Head of Member Retention & Loyalty

GymNation; Dubai; On-site; AED 600,000 - 1,000,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Relocation support

LTIP

Great Place to Work certification

Competitive salary & benefits

Job summary

GymNation seeks a world-class Head of Member Retention & Loyalty to own churn, tenure and lifetime value end-to-end. You will unite behavioural science, technology and creativity into one retention system, leveraging AI and automation across the business.

We offer a best-in-industry tech stack and established data and CRM teams to turn your ideas into action, with a direct influence on strategy and rapid impact across our fast-growing regions.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in retention, loyalty, lifecycle marketing, CRM or customer experience, with at least 3 years leading or building a function.
• Experience designing and launching a loyalty programme, gamification system or major lifecycle journey end-to-end.
• Product-minded, with experience shipping features or journeys inside a mobile app alongside product and engineering teams.
• Multi-product or add-on subscription experience is a strong advantage.
• Experience with data-driven retention strategies and AI-enabled customer journeys.

Responsibilities

• Own the retention strategy and be accountable for member churn, average length of stay and lifetime value across the business.
• Specify and sign off a single agreed view of retention performance - cohort curves, survival analysis, and voluntary versus involuntary churn.
• Diagnose why and when members leave, by segment, tenure, price point, joining channel, gym and market.
• Prioritise the levers by value at stake, and kill the ones that don't move the number.
• Own the multi-year roadmap that takes retention from a reporting line to a structural competitive advantage.

Skills

Retention & Loyalty

CRM

Behavioural science

Data analysis

Product mindset

Tools

A/B testing tools

AI tools

Mobile app development

Analytics stack

Job description

(Relocation support available for exceptional candidates.)

Head of Member Retention & Loyalty

50+ gyms. 250,000+ members and expanding quickly!

GymNation, the Middle East's fastest-growing fitness brand, is seeking a world-class Head of Member Retention & Loyalty to own churn, tenure and member lifetime value end-to-end. One of the first roles of its kind in the global fitness industry.

We've become brilliant at getting people through the door. Now we're going to be the best in the world at keeping them. Every operator talks about churn - almost none have a senior leader who owns it. From a member's first workout to the moment they'd never dream of cancelling, the relationship is yours to design.

You won't start from a blank page. A best-in-industry technology stack and established tech, data and CRM teams are here to put your ideas into action. You'll unite behavioural science, technology and creativity into one retention system. We leverage AI and automation across the business and expect you to advance us here. In retention, AI is the difference between reacting to cancellations and predicting them.

We're growing fast, and so will your impact: exceptional visibility, direct influence on strategy, and the chance to build the retention playbook the rest of the industry will want to copy and can't.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the retention strategy and be accountable for member churn, average length of stay and lifetime value across the business.
• Specify and sign off a single agreed view of retention performance - cohort curves, survival analysis, and voluntary versus involuntary churn.
• Diagnose why and when members leave, by segment, tenure, price point, joining channel, gym and market.
• Prioritise the levers by value at stake, and kill the ones that don't move the number.
• Own the multi-year roadmap that takes retention from a reporting line to a structural competitive advantage.

Behavioural Science, Onboarding & Habit Formation

• Redesign onboarding and the critical first 90 days around the behaviours that actually predict long-term membership.
• Identify and instrument our early-visit "magic number" - the visit frequency that separates a member who stays from one who lapses.
• Apply named behavioural science (habit loops, commitment devices, loss aversion, goal gradient, social proof, nudge theory) to real member journeys, not theory.
• Own the nudge architecture behind every journey - the timing, framing, defaults, choice sets and friction that decide whether a member acts, not just the message sent.
• Design the in-gym moments that matter: first workout, first class, first body scan, first personal goal, first friend made.
• Set the brief for Operations and in-gym teams so front desk and floor staff are an active part of the retention system.

Gamification

• Design and work with the tech team to ship gamification inside the GymNation app - streaks, badges, milestones, challenges, leaderboards and rewards.
• Build mechanics that drive genuine visit frequency and belonging, not vanity metrics, and retire what doesn't earn its place.

Loyalty Programmes

• Build and own the GymNation loyalty programme - tenure rewards, status tiers, partner perks and member benefits.
• Own the referral programme so loyalty compounds, and the win-back programme so lapsed members return.
• Create structural reasons to stay that competitors cannot copy, and that strengthen rather than discount the proposition.
• Own the reward economics so the programme demonstrably pays for itself in retained revenue.

