Alejandra Salomon

Churn, in this account, can begin with a discount that trained people to wait, an acquisition channel that brought in the wrong customer, or a product that gave no strong reason to buy again.

• Sending more email addresses none of those problems.
• The useful move is to stop discussing churn in isolation and show what happened before it.

The post grew out of a reader comment asking how to get leadership to see a churn problem as an acquisition or product problem. Salomon's answer is to tag customers and compare cohorts until the point where behavior changes becomes visible, then replace "retention can't fix this" with "here's where the behavior starts to change."

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The goal is to locate the break rather than judge churn as a single number, turning the retention conversation into a diagnosis with a place to fix—not a request for another campaign.

A significantly worse repeat rate from one acquisition channel or offer—or faster churn among customers won during a heavy discount—is a signal. Cancellations that consistently mention product experience, pricing, or how quickly people actually use the product point away from email as the cause.

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Welcome flows, behavioral segmentation, personalized post-purchase journeys, replenishment timing, and winback campaigns can remind someone why they loved a brand or bring them back at the right moment, but they cannot create loyalty the brand never earned. In this framing, retention is the result of the entire customer experience.

The post lists what a flow cannot fix: a product that did not live up to the marketing, shipping that took too long, a subscription harder to cancel than to start, customer service that made people feel like a problem, packaging that felt cheap, or a first purchase that gave no reason to make a second. It also names the reflex responses to retention trouble—build a winback flow, send more campaigns, add save offers, launch loyalty—and says they sometimes work, but can also become sophisticated ways to market around a bigger problem.

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Instead of asking how to improve retention and jumping straight to a new flow, a better offer, more personalization, or another campaign, Salomon asks what the best customers bought first, what brought them back, how long that took, what experience built enough trust for a second purchase, and what those customers have in common.

• In this reading, retention data shows what is working as well as who churned.
• Understanding it helps a brand create more of the experiences that make the right customers want to return, rather than trying to convince everyone to stay.

The questions Salomon lists are the method: What was the first purchase?

• What made customers come back?
• How long did it take?
• What experience earned their trust?
• What traits do repeat buyers share?
• The goal is to stop trying to convince every customer to stay and start creating more of the experiences that make the right customers want to return.

This post drops the "hot take" framing of the earlier ones and follows up on a previous week's take, telling readers that the hottest take was just "maybe listen to your customers." It marks a shift from provocation toward a quieter, data-led reframe, and it shows the ideas developing in conversation with the audience rather than as standalone product content.

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Read it for the argument and supporting evidence to use in that conversation.

The post opens on an uncomfortable truth: sometimes a retention team is held accountable for customers it never had a chance of retaining.

• It grew out of a reader comment asking how to get leadership to see churn as an acquisition or product issue.
• Salomon's answer is to stop discussing churn in isolation and show the story before the churn.
• They walk through the cases: one acquisition channel, offer, or message producing noticeably worse repeat rates; customers won during a heavy discount churning faster; cancellations that consistently cite product experience, pricing, or how quickly people actually use the product.
• Sending more email is not the fix in any of those.
• The practical move is to tag customers and compare cohorts, so the point where behavior starts to break down becomes visible.
• Their phrasing for leadership is "Here's where the behavior starts to change" rather than "retention can't fix this."

For brands planning a campaign

For a brand with falling repeat purchase, this doubles as a diagnostic template: cohort customers by acquisition source and offer, compare repeat rates, and read cancellation reasons before commissioning another winback flow. If discount-acquired cohorts repeat far less often, the campaign should address acquisition or offers, not just lifecycle messaging.

Read it before approving another campaign: it lists upstream causes a flow will not address.

The post lays out common reflex responses to retention trouble: churn is high, so build a winback flow; repeat purchase rate is down, so send more campaigns; subscriptions are cancelling, so add save offers; customers are not coming back, so launch a loyalty program.

• Salomon acknowledges that these sometimes work, but says teams can also build “really sophisticated ways to market around a bigger problem.”
• The causes they name are specific: an offer that trained customers to wait for a discount, acquisition that brought in the wrong customer, a subscription cadence that does not match how people use the product, and no strong enough reason to buy again.
• The point: retention is less about choosing the next email than finding out why someone did not come back.

For brands planning a campaign

Use this as a pre-brief checklist. If any of the named causes fits the brand, part of the budget belongs upstream of lifecycle marketing; the campaign plan should say which problem the spend is meant to solve.

Read it for the range of non-messaging causes a brand may need to address.

Salomon offers a hot take from someone who works in retention: the best retention strategy might have nothing to do with email or SMS.

