Verneri Brander

Partnership Announcement: @GrowthTrigger X @klaviyo redefining the retention marketing game for Nordic e-commerce 🤝 1/8

Here's a pattern we keep seeing with telehealth brands that scale past $5M. They've got 15-20 automations running. Nobody has reviewed them in 6 months. Half are sending to outdated segments. Three are conflicting with each other. Two are converting at literally 0%. The system grew organically and now it's fighting itself. First thing we do is map every active flow, kill the ones dragging performance, and rebuild the ones worth saving.

Had a prospect tell me last week "we already have Klaviyo set up, so we're good on email." Having Klaviyo set up is like having a gym membership. It means nothing if you're not showing up and doing the work.

The best cross-sell in telehealth doesn't feel like a hard sell. It feels like a provider saying "based on your progress, you might benefit from this." Clinical framing converts. Ecommerce framing gets ignored.

I used to work 8 hours a day and have a never-ending to-do list. Then i found Claude Now I work 16 hours a day and have a never-ending to-do list. --- Jk :D But that's how it feels like. The pace of taking action and getting sh*t done has exploded with AI but it also means that every hour I'm not working, I lose "more output" than in the past. Can anyone relate? I'm excited and overwhelmed at the same time.

We've audited lifecycle marketing at dozens of telehealth brands now. Most score below 40% on what we'd consider a healthy retention infrastructure. Not because they're bad at marketing. Because nobody ever mapped it out for them. What "good" looks like across deliverability, segmentation, automation health, and patient lifecycle coverage. So we built a free tool that does exactly that. 6 questions. Takes 1 minute. You get a Lifecycle Health Score (0/100) and a breakdown of where the gaps are. See where you actually stand in under 60 seconds. growthtrigger.xyz/health-score

Something that surprised me about building a service business for one hyper-specific vertical. When you only serve telehealth, every conversation compounds. A pattern we spot at one brand shows up at the next. A flow that works for GLP-1 retention informs how we think about men's health. The knowledge stacks. Generalist agencies can't do this. They go from a fashion brand to a SaaS tool to a supplement company. Every engagement starts from scratch. The insights from one project don't transfer because the industries are too different. For us, every client makes the next engagement better. We already know which months patients churn, which segments respond to what, which automations tend to break, and where the data usually falls apart. That's not something you can build in a pitch deck. It takes years. If you're building an agency or a service business, seriously consider going deep in one space instead of wide across many. The compounding effect takes 12-18 months to really kick in, but once it does, it changes everything about how you win deals and deliver results.

If you're still sending emails like this in 2026, you're in trouble. ❌ Only emailing when there's a sale or promotion ❌ Every campaign is a discount blast ❌ Same generic emails to your entire list This worked in 2015. It doesn't anymore. Ad costs are at an all-time high. Inboxes are more crowded than ever. And your customers have been trained to ignore almost everything you send them. The landscape has completely changed, So I made an entire breakdown covering the 3 new rules of email marketing in 2026. If you're an e-commerce or telehealth brand doing $50k+/month, this one's for you. 📺 Watch the full breakdown here: youtu.be/W0FW5DuGK0A?is…

Talked to a founder yesterday who said "we tried email, it didn't move the needle." Turns out their spam complaint rate was above 0.3%, open rate below 25%. Their emails were landing in spam for months and nobody even knew. The channel works fine. If the infrastructure isn't broken.

Customer/Patient retention isn’t a discount problem. It’s a journey design problem. Yet most telehealth brands treat it like a last-minute rescue mission. Month 2 drops? → Send a discount. → Launch a winback. → Add a “please don’t cancel” flow. That’s not retention. That’s damage control. Real retention is built 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 the cancellation button is ever clicked. It starts here: → Expectation setting in week 1 → Normalizing side effects → Explaining plateaus before they happen → Handling objections before they turn into refunds If a GLP-1 patient doesn’t know nausea can be normal… They don’t think: "Ah, this is part of the process.” They think: “This isn’t working for me.” And that thought is where churn begins. Retention in telehealth is psychological before it’s financial. Patients stay when: → They understand what’s happening in their body → They feel guided → They see a clear next step → They know what comes after month one And once trust is built... Then expansion becomes natural: → Multi-month plans → Complementary treatments → Long-term health pathways Not pushed. Designed. The brands that win don’t rely on end-of-journey discounts. They architect the journey so churn never becomes the default outcome. If your retention strategy starts at “don’t cancel”… You’re already too late.