Ancillary & Add-On Retention

• Own churn and tenure across the full product ladder, not just core membership - body-composition scanning, Recovery Rooms, hydration and in-gym retail, and premium or signature products.
• Track add-on churn separately from core churn. A member who drops one product but stays is a different problem to one who leaves altogether.
• Identify which add-ons are genuine retention anchors and which are simply incremental revenue, then own the attach-and-retain playbook: what is sold at join, what is sold later, and what actually extends core tenure.
• Design upgrade, downgrade and pause paths so that a cancellation becomes a downgrade rather than a loss.

AI & the Member App

• Direct the roadmap for churn-risk scoring, personalised journeys and next-best-action in the app.
• Own and evolve the AI save-flow - matching the right save lever to every reason a member gives for leaving.
• Use AI to personalise content, goals, class recommendations and nudges at individual member level.
• Work with Technology and Data to move from rules-based triggers to predictive, continuously learning models.
• Set the standard for how AI is used responsibly with member data in every country we operate in.

Lifecycle Communications

• With the Head of CRM and wider marketing team, orchestrate every channel into one coherent member journey - email, push, SMS, WhatsApp, in-app, in-gym screens, TV and radio, and front-desk conversations.
• Launch and continuously improve lifecycle campaigns for onboarding, at-risk, lapsed, win-back and high-value members.
• Eliminate fragmented messaging that erodes trust, and govern contact frequency across the business.

Measurement, Experimentation & Reporting

• Run a continuous programme of experiments and A/B tests - designed properly, read honestly, and scaled only when they work.
• Quantify the revenue impact of every retention initiative and report it to leadership in commercial terms.
• Build the dashboards and scorecards that give leadership and gym managers real-time visibility.
• Benchmark against global operators and set the target that makes us best in class.

Team & Cross-Functional Leadership

• Build and lead the retention and loyalty function from the ground up.
• Work across Technology, Data, CRM, Marketing, Operations and Finance to make retention a company-wide priority, not a departmental initiative.
• Translate complex behavioural and analytical findings into executive-ready recommendations for the leadership team, board and investors.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

The metrics you'll move

• Monthly and annual churn - the headline number you own.
• Member lifetime value and average length of stay.
• Visit frequency, and the percentage of members hitting the sticky threshold.
• Cancellation save-rate - members retained at the point of leaving.
• Add-on attach rate, add-on churn and ancillary revenue per member.
• App engagement, including DAU/MAU, streaks and challenge participation.
• Referral and win-back rates.

QUALIFICATIONS & SKILLS

Experience

• 5+ years in retention, loyalty, lifecycle marketing, CRM or customer experience, with at least 3 years leading or building a function.
• Track record of owning retention or loyalty in a consumer subscription business, with demonstrable impact on churn and lifetime value.
• You might come from anywhere - subscription tech, gaming, telco, fintech, streaming, e-commerce, hospitality or fitness. What matters is the instinct for behaviour, data and habit.
• Experience designing and launching a loyalty programme, gamification system or major lifecycle journey end-to-end, not just optimising one.
• Product-minded, with experience shipping features or journeys inside a mobile app alongside product and engineering teams.
• Multi-product or add-on subscription experience is a strong advantage - tiering, attach and cross-sell, downgrade paths and product-ladder economics - as is multi-market or multi-language experience.

Technical Requirements

• Data-literate and hands-on - cohort analysis, survival curves, LTV modelling, churn drivers and segmentation.
• Strong understanding of A/B testing, experiment design, statistical significance and the traps in both.
• Familiarity with subscription billing platforms, recurring-payment lifecycles, dunning and involuntary churn.
• Comfortable using AI tools (LLMs, agents, Claude Code) to accelerate workflows and multiply your output.

Mindset

• Behavioural science fluent - can name the science and apply it to a real member journey.
• Commercially minded - sees retention as revenue, not a soft metric, and can defend every investment in those terms.
• Builder mentality - energised by a blank page, a world-first mandate and the chance to define the role rather than inherit it.
• Exceptional communicator - can align Tech, Data, Marketing and Operations behind one retention goal.
• Strategic thinker who can zoom out to set direction and zoom in to write the push notification copy when it matters.
• Intellectually honest - reads experiment results as they are, not as they were hoped to be.
• AI-forward - sees AI tools as core to how a modern retention function operates.

WHY GYMNATION?

• A genuine world-first. Very few gyms on the planet have this role. You'll define it, and set the benchmark others follow.
• Real tools already in motion - a new member app, an AI cancellation save-flow, body-composition scanning, a modern data stack and more.
• Scale and pace - three fast-growing markets already, with international expansion underway.
• Competitive salary, benefits, and eligibility for GymNation's Long Term Equity Incentive Plan (LTIP).
• Certified as a Great Place to Work, from the results of an all-GymNation staff survey.
• Relocation support available for exceptional candidates.