CRM & Retention ⁽⁵⁾

Aaron West

Retention Metrics That Actually Predict Growth

The cornerstone of this pillar ended on a deceptively simple instruction: do the work consistently, and measure it. This is the reference for that last word. Retention has a long list of possible metrics, and most teams fall into one of two traps with them:…

Aaron West

Cashback, Loyalty, and the Overlap Where Money Quietly Leaks

Cashback sits in a strange place in how you run a store, because it shows up in two completely different parts of the business that rarely talk to each other. In the affiliate channel, cashback sites are publishers, third parties who send you customers and…

Aaron West

The Engagement Trap: Why "More Emails" Is Not a Retention Strategy

When retention numbers are soft, the most common reflex in the building is also the most damaging: send more emails. More newsletters, more promotions, more "we miss you" nudges, on the theory that more contact means more engagement means more sales. It is intuitive, it…

Aaron West

Automating the CRM Lifecycle: The Customer Motions That Should Never Be Manual

The cornerstone of this pillar made one demand that quietly does most of the work: decide what should happen next for each kind of customer, and then do it consistently. That word, consistently, is where almost every retention effort falls apart. The welcome that goes…

Aaron West

CRM Is Not Software. It's a Discipline

Here is a scene I have watched play out more than once. A team decides they need to "do CRM." They evaluate platforms, pick one, pay for it, migrate their customer data into it, and tick the box: we have a CRM now. Six months…