Head of Retention CRM

About this role

Fresh Food, Happy Dogs.

We believe dogs deserve the healthiest, most natural and tastiest meals - with none of the nasties. That’s why we make FRESHly prepared food, cooked just like you would at home and delivered direct to our customers in perfect portions. As a B-Corp certified company, you’re joining a sustainable business that genuinely cares about our people, our products and our impact on the planet. Our goal is simple: to help dogs live healthier, happier, and longer lives, while leaving humans smiling after every interaction.

We’ve come a long way since our co-founders (Kev & Dave), hand delivered the very first Butternut Box. Today, we feed hundreds of thousands of hungry dogs across the UK and Europe - but we won’t stop until we’re feeding dogs everywhere. To get there, we need a team of brilliant people who share that ambition to come and work for us.

🐾 The job:

Please note that this role will close on: 25th September 2026.

We are looking for a strategic, commercially-obsessed Head of Retention CRM to own the experience of our customers. This is a brand-new role designed to take our CRM function from a "reactive service" to a proactive, world-class lifecycle engine. Reporting to our Director of CRM & Commercial, you will lead a talented team of 4-5 to own the end-to-end customer lifecycle across 10+ markets.

You’ll be the architect of our CRM strategy - optimising our tech stack (we use Iterable and SMS at scale), refining our event-based journeys, and ensuring every touchpoint, from the first "hello" to a re-onboarding journey, is optimised for both RoI and customer delight lens. This role is not about open and click rates; it’s about LTV, churn prevention, and commercial impact.

❓ What you’ll do:

Strategy & Architecture

• Lead the North Star: Own the end-to-end CRM lifecycle strategy across the active customer journey: onboarding, engagement, upsell, churn prevention and re-onboarding.

• Scale the Plumbing: Design and execute a CRM architecture that works seamlessly across international markets, ensuring quick delivery times and low incident rates.

• Break the Silos: Partner with Digital Product, Marketing, and Customer Love to ensure CRM is integrated into the wider customer experience, not just an island.

Commercial & Financial Ownership

• Own the Numbers: You are directly responsible for revenue-impacting KPIs: retention rates, churn deflection performance, engagement.

• Prove&Prioritise: You’ll help define how lifecycle CRM is measured and attributed and how competing initiatives can be prioritised accordingly.

• CRM Vendor Management: Manage CRM vendor relationships, renegotiate contracts and explore new options to increase RoI.

People Leadership

• Manage the Managers: You’ll lead a team of 4.

• Coaching & Upskilling: Your goal is to inspire and elevate the team, helping them hit their objectives while fostering a culture of innovation and accountability.

👀 What we're looking for:

• CRM Expert - You have strong experience managing CRM programmes and teams across 5+ markets and languages and across different remits

• Lifecycle Architect - Significant experience designing and executing customer journeys

• D2C/Subscription Expert: You have deep experience in a high-growth subscription or high purchase frequency ecommerce environment. You understand the "habit formation" required to keep customers coming back.

• Commercial Navigator: You think in terms of P&L. You're fluent in retention curves, LTV, discount economics and subscription churn, and you're comfortable building business cases and making ROI-driven trade-offs.

• Focused Prioritisation: You've run a function with far more inbound than capacity. You're assertive, you prioritise ruthlessly, and you have the humility to listen and the confidence to push back on low-impact requests.

• Analytical Rigour: You don't just report on data; you find the "so what." You're comfortable with test vs control, cohort analysis and incrementality, and you can attribute impact in areas where it isn't obvious.

• Tech-Savvy: You know your way around a modern CRM stack. You can partner effectively with Engineering and Data teams to launch scalable templates, event schemas, deliverability measurement.

• Empathetic Leader: You’re a "people first" leader who enjoys coaching senior individual contributors and managers. You have the humility to listen and the assertiveness to push back on low-impact requests.

• Dog Lover: It’s a plus if you have a furry friend at home, but a love for dogs is mandatory! 🐶

⏳ The interview process:

• Initial call with your dedicated Talent Acquisition Partner, carried out remotely.

• Skills interview, for 90 minutes, in person. This stage will include an in interview task.

• Behaviours interview, for 45 minutes, followed by two 45 minute Leadership interviews with members of our C-suite in person.

We usually expect our interview process to take 3-5 weeks, end to end.

🙌 Our benefits:

• 25 days holiday (plus 8 bank holidays) and an additional day for every year of service up to 5 years

• 5 additional, paid 'paws' days off per year dedicated to your learning, development or personal wellbeing. Hit pause when you need it most

• £500 personal learning & development budget to sharpen your skills

• Share options grant - everyone owns a piece of Butternut's success.

• A significant discount on our Fresh food, to keep your own dogs as healthy as our customers

• Enhanced parental leave

• Flexible core working hours

• Cycle to work scheme

• Pension with NEST

• Private Medical Insurance with Vitality

• Private Dental Insurance with Bupa

• Paid time off for fertility treatments and pregnancy loss

• Paid sabbaticals for squad members with 5 or more years service at Butternut

• Discounted gym access through MyGymDiscounts

• Lots of office dogs (Ajax, Peggy, Chief, Louis, Hansen, Winnie and many more….)

💡 Important things to note:

• We recommend getting your application in…