Hi Alexandra! In short: who are you and what do you do?

Hi, I’m Alex and I’m a brand copywriter and retention marketer.

I work with ecom brands to bring their retention programs to life (or resuscitate them!) via email/SMS marketing, direct mail, subscriptions, and more.

I’m obsessed with creating a better experience for customers—in fact, I’d say that my main focus is NOT squeezing that extra sale no matter what.

My main focus is customer success (and don’t worry, this brings in the cash). I believe this is at the core of a good retention program.

Which tools do you regularly use in your ecommerce marketing stack?

Which ones are your favorite, and why?

At the moment I use the following tools:

• Klaviyo for email marketing and SMS

• Recharge for subscriptions

• Omniconvert’s Reveal for RFM segmentation, NPS tracking, and advanced product analytics

• Wonderment for order tracking and a better post-purchase experience

• Fondue for cashback offers (because discounts are so last week!)

• PostPilot for direct mail

• Zipify for landing pages/sales pages

It’s hard to choose favorites, but if I had to pick 3 for retention, I would go with these:

1. Klaviyo - because there’s really no equivalent out there!

2. PostPilot - because it can help you reach all the customers who are suppressed for email and get them to buy again

3. Reveal - because I have seen first-hand what a difference RFM segmentation can make in terms of customer experience and revenue.

Could you tell us about the most exciting ecommerce project you worked on, recently? 

The most exciting project was by far guiding the email strategy for a client’s crowdfunding campaign.

It was a massive success — they raised $1.65M and sold out of shares in less than 24 hours!

Email was a big part of it, but of course, it was a team effort across multiple channels. It was great to be part of such an exciting project!

Which ecommerce messaging trends have you identified this year?

Which ones will be mainstream and which ones will die out in 2023? 

Maybe it’s just my LinkedIn feed, but there’s a LOT of talk about CLV and retention—an extreme version of this is “Retention is the new acquisition”.

While I obviously believe that retention is important, it’s not a silver bullet. And it certainly cannot replace acquisition. There should always be a healthy balance between the two. 

I don’t have a crystal ball, but I think (and hope) that this dogmatic view will die out and make way for a more balanced, holistic approach to marketing.

None of these channels work in a vacuum, so we need to look at the big picture to really have an impact. 

When it comes to messaging channels, email, SMS and WhatsApp / Messenger are key.

Which channels do you use most frequently, and how do you combine them?

I use email and SMS in combination with direct mail to increase reach and revenue.

For a cost-effective approach, I generally send SMS to people who haven’t converted via email, and direct mail campaigns to profiles that are suppressed for email.