# Tom Jacques-Seebold

Tom Jacques-Seebold helps DTC brands improve email and CRM so they can build customer retention and revenue without weakening their brand.

- Profile: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/creators/tom-jacques-seebold/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomseebold
- Topics: email-marketing, retention-marketing, crm
- Based on 14 dated posts, latest 2026-09-30

## Summary

Tom Jacques-Seebold is most useful for DTC email and CRM audits that connect retention work to brand trust.

- Best for: A DTC or subscription brand whose CRM has become promotional and wants an outside view.
- Not for: Reach-led consumer awareness, mass product launches, or sponsored placements priced against audience size.
- Check first: Ask for examples beyond LinkedIn posts, plus audience data and terms if considering sponsorship.

### Takeaways

- Every send either enriches your brand or erodes it, with no neutral option.
- Transactional email is the brand channel most customers actually see.
- Retention fails through small, quiet leaks, such as weak welcome flows.

## Main ideas

- **Every send either enriches your brand or erodes it—there is no neutral**: Jacques-Seebold sets the standard performance-channel playbook—grow the list, find intent, segment the audience, personalise the content, run automations and drive the sale—against the daily pressure on CRM teams to blast the base, add channels and produce quick sales. They argue that brands can get away with this for a while, but the equity built up over years gradually erodes, with the effects showing up later. They identify the gap between brand custodians, email marketing specialists, performance media teams and data engineers as where the tension first surfaces—and where they work.
- **Transactional email is the brand channel most customers actually see**: Order confirmations, booking references and notifications reach people regardless of marketing consent. Jacques-Seebold argues that this makes them more important than any campaign sent in the same year. Opt-in rates are falling, and inboxes are increasingly curated by AI and filters, so transactional messages are often the only ones that land with the right information at the right time. They treat these messages as brand-led, spanning email, SMS, RCS, push and WhatsApp, and say they should be audited rather than left on defaults.
- **Retention fails through small, quiet leaks**: Founders and CMOs know they need better retention but often do not know where to start. Jacques-Seebold frames retention as a chain of connected moments, not a single metric: the pop-up promise that brings in the right leads; the welcome journey that holds attention; the first purchase and product experience; how a one-time buyer is treated differently from a four-time buyer; and the lapsed cohort nobody has reviewed in months. Because no single leak is dramatic, underperformance stays invisible while acquisition costs continue to accrue at the top of the funnel.
- **Show the value before anyone commits**: The audit is laid out step by step, with a clear sales sequence: scope first, findings early, cost before a decision, then the deep analysis. The brand gives read-only access for an initial look, limiting over-commitment on both sides. By the second call, Jacques-Seebold says they are already sharing what they found, what they will investigate, the cost of the audit and 90-day plan, and a few urgent areas to focus on before anything is paid for. They warn that the findings can be uncomfortable, but say most issues are fixable within 90 days, either by the brand’s own team or theirs.
- **Make CRM’s commercial case in revenue terms, not creative preference**: Jacques-Seebold casts CRM and email as marketing’s least glamorous channels, then makes the case for them: steady, predictable revenue is what founders, CEOs and CFOs want. Across the posts, they frame email and CRM decisions in terms of retention economics, brand equity and risk rather than channel tactics. That points to how a proposal can be framed for executives, and explains why the audit delivers a score and prioritised backlog rather than creative direction.

## Work to read

- [CRM is boring, and that is the point](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomseebold_crm-is-supposed-to-be-the-least-sexy-marketing-activity-7508423069359693824-CxY8)
- [Every send either erodes your brand or enriches it](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomseebold_every-send-either-erodes-your-brand-or-enriches-activity-7505884541715169281-cHwR)
- [Transactional email is the channel most customers actually see](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomseebold_your-transactional-emails-will-reach-more-activity-7498273638303932417-_yDU)
- [Inside a CRM audit: from first look to 90-day plan](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomseebold_courtesy-notice-i-warn-you-now-we-dont-activity-7510960135075397632-Jcfs)
- [Where retention leaks hide, and a five-minute way to find them](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomseebold_every-dtc-founder-and-cmo-i-speak-to-knows-activity-7500809990736101376-P0er)

## Brand relationships

- **Intentive Digital** (disclosed_partnership)
- **The Athletic** (disclosed_partnership)
- **The Lost Estate** (mention)

## Partnerships

Tom Jacques-Seebold's posts describe a commercial route to a CRM and email audit, sold through the studio site linked in those posts. The audit starts with a discovery call about your business, current CRM programme and priorities for the next three months, followed by read-only platform access so the scope and cost can be set before either side commits. At a second call, you hear the initial findings, what will be examined in depth, and the price of the audit plus a 90-day plan. The post also promises a few urgent areas to act on if you stop there. The worked audit covers the pop-up promise and welcome experience through to first purchase; journeys for people who have not bought yet; campaigns; segmentation; tone of voice; branding; inbox rendering and deliverability; list health and growth; and engagement, revenue, attribution and retention metrics such as churn, repeat purchase rate and lifetime value. The output includes an assessment of whether the programme is enriching or eroding the brand, a Brand Enrichment Score between -100 and +100, a breakdown of revenue opportunities and a 90-day prioritised backlog. Findings are framed as fixable within 90 days, either by your own team or theirs. Two client examples illustrate the work rather than sponsorship formats: at The Athletic, transactional messaging was treated as part of the product because the newsletter subscription was what customers paid for; at The Lost Estate, pre-show notifications gather dietary requirements and confirm dress code, timing and location to build anticipation before the event. The five posts do not mention sponsored-post, paid-partnership, affiliate or media-kit terms, and publish no rate card, audience specification or campaign pricing. Ask for current rates, audience details and campaign options before assessing a partnership.

## Alternatives

- Noah Haynes: Choose Noah Haynes when the brand already accepts that retention is the problem and wants campaign-level execution: growing the list, improving the welcome flow, sending more segmented campaigns, fixing weak content, and filling gaps in essential pre-purchase and post-purchase flows. The material is also a better fit when the immediate task is moving slow stock with a structured sequence of offers and merchandising rather than commissioning a broad diagnostic.
- Abraham Buchinger: Choose Abraham Buchinger when the need starts upstream of the email programme: whether the brand owns the decisions behind its tools, whether traffic and messaging are aimed at the right audience, and whether clarity beats design in offers and communications. The posts also suit a discussion about platform risk and channel ownership, including how shopping inside AI assistants and dependence on Amazon change where buying decisions begin.
- Bogdan Birtom: Choose Bogdan Birtom when the decision is platform-specific: assessing Klaviyo's latest features, understanding its move toward a broader B2C CRM, or planning a migration of subscription and transactional flows from Recharge into Klaviyo. The material is useful when the buyer needs to weigh feature changes, consolidation, segmentation, and deliverability implications before committing to a platform or migration.

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AI-assisted summary of public posts. Audience demographics are not available. Engagement appears only where we checked recent posts. Method: https://b2binfluencer.marketing/methodology/