Director of Retention & Lifecycle in London

The mission of this role is to own retention A-Z to fuel the growth to 9-figures. This role comes in to drive three things: lower churn, significantly higher lifetime value, and a better customer experience across the board. Success is lower churn, stronger retention, much higher lifetime value, more revenue from email and SMS, and happier customers.

We are a profitable DTC brand selling premium pet products. We sell across Shopify, Amazon and Chewy, and we're one of the fastest-growing brands in the pet space – $50M+ in annual revenue and scaling to $100M+. We recently launched a second brand, expanding into a new customer base. We're a 100% remote, lean, senior team that moves fast, and every person here has a massive impact on the business.

Culture-fit is our #1 factor when hiring! We have a genuine will-to-win. No work is beneath us if it moves us towards our goals. We use creativity to do more with less – and quickly. We use data to make decisions and live by four core values:

• Better Everyday: have a retention test live every week across subscriptions, flows or the post-purchase experience, and write down what each result teaches.
• Speed Is King: spot a churn, refund or CSAT problem the day it shows up and have a fix in motion that week.
• Work Smart: AI and automation first. Claude reads cancellation reasons, reviews and tickets to find why customers leave, AI drafts flow copy and segments, and retention KPIs report themselves every week.
• Overdeliver: bring the CEO the next big retention lever before being asked, and get more lifetime value from every customer than the plan called for.

If you want to challenge yourself and shape a fast-growing company, work directly with the founder, and play a big role in scaling it to $100M+, then you've come to the right place.

Outcomes (what success looks like):

• Churn goes down: monthly subscription churn and save rate, by brand.
• Retention improves: repeat purchase rate and cohort retention at 3, 6 and 12 months.
• Lifetime value rises significantly: 12-month lifetime value by cohort and brand vs the same cohorts last year.
• Email and SMS drive more revenue: email and SMS share of total revenue, and revenue per recipient.
• Customers are happier across the board: CSAT, review rating, refund rate and tickets per order.

Key Objectives:

• Own the subscription program for both brands: offers, cadence, bundles, the customer portal and the cancellation flow.
• Build and test save offers, skip, swap and pause options, and win-back flows to cut churn.
• Own email and SMS strategy for both brands, and manage the retention agency's calendar, flows, targets and results.
• Build the lifecycle journey from first order to loyal customer: welcome, post-purchase, replenishment, cross-sell, win-back and VIP flows.
• Map and improve the full post-purchase journey, and run a loyalty, referral or VIP program if the numbers support it.
• Lead the customer experience team and set customer service policy that protects both the customer and the margin.
• Report cohort retention and lifetime value against target every month, and name the biggest lever.

Fully remote, based outside the US. Fluent in English.

Retention Leadership: 5-6+ years in retention or lifecycle at DTC brands, including leading retention at a subscription brand doing $30-50M+ a year (ideally nine figures). This is a must.

Subscription Expertise: you have grown a subscription program and know churn, saves, cohorts and MRR inside out.

Lifecycle Marketing: you build email and SMS programs (Klaviyo or similar) that drive a large share of revenue without burning the list.

Tools: deep hands-on experience with Klaviyo (or similar) and Loop (or a similar subscription platform).

Analytical: you read cohort, lifetime value and churn data fast and find the lever that moves the number.

Testing Discipline: you run clear tests on offers, flows and save tactics, and read results honestly.

Leadership: you have led a retention and customer experience team, including managing agencies, through KPIs and goals.

Commercial Judgement: you protect margin, and know when a discount or save offer earns its cost.

Customer obsessed: you understand why customers stay or leave, and fix the cause, not the symptom.

Excellent cultural fit as per our values above. Excited to play a big role in scaling the company and work closely with the founder.

Accountabilities:

• Subscriptions and churn: own the subscription program for both brands, keep at least one save or retention test live every week, grow the share of new customers who subscribe, and report subscribers, MRR, churn and save rate by brand every week.
• Email, SMS and lifecycle: own email and SMS strategy, manage the retention agency, keep the calendar live and flows in testing, keep list health and deliverability strong, and plan sale and launch campaigns with the Head of Growth and the Head of Brand & Community.
• Post-purchase experience and loyalty: ship at least one post-purchase improvement every month, and use cancellation reasons, reviews, surveys and support contact reasons to find why customers leave and fix the cause with the owning team.
• Customer experience and support: lead the Customer Experience Manager, own the weekly CX KPI scorecard (CSAT, first response time, AI resolution rate, refund rate and chargebacks), set customer service policy, and grow 4- and 5-star reviews.
• Retention data and reporting: track cohort retention, repeat purchase rate and lifetime value by brand and channel, report retention KPIs weekly, run a monthly retention review with the CEO, and write the retention playbook as SOPs so it runs without one person.

How Our Hiring Works:

• Application + Screening Interview
• In-Depth Interview with our CEO
• Reference Calls
• Final Interview with our CEO

Salary Expectation: USD $115,000 to $145,000 a year (based on experience and expertise) + performance bonus of 15-20% of base after the trial period.