• They list what even a polished program cannot rescue: a welcome flow, behavioural segmentation, personalised post-purchase journeys, optimised replenishment timing, and a good winback.
• The underlying problems might be a product that did not live up to the marketing, shipping that took too long, a subscription harder to cancel than to start, customer service that made people feel like a problem, packaging that felt cheap, or a first purchase that gave no reason for a second.
• Retention reflects the entire customer experience.
• Email and SMS can amplify a great experience or bring someone back at the right moment, but cannot manufacture loyalty the brand never earned.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful for setting expectations around a lifecycle retainer and generating questions for product, operations, and support teams. It cautions against promising a retention lift from messaging alone when the weak point lies elsewhere in the experience.

Read it for a short reframe that changes the questions a brand asks of its retention data.

The post follows up on an earlier one whose hottest take, in Salomon’s telling, was simply “maybe listen to your customers.”

• Rather than jumping to a new flow, a better offer, more personalisation, or another campaign, they suggest asking why the best customers stay: what they bought first, what brought them back, how long that took, what experience earned enough trust for another purchase, and what those customers have in common.
• Retention data shows not only who churned but also what is working, helping a brand create more experiences that make the right customers want to return instead of trying to convince everyone to stay.

For brands planning a campaign

Suggests analysing repeat buyers as a cohort to find experiences worth replicating, then using those insights to plan campaigns instead of starting with another flow.

The stated causes are acquisition choices and product experience: a discount offer that trained customers to wait, a channel that brought in the wrong customer, a subscription cadence that does not match how the product is used, slow shipping, cancellation friction, service interactions, packaging, or simply no strong reason to buy a second time. Email and SMS are described as amplifiers of an experience that already works, not as a way to manufacture loyalty a brand never earned.

For brands planning a campaign

A brand bringing a churn or repeat-purchase brief should expect the first pass to question acquisition offers and product experience, not start with another flow. This suits brands willing to examine the pre-purchase and post-purchase experience; it is a poor fit for a brief that only wants a Klaviyo or Postscript build with no scope to change the offer or product.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3

The diagnostic locates the break rather than judging churn in isolation. For leadership, the recommended reframe is to replace “retention can’t fix this” with “here is where the behavior starts to change,” making the cause visible and showing that churn is not solely the retention team’s problem.

Tag customers by acquisition source and offer, group them into cohorts, compare repeat and cancellation behavior across cohorts, and present the pre-churn story to leadership as evidence of where the break begins.

For brands planning a campaign

A campaign brief should supply cohort-level data segmented by acquisition channel and offer, plus cancellation reasons if available.

• The expected deliverable is a diagnosis with a recommended place to fix, not a new campaign.
• Without acquisition or product data, the analysis will be limited.

Examples: Source 1

Instead of asking “how do we improve retention,” Salomon asks what the best customers bought first, what brought them back, how long the gap was, what experience built enough trust for a second purchase, and what those customers have in common. The argument is that retention data can show what is working as well as who churned, helping a brand create more of the experiences that make the right customers want to return.

Work backwards from repeat purchasers: first purchase, time to second purchase and shared traits. Use those patterns to decide which experiences to repeat.

For brands planning a campaign

Useful for brands with a vague retention problem and no single obvious churn cause: it produces an angle based on repeat-purchase patterns and first-purchase cohorts, rather than campaign volume. A brief can request this pattern analysis alongside the churn diagnosis and use the result to choose a campaign angle.

Examples: Source 1

Hashtags name retention tools and channels (Klaviyo, Postscript, Attentive, email, SMS) and DTC ecommerce. One post replies directly to a comment on an earlier post, and another refers back to the previous week’s take, so the ideas develop in conversation with the audience rather than as standalone product content.

The posts name no client, report no measured result and describe no specific engagement. Ask for client examples or measured outcomes before assessing effectiveness.

For brands planning a campaign

A brand evaluating a partnership should expect short, argument-led posts that name tool categories and challenge default tactics, not product demos or step-by-step tutorials. The tool names suggest familiarity with the email and SMS stack, but do not document a working or paid relationship with those vendors; ask about any relevant vendor partnerships.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2 · Source 3 · Source 4

Both work with Klaviyo and Shopify tools, and build posts around a single argument supported by a numbered list rather than a product walkthrough. Hammed's post on automations versus campaigns makes a similar claim to the one they make about flows: the useful question is what customer behaviour you are not responding to yet, not what to send this week.

