The+State+of+Careers+In+Retention+Marketing-2.pdf

The State of In
Careers
Retention

Marketing

The art of customer retention has become a power center owing to its nature of
sustainable growth as well as profitability. There is a meteoric rise in the demand to
not only practice retention but also hire talented retention marketers.

Careers in retention marketing have existed for decades. However, in the last few
years, and more so in India, the demand for talent in the space has become
manifold after brands’ increased focus on profitability and building sustainable
businesses.

As a community focused on serving, helping, and growing this talented bunch, we
encountered curiosity and confusion about having a career in this space on
various occasions in our conversations in the Retention DNA Community. We took
up the challenge and spent the last three months gathering qualitative and
quantitative insights that capture and shape the future of Careers in Retention
Marketing in India.
2
- Head of D2C | Renowned Consumer Brand
“While acquisition would give you growth &
topline, businesses have started to realize that
profitability can only come when they make
retention important from day 1.”

New age growth organizations need to get
people who understand the nuanced mix of
behavioral analytics, behavioral economics
plus P&L or business acumen
To make sense of the report, it is essential to understand that retention
marketing is a niche. We collected data from over 300+ working professionals in
a nationwide survey across 20+ industries ranging from 0 to 20 years of work
experience.

In addition, we spoke to experts who work as CXOs, digital heads, growth
specialists, and product marketing heads across renowned organizations. They
dip their toes and sink their teeth into anything that could influence user behavior
and, ultimately, their decision to stay or leave a brand.

As part of our sample pool, we have representation of talent from some of the
most renowned brands in the country, ranging from early-stage startups that
have cracked retention from the get-go to large enterprises undergoing their
digital transformation journeys.

Piecing together the insights and narratives from interviews with thought leaders
and analyzing all the data collected, the report elaborates on essential questions
related to Competencies, Career Growth, Hiring & Job Search, Compensation,
and Mentorship.
Whether you’re looking to switch to Retention Marketing or understand if you’re a
good fit to progress in your career as a retention marketeer, these learnings will
satiate the needs of both those questions. Data, backed by insights from P&L
leaders across the board, gave us a pointed list of core competencies that allow
one to excel in one's job and keep it exciting and interesting.
So, what does it really take?
Methodology
3
- Head of Retention | Renowned Quick Commerce Brand

4
Here’s a list of the top 7 strengths that stood out across two independent lines of
questioning, ‘what hiring managers are looking for in candidates’ & ‘key skills that
retention marketers confessed to being their bread, butter & jam on the job.’

The rules of retention aren’t written down & they can change significantly if you go
from selling mattresses to selling groceries; hence, understanding the core of the
business is critical to a role in retention. If you don’t know what to look at, how will
you look for it?- a great understanding of the business sets a strong foundation
for everything expected from a retention marketer- from analyzing data to
designing hypotheses or even taking ‘calculated risks.’
Business acumen
A knack for numbers paints an accurate picture of the ground reality, unveils
customer engagement patterns, and predicts trends. It’s an RM’s job to
understand what we’ve been doing and how we’ve been doing to know what we
must do and how we must do it. Only data can tell you that.

It could be analyzing paid marketing spends, evaluating the effectiveness of your
newsletter among your users, figuring out what makes your landing pages work,
or what SEO keywords are working in your favor.

A data-oriented mindset coupled with a good command over programming
languages like R and Python grants you brownie points.
Data acumen

5
The Most Important Skill

According To Respondents
Data Analysis

39.6%
Tools

9.5%
Creativity

16.1%
Project Management

17.2%
Strategy

17.6%
Data acumen coupled with business acumen will give you insights into what’s
happening and, at best, some intuition to work with. However, to be a great
retention marketer, experimentation has to be second nature.

As the Head of Retention at a leading Q-Commerce brand quoted, “At any time,
we have about 100 experiments running, and what you experiment with today
either becomes obsolete or status quo a month later.” Hiring managers of highly
experiment-driven brands admitted to having ‘hit pass’ on marketers who
possessed impressive knowledge but were set in their ways and “knew exactly
what would work.”
Experimentation

6
A Jeff Bezos quote in one of our interviews was, “It's not an experiment if you know
it's going to work.” they then added, “One thing I need to work on with my team is
to get them comfortable with failures.”
First-principle thinking
Given the experimental nature of the job, first-principle thinking becomes non-
negotiable. While it sounds like ‘fancy for common sense,’ it becomes increasingly
important on a daily basis. Most interviewees mentioned that what differentiates
a good retention marketer from a great one is their ability to park aside what’s
worked previously and approach complex problems by breaking them into
fundamental components. 

