The ecommerce retention and lifecycle marketing agency for second orders.
Acquisition pays for the first order. Retention decides whether the business makes money. We are a retention and lifecycle marketing agency for ecommerce brands: Klaviyo email, SMS and automated flows engineered around repeat-purchase economics. Second-purchase rate, time between orders, cohort retention, lifetime value. If you are looking for a CRM marketing agency for an online store, this is usually the work you mean: turning the customer data in Klaviyo into the next order. Across 800+ brands and $250M+ in attributed email and SMS revenue, the pattern holds. The money is in the customers you already paid for.
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Get your free retention audit
Drop your store URL and email. We'll review your flows, SMS and repeat-purchase data and send a written 90-day roadmap within 24 hours. No obligation.
Trusted by
800+ brands
Program specs
SPEC.01
$250M+
attributed email + SMS revenue
SPEC.02
800+
ecommerce brands
SPEC.03
Partner
official Klaviyo partner
SPEC.04
EST. 2017
aeronautical-engineer founded
Retention is a math problem, not a newsletter.
Once ad spend is counted, a lot of DTC first orders break even at best. The profit arrives on orders two, three and four. So the retention question is not how many emails to send this week. It is how many first-time buyers come back, how fast, and what each one is worth over the next 12 months.
You have probably seen the figure from Frederick Reichheld of Bain & Company, repeated in Harvard Business Review in 2014, that a 5% lift in customer retention can raise profits by 25% to 95%. Treat it as a direction, not a forecast. The only numbers that matter are in your own cohort data, and most brands have never pulled it. We start there, and we report on these five numbers every month.
| Metric | What it measures | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| 01 Second-purchase rate | The share of first-time buyers who order again. | In most accounts it is the single biggest lever, and the one almost nobody reports on. |
| 02 Time between orders | Median days from order one to order two, by product. | Replenishment timing, and when win-back should treat a customer as genuinely late, not just quiet. |
| 03 Cohort retention | Of the customers you acquired in March, the share still buying in September. | Month-by-month curves per cohort, not one blended average that hides the decay. |
| 04 Customer lifetime value | Klaviyo's predictive CLV, checked against real cohort revenue. | What each customer is worth against what you paid to acquire them. |
| 05 Revenue per recipient | What each send actually earns, split by flow and campaign. | Whether more email is making money or just making noise. |
What is a good customer retention rate?
For an online store, the useful version of the question is repeat purchase rate: the share of customers who buy more than once in a given period. Klaviyo puts a good repeat purchase rate at around 20% to 30%, and notes that it runs higher for affordable or perishable goods and lower for high-value goods such as tech or luxury items. So the same 20% means different things: low for a consumables brand, strong for one selling high-ticket goods.
Two formulas, two jobs. Repeat purchase rate is customers with more than one order divided by all customers in the period, times 100. Customer retention rate is customers at the end of the period minus new customers acquired, divided by customers at the start, times 100. The second suits businesses with contracts or subscriptions, where you know who is still a customer. A store has no contract doing that work, which is why we lean on repeat purchase rate and cohort curves.
A blended rate hides the decay, so we read it by cohort: of the customers who first bought in a given month, what share bought again within 60, 90 and 180 days, split by the product they started with. That is the number our retention work is judged on. Our guide to customer retention strategies for ecommerce covers the numbers that prove it, and the customer lifetime value calculator shows what a lift in repeat purchases is worth.
Sources: Klaviyo, what is a good repeat purchase rate?, Shopify, customer retention rate formula.
Lifecycle marketing, stage by stage.
Six stages, one customer journey. Klaviyo's own benchmark data shows automated flows drive roughly 41% of email revenue from just 5.3% of sends. That is where retention is won, so that is where we start. Each stage below feeds the next.
First order to second
Post-purchase onboarding, product education and cross-sell by affinity. The window where a buyer becomes a customer, or does not.
Replenishment
Reminders timed to how long the product actually lasts, not a guess. Built from your own order data.
VIP and high-LTV
Early access and recognition for the customers carrying the P&L. Reflex discounting kept away from people who would have paid full price.
Win-back
Triggered on each customer's own expected reorder window instead of a blanket 90 days. Then suppression, to protect deliverability.
SMS
Reserved for moments that are genuinely time-sensitive: carts, restocks, drops, shipping. Layered on email, never bolted on.
Lifecycle campaigns
Campaign sends segmented by lifecycle stage, so a first-time buyer and a ten-order VIP never get the same email.
Retention is the core of our ecommerce email marketing agency work. This page is the same work, judged on repeat-purchase numbers. The full flow library, with benchmarks for each, is on our flow automation page. SMS setup, compliance and email plus SMS attribution are covered under SMS marketing. When we build the flows, we write and design the emails in them too, judged on clicks and orders: see email design and copywriting.
Doing it in-house? Start with our 12 customer retention strategies for ecommerce, learn to measure the payoff with customer lifetime value (CLV), and if you sell subscribe-and-save, read retention for subscription ecommerce.
