Senior Director, Client Retention
About this role
Role Mission & Mandate
The Sr. Director, Client Retention is accountable for deepening client relationships, maximizing client lifetime value, and driving retention across the network. Leading teams responsible for CRM and email/lifecycle marketing, and the Pet Health Club loyalty program, this role ensures that every existing client receives a consistent, personalized, and value-driven experience that keeps them coming back. This is a newly created role that reflects the organization’s strategic ambition to build world-class retention capability. Reporting to the Chief Customer & Marketing Officer, the Sr. Director, Client Retention provides direct leadership of the Manager, CRM Operations and the Manager, PHC.
Accountabilities
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Accountability |
Deliverable |
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CRM & Email/Lifecycle |
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Pet Health Club (PHC) |
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Client Lifecycle Strategy |
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Leadership |
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Metrics & KPIs |
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Accountability & Performance |
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Experience Profile
- 7-10 years of progressive CRM, loyalty, or lifecycle marketing experience, with at least 3 years in a people leadership role.
- Demonstrated success building or scaling a loyalty or membership program in a multi-location consumer environment.
- Deep expertise in CRM platforms, marketing automation, and email/lifecycle program management.
- Experience leading cross-functional teams and influencing across clinic or field networks without direct authority.
- Strong commercial acumen with the ability to connect retention metrics to revenue and lifetime value outcomes.
- Data-driven approach to decision-making; comfortable with segmentation, cohort analysis, and campaign measurement.
- Veterinary, healthcare, franchise, or subscription business experience an asset.
- Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Business, or related field; MBA an asset.
Living Our Values Through Leadership
This role is more than a checklist of accountabilities - it’s a reflection of how we show up as leaders in our practice, with our teams, and across our network. The table below highlights how this role brings our values to life through everyday leadership behaviours that build trust, drive performance, and foster a culture of care and collaboration.
These behaviours are not extras, they are core to how we deliver excellent patient and client care, inspire our people, and build a stronger network together.
Our Values guide what we stand for. Our Leadership Behaviours define how we bring those values to life in practice, every day, in every role.
Our Values
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We Care |
We Dare |
We Share |
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We care for animals and people, keep our promises, treat each other with decency and respect. |
We dare to innovate, encourage entrepreneurial thinking and identify opportunities to succeed in a changing world. |
We share knowledge, best practice and make decisions based on trust, dialogue, commitment and engagement. |
Our Leadership Behaviours
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Value The Why |
Behaviour The How |
Behaviour Definition What it looks like |
How This Role Brings It to Life |
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We Care |
Motivating |
Show self-belief, build strong teams, motivate others to reach their potential. |
Inspires the Retention team and clinic partners to champion client loyalty, celebrating programme milestones and individual contributions. |
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We Care |
Resilient |
Effectively manage their own well-being and that of others, quickly recover from challenges, and learn from mistakes. |
Navigates the complexity of a newly formed function with steadiness, keeping the team motivated and focused through periods of change. |
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We Dare |
Results-driven |
Relentlessly seek to improve business performance, act decisively, drive progress through clear expectations. |
Sets bold retention targets, holds the team accountable, and drives a performance culture that connects CRM and PHC activity to measurable business outcomes. |
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We Dare |
Lead for the future |
Balance the perfect and pragmatic, prioritize long-term progress, drive sustainable innovation. |
Builds scalable retention infrastructure and introduces best-in-class loyalty practices that position the organisation for long-term client lifetime value growth. |
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We Share |
Humble |
Act with integrity, earn trust through transparency, pursue personal development. |
Earns the confidence of clinic teams by listening first, sharing programme insights openly, and continuously seeking feedback on what is and isn’t working. |
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We Share |
Collaborative |
Stretch outside their own area of expertise to drive performance, happy to learn from others, inspire teams through great communication. |
Partners closely with Acquisition, Planning & Analytics, and Ops & Clinic Support to ensure retention efforts are integrated into the full client experience. |
Company at a glance
Being part of VetStrategy is about being part of something bigger – an ever-growing community, where we connect person-to-person and skill-to-need, united by a common purpose of healthy animals, happy owners. From our humble beginning in 2006 to the present day, we continue to make a difference in the lives of people who have dedicated themselves to this industry.
When VetStrategy co-founders Orin Litman and his wife, Dr. Michelle Cutler, decided to acquire McLean Animal Hospital in 2006, they focused on three promises – our Customer Promise of world-class veterinary care, delivered locally; our People Promise, to be a great place to work; and our Sustainability Promise to be a force for good for patients, people and our plant.
Keeping our three promises led VetStrategy to become the leading veterinary network in Canada, with veterinary practices, 24-hour emergency care, and specialty hospitals coast-to-coast. We have developed and refined a model for supporting our practices across the country.
What we do
We care for those dedicated to caring for animals by creating a workplace where we focus on innovation, engagement, and teamwork.
We know the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into building each practice, and we don’t want to touch that – we truly embrace the uniqueness of each clinic. Our heritage first approach means we won’t change a clinic’s name, culture or heritage.
We understand the challenges our veterinary teams face and are committed to doing what’s right – for them, their clients, and their patients.
We care about the future of veterinary medicine. Everything we do comes back to ensuring that veterinarians have the time, support, and infrastructure to focus on responsible medicine and quality care.
We believe in empowering our support office and clinic staff and providing them opportunities to develop their skills and grow in their careers.
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