Andrei Rebrov

@yojimmykim Have you already vibecoded a service that automates it?)

@muratkahraman Agentic commerce is where retention gets interesting. We're seeing brands use AI agents to identify at-risk subscribers, increase seo/geo, run analysis and so on

Winning brands don’t run campaigns. They build systems. This week’s EIJ: → creative as a repeatable engine → agentic commerce rising → AI attribution gap → ops still breaking trust Systems scale. Campaigns don’t. 👉 ecommerceinnovators.substack.com/p/e-commerce-i… #Ecommerce #DTC #Growth

Very short story that highlights what's wrong with modern SaaS tools (claiming that they have thousands of clients) - Saw an instagram ad promoting a playbook pdf - Filled an extensive funnel - Booked a meeting - Meeting was canceled 30 mins before happening Oh, come one

@alexlay88 The gap between 35k and 100k lack of disciple to review your flows/campaigns and improve them constantly

Most ecommerce brands have email lists that could generate 7x more revenue. They're just treating Klaviyo like a basic email tool instead of a retention machine. The gap between £5k and £35k monthly? It's usually automation setup and segmentation. That's it. More info in link.

@ecom_nicolas also, cohort LTV decay rate matters more than headline churn

3 subscription metrics that determine if your recurring revenue compounds or collapses ↓ - Adoption rate: default to subscribe & save on PDP, front-load discounts (30% first, 10% recurring), sell the subscription lifestyle in your welcome flow - Churn rate: pre-charge reminders 3-5 days before renewal, segment by cancellation reason & build flows around each one - Failed payment recovery: dunning flow (day 0, 2, 5, 7) with SMS alongside email, frame around what they'll miss

@sindhubiswal @HamptonAc_ The traffic arbitrage era is over (YAY). What's left is the relationship arbitrage — brands that understand their customer lifetime value by channel and invest in keeping those customers. The 3:1 ratio isn't just a target, it's a survival threshold.

The "death" of dropshipping is just the rising cost of bad customer service. ​Middlemen who don't touch products now win through localized logistics and custom packaging. Most people fail because they ignore the 3:1 LTV to CAC ratio. You can't arbitrage cheap traffic anymore. ​Start by owning the post-purchase experience. If you control the shipping speed, you control the profit.

2019: "Dropshipping is dead." 2020: "Dropshipping is dead. 2025: "Dropshipping is dead." 2026: "Dropshipping is dead." Meanwhile people are still quietly making $30K, $50K, $100K months selling products they never touch The only thing that died was the lazy version. The people who adapt keep winning

@MartinLasmanis Seems like it's a new trend. Build a media presence first, product second.

My LinkedIn posts generate more inbound than our entire paid marketing budget. A founder's personal brand is the most underpriced marketing channel in DTC.

@nate6879SF This is painfully accurate. The fix is cohort data early — even 3 months of retention curves tells you more than any spreadsheet projection. The ratio matters, but only when L and C are measured, not modeled.

everyone talks about LTV/CAC ratio like it's gospel. nobody mentions that at pre-seed your LTV is a guess, your CAC is a guess, and the ratio of two guesses is just a more confident-sounding guess.

@psaccomani At @FinsiAI we found improving retention by 5% had 3x the revenue impact of a 5% improvement in acquisition. Most brands learn this too late

Retention is the unlock for everything in ecommerce. Profit. ROAS. Growth. It all works better when customers come back and buy multiple times. Yet most brands still spend the vast majority of their budget on acquisition. Getting new people through the door. First orders. Here's the thing: first orders are a cost center. You're paying for ads, paying for clicks, eating into margin with a welcome discount. That first sale rarely makes you money. The second sale is where the business starts. And the third, fourth, fifth. That's where your margins expand, your CAC pays off, and your growth actually compounds. Attentive just released their 2026 State of Loyalty & Retention report. 600 shoppers surveyed on what makes them come back, what makes them leave, and what actually drives loyalty. A few things that stood out: - 88% of consumers tried a new brand in the last 3 months. Only 18% plan to come back to most of them. - 52% of consumers shop regularly with just 3-5 brands. The "inner circle" is real, and it's small. - The two biggest drivers of a second purchase? A good deal (52%) and product quality (45%). Almost the whole playbook right there. We broke it all down in this week's Retention Edge newsletter - 7 stats from the report, what they mean for your brand, and what to actually do about them. Read it now: retentionedge.co/p/what-600-sho…

@7figsolo Good framework. One thing I'd add: feed it your actual cohort data. Generic AI advice on retention is mediocre — but when it can see that your Month 2 drop-off is 40% and your reactivation rate is 3%, it gets specific fast. The prompt matters less than the data you give it.

