Lifecycle & Retention Strategist

About The Role

Bad Birdie is growing fast, and the Lifecycle and Retention Strategist is the person who makes sure that growth compounds. You will own the entire post-purchase experience: email through Klaviyo, SMS through Attentive, loyalty through Rivo, and reviews through Okendo. Your job is to build the strategy that ties all of it together and turns one-time buyers into repeat customers and repeat customers into brand evangelists.

This is a builder role at a brand that has already earned serious customer love. The audience is engaged, the data is rich, and the opportunity to create a best-in-class retention program is wide open. You will have full ownership of the scope, high visibility on a small team, and work that directly determines how well our growth investments pay off over time.

What Success Looks Like

Within the first 3 to 6 months, success looks like:

• Klaviyo and Attentive flows are rebuilt, optimized, and outperforming previous benchmarks
• A loyalty program redesign is live with a refined tier structure, reward mechanics, and measurable lift in repeat purchase rate
• A referral program is launched and generating attributable revenue for the first time
• A retention dashboard is built, maintained, and shared weekly connecting email and SMS performance to revenue goals
• Review volume is growing systematically through an owned Okendo solicitation strategy
• Head of Ecommerce trusts the post-purchase experience is covered and is free to focus on acquisition strategy

What You’ll Be Responsible For

Email and SMS Strategy

• Own the Klaviyo ecosystem: flows, campaigns, segmentation, deliverability, and list health
• Own Attentive for SMS: campaign strategy, compliance, subscriber growth, and revenue attribution. This is a revenue channel, not a notification tool.
• Manage cross-channel coordination between Klaviyo and Attentive. Suppression logic, frequency capping, and journey sequencing across both platforms so customers are not getting hit from every direction at once.
• Build and optimize lifecycle flows: welcome series, post-purchase education, browse and cart abandonment, winback, sunset, VIP, replenishment, and other automations
• Plan and execute the campaign calendar. Weekly sends, product drops, seasonal pushes, and Breakfast Balls content integration.

Retention and Loyalty

• Redesign and iterate a loyalty and rewards program that fits our customer (golf-obsessed, repeat buyers, brand-loyal). Tier structure, reward mechanics, and earning rules all need to be refined.
• Build and launch a referral program. The vast majority of customers find us via word-of-mouth or social. A structured referral program is one of our highest-ROI retention opportunities and you will be the one to own it.
• Own repeat purchase rate, customer LTV, and cohort retention metrics. These become your scoreboard.
• Build reactivation strategies for lapsed customers, seasonal buyers, and one-time purchasers
• Share post-purchase learnings that inform acquisition strategy

Customer Segmentation and Personalization

• Build behavioral segments: purchase frequency, category affinity, channel preference, seasonal patterns, and RFM (recency, frequency, monetary) modeling
• Develop personalized content and offer strategies by segment. A 4x repeat buyer should not get the same email as a first-time browser.
• Use existing survey data (we have an extensive customer dataset) and purchase data to inform messaging, timing, and offers
• Address perception gaps directly in lifecycle messaging. Value communication is a retention lever, not just a brand exercise.

Reviews and Social Proof

• Own the Okendo review solicitation strategy end-to-end: optimize request timing sequences, incentivize photo and video reviews, and build systematic response workflows
• Grow review volume and quality. We have thousands of reviews and a customer base that loves the brand. Build the systematic program that turns that sentiment into a compounding asset.
• Build post-purchase NPS and CSAT collection and close the feedback loop. Our NPS is strong. Your job is to make it a continuous signal and act on every data point.
• Coordinate with the ecommerce team to pipe UGC, review content, and Okendo attributes into product pages and site experiences

Analytics and Reporting

• Build and maintain a retention dashboard: LTV by cohort, repeat rate by acquisition source, flow performance, campaign ROI, list growth, referral attribution
• Run a weekly reporting cadence. What worked, what did not, what is changing next week.
• Connect email and SMS performance to broader revenue goals. This is not a side channel, it is a revenue engine. Best-in-class DTC brands drive 25 to 35% of revenue through owned channels.

Qualifications

• 3 to 5 years owning lifecycle marketing or retention at a DTC brand (not just email execution, but strategy, flows, and revenue ownership)
• Deep Klaviyo expertise: flows, advanced segmentation, dynamic content, A/B testing, deliverability management
• Hands-on experience with Attentive or a comparable SMS platform like Postscript, used as a revenue channel
• You have built a retention program from early-stage or rebuilt one that was underperforming. This is not a maintain-what-exists role.
• Loyalty or referral program experience. You have launched at least one and can point to the revenue impact.
• Strong analytical mindset. You think in cohorts, LTV, RFM, and payback periods, not just open rates.
• Copywriting instincts. You can write a subject line that gets opened and body copy that sounds human, not templated.
• Comfortable managing email and SMS on separate platforms, including suppression logic and frequency management across both
• Design skills. You can operate inside Figma or Photoshop to design and slice.
• You are a self-starter who builds systems, documents processes, and does not wait for a brief

Bonus Points

• Experience with Rivo or similar Shopify-native loyalty platforms
• Experience with Okendo or similar review platforms, particularly review request optimization and UGC collection
• Referral program launch experience
• You have worked at a brand doing $10M to $80M in DTC revenue with a physical product
• Background in apparel, golf, lifestyle, or fashion verticals
• Experience with zero-party data collection (quizzes, preference centers, progressive profiling)
• You have built weather-triggered or seasonal campaign strategies for products with seasonal buying patterns

What We Offer

At Bad Birdie, we care deeply about our people and culture. Here’s what you can expect:

• Generous PTO and sick time
• 10 recognized holidays
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance, plus HSA and 401(k) with company match
• Heavily discounted Bad Birdie apparel

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