Marketing Manager - Leisure (Retention)

At Places Leisure, we hire people, not just numbers. If you are interested in one of our roles, we encourage you to apply—you could be exactly who we are looking for. While experience matters, we are most interested in individuals who live our People Promises: those who do the right thing, are enthusiastic and eager to grow, believe in community spirit, show respect, and enjoy their work. As part of one of the UK’s leading social enterprises, we are dedicated to creating active, healthy, and inclusive communities for both our customers and colleagues. We value kindness, honesty, and teamwork, and we strive to make Places Leisure a supportive and enjoyable place to work for everyone.

More About Your Role

The purpose of the role is to support our Leisure Centres, shaping the end-to-end planning process ensuring alignment with business targets and organisational marketing objectives. Operating as a senior partner to the allocated Business Area, the role leverages data, insight, and performance intelligence to guide decision making and collaborates closely with the Centre of Excellence Marketing and Communications specialists to lead the development and delivery of high impact communication plans across both online and offline channels. This includes overseeing measurement, analysis, and performance reporting to identify actionable insights that inform continuous optimisation. The role also supports with the coordination (and in some cases production) of localised Business Area support, using marketing toolkits and centralised collateral. A key focus is on strengthening customer relationships and driving retention by enhancing engagement across the existing customer base.

Essential Criteria

• Strong planning campaign management, and cross-functional communication skills, with the ability to prioritise and manage multiple high-impact initiatives.
• Proven experience leading complex marketing or communications projects, successfully influencing and managing senior stakeholders across diverse workstreams and demanding timelines.
• Demonstrable experience delivering marketing activity that drives both commercial performance and/or customer-focused outcomes at scale.
• Experience planning, coordinating and executing marketing campaigns aligned to wider business plans and strategic objectives.
• Ability to evaluate marketing campaigns, translating performance data into actionable insights and strategic recommendations for senior stakeholders.
• Knowledge of marketing and communications across B2C or B2B audiences.
• Understanding and experience of managing customer loyalty and retention strategies, ideally within subscription-based or membership-driven environments.
• Proficiency in Microsoft Office and familiarity with project management and marketing analytics tools (e.g. Monday.com, Google Analytics).

More About You

You are an organised and proactive marketer with experience in marketing planning and campaign management, confident managing timelines, prioritising workload, and keeping multiple workstreams on track. You work collaboratively and build strong, professional relationships across commercial teams, site teams, and specialist marketing functions. You thrive in utilising data and insights to drive decision-making and optimisation, with strong communication skills, attention to detail, and a structured approach to planning. You will be familiar with marketing operations, performance tracking tools, and proficient in Microsoft Office and project management platforms such as Monday.com. This role offers flexible working, with the option to work from home. Travel to Places Leisure offices or sites will be required, and candidates should be within reasonable travel distance of one of our office locations; such as Leeds, London, or Preston.

Benefits

We are a large diverse and ambitious business, which will give you all the challenge you could wish for. We know that there’s always more we can do to make you smile, that’s why we offer a comprehensive benefits package with each role, yours will include:

• Competitive salary, with a salary review yearly.
• Pension with matched contributions up to 7%.
• Excellent holiday package – 35 days annual leave with the option to buy or sell leave.
• Cashback plan for healthcare costs – up to £500 saving per year.
• A bonus scheme for all colleagues at 2%.
• Training and development.
• Extra perks including huge discounts and offers from shops, cinemas and much more.

What’s Next?

If you meet the criteria and are ready to make the next step in your career then click apply. You will be redirected to our careers site where you can discover more about the role, read a full job description and apply directly to us. As part of our commitment to diversity and inclusion, we offer a guaranteed interview to candidates who are disabled, neurodiverse, or have served in the Armed Forces, provided they meet the essential criteria for the role. If you would like to be considered under this scheme, please indicate this in your application. We are dedicated to creating a supportive and accessible recruitment process for all. We are committed to creating an inclusive and accessible recruitment process. If you require any reasonable adjustments to support your application or interview experience, please let us know. We’re happy to work with you to ensure you have the opportunity to perform at your best.

If you are a Places for People customer and you’re looking for support with your application, please contact our skills and employment team on skillsemployment@placesforpeople.co.uk. We understand the importance of a supportive and inclusive work culture so please talk to us at interview about flexibility you may need. We can’t promise to give you exactly what you want, but we promise not to judge you for asking. For this role we are open to discussing the possibility of reduced hours, flexible start and finish times or compressed hours.

Safeguarding

At Places for People, safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility. We are committed to creating safe communities for our customers and colleagues by protecting children, young people, and adults at risk from harm, abuse, and neglect. We follow robust safeguarding policies and procedures, ensuring all employees, volunteers, and contractors uphold the highest standards of safeguarding and accountability. Our recruitment process includes pre-employment checks, including Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks where applicable, to promote a safe and secure working environment. By joining Places for People, you are expected to contribute to our safeguarding culture, following our policies and reporting concerns to protect those in our communities.