A career within any of these fields relies on more than just writing and oral communication. It’s about creating better customer journeys and triggering the right response, at the right time, to allow customers to buy your product/ service, and to remain engaged a brand. Through careful understanding of data & trends, you will understand more accurately what customers likes & dislikes. This creates more personalised and relevant customer experiences, which gets better results, a greater ROI, and an increase in sales.

If you genuinely enjoy working with numbers, data and consider yourself to be an analytical person, a career in Marketing automation, CRM & Direct marketing is highly rewarding as you’ll need to constantly find new and creative ways to reach your target audiences, including events, store displays, advertising and direct mailing.

Those in CRM tend to be in charge of defining ‘customer lifecycle’ programmes which see customers receive set pieces of communications at specific points in time when they move through the lifecycle. All client campaigns are analysed regularly and often determine which follow up activities should take place.

There will be a lot of planning, executing and measuring direct response campaigns to pinpoint when a customer is reacting. Every campaign is structured in a way that makes it possible to identify and report on when a customer has acted on it. By using techniques like profiling and segmentation, it’s easy to target only those exact customers that you believe your message will be relevant to. These campaigns focus predominantly on customer acquisition or retention, aiming to sell and cross-sell.

• Marketing Automation Specialist
• Direct Marketing Executive
• CRM Specialist
• Marketing Automation Manager
• Marketing Automation Executive
• CRM Executive
• Direct Marketing Specialist
• Direct Marketing Assistant
• Direct Marketing Associate

• Head of Marketing Automation
• Marketing automation Lead
• Direct Marketing Manager
• Senior Marketing Specialist
• Subscriptions Manager
• Campaign Manager
• CRM / eCRM Manager

We’ve outlined the latest salary benchmarks for CRM, Marketing Automation & Direct Marketing roles in the guides below:

B2B Marketing Salary Guide – South West

B2C In-house Marketing Salary Guide – London & South East

B2C In-house Marketing Salary Guide – London & South West

To work in Marketing Automation, CRM or direct marketing, you should have great organisational skills as well as overall project management skills. Being good with numbers is a huge strength in this sector, as well as analytical skills. Attention to detail is key, as well as motivation and enthusiasm while sticking to tight deadlines and working well under pressure.

Typically, those who work within Marketing Automation, CRM or direct marketing come from a broad spectrum of academic backgrounds, however, you will be at an advantage if you have worked in a role involving data/numbers.

Salary:

£22k – £25k

What They Do:

Supports direct marketing campaigns through data handling, proofreading, scheduling print/mail/email campaigns, and monitoring campaign performance.

Skills Needed:

• Data entry and cleansing
• Print and email coordination
• Mail merge and distribution tools
• Proofreading and compliance checks
• Team support and organisation

Salary:

£26k – £35k

What They Do:

Executes marketing campaigns across email, SMS, and direct mail. Supports automation workflows, audience segmentation, and performance analysis.

Skills Needed:

• CRM/email platforms (Salesforce, Braze, Dotdigital)
• Segmentation and targeting
• Personalisation and scheduling
• Understanding of GDPR and data protection
• Campaign tracking and reporting tools

Salary:

£35k – £45k

What They Do:

Focuses on creating, testing, and optimising automated journeys or direct mail/email campaigns. Builds workflows, maps user journeys, and delivers personalised content.

Skills Needed:

• Journey building and automation logic
• Behavioural targeting
• Integration with CRM systems
• Workflow testing and optimisation
• Reporting on automation KPIs

Salary:

£40k – £55k

What They Do:

Owns CRM strategy, builds automated workflows, and collaborates with content and data teams. Focuses on increasing retention, engagement, and CLTV.

Skills Needed:

• Lifecycle marketing strategy
• CRM platforms (Salesforce, HubSpot, Adobe, Iterable)
• Campaign performance optimisation
• GDPR and data compliance
• Cross-channel CRM (email, SMS, push)

Salary:

£45k – £60k

What They Do:

Designs and manages automated journeys across channels. Integrates tools with the CRM system and ensures data accuracy and targeting effectiveness.

Skills Needed:

• Workflow building and logic mapping
• API integrations and tech stack familiarity
• Behavioural targeting
• Marketing ops and CRM data structure
• Automation performance reporting

Salary:

£45k – £60k

What They Do:

Drives strategies to retain and grow the existing customer base using data-driven email, SMS, and loyalty campaigns.

Skills Needed:

• CLTV analysis and segmentation
• Churn modelling and win-back strategies
• Loyalty and re-engagement campaigns
• Experience with cross-sell and up-sell flows
• Customer feedback loops

Salary:

£65k – £85k

What They Do:

Leads the CRM and automation strategy, manages platform investments, and ensures alignment with commercial and product goals. Oversees performance reporting and team management.

Skills Needed:

• CRM roadmap development and ownership
• Forecasting, ROI and commercial KPIs
• Team structure and agency oversight
• Senior stakeholder influence
• Tech stack strategy

Salary:

£85k – £110k+

What They Do:

Owns the customer lifecycle vision. Leads enterprise-wide retention strategies, oversees tech integrations, and partners with C-level to grow revenue through loyalty and engagement.

Skills Needed:

• Visionary lifecycle strategy and data transformation
• Investment in tech infrastructure and martech
• Executive stakeholder management
• Growth accountability (CLTV, churn, NPS)
• Cross-functional collaboration (product, insight, digital)