
The Head of CRM & Loyalty is responsible for everything that happens with a customer after their first purchase or registration: how often they come back, how much they spend over their lifecycle, and why they leave. In e-commerce, revenue from the existing base is often cheaper than acquiring new buyers, so this role directly affects margin and the business's dependence on paid traffic.
In most companies this role reports to the CEO, the commercial director, or the marketing director and leads a team of CRM managers, analysts, copywriters, and sometimes a email designer. The Head of CRM works closely with performance marketing, which receives segment data for lookalike and retargeting campaigns, with the product team on loyalty programs, and with customer support on bonus-related questions.
The role is not limited to sending emails. The goal is to build a system: a unified customer profile, automated scenarios triggered by events, rules for earning and redeeming bonuses, hypothesis testing, and clear reporting that supports decisions about budget and priorities.
Responsibilities
- Develop the retention strategy and loyalty program: tiers, bonuses, cashback, personalized offers, and rules for earning them
- Build a customer base segmentation system based on RFM, behavior, purchase categories, and customer lifecycle stage
- Manage automated scenarios (welcome, abandoned cart, reactivation, post-purchase) and their priorities
- Plan the communications calendar across email, push, SMS, and messengers, aligning it with marketing and promotions
- Run the A/B testing process for email subject lines, offers, and send frequency, documenting results and conclusions
- Monitor the quality of customer data and the accuracy of events sent from the website and app
- Agree with product and development on requirements for the personal account, bonus mechanics, and integrations
- Budget for CRM tools and contractors, assess their economics, and make decisions about changing the tech stack
- Manage the team, set goals, review campaigns, and develop expertise within the department
- Report to leadership on the base's contribution to revenue, margin, and retention
Skills
- Understanding of e-commerce unit economics: margin, LTV, CAC, purchase frequency, average order value
- Segmentation and cohort analysis, including the ability to read retention curves
- Designing loyalty programs and engagement mechanics that account for margin by category
- Copywriting and an understanding of repeat-purchase psychology, with the ability to brief creative teams
- Designing A/B tests and interpreting results with regard to statistical significance
- Handling personal data and regulatory requirements for consent and unsubscribe
- Writing product and development requirements, translating business goals into technical tasks
- Managing a team and prioritizing several channels at once
- Communicating with finance and leadership: defending the budget with base-level numbers
- Understanding anti-fraud limits on bonuses and promo codes so the program does not become a source of losses
Tools
- CRM and marketing automation platforms (Klaviyo, Braze, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Dotdigital, and similar)
- CDP or an in-house customer data warehouse
- Google Analytics, Yandex Metrica, BI tools (Looker Studio, Power BI, Tableau)
- SQL for data exports and segment validation
- A/B and split testing tools
- Push notification and SMS providers
- Jira or Trello for task planning and campaign calendars
- Spreadsheets and pivot reports for the customer base financial model
How performance is measured
- Share of revenue from repeat purchases and the existing base in total turnover
- Retention by month and cohort (D30, D90, M6)
- Customer LTV broken down by acquisition channel and segment
- Purchase frequency and average order value among loyalty program members
- Share of program members in revenue and percentage of active bonus users
- Conversion of automated scenarios and their revenue contribution relative to regular newsletters
- Spam complaints, unsubscribe rates, and deliverability metrics
By vertical
E-Commerce
In e-commerce the role works at the SKU level: segments are built by category, abandoned carts, and overlap with warehouse stock. The Head of CRM ensures that repeat purchases do not erode margin through excessive discounts and coordinates communications with logistics and purchasing when slow-moving items need to be promoted.
Levels
Head of / Director
The Head of / Director owns the retention strategy and loyalty program as a whole: budget, team, tech stack selection, and the base's contribution to overall revenue. Decisions are made at the level of business goals rather than individual campaigns, and they defend CRM priorities against marketing, product, and finance.
How to get there
People usually enter the profession from adjacent roles: a CRM manager or marketer who ran email and push, an analyst who worked with customer cohorts, or a product manager responsible for the personal account and loyalty program. Experience working with customer behavior data and automated scenarios matters more than a degree.
To prepare, learn e-commerce unit economics, learn to build segments and cohort reports in SQL and BI, understand how automation scenarios work, and learn how to run A/B tests. It is useful to complete the full cycle on your own: formulate a retention hypothesis, run a test, calculate the effect, and present the findings to a manager.
Growth comes from managing individual channels to being responsible for the entire customer base: first campaigns and scenarios, then the loyalty program, then the team and budget. Moving into a Head role usually requires experience managing people and the ability to connect CRM with revenue and margin at the company level.
Next steps: Director of CRM / Director of Retention, Head of Growth, VP Marketing or Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) in e-commerce, Head of Loyalty Programs, Chief Revenue Officer (CRO)
FAQ
How is a Head of CRM different from a CRM manager?
A CRM manager runs specific channels and campaigns, while the Head of CRM is responsible for the retention strategy, the team, the budget, and the customer base's contribution to revenue. They decide which mechanics to launch and which tools to use, and they report to company leadership.
Do you need a technical degree to become a Head of CRM?
There is usually no formal requirement, but the role is hard to do well without confident data skills. You need to understand SQL exports, event structures, and testing methodology so you can evaluate campaign results and speak the same language as analysts and developers.
What determines income in this role?
Income depends on the size of the business and the customer base, CRM's contribution to revenue and margin, the size of the team and budget, and experience with loyalty programs. Companies assess results through retention and LTV, so verified base-level numbers carry significant weight in interviews.
How do loyalty and CRM work in e-commerce while managing risk?
Loyalty programs need limits on bonuses and promo codes to prevent abuse and multi-accounting. The Head of CRM agrees on earning rules with the anti-fraud team and finance so that discounts do not exceed acceptable margin.
What experience is needed to qualify for this position?
Employers usually expect experience managing a large customer base, launching automated scenarios and retention programs, and managing a team or contractors. It is important to be able to show results in retention, LTV, and the share of revenue from repeat purchases.
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