West Marine — Lifecycle & Retention Strategy

West Marine is a national marine retailer serving recreational boaters, serious sailors, and commercial buyers — each requiring a fundamentally different marketing approach. As a strategic contractor embedded in the Lifecycle & Retention team, I inherited a program with generic customer journeys, no SMS presence, and minimal reporting infrastructure. 

 The program required a full lifecycle rebuild across every major customer touchpoint. Working from their existing data and cross-functional input, I developed and implemented the following:
 

Welcome Series — Rebuilt from a one-size-fits-all send into segmented flows for new customers, West Advantage loyalty members, and category-specific audiences (electronics, maintenance). Tailored messaging by entry point improved relevance from first touch.

Browse Abandonment — Built a behavioral trigger journey promoting the exact products a customer viewed alongside related items, moving the program from batch sends toward true 1:1 personalization.

Post-Purchase Journey — Implemented a category-segmented post-purchase flow (maintenance, safety gear, electronics, fishing gear) designed to drive cross-sell and category depth based on what each customer actually bought.

Lapsed Customer Program — Identified and built distinct tracks for at-risk and fully lapsed segments, each with tailored messaging, offers, and product recommendations calibrated to re-engagement likelihood.

Replenishment Journey — Introduced usage-cycle-triggered flows for consumable products — boat soap, flares, fire extinguishers — keeping West Marine top of mind at the natural restock moment.

SMS Program Launch — Assisted in the build and launch of the SMS channel from scratch with retail and eCommerce segmentation in place from day one.

QA & Workflow Overhaul — Restructured the email QA and approval process to reduce errors, enforce proper segmentation checks, and increase deployment speed.

Reporting & 2023 Roadmap — Delivered monthly KPI reports with actionable recommendations, plus a full 2022 annual review that directly informed a 2023 CRM Segmentation Implementation Plan presented to the Director of Lifecycle & Retention Marketing.

My role was intentionally transitional — West Marine needed a senior strategist to rebuild the retention program while they hired a permanent in-house lead. I came in, assessed every customer touchpoint against their actual data — purchase timeframes, engagement trends, loyalty behavior, churn signals — and used what I found to build flows that matched where customers actually were, not where the old program assumed they'd be. That meant cross-functional work with retention, design, merchandising, and web teams to make sure the lifecycle restructure reflected the full customer picture. The program I handed off was grounded in their data and built for the team stepping in to own it.