Three different telehealth founders in two months have told me the same story: their previous agency took their backend IP and customer data and used it for a direct competitor. The bar in this industry is literally on the floor. Not recycling your clients' IP isn't a bold ethical stance. It's basic. But apparently it's rare enough to be a differentiator now. I'm building an entire business around something most people consider table stakes - just not screwing people over. Funny how that works.

Naming the shame works in copywriting. We wrote a campaign for a weight loss brand that named the thing everybody thought of but nobody ever said out loud. The secret eating. The 11 PM kitchen. The shame. This email got a 81% open rate. Sometimes the most effective copy is just saying what the patient is already thinking but afraid to admit.

Most telehealth brands send the same welcome flow to every patient regardless of what treatment they signed up for. A GLP-1 patient and a hair loss patient have completely different pain points and dream outcomes since day 1. One welcome flow can't address both.

Hims stock up 50% in two weeks. $1.15B Eucalyptus acquisition. Novo Nordisk partnership for branded GLP-1s. 2.5M+ global subscribers. Here's what this means if you're a smaller telehealth operator. 1. When Hims was selling compounded semaglutide, smaller brands could compete on price. That era is closing fast. They've pivoted to branded products and global expansion. The competitive moat just got a lot deeper. 2. You can't outspend Hims on acquisition. They did $2.35B in revenue last year with 59% YoY growth. But here's what they can't do: personalize lifecycle marketing at the level a focused brand can. 3. A brand with 10,000 patients and deep segmentation will retain at higher rates than a brand with 2.5M subscribers sending the same flows to everyone. That's the math that keeps smaller operators alive. The takeaway: stop trying to win on acquisition volume. Win on the patients you already have. Your lifecycle channel is the only asset that gets more valuable as the big players drive up ad costs.

Plain text email from a named provider. Zero design. No logo. No banner image. It outconverts your polished campaign every time with cold and lapsed patients. Clinical authority is a trust shortcut that no amount of branding can replicate.

One of our clients made $34/month (yes, 34 DOLLARS) in email revenue. One month later, after fixing the deliverability infrastructure alone, $30K/month. Same list. Same products. The emails were just never arriving.

Walgreens just entered weight loss telehealth. $49 per visit, no subscription. The pricing war is here. The brands that survive it won't be the cheapest. They'll be the ones patients actually stay with.

If you’re not running monthly cohort analyses as a telehealth brand, you're flying blind. In subscription-based businesses like telehealth, patient retention is the key to long-term growth. Why? Because LTV and retention are data-driven. And if you're not consistently analyzing cohorts, your whole strategy is based on guesses. A monthly cohort analysis tells you: → Where patients are dropping off → How long they stay on treatment → What triggers them to buy more or churn This isn’t about tracking numbers for numbers' sake. It’s about tying your actions to real insights. Here’s why it matters: 1️⃣ 𝐈𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐟𝐲 𝐤𝐞𝐲 𝐝𝐫𝐨𝐩-𝐨𝐟𝐟 𝐩𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐬: Cohorts help you spot where patients start to churn or disengage. Is it early treatment dissatisfaction? Is it after they’ve hit a weight loss plateau? → Knowing this lets you interrupt that pattern with strategic interventions. 2️⃣ 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐋𝐓𝐕 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞: With cohort analysis, you can see how long patients stick with you and how much they spend throughout their treatment journey. → This allows you to adjust your marketing and offers to extend that LTV - without spending more on acquisition. 3️⃣ 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐣𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐲: Each cohort has unique needs. Some will need more reassurance. Others will need more education. → By aligning your retention flows to specific patient needs, you increase engagement, satisfaction, and ultimately retention. Here’s a simple strategy to implement monthly cohort analysis in your telehealth business: → Track cohorts by treatment type, start date, and engagement. → Focus on key metrics like refill rates, follow-ups, and churn points. → Adjust retention strategies based on those insights When done right, monthly cohort analysis lets you: → Improve retention and reduce churn → Maximize LTV by offering timely interventions → Build a patient-first marketing strategy You have all the data you need to make actionable, high impact decisions. All you need is to simply follow the numbers and strategize accordingly.

