Senior CRM Manager - Lifecycle & Retention

Join our expanding Product Growth team! We’re actively recruiting a Senior CRM Manager as we continue to scale at M-KOPA. You’ll build and scale the lifecycle systems that drive retention, upsell, and customer lifetime value for millions of everyday earners across Africa.

The Impact 💚

You’ll design the retention and upsell infrastructure that turns first-time customers into long-term, high-value ones, driving measurable CLV growth while creating financial inclusion for Africa’s traditionally excluded. We’ve already helped over 10 million customers access over $2 billion in credit. It’s your chance to be part of something that’s transforming lives across an entire continent 🌍

The Opportunity

🏗️ Build lifecycle CRM from the ground up: design and scale retention, repayment, and upsell programmes across 4 African markets (Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana), working with proprietary data from millions of customers and a unique distribution model (30,000+ field agents + 300 telesales)

💰 Own retention and upsell outcomes: your success is measured in CLV growth, retention and renewal rates, repayment behaviour, and upsell revenue

🎲 Bring fresh thinking: we want someone who pushes lifecycle beyond the standard playbook, gamification, loyalty mechanics, streaks, rewards, and other creative growth levers that make repayment and engagement genuinely enjoyable, not just another push notification

🎯 Nice to have, not required: we’re curious whether you’ve also touched performance or paid marketing. We don’t run that as part of Growth today, but understanding how it connects to retention is something we’re actively thinking about, and your perspective could help shape where we take it

🚀 Go hands-on daily: build automated journeys, design experiments, analyse results, and scale what works

🏆 Global recognition: join a company named by TIME 100 as one of the world’s most influential and by the Financial Times as Africa’s fastest-growing for 5 consecutive years (2022-2026)

What You’ll Do

You’ll own lifecycle CRM strategy and execution end to end. Build automated customer journeys in CleverTap, run experiments on messaging and timing, analyse retention and repayment cohorts, and scale successful programmes across markets. Partner with Product, Commercial, and Operations teams to turn customer behaviour into retention and growth opportunities.

Your Core Responsibilities

• Build and scale multi-channel lifecycle programmes: design onboarding, retention, churn prevention, and upsell journeys across SMS, WhatsApp, push, and in-app messaging

• Design behavioural trigger-based upsell systems: move customers from entry products (smartphones/e-bikes) to higher-value bundles (digital loans, insurance, device protection) based on payment behaviour and engagement signals

• Run rigorous experiments: A/B test messaging, timing, incentives, and offers with clear hypotheses and statistical rigour, then turn wins into repeatable playbooks

• Own retention economics: track and optimise LTV, cohort retention, renewal rates, and upsell performance, translating insights into action

• Scale what works across markets: turn successful experiments into documented frameworks that enable teams to execute retention initiatives across 4 African markets

Your Environment 💼

Tech Stack: CleverTap, Braze, MoEngage, or similar

Analytics: Mixpanel, Amplitude, Looker

Channels: WhatsApp, SMS, push, in-app messaging, telesales

What You Need

• 6+ years building and scaling CRM or lifecycle marketing, ideally in businesses where daily or weekly customer engagement drives retention and revenue.

• You’ve built CRM systems, not just optimised them, whether migrating platforms (Mailchimp → Braze), designing journey architecture from scratch, or scaling programmes across markets.

• You’re hands-on in CRM platforms daily, personally building journeys in tools like Braze, CleverTap, MoEngage, Customer.io, or Iterable.

• You think in business outcomes, your achievements mention LTV growth, retention revenue, upsell rates, renewal improvements, not just open rates or engagement metrics.

• You run rigorous experiments, designing tests with clear hypotheses, control groups, and measurable success criteria.

• You bring fresh eyes to lifecycle marketing, someone who’s introduced gamification, loyalty programmes, streaks, badges, or other non-obvious engagement mechanics into a retention strategy, and can talk about what worked, what didn’t, and why.

• Relevant backgrounds we’re interested in: MVNO experience, super-apps with daily engagement models, mobile gaming with daily retention mechanics, prepaid subscription services, or B2C fintech/subscription businesses where high-frequency engagement drives the model.

• Bonus, not required: exposure to performance or paid marketing (paid social, paid search, app install campaigns), and a point of view on how acquisition spend and targeting could connect to retention outcomes. This isn’t something you’d own, we’re just genuinely interested in how you think about it.

Location & Benefits

• 🌍 Fully remote role within UTC -1 to UTC +3 time zones

• 🤝 Work with diverse teams across UK, Europe, and Africa

• 📚 Professional development programmes and coaching partnerships

• 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 Family-friendly policies and flexible working arrangements

• 💚 Well-being support and career growth opportunities

Our Mission 🌍

We create financial inclusion for the traditionally excluded through a fair, flexible, customer-centric financing model. We strive to drive greater inclusion of women, youth, and low-income communities.

Our Impact 💚

Our technology has created measurable change:

• Connected 📱: 2.5 million first-time smartphone users connected

• Prosperous 💰: 70% of customers use M-KOPA products for income generation, with 35,000+ livelihoods created for agents

• Green 🌱: 2.1 million tonnes of CO₂ avoided through clean energy products, with over 127,700 circular economy products provided

Why M-KOPA?

At M-KOPA, we empower our people to own their careers through diverse development programs, coaching partnerships, and on-the-job training. We support individual journeys with family-friendly policies, prioritize well-being, and embrace flexibility.

Join us in shaping the future of M-KOPA as we grow together. Explore more at m-kopa.com.

Recognized four times by the Financial Times as one Africa’s fastest growing companies (2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026), named on CNBC’s World’s Top Fintech Companies 2025 & 2026 and by TIME100 Most influential companies in the world 2023 and 2024 , we’ve served over 10 million customers, unlocking $2 billion in cumulative credit for the everyday earners across Africa, in addition to over 10,000 e-bikes financed in Kenya.

Important Notice

M-KOPA is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer committed to assembling a diverse, broadly trained staff. Women, minorities, and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.

M-KOPA explicitly prohibits the use of Forced or Child Labour and respects the rights of its employees to agree to terms and conditions of employment voluntarily, without coercion, and freely terminate their employment on appropriate notice. M-KOPA shall ensure that its Employees are of legal working age and shall comply with local laws for youth employment or student work, such as internships or apprenticeships.

M-KOPA does not collect/charge any money as a pre-employment or post-employment requirement. This means that we never ask for ‘recruitment fees’, ‘processing fees’, ‘interview fees’, or any other kind of money in exchange for offer letters or interviews at any time during the hiring process.

Applications for this position will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Shortlisting and interviews will take place at any stage during the recruitment process. We reserve the right to close the vacancy early if a suitable candidate is selected before the advertised closing date.

If your application is successful M-KOPA undertakes pre-employment background checks as part of its recruitment process, these include; criminal records, identification verification, academic qualifications, employment dates and employer references.