First-principle thinking allows one to take intuition, marry it to data, and build a
solid hypothesis.
Consumer acumen
‘Add items worth Rs.166 & get a surprise item added to your order’- looks familiar?

Consumer acumen helps make sense of the human, social, and behavioral layers
in purchase decisions. Data would tell the most active time slots and hotspots on
an app, but consumer acumen allows a retention marketer to leverage them. It will
enable you to reason two similar-looking spikes on your data charts and derive
two very different insights and business decisions. You cannot sell if you don’t
understand how people buy.

7
Creativity

29.0%
Operations

31.0%
Management

40.0%
Nature of Respondents’

Retention Marketing Roles
A significant part of a retention marketer's job is to take these data-led insights
and thought-out experiments and deploy them in creative ways across
channels to get that final conversion, giving all other brands and nudges a run
for their money. The finest retention marketers in the trade confessed to having
loved copywriting because it creates high-converting clickable emails, push
notifications, SMSes, WhatsApp texts, and buttons.
Creativity & Communication
While the above five points sound super left-brainy, retention marketers attribute
20-40% of their work to being creative. Once you’ve cracked the science of
retention in your industry or at your job, the final blow, the nudge to buy, ultimately
comes from the art.

8
Looking at the list of competencies
naturally raises the above question!
However, here’s to a bit of relief—clarity
and a presence of mind take
precedence over platform. A platform is
merely a tool for executing ideas, but
you can’t use it unless you know what
you’re using it for.  
While some experience can help you
start the job, most hiring managers
emphasize that a platform can always
be learned by one on the job.
But what about using Retention tools? How
much does experience matter?
Stakeholder management
Retention, while in most cases ‘owned’ by an individual or curated pod, is
influenced and involves a handshake across the board. The decisions they make
spring from a cross-functional collaboration between website, product, finance,
content, growth, engineering, data, and support. From presenting a business case
for a new campaign, aligning the sales & rest of the marketing team, making sense
of it to the financial controllers, backing it with data, to all the way creating and
deploying the assets to take it live- the bigger the opportunity, the more people
one needs to manage. 

Whether to view this as an opportunity or a challenge becomes subjective, but one
thing that’s objectively certain is that people who work in retention roles end up
massively leveling up their people skills.

9
Speaking of experience, yes, relevant work exposure ranks vital on the list.
However, it comes with a surprise twist. Our experts mentioned that more than
experience within retention specifically, they often value rudimentary experience
across other marketing disciplines like performance, acquisition, GTM, and
others. This way, you’ll already have worn different hats when you become a
retention marketer, and your accumulated wisdom will widen your playing field.
Statistically speaking, from the sample pool, about half the people had a master's
degree as their highest education & about 40% had a bachelor's degree.
Objectively looking at it, trends for salaries and growth trajectories in retention are
parallel to other fields in the industry. A master's degree usually allows one to start
with a higher pay & senior role owing to the business acumen, while for someone
without an MBA, those skills, once acquired via relevant work experience, can
provide similar opportunities.
What about education? Is an MBA necessary
to become a retention marketer?
Highest Educational Qualification of Respondents
Bachelors

44.7%
Others

4.3%
Masters

55.1%

10
Additionally, those with only a bachelor's degree suggested other launchpads
to level up their skills, exposure, and knowledge. Our good friends at
communities like GrowthX and The Product Folks received well-deserved
mention from cohort members who’ve been able to use their offerings to
upgrade their careers. While cohort-based courses specifically for retention
do not exist per se, retention becomes an area of focus in most offerings.

