Junior Retention Strategist (Email & SMS)

The short version

You’ll be second in command of a client pod, sitting directly beside a senior Retention Strategist and learning to do their job while you’re still doing yours. Most agency roles at this level hand you a brief and expect you to build it. This one expects you to read the brief, understand why it exists, and tell us when it’s wrong.

Why this role exists

We run client work in pods. Each pod has a Strategist who owns the thinking, the client relationship and the revenue outcome; an Activations Specialist who owns the technical build and QA in Klaviyo; plus a designer and a copywriter. We kept hitting the same gap. The Strategist gets pulled into execution when things get busy. The Activations Specialist can execute anything but hasn’t been trained to think about why. Neither can fully cover the other. So we’re building the seat in between. You’re the Strategist’s right hand. When they’re on a client call, you’re moving the pod. When they’re on leave, you hold the account. When the Activations Specialist is buried, you build. You’re the person who knows enough about both sides to keep an account running without either one of them in the room. That’s a lot of responsibility for a junior seat. It’s also the fastest way we know to make someone a strategist.

What you’ll learn here

This is the part most job posts skip, so we’ll be specific.

You’ll learn to diagnose instead of guess. Klaviyo revenue is down 20% this month. Is that a flow problem, a deliverability problem, a list fatigue problem, or is store revenue just down and email is fine? Most people at your level can’t tell those apart. You’ll learn to, on real accounts, with a senior strategist checking your reasoning.

You’ll learn what actually moves retention revenue. Flow architecture, segmentation, offer strategy, cadence. Not formatting tweaks, not sending more email.

You’ll learn to think in leverage. On any account there are twenty things you could do. Two of them matter. Picking those two is the entire job of a strategist, and it’s a skill you build by being asked the question every week until you have an answer.

You’ll learn to own a client narrative. What happened, why it happened, what we’re doing about it. Delivered clearly enough that a client trusts you in a bad month, not just a good one.

You’ll sit in gameplan reviews, standups and client calls with senior strategists from day one. You’ll be asked for your view. You’ll be wrong sometimes and told why.

Do this well and you’re running your own pod as a full Strategist inside 12 to 18 months. That’s not a vague promise. It’s the path, and we’ve moved people down it.

What you’ll actually do

• Execute at a level that never needs checking. Build flows, campaigns, segments and popups in Klaviyo. Triggers, filters, conditional splits, send windows, suppression logic, UTMs. Correct the first time.
• Own QA like your name is on it. Rendering across Gmail, Apple Mail and Outlook. Live links. Dynamic content resolving properly. Exclusions actually excluding. A send with an error is worse than a late send, and you’re the last line before it goes out.
• Question the brief. This is the part we mean seriously. If a flow doesn’t make sense, if a segment will overlap with something already live, if the timing will cannibalise a campaign — say it before you build, not after. Executing a bad brief perfectly is still a bad outcome, and we’d rather you push back.
• Read the numbers and form a view. Pull the data, then tell us what it means. “Browse abandonment RPR dropped 30% after we changed the segment” is worth more than a clean export.
• Keep production honest. ClickUp current in real time. Blockers flagged the moment you see them, not the day of the deadline. Nobody should have to chase you.
• Step into either seat when the pod needs it. Cover the Strategist on a call or a weekly update. Cover the build when the Activations Specialist is stretched.

Who this is for

You’re already fast in the tools. This part isn’t negotiable.

• 2+ years hands-on in Klaviyo for an ecommerce brand or agency. Not “familiar with.” You’ve built multi-branch flows, written nested segment logic, debugged a trigger that wasn’t firing, and know exactly where Klaviyo’s date-relative filters trip people up.
• Working knowledge of Shopify — how the integration feeds Klaviyo, what the standard events and properties are, where the data breaks.
• Comfortable with the wider stack (reviews, subscriptions, loyalty, SMS, popups) and able to figure out a new tool without a walkthrough.
• You want to know why, and you ask.
• You flag what looks wrong even when it isn’t strictly yours.
• You can explain a decision in one sentence.
• You manage your own timelines.

You think past the ticket.

You don’t need to be the smartest person in the room. You need to be curious, accurate, and hard to rattle. We’ll teach you the rest.

This isn’t for you if: you want a pure strategy seat and expect someone else to build. In this role you build, and the building is what earns you the strategic seat.

Setup

Fully remote, full-time. A defined portfolio of ecommerce clients, a small pod you’ll work with daily, and direct access to senior strategists and managers. You will not be left to figure it out alone.