The Product Owner – Retention & Loyalty is responsible for designing and executing strategies that increase customer retention, engagement, and lifetime value (CLV).
This role owns retention-focused product initiatives across CRM, loyalty programs, personalization engines, incentives, customer lifecycle journeys, and repeat-booking funnels.
The PO collaborates closely with data, marketing, engineering, UX, payments, customer support, and commercial teams to build a retention engine that drives long-term customer loyalty and sustainable revenue.
🔑 Key Responsibilities
1. Retention Strategy & Customer Lifecycle
- Develop a clear retention strategy aligned with business goals.
- Build end-to-end lifecycle journeys: onboarding, activation, engagement, conversion, and re-activation.
- Segment customer cohorts and define tailored retention tactics for each segment.
- Identify high-churn risk segments and create interventions to prevent drop-off.
2. Product Roadmap & Backlog Ownership
- Own the roadmap for retention, loyalty features, CRM, and personalization tools.
- Create user stories, acceptance criteria, and prioritize initiatives based on expected retention uplift.
- Drive continuous delivery through agile ceremonies (grooming, planning, reviews)..
3.Loyalty Program Ownership
- Design and enhance loyalty programs (points, tiers, rewards, perks, vouchers).
- Manage the earn & burn engine, redemption rules, and partner integrations.
- Benchmark loyalty programs from global players (Airlines, Hotels, E-commerce).
- Improve loyalty enrollment rate, engagement frequency, and redemption experience.
4. CRM, Personalization & Engagement Tools
- Own CRM journeys across email, SMS, push notifications, in-app messages, and remarketing tools.
- Create personalized promotions and dynamic content based on user behavior, booking history, and preferences.
- Manage triggers such as abandoned search, abandoned booking, destination reminders, price drop alerts, etc.
- Optimize communication frequency to avoid fatigue and unsubscribe spikes.
5. Data-Driven Optimization
- Use cohort analysis, funnel performance, RFM segmentation, churn prediction models, and CLV analytics to guide decisions.
- Monitor customer engagement dashboards and identify areas of leakage.
- Run A/B tests on journeys, messaging, incentives, and recommendation algorithms.
- Use insights to continuously refine retention strategies.
6. Incentives, Offers & Pricing Levers
- Design incentive mechanics that improve repeat bookings (promo codes, cashback, credits, bundles).
- Work with finance & revenue teams to align incentive budget with ROI.
- Ensure fraud-free and abuse-controlled incentive systems.
7. Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Partner with marketing on CRM campaigns, promotions, and audience segmentation.
- Collaborate with engineering & data teams to build recommendation systems and personalization engines.
- Work with customer care to identify root causes affecting retention (refund delays, UX issues, pricing complaints).
- Align with UX to improve repeat booking flows and increase session frequency.
Requirements
- 4–7 years of experience in product, growth, CRM, or retention roles in OTA/e-commerce.
- Strong knowledge of customer lifecycle marketing, loyalty programs, and segmentation.
- Experience with CRM platforms (Braze, WebEngage, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Clevertap, Iterable).
- Strong analytical mindset with experience in A/B testing and cohort analysis.
- Familiarity with personalization engines and recommendation systems.
- Ability to translate data insights into product features.
- Excellent planning, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
- Experience working in Agile environments.
Key Success Metrics (KPIs)
- Retention Rate (D30 / D60 / D90).
- Repeat Booking Rate.
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV).
- Churn reduction %.
- Loyalty enrollment & redemption rates.
- Open rate, click-through rate, conversion rate for CRM channels.
- Activation-to-Repeat funnel improvements.
- Reduced cost per retained customer.