You open an email and within seconds you just know it's premium. You can't point to one specific thing. But something about it makes you trust the brand more, makes you want to buy. That feeling isn't an accident. It's psychology. Most brands design their emails based on what looks cool. Or worse, they copy a template and call it a day. But the brands that actually convert are engineering a psychological response. And most of their competitors have no idea they're doing it. After designing thousands of emails, we found that almost every premium email comes down to 3 core principles: → Why "simple" designs outperform cluttered ones (and it's not the reason you think) → How brands like Apple use one psychological effect to build trust before you even read a word → The design trick that makes people crave your product before they even click "buy" If your emails still look like a coupon flyer, this one's for you. 📺 Watch the full breakdown here: youtu.be/xt3wdPKNHcE?si…

FDA sent 30 warning letters to telehealth companies marketing compounded GLP-1s. Hims immediately partnered with Novo Nordisk to sell branded products instead. Here's what this means for every telehealth operator right now. The compounding exemption that let dozens of brands offer cheaper semaglutide is effectively over. The FDA ruled the shortage resolved. If your entire business model was built on compounded GLP-1s, you're now in a regulatory gray zone. The brands that will survive this aren't the ones scrambling for new compounding loopholes. They're the ones who already built retention systems around their existing patients. Product diversification plus strong lifecycle infrastructure. When your acquisition channel gets disrupted overnight, your email and SMS list is the only asset you actually own. No algorithm change, no regulatory shift can take it from you. That's the entire argument for investing in retention before you need it. The telehealth brands who treated lifecycle as an afterthought are about to learn the most expensive lesson: acquisition without retention is renting patients, not building a business.

If you're in telehealth or a subscription-based business, your success hinges on one key metric: 𝐋𝐓𝐕:𝐂𝐀𝐂 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨. Here’s what it means: → 𝐋𝐓𝐕 (𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞): The total revenue you generate from a patient or customer throughout their entire relationship with your brand. → 𝐂𝐀𝐂 (𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐀𝐜𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐬𝐭): The cost of acquiring a new patient or customer, including marketing spend, sales efforts, and other related costs. The ratio of these two metrics = how much revenue you’re getting for each dollar you spend to acquire a new customer. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐆𝐨𝐚𝐥: You want to 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐋𝐓𝐕 (revenue from patients) while 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐂𝐀𝐂 (cost to acquire them). The higher this ratio, the more profitable your business is, and the easier it becomes to scale. 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐋𝐓𝐕:𝐂𝐀𝐂? It all comes down to optimizing both the front-end (pre-purchase) and back-end (post-purchase) of your patient journey. 1️⃣ 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐭-𝐄𝐧𝐝 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 (𝐏𝐫𝐞-𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞) The more frictionless and personalized your pre-purchase journey is, the lower your CAC will be. → 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝 𝐟𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐬 that guide leads smoothly from interest to conversion without unnecessary roadblocks. → 𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲 𝐟𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐬 that bring back lost patients from abandonment or hesitation. → 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 based on data, segmenting based on treatment needs, gender, goals, and behavior. 2️⃣ 𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐭-𝐏𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐎𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐳𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 (𝐑𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 & 𝐄𝐱𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧) Increasing LTV comes from keeping patients engaged and happy throughout their treatment journey. → 𝐎𝐧𝐛𝐨𝐚𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 & 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐬𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 that reduce churn in the first few weeks. → 𝐎𝐧𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 to keep patients on track with their goals (especially for long-term treatments like GLP-1). → 𝐂𝐫𝐨𝐬𝐬-𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐮𝐩𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐨𝐩𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐞𝐬 strategically timed (e.g., from GLP-1 to NAD+, TRT, or HRT). → 𝐑𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧-𝐟𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 (monthly check-ins, milestone emails) that continue to provide value and reinforce progress. 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐈𝐭 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐤𝐬: These strategies reduce 𝐂𝐀𝐂 by improving your patient acquisition systems, while 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐓𝐕 by making patients more likely to stay longer, spend more, and refer others. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐮𝐥𝐭? A scalable business model with higher margins, less reliance on paid ads, and stronger financial health.