Original listing text, shown exactly as published by the company.
About the Role
Sur La Table needs a strategic CRM leader who can own the full lifecycle of the customer relationship — across email, SMS, loyalty, and customer intelligence — spanning Hardgoods, Culinary programming, and Retail. As Director, Lifecycle Marketing & CRM, you will set direction for how Sur La Table acquires, retains, and grows customer relationships across every business unit, with direct CMO access and meaningful P&L accountability.
In your first 6–12 months, you will build the automation architecture to drive significant revenue growth through lifecycle campaigns, establish the customer health reporting cadence that makes CRM performance visible to leadership, and evolve the Sur La Table Perks loyalty program from a discount-driven retention tool into a genuine relationship platform.
This is a lean team. You will own a lot, move fast, and make decisions with full end-to-end responsibility.
What You'll Do
Email & SMS — BAU / CEP Program Leadership
- Own the full email and SMS calendar across all business units — cadence, segmentation, deliverability, and send discipline — balancing competing demands from multiple channels and stakeholders.
- Partner with Brand and Creative to build a library of modular, brand-forward templates that flex across campaign types, business lines, and audience contexts.
- Lead personalization strategy: dynamic content, audience-specific versioning, and AI-powered content recommendations as standard operating practice.
- Own core KPIs — revenue per send, repeat purchase rate, LTV by segment, list growth, reactivation rate — and report them to leadership with a clear performance narrative.
Automation & Technology
- Build, scale, and optimize the full automation architecture — post-purchase, lifecycle, Culinary booking, loyalty, and reactivation programs — with a mandate to drive significant revenue growth through automated campaigns.
- Evaluate and implement best-of-breed CRM technologies. Own the vendor roadmap, build the business case for change, and execute transitions with discipline. AI capability and API/integration depth are primary evaluation criteria.
- Champion AI-first ways of working: leverage platform integrations and MCP connections to automate insight generation, and partner with internal technology teams to build custom tooling that gives the CRM function a capability edge.
Customer Intelligence & CDP
- Own the CDP and predictive intelligence platforms as strategic assets — driving cross-channel segmentation, LTV modeling, and touchpoint orchestration across all business units.
- Build the customer health reporting cadence — list trajectory, engagement quality, repeat purchase rate, cross-business-unit buyer rate, LTV cohorts, new customer acquisition, and reactivation performance — and make it visible and actionable for leadership.
Loyalty Program
- Own and evolve the Sur La Table Perks program — structure, benefits, offer architecture, and program economics — with a roadmap that transitions loyalty into a genuine relationship platform.
- Use customer intelligence to understand what drives frequency, AOV, and cross-business-unit engagement among your best customers. Report customer growth as a recurring leadership metric with a clear narrative around trajectory.
Omni-Channel & Cross-Functional Leadership
- Serve as the CRM voice in cross-functional planning across all business units — GTM strategy, promotional calendar, Culinary programming, and campaign briefing — as an upstream contributor, not a downstream executor.
- Understand how each business unit operates commercially — Hardgoods sell-through dynamics, Culinary class fill rates, in-store traffic and loyalty economics — and build CRM strategy that reflects that reality.
- Partner with Performance Marketing, Brand, and Merchandising to ensure CRM is a planned, proactive contributor to major campaigns and commercial priorities.
Team & Vendor Leadership
- Lead and develop a focused CRM team. Establish a proactive development cadence — growth goals, stretch opportunities, and honest conversations about trajectory.
- Own vendor relationships across the CRM stack. Hold partners to clear performance standards and a continuous improvement expectation.
- Own the full financial picture for CRM — budget management, sales forecasting, and P&L accountability across Email, SMS, Loyalty, and lifecycle automation. Set revenue targets by channel, track performance against forecast, and report financial outcomes to leadership.
Required Qualifications
- 8+ years of progressive CRM and lifecycle marketing experience with demonstrated ownership of a full program spanning multiple channels, campaigns, and business units.
- Proven omni-channel acumen: you understand how customers move between eCommerce, physical retail, and service/experiential business lines, and you build strategy that reflects that journey.
- Experience supporting multiple business units simultaneously — balancing competing priorities, managing a complex send calendar, and maintaining program discipline across stakeholders with different commercial goals.
- Deep platform expertise across a modern CRM stack: CEP/ESP (Braze or equivalent), CDP, predictive intelligence tools, SMS, and loyalty infrastructure. Hands-on familiarity with AI integrations and API-driven workflows.
- Strong creative sensibility — you partner with design teams to produce brand-rich, high-performing email and SMS creative across multiple campaign types and audience contexts.
- Strong analytical instincts — you translate LTV, retention, and engagement data into business cases that resonate with commercial and finance stakeholders.
- Cross-functional credibility — you show up with a point of view, advocate for the customer relationship when the business pushes for volume, and hold your ground on channel discipline.
- Retail or omni-channel background required.
Preferred Qualifications
- Multi-business-unit or multi-category experience.
- Culinary, food, or lifestyle brand experience.