Hammed's framing is external and industry-level: the ecommerce funnel is shifting as shoppers discover products through AI tools, and platform data such as a report drawn from 150,000 brands.

• Salomon's framing is internal and diagnostic: churn and repeat-purchase problems traced to acquisition offers, product experience and cohort behaviour inside a single brand.
• Readers looking for channel-level and discovery trends would turn to Hammed; those seeking a retention diagnosis would turn to Salomon.

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Corto's posts describe turning Claude Code into a Klaviyo execution engine and pairing GPT-6 Astra with a CRM workflow to plan a monthly campaign calendar, build lifecycle flows and produce creative directions — the same Klaviyo-centred territory they cover.

Corto's angle is speed and automation: using AI to compress strategy, copy and creative production into one workflow, and packaging the setup as a guide.

• Salomon's angle is scepticism about more output: another winback flow or campaign cannot fix a customer who was never going to return; the work should start with cohorts and pre-churn behaviour.
• The two are almost opposite bets on where the leverage sits.

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Ahmad's list of eight reasons ecommerce email slips names discount fatigue, blasting everyone the same way and skipping the post-purchase flow; a companion post argues that a strategy that worked for one DTC brand will not transfer to another.

• Salomon makes a related point: a discount offer can train customers to wait, and copying a flow cannot fix context.
• Both make their case in structured LinkedIn list posts.

Ahmad stays inside email, offering a checklist of fixes — strategy, welcome flow, segmentation, testing, zero-party data — and a warning against reusing another brand's playbook.

• Salomon steps outside the channel, arguing that some problems handed to retention teams are acquisition or product problems no email programme can resolve.
• They offer a method — tag by acquisition source, compare cohorts, study repeat buyers — rather than a checklist.

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The posts cite a report covering 150,000 brands: automations accounted for 2% of email sends but 30% of email-driven revenue.

• They frame the choice as flows that respond to intent a customer has already shown, rather than campaigns that have to recreate it.
• Hammed also suits a brand whose retention plan needs to account for how customers now discover products, including AI-assisted research before they reach the site, as well as product clarity, the buying experience, and first-party data after a mention.
• Choose Hammed when the brand is ready to act within email and automation and wants the decision supported by published numbers.

The posts focus on email and lifecycle marketing: timing, segmentation, and the different roles of campaigns and flows.

• They do not assess the acquisition offer, product, pricing, or service issues that Salomon's method says a brand should check first.
• Before optimising automations, a brand should establish whether churn is actually a lifecycle problem.
• The posts cite a report and its figures but no client or measured result; ask for evidence of outcomes before treating the data as proof of engagement.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The posts describe using AI coding and writing tools as a Klaviyo execution engine: analysing an account, finding opportunities, and running CRM workflows across flows, campaigns, segmentation, deliverability, and analytics.

• They also cover planning a monthly campaign calendar, generating angles, building lifecycle flows, and producing creative directions and copy ready to recreate inside Klaviyo.
• On the same retention decision, Salomon answers what to do and where the problem starts; Corto S. addresses how to produce the resulting email and CRM work faster and at greater volume.
• Choose Corto S. when a brand has decided its email programme should carry more of the retention load and needs throughput, not another round of strategy.

The work focuses on tooling and AI-assisted workflows.

• It assumes the retention and offer strategy is settled enough to automate; it does not assess whether email is the right intervention.
• Both posts point readers to a free guide, making the material partly promotional.
• Ask for client examples and measured outcomes before relying on it as evidence of results.
• Brands still weighing whether more email is the answer will get less from this than those ready to produce.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2

The posts offer a practical checklist: no clear strategy, a weak welcome flow, sending the same message to everyone, too many discounts, ignoring data, no post-purchase flow, never testing, and no zero-party data.

• A companion argument says an email strategy that worked for one DTC brand will not necessarily transfer to another, even in the same niche, because audience psychology, lifetime-value goals, journey length, tone, promise, and positioning differ.
• Ahmad suits brands seeking hands-on advice on messaging, segmentation, and offer craft, plus a warning against copying a competitor's flows.
• There is overlap with Salomon on discount fatigue training customers to wait and on post-purchase retention; Ahmad goes deeper into rebuilding the message and segmentation themselves.

The framing centres on email strategy, directing readers back to the channel rather than to the upstream acquisition and product issues where Salomon's method starts.

• The two posts are dated October 2025, roughly a year older than the other material here.
• Ask for client examples and measured results before treating Ahmad's advice as evidence of outcomes.
• Consider Ahmad when the brand has decided email is the problem to fix and wants to rebuild the programme.

Examples: Source 1 · Source 2