Marketing and Branding - Functional Specialist II

Join Our Team: Digital Marketing Specialist opportunity. Navigate your future and lock in your career as we keep our canals open and alive. The Marketing and Brand team at Canal & River Trust promotes the charity by creating and delivering engaging digital content and campaigns. The team manages channels such as the website, towpath signage, email marketing, and online advertising to attract visitors, grow audiences, and encourage public support through donations, volunteering, and engagement.

Working closely with teams across the Trust, the team uses data and insights to shape campaigns, improve user experience, and ensure the stories of the waterways, including heritage, environment, wellbeing, and community, reach and inspire a wide and diverse audience. The Digital Marketing Specialist sits within the Digital Marketing & Engagement team and plays a central role within the wider marketing and brand team, leading the planning and delivery of our online national marketing engagement and acquisition programme, whilst overseeing our Google Grants search advertising programme.

This role also manages and develops the Advertising Executive, focusing on regional and specialist digital online advertising activity, and acts as the go-to expert for digital advertising and tracking; providing guidance, insight, and best practice across the organisation.

Working Hours & Location

This role follows a 37 hours, Monday to Friday working pattern. The vacancy will be offered on a remote working basis, with a requirement to attend our main hub spaces as and when required. Travel across our network will be required.

Role Overview

As a Digital Marketing Specialist, you will lead paid marketing activity to drive charity awareness, engagement, and long-term supporter growth. You’ll manage advertising programmes and budgets with agencies, optimise paid search performance, support cross-team planning, and mentor a direct report delivering regional activity. The role also covers tracking and analytics, ensuring accurate reporting and using insights (e.g. GA4) to drive continuous improvement. You’ll project manage multiple programmes, including new acquisition initiatives, oversee agency deliverables, and ensure all activity meets governance, data, and tracking requirements.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the Trust’s digital marketing engagement and acquisition programme to deliver engaged supporter growth with a substantial annual budget that is consistently refined and optimised to maximise performance.
• Manage user access, governance, naming convention standards, agency access budget caps and invoicing of our central digital advertising platforms (i.e Google, TikTok, Meta).
• Oversee agency relationship and performance, ensuring accurate reporting, campaign optimisation, and audience insights.
• Manage new agency tenders as and when necessary.
• Plan and review paid media activity to support a wide range of colleagues, while advising internal teams on best practice and audience strategy.
• Manage and optimise the Google Ad Grants Pro programme, ensuring compliance and maximising reach.
• Line manage an Advertising Executive delivering a partnership approach to advertising our local events, volunteer opportunities, regional and local campaigns.
• Maintain oversight of our trust-wide targeting matrix and active advertising calendar that shares cross-team audience planning, and channel selections to support with decision making, planning and visibility.
• Lead digital tracking and campaign measurement, including UTM setup, GA4 accuracy, data visualisation, stakeholder insights etc.
• Project manage the launch and delivery, and insights based creative direction of new acquisition CTAs and value exchange products.
• Support wider digital strategy, collaborating with internal teams including social media and marketing.
• Ensure all activity reflects the Trust’s values, with a strong focus on inclusion and best practice.

About You

You’ll have a strong track record in delivering high-quality, results-driven digital performance marketing, optimised for long-term engagement. Experience developing advertising strategies within broader supporter journeys is essential, particularly in driving first interactions and early engagement, alongside hands-on budget and line management.

You’ll bring expertise in performance media buying, benchmark setting, and data analysis to optimise campaigns and turn results into clear insights, with a solid understanding of audience targeting and segmentation. Confident managing agencies, you’ll ensure briefs are delivered on time and to a high standard, while maintaining strong project management skills (including Excel), curiosity, and a proactive, problem-solving mindset.

We’re looking for an innovative digital specialist with fresh acquisition ideas and a proactive approach to tracking and segmentation, ready to take our central digital marketing and acquisition programme to the next level.

Skills & Qualifications

• Degree level qualification or equivalent relevant experience in marketing, digital, or a related field.
• Experienced in leading large scale, multi-channel, digital engagement and acquisition advertising programmes, managing budgets, and delivering measurable growth targets (e.g. leads, engagement, conversion).
• Strong knowledge of paid media platforms (e.g. Google Ads, Meta, TikTok) including governance, optimisation, and agency management.
• Proven track record of using analytics and tracking tools such as GA4 and UTM tagging to monitor performance and inform decisions.
• Able to manage and optimise programmes such as Google Ad Grants, ensuring compliance and maximising impact.
• Creative and curious, wanting to bring both new trends and sector learnings into the charity and applying to our digital marketing; driving a culture of continuous improvement.

General Skills

• Excellent project management and stakeholder management skills, with experience coordinating campaigns across teams and partners.
• Able to interpret data and provide clear insights, advising teams on best practice and improving performance.
• Experience leading or supporting others, with the ability to manage workload, budgets, and priorities effectively.
• Comfortable working in a fast-paced environment, maintaining oversight of multiple campaigns, audiences, and channels.
• Collaborative and proactive, working closely with internal teams (e.g. social, marketing) to plan and deliver activity.
• Committed to inclusive, customer-focused approaches and continuous improvement in digital delivery.
• Strong copywriting experience for performance led content, and ability to review against brand tone of voice and guidelines.

Contact & Application

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at CRT.recruitment@canalrivertrust.org.uk. We encourage early applications as we may close the vacancy once we receive enough suitable candidates.

What We Offer

In addition to your annual base salary up to £40,000, we also offer a competitive pension scheme, increasing holiday entitlement, and a range of employee benefits. For a full breakdown of our benefits, check out our brochure.