Location: Markham, Ontario
Job Description:
Position: Senior Manager, CRM & Lifecycle Marketing
Type: Full-Time | Hybrid
Location: Markham, ON
Reports to: Director, Marketing /Loyalty Analytics
About Us
Pet Valu is Canada’s leading pet specialty retailer, dedicated to strengthening the bond between dedicated pet lovers and their pets. With 50 years of animal care expertise, we operate over 800 stores across Canada under several banners, including Pet Valu, Bosley’s, Total Pet, Paulmac's Pet, Tisol & Chico. Guided by our mission to deliver products, care, expertise, and memorable moments, Pet Valu is a place where people build meaningful careers while making a positive impact on pets and communities.
What will you do?
The Senior Manager, CRM & Lifecycle Marketing is responsible for developing and executing Pet Valu's customer engagement strategy across owned channels, store POS including email, SMS, push notifications, in-app messaging, and future customer engagement platforms.
This role owns the design, deployment, optimization, and measurement of customer journeys that drive acquisition, activation, retention, loyalty engagement, and customer lifetime value. Leveraging customer data, analytics, loyalty insights, and personalization capabilities, the Senior Manager will create relevant, timely, and connected experiences across the customer lifecycle.
Working closely with Loyalty, Analytics, Digital, Merchandising, and external technology partners, this leader will help transform customer engagement from campaign-based marketing to personalized, lifecycle-based customer experiences.
Responsibilities:
CRM & Lifecycle Strategy
Owns:
- Customer lifecycle framework
- Customer contact strategy
Responsiblities:
- Develop and execute Pet Valu's CRM and lifecycle marketing strategy across email, SMS, push, in-app, and future owned channels.
- Define customer lifecycle journeys that support acquisition, activation, retention, reactivation, and loyalty engagement objectives.
- Establish channel strategies, communication principles, and contact policies that balance customer experience and commercial performance.
- Partner with Loyalty, Merchandising, Digital, and Analytics teams to prioritize customer engagement opportunities.
Customer Journey & Campaign Management
Owns:
- Automated journeys
- Triggered communications
- Retention programs
- Loyalty engagement campaigns
- Personalization execution
Responsibilities:
- Design, implement, and continuously optimize customer journeys using customer data, behavioral triggers, and business priorities.
- Deliver personalized customer communications across lifecycle stages and pet ownership moments.
- Execute programs that increase purchase frequency, customer retention, loyalty participation, and app engagement.
- Ensure campaigns and journeys are delivered consistently and effectively across all CRM channels.
CRM Platform & Martech Enablement
Owns:
- Bloomreach Engagement platform business administration
- CRM platform optimization
- Marketing automation capabilities
- Channel enablement roadmap
Responsibilities:
- Act as business owner for CRM and marketing automation platforms, including Bloomreach and future engagement technologies.
- Work with Analytics, Data, IT, and external vendors to ensure customer data and platform capabilities support business needs.
- Prioritize and implement platform enhancements that improve personalization, automation, and customer engagement.
- Support future customer app integrations and new customer engagement capabilities.
- Support implementation of next-best-offer and AI-driven personalization capabilities as they evolve.
Performance, Testing & Optimization
Owns:
- Campaign performance
- Journey performance
- Test-and-learn roadmap
- Optimization strategy
Responsibilities:
- Monitor and improve CRM program performance across all channels.
- Lead A/B testing and experimentation initiatives to optimize customer engagement and commercial outcomes.
- Partner with Loyalty Analytics /Data teams to measure incremental impact, ROI, and customer behavior changes resulting from CRM programs.
- Use insights and performance data to continuously improve customer journeys and communication effectiveness.
Leadership & Team Development
Responsibilities:
- Build and lead a high-performing CRM and lifecycle marketing function.
- Establish best practices for customer journey design, campaign execution, personalization, and testing.
- Foster a culture of customer-centricity, accountability, and continuous improvement.
- Collaborate effectively across Marketing, Loyalty, Analytics, Digital, Merchandising, and Technology teams.