What a retention engagement looks like.
Diagnosis first, flows second, cohorts third. The order matters: a better campaign cannot fix a broken post-purchase flow, and nobody can read a cohort curve in the week the work starts.
Retention audit
Flow inventory, repeat-purchase gaps, SMS setup, deliverability and segmentation, with a written 90-day retention plan within 24 hours of access. Yours to keep whether you hire us or not.
Fix the flows
Under-performing flows get fixed first: post-purchase, replenishment and win-back, the parts of the system that carry the second order. A repaired flow earns from the day it goes live, because it runs on customers you already have.
Read the cohorts
Repeat-purchase metrics take longer to read honestly, because a cohort needs time to reorder. The compounding effect usually shows over 90 to 180 days, judged on second-purchase rate and cohort curves, not open rates.
Run and report
Campaigns segmented by lifecycle stage, flow testing and deliverability monitoring, reported monthly on the five numbers above. Weekly check-ins, a dedicated Slack channel and quarterly strategic reviews.
What a retention marketing agency costs.
Our published ranges, in USD. We sell projects and monthly retainers, never hours, and you get a fixed number before any work starts.
| Engagement | Price | Terms | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retention audit | Free | No commitment | Flow inventory, repeat-purchase gaps, SMS setup, deliverability and segmentation, with a written 90-day retention plan within 24 hours of access. |
| Fixed-scope project | $3-15K USD | Depending on scope, 1-6 weeks typical | One defined outcome, such as a post-purchase, replenishment and win-back rebuild, a deliverability fix or a migration. Single fee, agreed before work starts. |
| Retention management retainer | Typically $3-12K USD a month | Month to month, 30 days notice | Lifecycle campaigns, flow testing, segmentation, deliverability monitoring and monthly reporting on the five numbers above. Weekly check-ins, a dedicated Slack channel and quarterly reviews. |
What moves the number: the state of the account, list size and send volume, and how much we build versus how much your team runs. Budget separately for Klaviyo's own subscription, which Klaviyo prices on active profiles. The audit ends with a specific scope and price for your account within 24 hours.
The full schedule and contract terms are on our pricing page, and our guide to email marketing agency pricing explains what drives agency fees across the market.
Three labels. Know which one you need.
Lifecycle marketing describes the stages: subscriber, first-time buyer, repeat buyer, VIP, lapsed. What it does is send each customer the message that fits their stage, designed to move them to the next one. Retention marketing describes the goal: more customers moving forward through those stages instead of falling out. A good lifecycle marketing agency and a good retention agency do the same work, and so do we. Our guide to lifecycle marketing stages, flows and examples maps it out.
CRM marketing agency means two different things. In B2B it usually means implementing Salesforce or HubSpot for a sales team, and we do not do CRM software implementation. In ecommerce it means the owned-channel work built on customer data: the email, SMS, flows and segments that drive the next order. Klaviyo now describes itself as a B2C CRM, and for most online stores the customer record that matters is the Klaviyo profile fed by your store, carrying every order, browse and click. Turning that record into the next order is the CRM marketing we do. More on that in is Klaviyo a CRM for ecommerce?
What we will not do is sell retention as a volume game. More sends to a disengaged list is weight, not lift. It drags down inbox placement for the customers who were going to buy. We win by removing things: the extra discount, the extra CTA, the segment that should have been suppressed three months ago.
Retention closes the Profit Loop.
Retention does not live in a silo. The customer your media buyer paid for is the customer your email program has to keep, and the angle that won the click on the ad is usually the angle that wins the second order in the inbox. Our operating model, the Profit Loop, runs creative strategy, paid media, CRO and email as one system accountable to blended revenue: lower CAC at the front door, higher LTV in the inbox.
If the leak is in retention, this page is the engagement you need. If it starts upstream, in the ads or on the product page, the Profit Loop is where to look.
Retention, measured in revenue.
At Relaxium, an INC 5000 supplements brand, Pete spent 22+ months running retention from the inside as Head of Retention Marketing (Email and SMS): +$3M in incremental annual revenue from campaign cadence, segment depth and a plain, instrumented program. At Popl, email and SMS went from under 20% of revenue to 50-60% over 21 months. At Better Body Co., a 3-month consulting engagement took email from about 10% of revenue to the 20-25% target range by the end of 2021. All three are in our Klaviyo case studies.
Three brands. Receipts.
Selected from 800+ engagements. The brief, the intervention, the number that moved.
Better Body Co.
/ Health & Supplements
of revenue from email (from 10%)
/ Brief
Email at 10% of revenue. Inflection point looming.
/ Intervention
Stripped flow architecture. Rebuilt around purchase behaviour. 3-month consulting program with 10+ person in-house team.
Popl
/ NFC Tech
of revenue from email + SMS
/ Brief
Email + SMS stuck under 20%. Y-Combinator scaling pressure.
