Why this role exists
Match Bingo has a product that works, a licence that’s live, and a funding round just closed. The next chapter is growth — getting the right players in, making them stay, and building the kind of retention engine that turns a good product into a sustainable business.
This role owns all three levers: paid acquisition, affiliate partnerships, and CRM. You’ll be the person who decides where the marketing budget goes, what it has to return, and how we talk to players at every stage of their journey. Done well, this is the role that ensures Match Bingo scales.
The role in plain term
sYou report directly to the CEO. You own growth end-to-end — from the first paid impression through to the CRM programme that keeps a player coming back six months later. You manage the marketing budget, you set the channel strategy, and you’re accountable for the numbers: cost per acquisition, lifetime value, retention rates, and payback periods
.You’ll work closely with the Head of Engineering (what gets built should reflect what drives retention), and the Head of Data (the data team is your primary analytical resource). You’ll also work within a regulated environment — every campaign, every bonus mechanic, every affiliate deal has to be compliant
.
What you’ll actually
doYou won’t be doing this alone. You’ll have a marketing budget to work with, access to agencies for paid channels, and the Head of Data as your primary analytical partner. The affiliate workload will have its own support — we’re hiring a Junior Affiliate Manager alongside you. The Head of Engineering owns the platform and will be your route to any product or CRM tooling changes you need. The first 90 days are about getting across what exists, making an honest assessment, and setting a clear direction — not doing everything at onc
e.In your first 90 day
- s:Understand the current picture — working with the Head of Data & CEO, get across where players are coming from, what they’re costing us, and how long they’re staying. Agree the metrics that will define success before you start spendin
- g.Get across the affiliate picture — understand which partners are active, what the current deal structures look like and the affiliate management platform we’re using. The Junior Affiliate Manager we’re hiring alongside you will take on the day-to-day of this channel; your job will be to manage overall performance, and oversee key account
- s.Assess the CRM and retention setup — understand the automated journeys that exist, what’s working, and define, with help from the rest of the team, what a proper retention programme should look like. You’ll have the Head of Engineering available to implement changes to the tooling once you know what you nee
- d.Set the channel strategy and start spending — paid search, paid social, affiliates, SEO. There is a budget; you decide where it goes first. You can use agencies for execution on paid channels — the role is to own the strategy, set the targets, and hold performance to account, not to run every campaign yoursel
f.In the year after tha
- t:Own the paid acquisition programme — Google, Meta, and any other channels that earn their place. You set the targets, manage the spend, and are accountable for CPA and payback period against a clearly ring-fenced budge
- t.Build and manage the affiliate network — recruiting new partners, negotiating deal structures, monitoring performance, and cutting what doesn’t work. Affiliate will become a meaningful and efficient acquisition channe
- l.Run the CRM programme end-to-end — automated lifecycle journeys, reactivation campaigns, bonus and promotion strategy, and the segmentation logic that makes all of it smarter over tim
- e.Work with the data team to build the retention models — churn prediction, LTV forecasting, cohort analysis. Your decisions should be driven by data, not instinc
- t.Use AI to do more with less — from creative generation and copy testing at scale, to automated campaign optimisation, to AI-assisted personalisation in CRM. If you’re not actively using AI tools in your growth work, you’re leaving performance on the tabl
- e.Report clearly to the CEO on what the marketing budget is returning — not vanity metrics, but the numbers that connect spend to revenu
e.
The character we’re looking
forAnalytically sharp. You live in the numbers. You can build a CPA model in a spreadsheet and you know what a healthy LTV:CAC ratio looks like for a business at this stage. You don’t trust gut feel when data is availab
le.
Channel-fluent. You know paid search and paid social well enough to manage agencies or run campaigns yourself. You understand how affiliate networks work, how to structure deals, and how to hold partners accountable. You’ve built CRM programmes from a low base bef
ore.Commercially accountable. You think of marketing budget as an investment, not a cost. Every channel has to earn its keep. You’re comfortable owning a payback period target and explaining the variance when it mo
ves.
Compliance-aware. You’ve worked in or adjacent to a regulated industry — gambling, financial services, or similar — and you understand that creativity within a framework is a skill, not a constr
aint.
AI-active. Not in a theoretical way — you’re already using AI tools in your growth work. Whether that’s creative testing at scale, automated bid management, personalisation logic, or something else entirely, you’ve found ways to make your programmes smarter and faster wi
th AI.Hands-on. This is a lean team. You won’t have a large department beneath you from day one. You need to be the person who builds the thing, not the person who manages the person who manages the
thing.
Mus
- t-havesYou’ve owned a paid acquisition budget before — not managed upwards, owned it. Tell us what the budget was, what it was returning when you arrived, and what it was returning when yo
- u left.You’ve built or significantly grown an affiliate programme. Tell us how many partners, what the deal structures looked like, and what it contributed to total acqui
- sition.You’ve run CRM campaigns — lifecycle, reactivation, or both — and you have a clear view on what good looks like. Bonus if you’ve built the segmentation logic yourself rather than inherit
- ing it.You’re analytically self-sufficient. You don’t need a data analyst to pull every report. SQL is a bonus; knowing what questions to ask and being able to work with the output is a m
- inimum.You have genuine experience in or adjacent to a regulated consumer industry. You know what a responsible gambling policy is and why it matters to how you structure prom
- otions.You’re already using AI in your growth work in a meaningful way. Tell us specifically how — we’re not looking for a vague answer about using ChatGPT for copy. What have you built or automated that wouldn’t have been possible or practical
- before?You can work three days a week from Tunbridge
Wells.
The
- packageSalary: £65,000 – £110,000 depending on ex
- perienceEMI equity
- optionsUp to 15% performan
- ce bonusBenefits
- packageThe chance to own growth at a funded, licensed, already-shipping startup at the point where it starts t