CRM Manager in Cirencester

Location: Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Working pattern: Full-time, permanent

Office attendance: Minimum 60% office-based in Cirencester

Salary: £40,000-£48,000 per annum, dependent on experience

Reporting to: Marketing Director

Key relationships: Marketing, Sales, Travel Specialists, Operations, Finance and technology partners

About Steppes Travel

Steppes Travel is a specialist tour operator creating tailor-made journeys and expert-led small group tours around the world. For more than 35 years, our business has been built on knowledge, judgement, personal service and enduring relationships with our clients.

We are now looking for a CRM Manager to help us make more intelligent and consistent use of our customer information, improving the relevance of our marketing and creating more opportunities for enquiry, repeat business and long-term client value.

Role Purpose

The CRM Manager will sit within the Marketing team and take day-to-day ownership of how Steppes Travel uses Zoho CRM to understand, segment and communicate with its audiences.

The role is not simply about administering a system. Its purpose is to turn the information held within Zoho into useful marketing action: identifying meaningful groups of clients and prospects, improving the timing and relevance of communications, supporting customer acquisition and nurturing, and helping Steppes Travel build stronger relationships over time.

The successful candidate will understand the commercial opportunities offered by a well-managed CRM and will be equally comfortable working with data, marketing campaigns and colleagues across the business. They will improve the structure and quality of customer information, develop practical segmentation, create and refine automated journeys, and ensure insight from the CRM informs marketing decisions.

They will also help colleagues use the system consistently. This will require clear standards, practical training and an appreciation that good data must be captured as part of everyday work if it is to remain useful.

Key Objectives

• Make Zoho CRM a more useful and commercially productive marketing tool.
• Develop a sustainable segmentation framework that improves the relevance and effectiveness of communications.
• Create lifecycle and automated marketing activity that nurtures prospects, supports conversion and encourages repeat travel.
• Improve the completeness, consistency and practical value of customer data.
• Increase the use of customer insight in marketing planning and decision-making.
• Build confidence and consistency in CRM use across Marketing and the wider business.

Key Responsibilities

CRM Ownership and Development

• Take day-to-day ownership of Zoho CRM within the Marketing team and act as the principal point of contact for its marketing use.
• Develop a clear CRM roadmap aligned with marketing priorities and the wider business strategy.
• Review how Zoho is currently configured and used, identifying practical improvements to fields, workflows, permissions, integrations and reporting.
• Manage relationships with relevant technology partners and suppliers, ensuring changes are properly specified, tested and implemented.
• Remain informed about relevant Zoho functionality and assess new features according to their practical value to Steppes Travel.

Segmentation and Customer Insight

• Develop and maintain a clear, usable segmentation framework for clients, prospects and other audiences.
• Use booking history, interests, engagement, source, lifecycle stage and other relevant information to identify meaningful audience groups.
• Translate segments into practical recommendations for content, campaigns, events, offers and business-development activity.
• Identify opportunities for repeat travel, reactivation, cross-selling, referral and more relevant prospect nurturing.
• Review segment performance and refine the approach as the quality and volume of available data improve.
• Guard against unnecessary complexity, ensuring segmentation remains understandable, maintainable and commercially useful.

Campaigns Automation and Customer Journeys

• Work with the Marketing team to plan, build and deliver targeted CRM campaigns.
• Develop automated journeys for key stages of the customer lifecycle, including new prospects, enquiries, lapsed opportunities, first-time clients, repeat clients and dormant clients.
• Ensure communications are timely, relevant and appropriate to the value and character of the Steppes Travel relationship.
• Test and improve audiences, messages, timing and journey logic using sound evidence rather than assumption alone.
• Coordinate CRM activity with email, events, direct mail, referrals and other marketing channels.

Data Quality Governance and Compliance

• Define clear standards for the customer information required within Zoho and how it should be recorded.
• Monitor data completeness, consistency, duplication and accuracy, resolving issues at source wherever possible.
• Work with the Sales Manager and Travel Specialists to improve data capture throughout the enquiry and booking process.
• Establish proportionate processes for maintaining, cleansing and enriching customer records.
• Support responsible handling of customer information and ensure CRM marketing activity follows relevant data-protection and electronic-marketing requirements.
• Document important fields, definitions, workflows and ownership so that improvements can be sustained.

Reporting and Marketing Performance

• Develop concise reporting on audience growth, engagement, campaign response, lifecycle movement and the contribution of CRM activity.
• Help the Marketing Director understand which segments, messages and customer journeys are generating useful commercial outcomes.
• Connect CRM activity to enquiries and bookings where the available evidence supports it, while being clear about the limits of attribution.
• Identify trends, gaps and opportunities and turn them into practical recommendations.
• Provide reliable audience counts and customer insight for marketing planning, forecasting and campaign development.

Adoption Training and Collaboration

• Build confidence in Zoho through straightforward guidance, practical training and responsive support.
• Explain why consistent data capture matters and demonstrate how better information benefits the people expected to provide it.
• Work closely with Marketing, Sales, Operations and Finance to improve processes that affect customer information and communication.
• Lead CRM-related changes with clarity, patience and appropriate follow-through.
• Encourage a shared view of customer data as a business asset rather than the property of one department.

Skills and Experience

Essential

• Strong practical experience using Zoho CRM or a comparable CRM platform in a marketing environment.
• Experience developing and applying customer segmentation for marketing purposes.
• A sound understanding of CRM strategy, customer lifecycles and the commercial opportunities created by relevant, well-timed communication.
• Experience building targeted campaigns, automated journeys and audience workflows.
• Good analytical ability and confidence working with customer and campaign data.
• Experience improving CRM data quality, structure and adoption.
• The ability to translate marketing requirements into clear system and process changes.
• Strong communication and training skills, with the confidence to influence colleagues across different functions.
• An understanding of UK GDPR, PECR and their practical application to customer marketing.
• Good organisational skills and the ability to manage competing priorities independently.

Desirable

• Direct experience of Zoho CRM, Zoho Campaigns, Zoho Analytics or related applications.
• Experience within luxury travel, specialist travel, hospitality or another high-value relationship-led sector.
• Experience integrating CRM with websites, email platforms, booking systems or other business applications.
• Knowledge of lead scoring, personalisation, testing and customer lifetime value.
• Experience working in a smaller or owner-led business where systems and processes continue to evolve.

Personal Attributes

• Commercially curious and interested in what customer behaviour can reveal.
• Methodical and attentive to detail without losing sight of the purpose behind the data.
• Practical, self-motivated and comfortable taking ownership.
• Able to make complex systems and information understandable to others.
• Collaborative and patient, but willing to challenge inconsistent practice when necessary.
• Sensitive to the personal nature of luxury travel and the importance of using customer information with judgement.
• Focused on useful, sustainable improvement rather than complexity for its own sake.

Success Looks Like

Within the first 12 to 18 months, Steppes Travel will have:

• A clear CRM strategy and development roadmap for Marketing.
• A practical segmentation framework actively used to plan and deliver communications.
• More relevant campaigns and customer journeys supporting enquiry, conversion, repeat business and reactivation.
• Cleaner, more consistent and better-structured customer information within Zoho.
• Clear ownership and documentation of important CRM fields, processes and workflows.
• Useful reporting that connects CRM activity to customer behaviour and commercial outcomes.
• Greater confidence and consistency in CRM use across Marketing and the wider business.

Reward

• The salary range for this role is £40,000-£48,000 per annum, dependent on experience.