Qualifications:
Required:
- 8+ years of progressive experience in CRM, Lifecycle Marketing, Customer Engagement, Loyalty Marketing, Retention Marketing, Marketing Automation, or related customer-focused disciplines.
- 3+ years of people leadership experience, including coaching, mentoring, and developing high-performing teams.
- Demonstrated success developing and executing customer lifecycle strategies that drive customer acquisition, engagement, retention, and customer lifetime value.
- Experience building and managing automated customer journeys across email, SMS, mobile, app, push notification, and/or digital channels.
- Hands-on experience with enterprise CRM and marketing automation platforms such as Bloomreach, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Braze, Adobe Campaign, Iterable, Klaviyo, Emarsys, or similar solutions.
- Proven experience leading customer personalization, segmentation, and audience activation initiatives.
- Experience developing and executing testing and optimization programs using A/B testing, customer experimentation, and performance measurement frameworks.
- Strong understanding of customer behavior, customer lifecycle management, loyalty programs, and customer retention strategies.
- Experience partnering closely with Analytics, Data Science, Product, Digital, Technology, and Merchandising teams to deliver customer engagement initiatives.
- Experience translating customer insights and analytical recommendations into actionable customer programs and measurable business outcomes.
- Bachelor's degree in Marketing, Business, Analytics, Communications, Commerce, or a related discipline.
- Master's degree or equivalent experience considered an asset.
Preferred:
- Experience within retail, loyalty, eCommerce, subscription, hospitality, financial services, telecommunications, or other customer-centric industries.
- Experience launching and scaling an SMS marketing program.
- Experience supporting customer app launches, app engagement strategies, or mobile-first customer experiences.
- Experience operating within highly personalized customer ecosystems utilizing customer data, behavioral triggers, and predictive audience strategies.
- Experience leveraging customer predictive models such as propensity, churn, customer value, or next-best-offer recommendations within CRM programs.
- Experience working with loyalty platforms, customer data platforms (CDPs), and customer identity solutions.
- Experience participating in CRM, loyalty, marketing automation, or customer experience transformation initiatives.
What will make you stand out:
- Built or significantly scaled a CRM and lifecycle function in a retail organization.
- Led implementation or optimization of a modern customer engagement platform such as Bloomreach.
- Launched SMS marketing from the ground up and scaled subscriber growth.
- Developed lifecycle programs that measurably improved retention, frequency, or customer lifetime value.
- Experience integrating loyalty, CRM, personalization, and mobile app engagement into a cohesive customer strategy.
Compensation:
The base salary range for this position is $120,000.00 - $145,000.00 annually. The final offer will be based on factors such as market location, relevant skills, experience and internal equity.
Ready to join the team?
We’re looking for passionate people who bring strong skills and live our core values of safety, compassion, expertise, and efficiency every day. If you’re energized by doing meaningful work, taking pride in what you deliver, and making a real impact for pets, people, and communities, you’ll feel right at home here. Join us and build a career where purpose, care, and excellence come together - because love lives here™.
Why work for us?
At Pet Valu, our people are at the heart of everything we do. We’re passionate about creating an environment where you feel supported, included, and empowered to grow - both personally and professionally. Some of the perks of working with us include:
- Hybrid, Flexible Work Options
- Comprehensive health and dental benefits
- Employee Share Purchase Plan with company matching
- Learning and Development support tailored to you
- An inclusive, collaborative culture where your voice matters
- Fun company events that keep us connected
- Preferred rates for car rentals, hotels, phone plans and gym discounts
- Generous employee discounts on our products
Pet Valu is an equal opportunity employer committed to inclusion and accessibility. Accommodations are available upon request for candidates taking part in all aspects of the recruitment and selection process, in accordance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA).
At Pet Valu, we are committed to transparency and fairness in our hiring practices. This posting is for an existing vacancy. Pet Valu may use AI enabled technology to assist in the recruitment process for positions. The use of AI helps us ensure we are providing an equitable and streamlined recruitment experience for all applicants. While AI tools support our recruitment process, all decisions throughout the process are made exclusively by Pet Valu’s hiring team. At no stage does AI determine recruitment outcomes.
