Senior Manager, CRM & Loyalty

Overview

Firebirds Wood Fired Grill is a polished-casual restaurant brand with 70+ locations across the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. Our menu is distinguished by the craft of wood fire grilling, and our hospitality is built around turning ordinary nights into occasions. We’re a brand with genuine craft and a loyal following, at a moment of rebuilding how we tell our story.

The Role

We’re looking for a CRM and loyalty leader who will turn guest relationships into a meaningful engine for frequency, retention, and profitable growth. This is not simply an email deployment role. You’ll own the strategy behind how Firebirds attracts members, learns from guest behavior, creates relevant experiences, and brings guests back to our restaurants. Working closely with the VP of Digital Marketing and our Brand & Creative team, you’ll translate guest insights into personalized, measurable programs across the full lifecycle.

You’ll also be building. You can set a clear vision, create the processes and measurement needed to scale, manage technology and agency partners, and stay hands-on with segmentation, campaign planning, testing, and optimization.

Responsibilities

CRM & Lifecycle Strategy

• Own the CRM roadmap and guest lifecycle strategy, from acquisition and onboarding through engagement, repeat visits, win-back, and advocacy.
• Develop a coordinated contact strategy across email, SMS, app/push (where available), and other owned channels, balancing relevance, frequency, and guest experience.
• Build automated journeys and triggered communications based on behavior, preferences, milestones, and purchase history.

Loyalty Program Leadership

• Own the strategy, performance, and evolution of Firebirds’ Inner Circle loyalty program, with a focus on active membership, visit frequency, incremental spend, and retention.
• Design member acquisition, activation, recognition, and reactivation initiatives that create guest value and measurable business impact.
• Evaluate loyalty benefits, offers, and promotional economics with Finance and Operations to protect profitability and reduce unnecessary discounting.

Guest Data, Segmentation & Personalization

• Develop actionable guest segments using transaction, visit, engagement, and preference data.
• Partner with Digital, IT, and platform vendors to improve identity resolution, data quality, integrations, and usable guest profiles.
• Create personalization and testing strategies that make communications more timely, relevant, and effective.

Campaigns & Cross-Functional Partnership

• Own CRM activation plans for national campaigns, menu launches, seasonal moments, new restaurant openings, local store marketing, and off-premise initiatives.
• Partner with Brand & Creative on briefs, messaging, and content; with Operations on restaurant execution; and with Digital and Paid Media on coordinated acquisition and retargeting.
• Maintain a disciplined CRM calendar, approval process, and quality assurance standards across all deployments.

Analytics, Testing & Revenue Impact

• Establish dashboards and reporting for member growth, active rate, retention, frequency, redemption, attributable sales, incremental lift, and program ROI.
• Lead test-and-learn programs using holdouts, A/B testing, and incrementality measurement to distinguish true growth from promotional activity.
• Translate performance into clear recommendations for leadership and restaurant teams.

Technology, Partners & Governance

• Own day-to-day business relationships and performance expectations for CRM, loyalty, messaging, and related technology partners.
• Improve platform capabilities, integrations, workflows, and campaign execution efficiency in partnership with technical teams.
• Maintain consent, preference management, deliverability, data stewardship, and compliance with applicable privacy and messaging requirements.

Build the Function

• Create repeatable processes for segmentation, campaign briefs, production, QA, reporting, and optimization.
• Lead and develop internal resources and external partners as the function grows.
• Stay hands-on when needed: build audiences, review journeys, troubleshoot campaigns, and turn data into action.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in CRM, loyalty, lifecycle, or retention marketing, including experience leading teams and external partners.
• Proven success growing loyalty participation and driving measurable repeat visits, retention, and incremental revenue at a multi-location consumer business; restaurant or hospitality experience strongly preferred.
• Deep understanding of segmentation, marketing automation, triggered journeys, email/SMS execution, and customer data.
• Strong analytical judgment, including experience with cohort analysis, testing, holdouts, promotional economics, and ROI measurement.
• Experience managing CRM and loyalty platforms, data integrations, vendor relationships, and cross-functional technology projects.
• A builder’s mindset: comfortable defining strategy, creating structure, and executing with lean resources.
• Clear communication skills and the ability to influence senior leaders and restaurant operators.
• Working knowledge of messaging consent, deliverability, and guest privacy practices.
• Experience with Thanx, Klaviyo, or comparable restaurant loyalty and CRM platforms is a plus.

What Success Looks Like in Year One

• A clear CRM and loyalty roadmap, with agreed-upon KPIs and a reliable executive reporting cadence.
• Improved Inner Circle acquisition, activation, and active-member engagement, with measurable gains in retention and repeat visits.
• Automated lifecycle journeys in place for onboarding, engagement, lapsed guests, and key guest moments.
• A disciplined segmentation and experimentation program that demonstrates incremental sales and profitable offer performance.
• Cleaner guest data, stronger platform workflows, and dependable campaign execution across owned channels.
• A scalable CRM operating model that connects guest insights, Brand & Creative, Digital, Operations, and agency partners.

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