Most brands have someone who runs email. What most brands don't have is someone who looks at the entire customer journey.
I do Strategic Retention for Ecommerce: an audit of your full retention ecosystem and a roadmap your team can actually act on.
Your email program is running. Campaigns go out, flows are live, your agency is optimizing open rates. And your retention is still not where it needs to be.
That's not an email problem. Retention is rarely just an email problem. It shows up in three places most brands aren't looking:
The customers you're acquiring are shaping what retention is even possible. If the wrong customers are coming in, no lifecycle sequence fixes that. Acquisition quality and retention are the same conversation.
Agencies optimize what's there. They're not asking why customers leave, what the site experience is doing before email starts, or whether your segments reflect how customers actually behave. That's not their job. It needs to be someone's.
Opening a Director of CRM search is one answer. But what does that person walk into? A clear strategy they can execute against, or a blank slate they'll spend a year figuring out? The strategy should come first.
This is the gap I close.
These aren't flukes. Lifecycle email growing to 25% of revenue. Churn dropping 13% from a single flow change. NRR at 97%. Every one of those came from the same process: understanding what customers actually need, not just what the tool is already sending.
There are three paths most brands consider when retention isn't working. Each one gets part of the picture. None of them gets the whole thing.
A good retention agency will optimize what they can see: flow performance, campaign metrics, list health. What they won't do is audit acquisition quality, evaluate your site experience, or tell you whether your segments map to how customers actually behave. That's not in their scope.
The right hire is worth it. But a search takes three to four months. Then another six to twelve months before they've diagnosed the real problem and built a strategy. That's a long time to wait, and it's a lot of pressure to put on someone who walked into a blank slate.
Your marketing lead carves out time. They look at the data, run a few experiments, put together a plan. It helps until the next campaign crunch hits, and then the strategic work gets deprioritized again. Retention strategy without dedicated ownership tends to fade.
The audit and roadmap picks up where each of those stops short. You get strategic clarity now, and a foundation your team or your next hire can actually build from.
I've spent over a decade on both sides of the ecommerce ecosystem. At Klaviyo, I saw how the tools work and what brands actually struggle with when they try to use them well. At ByHeart, I was the one building the retention strategy in-house, working alongside an execution agency, and learning what a brand actually needs from that relationship.
Most retention consultants come from one side or the other. They either know the tools deeply but haven't run brand-side retention, or they've been brand-side but don't understand the ecosystem their agency is operating in. That gap shows up in the recommendations.
I can sit with your agency and tell them what's missing. I can sit with your marketing team and show them what the data is actually saying. I can look at your acquisition channels and tell you how they're affecting retention downstream. That's not a single-channel skill. It's a perspective that comes from having been in every seat.
And it didn't come from a straight line.
One offering. An audit of your retention ecosystem and a prioritized roadmap your team can act on. No execution, no ongoing management. Just a clear picture of what's broken and what to do about it, built by someone who has seen this from every angle.
A focused engagement that gives you a clear picture of where your retention program stands and a practical roadmap for where to take it next. Your team leaves with enough direction to move without needing ongoing outside help.
What's included
Tell me what's broken. I'll let you know if I can fix it.
Fill out the form and I'll follow up with next steps.
A decade in ecommerce, on the vendor side and the brand side, means I know what your agency is working with and what your internal team needs from the strategy they're supposed to execute.
What a CRM director sees in the data that marketing misses. What an agency is optimizing that isn't actually the problem. What a founder is really asking when they say retention is broken.
The non-linear path is a feature, not a bug. It's what lets me look at your full retention ecosystem, not just the channel your agency manages.
Probably, yes. An agency optimizes what they can see inside the tool. This engagement looks at what the tool is supposed to be solving, which means acquisition quality, site experience, segmentation logic, and whether your lifecycle architecture maps to how customers actually behave. Those aren't questions your agency is asking. That's not a knock on them. It's just not their job.
Do this first. The roadmap gives your new hire a strategy to execute against instead of a blank slate to figure out. That's a better use of their first six months, and it lowers the risk of a bad fit. A Director of Retention who walks into a clear strategy is more effective faster than one who has to diagnose the problem and build the plan themselves.
Ecommerce brands where retention is a meaningful business lever, not a nice-to-have. That usually means you have a real customer base, an email program that's been running for a while, and a sense that something isn't working but you're not sure what. DTC brands, CPG brands with a direct channel, subscription businesses, and brands with a mix of channels all fit. If you're pre-launch or just starting email, the signal isn't there yet to audit.
Access to your ESP and any relevant performance data, an internal point person who can help coordinate interviews and data access, and stakeholders available for 30 to 45 minute conversations in the first few weeks. You don't need to have your retention problem figured out. That's the work. The more raw material you can share at kickoff, the faster we move.
No. The engagement ends with a roadmap your team can run. I don't do campaign management, flow builds, or retainer work. That's intentional. The value here is strategic clarity, not another vendor in your stack. If you need execution help after the roadmap is done, I can point you toward the right resources.