Klaviyo Retention Specialist

The Next Race Studio is a growth studio for fashion and lifestyle brands. Email and SMS are where we turn one-time buyers into a base that comes back every drop. We are bringing on a dedicated retention specialist on contract to own Klaviyo end to end across our roster: flows, campaigns, segmentation, and list health, built to fit each brand's calendar and voice.

This is a hands-on contract seat. You are in Klaviyo every day, building and optimizing.

About the studio

We build and run the full growth engine for a small roster of fashion and lifestyle brands: site, email, paid, and the strategy that ties them together. Our brands sell in two modes at once, and retention has to flex with both:

• Drop-based sending: high-intensity campaign pushes around product drops, where timing, teasers, and access windows carry the revenue.
• Steady-state sending: the always-on rhythm of flows and evergreen campaigns that keeps the base warm between drops.

You do not need to already know our system. You do need to be the kind of operator who can read a brand, set the right cadence floor, and build a program that earns its place in the inbox.

What you will own

Flows

• Build and maintain the core flow architecture: welcome, browse abandon, cart and checkout abandon, post-purchase, winback, and VIP / replenishment where the brand calls for it.
• Treat flows as living assets. Test subject lines, timing, offers, and logic, and retire what stops earning.

Campaigns

• Plan and ship the campaign calendar against each brand's drop and seasonal schedule.
• Run both modes cleanly: drop pushes with the right teaser-to-launch sequencing, and steady-state sends that hold cadence without fatiguing the list.

Segmentation and list health

• Own the segmentation framework: engagement tiers, buyer segments, and the suppression logic that protects deliverability.
• Manage list growth and capture (popups, forms, on-site capture) and keep the list clean as it grows.
• Watch deliverability like a hawk: sender reputation, engagement-based sending, sunset flows. You catch a deliverability problem before it shows up in revenue.

Across the program

• Brief design needs against each brand's visual standards and our reference brand library. You direct the email design, you do not have to design every send yourself.
• Report on a fixed cadence: campaign and flow performance, what you changed, and what is next, in plain English.
• Hold to benchmarks per brand and flag when a program is drifting off them.

A note on scope

You own retention strategy and execution: the architecture, the calendar, the segmentation, the numbers, and the QC. Design volume is supported by our design bench; you brief and direct it. Brand creative direction stays with the brand. SMS may grow into scope over time; Klaviyo email is the core today.

What we are looking for

Must-haves

• 2+ years owning lifecycle / retention marketing in Klaviyo, in-house or at an agency, with full build-and-optimize responsibility (not just calendar management).
• Deep command of the core ecommerce flows and the judgment to know which ones a given brand actually needs.
• Real segmentation and deliverability chops: you can explain engagement-based sending, suppression, and sender reputation, and you act on them.
• Comfort with drop-based or launch-driven brands, where the calendar is unforgiving and timing is everything.
• Strong QC instincts. You catch the broken merge tag, the wrong segment, and the missed suppression before a send goes out.
• Clear, plain-English reporting. You can tell leadership what happened, why, and what you are doing next without jargon.

Bonus

• Fashion, streetwear, or lifestyle experience.
• Shopify fluency and comfort with the Klaviyo / Shopify data flow.
• ESP migration experience (MailChimp or other to Klaviyo).
• SMS lifecycle experience.

How we work

• Remote, US Eastern hours for overlap. Drop weekends may need monitoring; routine work stays inside the week.
• Small senior team. You will work directly with the strategist on each account and with leadership on the program. Low ego, high ownership.
• We move in one clean pass, not five rushed ones. We would rather you take the time to get a build right than ship fast and patch.