Discovery and Acquisition
first touchpoint
- Paid Ads: Google, Meta, TikTok
- AI Discovery: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity
Traffic to the shop
More profit from the customers you already paid for.
You already know retention is where the margin sits. Knowing it and running it are two different jobs. We take the whole CRM system off your desk: email, SMS, WhatsApp and direct mail, plus loyalty, referral and subscriptions.
Averages across 100+ brand partnerships.
What does a retention system actually do?
It turns one expensive first purchase into many profitable repeat purchases.
Lead Gen
paid traffic becomes your own subscriber
- Post Purchase, Pop-ups and embed forms
- Social Media opt-in (e.g. via Instagram DM)
Subscriber, the asset the brand owns
Foundation
the system
- Shop (e.g. Shopify)
- ESP (e.g. Klaviyo)
The two sync with each other
Communication
two send types
- Campaigns
- Flows
5 Channels: Email, SMS, WhatsApp, Direct Mail, App Push
Retention Levers
- Loyalty Program
- Subscription Model
- Referral Program
All three raise repeat rate and LTV.
Data and Reporting
- Tracking and Attribution
- Cohort Analysis
- Surveys and Buying Behavior
- Zero-Party Data
Metrics: repeat purchase rate, LTV, margins, CAC
Optimization
- Better offers and copy
- Deliverability
- Brand voice
- Psychology triggers
Acquisition buys you a customer once, at a price that rises every year. Retention decides how many times that customer pays you back, and every repeat purchase costs a fraction of the first.
The flywheel is not one machine. It is dozens of small mechanisms. Each one can be measured. Each one can be improved. Together they compound.
Does that sound familiar?
- 01
The welcome email opens with a discount, because that is what everyone does.
- 02
Three tools report three different revenue numbers for the same period. None of them match the bank.
- 03
Ask your team for the three main reasons customers buy again. Most shrug.
- 04
The replenishment flow came from a supplement brand. Nobody checked whether it fits yours.
- 05
Everyone agrees retention matters. Nobody owns it on Monday morning.
What the people who run retention at these brands say about us
RELAIN reviewed all of our CRM, email, and loyalty activities, provided extremely valuable recommendations for optimization, and transferred that knowledge directly to our team.
Yasemin Mecit
Head of CRM, SNOCKS
RELAIN rebuilt our entire email marketing from scratch and generated high revenue for us in the first month.
Nora Michels
Co-Founder, drink&paint
Our repurchase rate and email marketing revenue have quadrupled since partnering with RELAIN.
Shivi Gupta
Founder, VEDIC LAB
Based on engagement rate, we were able to launch Europe's most popular Foot Locker loyalty campaign with the help of RELAIN.
Michiel Roodvoets
Senior Loyalty Marketing Manager, Foot Locker
How do you run retention on AI without the output going generic?
You give the model context it cannot get anywhere else.
Everyone has the same models. Almost nobody has the context to point them at. An in-house team pointing AI at their CRM gets the average of everything that model has ever seen, because that is all it has to work with.
Every output we produce draws on two contexts at once. Your brand: products, customers, numbers, voice. And ours: five years and over a hundred brand partnerships, written down and kept current.
The speed is the by-product. The quality is the point.
Three things we do differently
Psychology, not discounts
Customers do not churn because your product failed. They churn because your CRM feels transactional. We design flows around scarcity, commitment, identity and effort justification, so the next purchase feels like a choice rather than a transaction.
Contribution margin, not open rates
Open rates do not fund payroll. We report CLV by cohort, repurchase rate and contribution margin per segment, so you can see what makes money and what only looks like it does.
One system, not four channels
Separate channels compete for attention. Connected ones multiply. Email, SMS, WhatsApp and direct mail run as one plan, with loyalty, referral and subscriptions wired into the same logic.
Five steps, and the first one takes two minutes
Answer five questions and book a call.
Two minutes, and you pick a time straight away.
First call.
We get to know each other, you share your challenges and goals.
Audit.
We go through your Klaviyo account and look at what is actually happening.
Second call.
We show you what we found and what we would do about it.
We start.
Fixed monthly fee, everything in one package, no tiers.
Two founders. No layer in between.
Florian Suckfüll and Marc Hiller have been increasing customer retention since 2021, first for brands like Foot Locker and Bosch, now for DTC brands from $5M up. You work with both of us directly, on every decision.
- Austin, Texas and Munich, Germany
We are a fit for some brands and wrong for others
This works for founder or exec led DTC brands doing $5M to $100M a year on Shopify and Klaviyo, whose customers buy more than once a year. Beauty, supplements, apparel and consumables sit right in the middle of that.
It does not work for products with no repeat cycle. If someone buys once every few years, the flywheel has nothing to turn.
Questions people ask before booking
Why does retention matter more in 2026 than it did?
Because acquisition costs keep rising. A first purchase often carries little or negative profit, so growth only becomes predictable when customers come back.
Which platforms do you work with?
Klaviyo and Shopify. We know most other ESPs from migrations, but that combination is where we work best.
What makes you different from an email agency?
An email agency runs a channel. We run the whole retention system and connect it to your P&L.
What does it cost?
It depends on your size, product range and how much is already running. We audit your account first, so the number we give you is measured rather than guessed.
Can you work with our in-house team?
Yes. Done for you, done with you, or consulting only. In most cases a hybrid works best, and the goal is that your team gets stronger.
Your next hundred orders are more profitable than your last hundred
That is what a working retention system does. Book a call and we will tell you within one conversation whether we can build one for you.