The Role...

The Soho Friends Manager is responsible for acquiring, growing and leading Soho Friends globally. They work alongside the Group Director to set the strategy for Soho Friends.

Primarily they look for partnership opportunities to drive acquisition at scale. They negotiate the contracts, work with finance to create the business case and partner with digital and projects teams to work on forms of execution. They then manage these partner accounts and further develop these partnerships to deliver on wider business goals eg. revenue for Bedrooms, Soho Works, Private Hire, Members Benefits and Partnerships. The manager is analytical; responsible for pulling data and reports, looking for trends and coming up with tactical opportunities to execute the strategy. They are strategic thinkers; they can think outside the box looking for tactical ways to maintain our churn at expected levels and increase Soho Friends engagement. Engagement is key to the success of Soho Friends.

The Soho Friends manager needs to be proactive, opportunistic, happy to challenge the status quo and most importantly get others on side. Be a supportive business partner and lead from the front. A successful Soho Friends manager knows that partnership and collaboration across multiple departments is crucial to delivering on the Soho Friends programme strategy. They are across all aspects of the Soho Friends experience including communications, data, reporting, digital etc. Although they rely on other teams to deliver on some of these aspects, they set the plan and the approach. The only road to success is through other teams. It’s a balance between what you can do yourself and what you need others to help with.

 

Main Duties…

Acquisition

• Acquire new Soho Friends. Look for partnership opportunities to drive volume of new Soho Friends. This includes setting up the initial discussions, negotiating contracts with legal, building business case with finance etc
• Manage the day to day running of these partnerships including regular monitoring of results, pushing the partners to drive harder on comms, putting forward tactical campaign ideas, trouble-shooting processes etc
• The manager will regularly stress test the acquisition channels we have and look to improve upon these: dot com, Bedrooms journey, Soho Home and third-party channels such as Mr and Mrs Smith and Tablet
• They will find opportunities and tactical solutions to convert public to Soho Friends whether that’s leveraging public data, leveraging key moments within bedroom and retail calendars or pilots such as paid social
• As a travel and lifestyle programme churn will always be a challenge so keeping our acquisition high is key

Engagement

• Analyse and use the data we have on Soho Friends to find new ways to deliver value
• Look for opportunities to drive greater engagement with Soho Friends whether that’s negotiating to open up access to retreats, deliver better benefits eg. Soho Works passes etc.
• Deliver on revenue goals for Retail and Bedrooms by coming up with marketing initiatives to cross promote benefits. Work with Soho Works team, Restaurant, Cowshed teams etc to engage our Soho Friends and come up with tactical initiatives throughout the year to drive spend
• Be proactive and seize moments, spot opportunities to piggyback and leverage what others are doing. 
• Leverage things that are happening across the business to engage our Soho Friends ie. House Festival 2024 where we hosted high spending Friends. It is your responsibility to seek out these opportunities.

Retention

• Collect and analyse retention metrics as well as member survey data to better understand the needs and wants of Soho Friends. Use this information to come up with tactical ways to improve our retention
• Sell your plans to other teams as it is only through others that you will able to deliver. This means negotiating, compromising and partnering to implement your tactics
• Card capture continues to be a challenge for Friends. Work with Home and Bedrooms teams on finding digital solutions to the issue but in the absence of this you will need to other methods to secure these details
• Any retention campaigns that are run or tactical plans you implement you need to gather and analyse the data. Create one pagers and share best practice with other business units on your methods and results

Reporting and Data

• Work alongside finance and data teams to ensure our reporting is accurate
• Regularly check the Friends dashboard so you are across the numbers ie. you know your joiners, leavers, spend on bedrooms, Home etc
• Keep leadership updated on how you are tracking against goals and report back on initiatives to show progress, results etc. Usually done quarterly
• Understand how to create and manipulate reports in salesforce
• Have good working knowledge of Excel to create reporting spreadsheets of your own to track tactical campaigns
• Having an inquisitive mind and feeling comfortable reviewing, manipulating data is important

Communications

• Work alongside the Comms team to set the communications approach for Friends and continuously review and optimise this approach
• Build relationships with membership and retention teams to understand how they do things, share knowledge and trial new tactics
• Liaise with GMs, bedrooms, home, restaurants etc to agree and finalise content for newsletters
• Meet regularly with the Global Comms team to feed into the overall global communications calendar
• Approve all communications going to Soho Friends - you are the last port of call so crucial that you check spelling, review CTAs, check content before anything goes to Friends. You may at times be called on to write copy and feed into the creative
• Review and manage existing email databases and suggest recommendations on how to invite public email databases to become Soho Friends
• Build relationships with the Soho Home team to use their public data, Friends data to drive acquisition and improve engagement

Events

• Partner with the House Events manager to ensure we have a good pipeline of Soho Friends events in the UK
• Regularly meet to understand attendance and ensure that we are keeping events fresh
• Although you will not need to regularly attend events it is advisable to drop into events every now and then to meet Soho Friends in person and get a feeling for whats working/not working etc

Admin

• The Friends manager is the point of escalation for BBs, support team on all matters to do with Soho Friends
• Although local House/bedroom teams will manage most BBs there may be times when you need to step in and make difficult calls to members regarding behavioural issues. You will be required to detail notes of the conversations and document.
• The Friends manager will work alongside teams such as Projects Team, Support Team and Digital. At times they may need to help support to drive things forward
• The manager will take on board feedback from support teams on recurring issues to find ways to help reduce call/case volumes

 

What We Are Looking For...

• Someone who is driven by a balance of data-led analytics and customer understanding. You need to love pouring over data and numbers, be good at spotting trends and have a commercial hat. However, at its core is also an understanding of people, how they think, what they want. 
• Collaborative and proactive; a team lead who can positively and productively impact both strategic and tactical initiatives. As a team of one much of what you do is through collaboration and through others. 
• Upward management and relationship building – as a manager you need to build relationships with your peers but most importantly build relationships with Directors across the business
• Entrepreneurial nature – must be self-motivated and driven to get things done. Ability to think on your feet, finding solutions and be creative with solutions
• Strong organisational abilities - Ability to prioritise tasks, diary and requests. You will have lots of plates spinning so organising your day/week to achieve everything you need to do is important. 
• Detail orientated – being able to scrutinise numbers, data, to spot trends, interesting nuggets. Also review communications, copy and creative
• Proactive not reactive - although there is an overall strategy, you’ll need to spot opportunities, put forward suggestions and take initiative
• Effective communication – proficient in pulling together presentations. Bring others on the journey. Compromise and negotiate to achieve your results. Be flexible and understanding
• Daily use of the Microsoft Office Suite especially Excel, Salesforce and other systems including reporting dashboards
• Excellent critical thinking skills and the ability to exercise good judgment and solve problems quickly and effectively

 

Benefits...

• Weekly Pay
• Every House Membership
• 50% off Food & Drink, 7 days a week
• Staff Room Rate; Any Bedroom, Any House, $100 a night
• Private Health and Dental Care
• Life Assurance
• Day off on your birthday
• Up to 50% Staff Discount on Cowshed & Soho Home
• In conjunction with Soho Impact, take 2 days paid a year to support a charity of your choice.
• Free Counselling Sessions
• Cookhouse & House Tonic: Our Cookhouse & House Tonic programmes offer unique food and drink trainings, events and opportunities to inspire and educate.
• Continuous training to develop yourself personally and professionally
• Exclusive access to our benefits platform with hundreds of discounts on shopping, gym memberships, holidays, insurance and much more
• Team Events: From fitness sessions to cinema screenings and art classes, each month we hold a series of fun events which you can sign up to.