Retention & Winback

Retention and winback campaigns are where loyalty is tested and value is proven. In my work, the challenge was two-fold: keeping millions of active members engaged with relevant, rewarding touchpoints, while reactivating dormant segments who had fallen out of the program. Success required balancing immediate incentive with long-term relationship building—designing communications that acknowledged customer behavior, reignited interest, and created clear reasons to return.

Through Chevron Texaco Rewards, I developed multi-touch journeys that addressed attrition head-on, including personalized reminders, milestone progress updates, and targeted winback offers. These efforts didn’t just fill short-term gaps; they rebuilt long-term program health, ensuring that members who had lapsed could be reintroduced into the ecosystem and re-energized to participate again.

Birthday Bonus

Challenge

Chevron Texaco Rewards needed a retention campaign that could build goodwill and strengthen emotional loyalty outside of major promotions. The program had proven strong at driving short-term fueling activity, but there was an opportunity to create engagement that felt more personal and member-centric.

Approach

I developed the Birthday Bonus campaign to deliver a surprise-and-delight moment that celebrated members during their birth month. Since the platform could not deliver points on the exact birthday, I designed the journey to award points at the start of the month and layered in a mid-month reminder to maximize visibility and redemption.

Execution

Added 50 bonus points automatically to birth-month member accounts on the 1st of the month.
Created upbeat, personalized email creative for both Chevron and Texaco, featuring members’ names and celebratory visuals.
Built a two-touch journey: an announcement email at the beginning of the month, followed by a reminder email for non-redeemers mid-month.
Crafted messaging that emphasized fun and celebration to foster emotional connection.

Results

Achieved extremely strong open rates, well above lifecycle benchmarks.
The reminder touchpoint unlocked incremental engagement, turning a large portion of non-redeemers into active participants and driving redemption well beyond the initial send.”
Strengthened long-term retention by positioning the program as more than transactional, building emotional affinity with members.

Role & Tools

I owned campaign strategy, messaging, creative briefing, and journey design, and executed in Salesforce Marketing Cloud using triggered sends and dynamic personalization.

Strategic
Takeaways

Retention success often depends on emotional as well as transactional levers. Even simple, celebratory campaigns can create long-term loyalty when executed with the right timing, personalization, and tone.

Winback Campaign

Challenge
Dormant members represented a significant drain on program vitality. Many had not transacted in over 30 days and had small point balances, putting them at high risk of attrition. Traditional promotions failed to capture their attention, and leadership needed proof that targeted communications could meaningfully shift behavior at scale.

Approach

I developed a multi-wave Winback campaign that combined preloaded bonus points with time-boxed urgency and personalized communications. My strategy focused on testing how messaging and expiration windows influenced behavior, while layering channels to maximize reach across dormant segments.

Execution

Segmentation: Identified members with 60+ days in the program, no transactions in 30+ days, and balances under 100 points. Audience size ~185,000.
Offer: Preloaded 100 bonus points into member accounts. Initially no expiration, later refined to a 30-day deadline to add urgency.
Cohorts: Launched in monthly waves across five months to track performance trends and refine execution.
Channel mix:
- Email + push in test groups vs. no comms in control to validate CRM impact
- SMS layered in as a final nudge to non-clickers
Collaboration: Worked closely with Analytics on cohort design, with Ops on bonus point delivery and expiration setup, with Legal and Brand on compliance and messaging alignment, and with external agencies on creative development, testing, and QA.

Results

The campaign successfully re-engaged a significant share of previously inactive members, with reactivation building steadily across cohorts rather than peaking at launch. Testing confirmed that personalized outreach drove meaningful incremental lift, while the addition of urgency mechanics and SMS touchpoints further magnified impact.

Roles & Tools

I owned the campaign end-to-end; from strategy and stakeholder alignment to creative briefing, execution, optimization, and performance reporting. Execution was delivered in Salesforce Marketing Cloud, with mobile push/SMS integrations and BI dashboards for reporting.

Strategic
Takeaways

Winback is not a quick fix. It requires sustained orchestration, urgency, and multi-channel reinforcement to shift behavior. This initiative proved that a carefully structured program can successfully re-activate dormant members and strengthen long-term loyalty.

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