Dissecting data suggests that a bachelor's degree can promise a good
kickstart for a career in retention. However, to break into managerial positions
and the 35L+ band, where retention becomes key to business strategy, an
MBA or equivalent work experience is beneficial.
First things first, let's look at some facts. Retention marketing isn’t a box you
need to fit into; it’s a mindset that is being increasingly incorporated and
appreciated across departments. Folks in retention are working across
marketing, growth & product roles in different organizations.
That’s great! So, are there enough roles for a
career in retention?
Growth Team

31.6%
Product Team

15.8%
Marketing Team

52.6%
Team Split Of Respondents

11
While D2C & E-commerce employ a significant share of retention roles, the
trend suggests that the pie spreads rather proportionally with different
industries realizing the need for a strong customer retention & engagement
engine.
One doesn’t need to worry about getting a slice of the retention pie, as the pie
itself is expanding. Conventional organizational structures weren’t ready or
designed around retention. Ipso facto, some companies are rejigging their
organizational structures, reporting, KPIs, and operations around retention to
make themselves future-proof. This retention revolution ensures that plenty of
good options keep coming up for someone to raise their hand & grab them.
Industry Split of Respondents
EdTech

17.9%
Agency

4.2%
BFSI

10.5%
Product Team

15.8%
Others

8.4%
Media &
Entertainment

8.4%
Gaming

3.2%
Healthcare

5.3%
E-commerce/D2C

35.8%

12
Glad you asked! As advocates of the retention community, we at Retention DNA
took the bitter-sweet job of pushing some buttons and asking difficult questions to
multiple retention professionals and leaders who hire for these roles. In our
conversation, we chalked out the three most critical things to consider when
accepting and considering a role in retention.
The foremost is whether the inherent nature of the
business demands high engagement and repetition
of the customers, e.g., ed-tech, investing, and quick
commerce. This allows one to be sure of a highly
dynamic and rather exciting playground from the get-
go while also highlighting the high-paced demand of
the role. This doesn’t mean we rule out all other
businesses; that is where the following two points
come in.
As previously shared, organizations across industries are re-engineering
themselves to focus on retention. The second flag to look for when considering a
role is to understand whether the organization is taking or planning any more
initiatives to increase customer engagement. This could mean understanding
ongoing projects, team structure, and the upcoming road map. This allows one to
be sure of having a mission to work towards rather than just becoming a tool
operator.  
The third rather ‘soft indicator’ is to chat with the hiring manager or head of the
department to understand how they see your role impacting the larger business,
what your success metrics would look like, the one to two-year roadmap, and
milestones they envision for you. This conversation creates transparency, even if it
then means figuring out a plan & defining the role as you go. One interviewee
quoted and summarized it beautifully: “It protects you from chasing a moving
target.”

If Master Oogway were into retention, he’d say, “Receiving a job offer means the
company can see value in what you can do. Make sure that you ask that question
back and understand what value it is going to bring to you.”
Superb! But are these roles meaningful for my
career?

13
As established above, brands across the board are on the prowl to look for
excellent retention marketing talent & while there is plenty of fish in the ocean,
seasoned recruiters and hiring managers are still hungry to be mind-blown.

With the understanding of the competencies, education, experience & industry
background we have established so far, it all comes down to cracking the
interviews and enduring the hiring process. We asked about ten-odd marketers
how they got hired & tore down the process and stages to make your life easy.
Typically, all of them are confirmed to have been through the following three to
four rounds.
One cannot retain customers if they cannot retain good vibes. Jokes aside, given
the highly collaborative nature of the role, this round allows the hiring manager to
understand the candidate as a member of the core team.

A pro tip for this round is to be in touch with meaningful anecdotes from your
current and previous stints.
First-principle thinking, remember? Very early into the process, employers want to
evaluate your problem-solving ability. Over a case study on the call, interviewers
want to understand how you approach complex, unfamiliar challenges. This case
study could be a business problem, an ask to design and analyze a funnel, or a
guesstimate to find the total number of tea cups in Mumbai. 

A pro tip for this round: While there are no correct answers, make sure you spend
time understanding and scoping the problem well enough.
So, there is a great job opening that you
want. How do you get it?
Vibe check
01
Case study
02

14
Dealing with data is given incredible weightage when interviewing for a retention
role. In most cases we encountered, candidates were given dummy data dumps,
often in parallel to a real problem that the brand or hiring manager might be
working on. The goal is to reach a predefined desired outcome by making sense of
the data and offering insights. In the case of more hands-on assignments, one
can also be asked to create segments and possible user journeys to achieve the
same. 