/ Intervention
Separated B2B and B2C journeys. Fixed deliverability fundamentals. Removed visual noise from every flow over 21 months.
Relaxium
/ Supplements
incremental email + SMS
/ Brief
INC 5000 brand, 1,040% growth over 3 years. Email lagging.
/ Intervention
Ongoing Head of Retention Marketing role. Plain-aesthetic emails, instrumented architecture, monthly tested cadence.
/ More case studies in the archive
See all mission reports
What clients radio in.
Verbatim.
Real results from real brands, in their own words. Auto-scrolling because there are too many to fit.
FAQ
Q.01 What does a retention marketing agency do? +
Answer
A retention marketing agency builds and runs the channels that bring existing customers back: email, SMS and automated flows. For ecommerce, the work is measured in repeat-purchase economics, meaning second-purchase rate, time between orders, cohort retention and customer lifetime value, rather than open rates or list size.
Q.02 How is retention marketing different from email marketing? +
Answer
Email marketing is a channel. Retention marketing is an outcome. Much of the work happens in email, but it is planned around customer behaviour and lifecycle stage, it includes SMS, and it is judged on whether customers come back and spend more, not on how many campaigns went out.
Q.03 What is a CRM marketing agency? +
Answer
It depends who is asking. In B2B, a CRM agency usually implements and runs sales software such as Salesforce or HubSpot, and we do not do that. In ecommerce, CRM marketing means the owned channels built on your customer data, mainly email, SMS and automated flows, run to bring customers back. That is the same work as retention marketing, and it is what we do, mostly in Klaviyo, which now describes itself as a B2C CRM.
Q.04 What does lifecycle marketing do? +
Answer
Lifecycle marketing sends each customer the message that fits the stage they are in, from new subscriber to first-time buyer, repeat buyer, VIP and lapsed customer, and designs each message to move them to the next stage. In ecommerce it runs mostly on automated email and SMS flows triggered by behaviour, such as post-purchase, replenishment and win-back, plus campaigns segmented by lifecycle stage.
Q.05 What is the difference between lifecycle marketing and retention marketing? +
Answer
Lifecycle marketing describes the stages a customer moves through: subscriber, first-time buyer, repeat buyer, VIP, lapsed. Retention marketing describes the goal: more customers moving forward through those stages instead of dropping out. In practice a good lifecycle marketing agency and a good retention agency do the same work.
Q.06 What are the three R's of customer retention? +
Answer
There is no single official version. The most common one is retention, related sales and referrals: keep the customer buying, grow what they buy through cross-sell and upsell, and turn them into a source of new customers. For an online store that maps to replenishment and win-back flows, cross-sell by product affinity, and review and referral asks once the customer has had a good result.
Q.07 What is a good customer retention rate for ecommerce? +
Answer
For an online store, measure it as repeat purchase rate: the share of customers who buy more than once in a period. Klaviyo puts a good repeat purchase rate at around 20% to 30%, higher for affordable or perishable products and lower for high-value goods such as tech or luxury items. Compare yourself by cohort and against your own category rather than one blended number.
Q.08 How long before retention work shows results? +
Answer
Flow fixes come first, and a repaired flow earns from the day it goes live, because it runs on customers you already have. Repeat-purchase metrics take longer to read honestly because a cohort needs time to reorder, so the compounding effect usually shows over 90 to 180 days. We report second-purchase rate and cohort curves monthly from the start, so you can see the direction before the full picture.
Q.09 How much does a retention marketing agency cost? +
Answer
Ours: the retention audit is free, fixed-scope projects such as a flow rebuild typically run $3-15K USD depending on scope, and ongoing retention management is a monthly retainer scoped to volume, typically $3-12K USD a month for ecommerce brands, month to month with 30 days notice. Published ranges are in USD. The audit comes with specific scope and pricing within 24 hours, and our pricing page has the full breakdown.
Q.10 Should we hire a retention agency or build the team in-house? +
Answer
For most brands below about $10M in revenue, an agency is the more cost-effective option. A US email marketing manager averages about $80K a year in base salary (Built In, 2026) before benefits, takes 3 to 6 months to hire, and carries the risk of hiring badly. At $10M+ with email as a strategic channel, the eventual answer is usually an in-house lead.
Q.11 What size brands do you work with? +
Answer
Ecommerce brands typically doing $500K to $50M+ in annual revenue, on Klaviyo or willing to move to it. Retention work needs enough order history to measure cohorts, which is why very early-stage stores usually get more from list growth and a solid welcome and abandoned cart setup first.
Keep the customers you paid for.
Free audit. Flow inventory, repeat-purchase gaps, SMS setup, deliverability and a written 90-day retention plan within 24 hours.
Or read the case studies →/ Free Audit
Get your free retention audit
Drop your store URL and email. We'll review your flows, SMS and repeat-purchase data and send a written 90-day roadmap within 24 hours. No obligation.