Director of Retention

Job Description

About Trade

Trade is changing the way people discover and enjoy specialty coffee at home. We’ve built the country’s largest marketplace of exceptional, independent roasters, pairing deep coffee expertise with smart personalization to help hundreds of thousands of customers find coffees they genuinely love.

Our platform connects people to 500+ freshly roasted coffees from 55+ of America’s best roasters, delivered straight to their door. By making discovery easy and fun, we’re opening up the world of specialty coffee to more people, while helping small, independent roasters scale and thrive. As we grow, we’re building more than a marketplace—we’re creating a category-defining destination for people who care deeply about what they drink every day.

About the Role

Trade is seeking a strategic, hands-on Director of Retention to own how we keep customers coming back and turn first-time buyers into lifelong coffee drinkers.

Reporting to the Chief Marketing Officer, you’ll lead retention and lifecycle strategy across email, SMS, push, and in-product experiences, as well as our subscription, loyalty, and win-back programs. You’ll use personalization and customer data to help every customer find coffees they love, set the retention roadmap, and run the testing program behind it, making sure every touchpoint after the first order is timely, relevant, and built to bring customers back.

You’ll have real ownership over how we recognize and reward customers at key milestones, how we make the first 90 days after a first order smooth, rewarding, and sticky, and how we use products and merchandising to influence retention. All of it will be grounded in customer research. We’re looking for someone who has done this work before and can show the results.

We’re a small team, so this role is broad by design. It’s ideal for a retention marketer who is as comfortable in the data as in the inbox: someone who can dig into customer-level and cohort data in the morning to understand why customers stay or leave, turn those insights into long-term strategy, and build a segment or review an email flow in the afternoon. We’ll measure your work by the repeat purchases, subscriber growth, and lifetime value it creates.

What You’ll Do

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• Own Trade’s retention strategy and roadmap, setting goals for repeat purchase rate, subscription growth, churn, and customer lifetime value
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• Lead Trade’s customer research, the foundation of our retention strategy, using customer-level and cohort analysis, surveys, interviews, and feedback to find the root causes of churn and turn what you learn into long-term strategy
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• Own the first 90 days after a customer’s first order, making onboarding smooth, rewarding, and sticky, and improving second-order rate, early churn, and 90-day retention
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• Recognize and reward customers at key milestones, such as a first reorder, a subscription anniversary, or a spending or tenure threshold, and measure the effect on repeat purchase and LTV
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• Shape how products are presented and merchandised across email, SMS, and logged-in experiences to influence retention, including recommendations, replenishment prompts, discovery, and bundling
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• Build and lead lifecycle marketing across email, SMS, and push, from onboarding to replenishment, cross-sell, and win-back, implementing flows in Klaviyo yourself
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• Grow and optimize Trade’s subscription program, including sign-up experience, delivery cadence, skip and pause options, and cancellation flows
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• Design and launch loyalty, referral, and rewards programs that deepen engagement with customers and with our roasters
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• Use purchase data and taste profiles to build segments and journeys that help customers discover coffees they love, working with Product and Engineering to define the audience criteria and parameters personalization requires
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• Run a testing program across offers, messaging, timing, and flows, and turn results into repeatable playbooks
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• Partner with Growth, Product, Design, and Customer Experience to align acquisition, onboarding, and post-purchase experiences
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• Use AI tools to move faster across segmentation, testing, personalization, and reporting
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• Report on retention health, cohort performance, and program ROI to leadership
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• Build and lead a small, high-performing team as the function grows
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Who You Are

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• Customer-obsessed: you understand why people come back and what makes them leave, and your research has changed strategy before
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• Focused on the first 90 days: you know those weeks decide which customers stay, and you’ve owned a new-customer journey with results to show for it
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• Good at celebrating customers: you’ve designed programs that recognize and reward key milestones and know what makes them land
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• Opinionated about merchandising: you have a strong point of view on how to present products to influence retention, and you’ve worked with Merchandising, Product, and Engineering to put it into practice
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• Creative: you know what makes a message feel personal rather than automated, and you can brief creative partners accordingly
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• Technical by nature: you can build new flows in Klaviyo yourself and work directly with developers to define the audience criteria, data properties, and parameters that personalization requires
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• Measurement-minded: you connect retention work to repeat purchase, subscriber health, margin, and lifetime value, not just open rates and clicks
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• Confident, but open: you hold a point of view, and you’re equally comfortable changing it when someone brings a better one
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• Flexible about scope: on a small team, the most useful leader is the one who picks up what needs doing
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• Forward-looking: you’re fluent in how lifecycle channels, privacy rules, and AI are changing personalization, and excited to test what comes next
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• Curious about coffee: expertise not required, we’ll get you there
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Required Experience

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• 6+ years of retention, lifecycle, CRM, or integrated marketing experience, including at least 1–2 years leading retention or lifecycle strategy, ideally at a DTC, subscription, or food and beverage brand
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• A track record of growing repeat purchase rate, subscription revenue, and customer lifetime value, with results you can point to
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• Experience leading customer research, including cohort and customer-level analysis, surveys, and interviews, and turning the findings into retention strategy
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• Hands-on technical experience building and optimizing email, SMS, and push programs in Klaviyo, including implementing new flows, features, and segments yourself
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• Experience working with developers to define the audience criteria, data properties, and parameters needed to power personalization and drive relevant, timely communication
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• Experience designing and scaling subscription, loyalty, or referral programs
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• Strong analytical skills, including cohort analysis, segmentation, LTV and churn modeling, and A/B testing, with working knowledge of tools like PostHog, Shopify, or similar
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• Experience partnering with Product, Engineering, Design, and Customer Experience teams to improve post-purchase experiences
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• Experience selecting lifecycle platform vendors, managing those relationships on behalf of a business, and shaping their product roadmaps
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• Experience managing and developing a team
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How We Work

We’re in our Midtown Manhattan office three days a week, with everyone together in person Tuesday through Thursday. Being face-to-face is core to how we operate—it allows us to move faster, solve challenges in real time, and generate new ideas through hands-on teamwork. This is the perfect environment for people who value close collaboration while building something meaningful together.

What We Offer

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• The chance to help grow a profitable, mission- and values-driven company alongside an experienced leadership team
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• The opportunity to deepen your skills and make a lasting impact as the organization scales
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• Ongoing mentorship and support from leadership and management
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• A competitive salary and unlimited vacation
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• $500 a year to spend on amazing coffee
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• Best-in-class health benefits and a 401(k)
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• Twice-monthly catered lunches
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• A pet-friendly office
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• Two paid days of Trade-sponsored community service each year
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NYC Base Salary

$140,000- $180,000

In addition, Trade offers comprehensive benefits, including company-paid health, dental, and vision insurance, 401(k), flexible spending account, and paid leave (including vacation time and parental leave) in accordance with applicable plans and policies.

Please beware of job scams: Trade Coffee will never ask candidates for payment or financial information, and all official communication comes from @tradecoffeeco.com addresses.

Legitimate open roles will be posted on our careers page or LinkedIn profile.

Equal Opportunity Statement

We are committed to diversity and inclusivity.