A pro tip for this round: While data is of the essence, make sure you apply business
and customer acumen when proposing any solution.
Organizations view retention marketers as individuals who broadly impact the
business, which makes it a high-visibility role. A chat with the founder(s) or the
leadership is penciled in for them to understand how your long-term aspirations
align with what you’re set to sail. They are often looking for a shared vision that will
ensure you steer the boat in the right direction. 

A pro tip for this round: Being more mindful and intentional about your decisions
and choices is often seen as a sign of good long-term thinking.
The good news is that it’s not rocket science! A healthy mix of competencies and a
get-stuff-done attitude can help you land a great role in retention.

Yay, you’re hired! What kind of salaries & hikes can
one expect?
Data acumen
03
Leadership chat
04

15
One of the most incredible things about working in retention is that there are roles
across the seniority spectrum to absorb good talent, which means depending on
what you bring to the table, there is space to get yourself a good deal.  
Given that, more often than not, retention roles are revenue roles, our survey
deduced more than 40% of the folks have a variable or incentive component on
top of their fixed package.
Speaking math, not English, we collected salary data and parked them in different
bands to make sense of the data. From 5L to over 40L, we created different
segments, and within the pool of people, here’s what it looks like.
Salary Component Split of Respondents
Fixed
Component Only

52.6%
Fixed + Variable
Component

47.4%

16
Annual Income Buckets of Respondents
20,00,000 - 30,00,000

14.7%
40,00,000+

5.3%
10,00,001 - 15,00,000

27.4%
Up to 5,00,000

9.5%
30,00,000 - 40,00,000

7.4%
15,00,001 - 20,00,000

11.6%
5,00,001 - 10,00,000

24.2%
But this alone means nothing, so we did the analysis & uncovered the
following key insights:
The Head of Retention at an online gaming company
can annually make as high as 1 Cr.
01
The Head of Retention at a 500Cr+ D2C brand can be
expected to draw anywhere in the range of 60-80LPA.
02

17
03
With great money comes great responsibility. In the 40LPA+ band,
almost all individuals had a great mix of master's degrees and work
experience. These roles are spread across marketing, growth, and
product, and in most cases, they are vertical owners.
05
For similar work experience and education, the consumer tech
sector offers greater prospects and lucrative positions. Within our
study, a notable portion of roles within the '20L - 40L' salary bracket
falls within this domain, encompassing fields such as delivery
services, ticket booking platforms, gaming, education technology,
healthcare, banking, investment, and more.
04
A good way to look for higher-paying opportunities is to scope the
revenue share that the business brings in via repeat users. A soft
trend that we picked via the data pointed to an addition of 5L in the
package of respondents whose role more directly influenced
revenue rather than those who had a second—or third-degree
impact.
06
Across the board, a master's degree has been substituted for years of
work experience with a multiplier factor. Those from top MBA colleges like
IIMs, ISBs, XLRI, and the like can treat it like a + 4 years of work exp, whereas
for other B-schools, that can be a range of an equivalent of 2-3 years.

17
07
While D2C and e-commerce have a huge demand in the market
and might only just grow, given the nature of the industry, the cost
sensitivity here is much higher. Multiple roles in the ‘Upto 10L’ bracket
are definitely a great place to start.
08
To break into the ‘10-15L’ band in D2C, one has to be a seasoned
retention marketer with 3-5 years of core retention exposure. The
opportunity lies with larger and more established D2C brands
that’ve been around for years to go anywhere upwards of that.
While, like in all cases, salaries are a complex computation of education, relevant
experience, city & work setup, industry, department, and more, we hope the above
insights allow you to make calculated decisions in your career.

Hikes work on similar lines and are always a function of these multiple variables.
However, three key parameters that define your appraisal as a retention marketer
include the revenue targets, your contribution beyond operations at a strategic
level, and the leverage you generate by creating value for the company beyond
written-down roles.

Sooner or later, for one to throttle into the big leagues & big cheques, they would
be expected to absorb retention & more, bringing us to this report's final segment.