Ecom strategy prompt for claude: You are my strategic sparring partner for building a branded ecommerce business from zero to scale using AI. You have deep expertise in DTC ecommerce, brand building, Meta advertising, Shopify conversion optimization, and CRM retention systems. You think like a founder who has built and exited a 7-figure ecom brand. You understand that brand beats tactics, trust beats pressure, and systems beat hustle. You are not an assistant. You are a senior operator who challenges my thinking. Before giving any advice, ask me these blocks one at a time: Block 1 — The product: Ask me what I sell, who I sell it to, what my price point is, and why someone buys this instead of the 50 alternatives on the market. Block 2 — The brand: Ask me what my brand stands for, what it deliberately does not stand for, and whether my store, ads, and emails feel like they come from the same brand. Block 3 — The numbers: Ask me my current daily revenue, my profit margin after all costs, my customer acquisition cost, and my repeat purchase rate. If I give vague answers, push until I give real numbers. Block 4 — The system: Ask me what my current AI stack looks like, which parts of my business I still do manually, and where I lose the most time every week. Block 5 — The bottleneck: Ask me what breaks first if I 10x my traffic tomorrow. Is it creative production, conversion, fulfillment, or retention? After I answer all five blocks: First, tell me where my brand is leaking money or trust. Be brutally honest. Show me the math of why my current setup limits my growth. Then give me the three highest-leverage moves I can make in the next 30 days — ranked by impact. Not theory. Specific actions tied to my numbers. Then build me a 90-day execution sequence: what to fix first, what to build second, what to scale third. Every phase must connect to the next. Then give me my first move — one single action I take in the next 48 hours. Done or not done. Rules: Never separate brand from performance. Every recommendation must strengthen both. Never suggest anything that requires a team. I operate solo with AI. Every solution must be executable by one person. If my offer is weak, say so. If my margins don't support ads, say so. If my brand feels generic, say so. No politeness. Only clarity. Always think in systems: traffic, conversion, retention. start.

@aleksandar_dtc The moment brands stop treating retention as a secondary metric and started modeling cohort LTV, scaling actually works

Most DTC brands don't have a traffic problem. They have a structural bottleneck. 📉 I see it constantly: "Ads used to work, but scaling feels harder now." Usually, the brand isn't actually scaling—it's just re-converting the same audience over and over. 🧵

@SuhritMamidi10 — brands obsess over acquiring new subscribers but ignore the repeat buyers already signaling intent. The data's right there, just nobody's acting on it

Unpopular opinion: food brands treat subscriptions like an afterthought. Then wonder why churn is brutal. I was auditing an 8-figure food subscription brand last week. Found 11,974 people who bought 3+ times without subscribing. Zero emails asking them to convert. Here's what's usually broken: → No flow for repeat buyers Someone buys twice without subscribing? That's a warm lead. Build a flow. Spell out the benefits. Convert them. → Wrong offer order Sending one-time purchase offers first is like asking someone to move in before the first date. Push subscription first. One-time purchase = last resort at the end of your flows. → No cancellation winback People churn. Most brands just... let them go. Win them back. It's cheaper than finding new customers. → Missing charge reminders Reduces failed payments. Fewer angry support tickets. Easy upsell opportunity for add-ons. None of this is hard. It's just overlooked. Go check your flows. I'll wait. P.S. Connect Claude with Klaviyo. Solid combo for solving this stuff fast.

@maxwellcopy customers who understood the 3-month commitment upfront had 40% lower churn. The problem is most brands optimize checkout for conversion speed, not retention setup

Problems with subscription brand churn: 1. Customers don't use the product enough, so they churn 2. Customers expect results too fast IM8 includes this graphic in their cart slider, pushing people to commit to the product for 12 weeks. Retention starts at acquisition.

That's one way to increase MRR, yes @OpenAI?

10% of gift subscription recipients never engage after the gift period ends. No opens, no orders, nothing. Most brands keep emailing them the same flows as paying customers. Wrecks deliverability and inflates list size while hiding real engagement numbers.

Your cancellation flow's first save offer is a discount? You're paying margin to solve a timing problem. We see it constantly — customer doesn't want to leave, they just need a pause. But cancel is the only button they can find. Flexibility beats discounts every time.

@alt_w_v_g Not surprised after reading amazon.com/When-McKinsey-…

NYC gave McKinsey a $4M contract to answer one question Should trash go in a trash can They studied it for 20 weeks Looked at Paris Looked at Amsterdam Looked at Barcelona Produced a 95-slide deck Titled "The Future of Trash" $42,000 per slide The conclusion after 20 weeks and 95 slides Yes Trash should go in a bin Not on the sidewalk They called it "containerization" Which is a $4 million word for "trash can" The mayor then stood at a podium and unveiled a bin A bin With wheels And a lid Like the one in your garage right now The one you bought at Home Depot for $50 He presented it like he had discovered gravity Camera crews were there Photographers Press releases For a bin I run the finances of an entire company If I handed my board a 95-slide deck that concluded "put the thing in the container" I would be fired by slide 2 My analyst could have done this in an afternoon With one slide That said "yes" And I would have redlined it for being too long But this is government Where common sense costs $4,000,000 And comes with a PowerPoint Make common sense common again Plz fix. Thx. Sent from my iPhone

@caechet Agree and add nuance — owned channels are table stakes, but the real edge is knowing WHICH customers to retain. Spending retention budget equally across all subscribers is nearly as wasteful as overspending on acquisition

the trade war is reshaping ecommerce margins. brands spending $100K/month on acquisition are feeling it. brands with 40% revenue coming from email and SMS retention channels? much more insulated. build owned channels before the market forces you to.

@tomwang24 8-15% monthly churn is wide — the brands doing well are closer to 8%, and the difference is usually engagement in the first 3 orders

What is the industry benchmark for DTC supplement/health & beauty brands in terms of subscribers? • 8–15% monthly churn • 15–30% S&S take rate • Avg subscriber stays on S&S for 10 months Do these numbers look right?

@Eqra567 Sound like time to check Finsi!

DTC founder starter pack: 47 Shopify apps 12 abandoned ad creatives One “this will 10x conversions” landing page And a Slack message saying: “Why is CAC suddenly up again?” Welcome to the brand-building Olympics.