Job Description: Here at Rakuten Kobo Inc. we offer a casual working start-up environment and a group of friendly and talented individuals. Our employees rank us highly in terms of commitment to work/life balance. We realize that for our people to be innovative, creative and passionate they need to feel valued and supported. We believe in rewarding all our employees with competitive salaries, performance based annual bonuses, stock options and training opportunities.
If you’re looking for a company that inspires passion, personal, and professional growth – join Kobo and come help us on our mission of making reading lives better. The Role: Rakuten Kobo is looking for a CRM Marketing Manager, Subscriptions to join our CRM & Lifecycle Marketing team. Reporting to the Senior Manager, CRM, this role will own and optimize key customer journeys across Kobo Plus and Audiobooks, using lifecycle marketing to drive acquisition, trial conversion, engagement, retention and customer lifetime value.
This is a highly data-driven role at the intersection of customer strategy, personalization, experimentation and execution. You will develop targeted lifecycle programs across email, push and emerging channels such as SMS, using customer behaviour and insights to deliver more relevant experiences at every stage of the subscription journey. You will partner closely with Kobo Plus, Analytics, Creative, Content, Marketing Technology, Product and other teams to identify growth opportunities, develop campaigns and always on journeys, test new approaches and continuously improve performance.
Success in this role means moving beyond individual campaigns to build smarter, more personalized lifecycle experiences that strengthen customer engagement and improve the long-term economics of our subscription businesses. The Person You are equal parts customer advocate, marketer and problem solver. You are curious about why customers behave the way they do and are excited by finding ways to make their experience better while improving business performance.
You are comfortable moving between strategy and execution: digging into performance data, developing a lifecycle hypothesis, briefing creative, working through targeting logic and evaluating whether a program worked. Most importantly, you don't think of CRM as simply sending more emails. You see it as an opportunity to use data, technology, creativity and experimentation to build stronger relationships with customers over time.
What You'll Do Own the Subscription Customer Lifecycle Develop and execute CRM strategies across the Kobo Plus and Audiobooks customer lifecycle, from acquisition and onboarding through engagement, retention, win-back and reactivation. Identify opportunities to improve trial-to-paid conversion, content discovery, addto-library behaviour, engagement, retention, and lifetime value. Build and optimize always-on automated journeys alongside targeted campaigns and promotional programs.
Develop strategies for key customer moments including onboarding, trial expiry, declining engagement, churn risk, cancellation and win-back. Drive Personalization & Experimentation Use customer behaviour, preferences, and lifecycle signals to create increasingly personalized and relevant communications. Develop segmentation strategies that improve targeting and customer experience. Build a strong experimentation roadmap across messaging, creative, offers, timing, frequency, audience and journey design.
Partner with Analytics to understand customer behaviour, evaluate incremental impact and translate insights into actionable CRM strategies. Continuously optimize programs based on performance, customer insights and test results. Deliver Best-in-Class CRM Programs Own campaigns and lifecycle programs end-to-end, from strategy and briefing through execution, QA, launch and post-campaign analysis. Write clear, insight-led creative briefs and partner with Creative teams to develop effective cust