18
Over the last few years, customer retention has metamorphosed into a full-
blown business role. In conversation with the multiple CXOs for this report, we
spent time understanding where they saw these roles heading. Almost
unanimously, they could envision professionals working in retention gaining
sharp business and consumer insights to grow into multiple leadership roles.
- CMO | Renowned Travel Aggregator Brand
An individual who has managed retention at full
scale has the unique advantage of understanding
allocations & possessing a holistic funnel view of
the business. The opportunity that a retention
manager has is disproportionately better and
brighter than any other team.
What about the bigger picture? Where am I headed?
Something notable is that people often end up going deep into one side of the
business in different roles, but retention provides a rather full-funnel view and
gives a unique advantage to those who spend their time here.

Because of this holistic view, successful retention marketers proceed to have
promising careers in positions ranging from Chief Officers of Business, Marketing,
and Strategy to leading Revenue or Growth charters. Rest assured, the path here
is bright and promising.

18
As businesses increasingly recognize the importance of retaining customers for
growth, the focus on careers in retention marketing has surged. Key insights
revealed seven core strengths essential for success in retention marketing,
ranging from business acumen to stakeholder management. Notably, the ability
to analyze data and conduct experiments emerged as linchpins in driving
effective retention strategies. Moreover, creativity and communication skills are
crucial in crafting compelling campaigns that resonate with customers.

While a master's degree may offer an initial advantage, practical experience
across diverse marketing disciplines proves equally valuable. The evolving
organizational structures underscore the expanding opportunities within
retention marketing across industries, promising a dynamic and rewarding
career path.

Job seekers aspiring for roles in retention marketing can expect a rigorous hiring
process, including rounds focusing on problem-solving abilities, data proficiency,
and alignment with organizational goals. While dependent on experience,
education, and industry, salaries offer ample opportunities for growth and
lucrative rewards, particularly in sectors prioritizing customer engagement.

Looking ahead, retention professionals are poised to transition into leadership
roles, leveraging their comprehensive understanding of consumer behavior and
business dynamics to drive strategic initiatives and revenue growth across
diverse sectors.

Synopsis

19
The Journey ahead: What’s
the next biggest unlock for
my career?
As the last part of our survey, we followed our hunch and asked a question that
we believed would help us craft the future of a career in Retention marketing. We
asked people if they had strong mentors to support their growth in retention
marketing, and a stark 44% couldn’t say yes.

Mentorship and community are tremendous unlocks for determined
professionals like yourself for a career in an evolving space like retention. As we
lay down the roadmap for the Retention DNA community for the year, we look
forward to creating multiple 1:1 and 1:many opportunities to seek mentorship from
seasoned leaders who’ve been there and done that.
Additionally, to bridge the education and
experience gap, we are thrilled to share that we are
bringing an 8-week hands-on certification course
ranging from the basics to advanced strategies
needed to excel as a retention marketer. Starting
June 1, thought leaders and industry experts will
teach the course.
If you are even the tiniest bit
curious to see what this course
entails, scan the QR code to get
added to the waitlist.

P
H S
D
14
About WebEngage
WebEngage is a new-age Retention Operating
System - a single suite for marketers and
product managers to store user data and
provide actionable insights. By orchestrating
omnichannel campaigns and leveraging user
insights, WebEngage provides a hyper-
personalized end-user experience to brands
across industries. The platform helps brands
drive revenue from customers and anonymous
users across twelve communication channels.
WebEngage goes above and beyond a
marketing automation platform and powers
the user engagement for thousands of
enterprise brands worldwide, working across
several industries like E-Commerce, Edtech,
Fintech, Foodtech, Media & Publications,
Gaming, BFSI, Healthcare, and Online Retail. The
key clientele includes marquee brands like HUL,
Bajaj Finserv, Unacademy, ALT Balaji,
MakeMyTrip, Zivame, Firstcry, etc. For more
information, visit webengage.com or follow
WebEngage on Twitter and LinkedIn.
f
t t t
Credits
Co-Founder | Retention DNA Community
& WebEngage
Harshit Manocha |
Asst. Director - Brand & Content Marketing,
WebEngage
Poulomi Banerjee |
Community Manager,
WebEngage
Simran Deshmuk |
Senior Content Manager,
WebEngage
Dev Iyer |
Book A Free Demo
B

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