Rachel Arela — DTC Retention & Klaviyo Lifecycle

How I think

Three phases. Built in order of impact, not order of ease.

Most retention work fails because it ships before anyone understands the brand it's meant to serve. I run a three-phase process so the system reflects the business, not a template.

Understand the brand and its process

Audit current Klaviyo setup — flows, segments, list health, deliverability
Review historical campaign performance and what's worked or hasn't
Read brand voice across site, social, and customer comms so emails sound like the brand
Quick conversation with the team about pain points, repeat-purchase patterns, top complaints
Identify which segments are underused or unused

Prioritise against revenue impact

Map gaps against highest-revenue-impact areas first
Usually: post-purchase → win-back → browse abandonment → birthday/VIP → newsletter cadence
Build a 30/60/90 day plan rather than trying to fix everything at once
Share with the client for sign-off before building

Build, measure, iterate

Build flows in order of impact, not order of ease
Set baseline metrics before each flow launches so you can measure lift
Monthly reporting on revenue per recipient, list growth, flow performance
Continuous A/B testing on subject lines, send times, content blocks

Strong opinions, loosely held

What I believe about retention work that not everyone agrees with.

Three positions I'd defend on a discovery call. Read them — if they resonate, we'll probably work well together. If they don't, we won't, and that's useful information too.

01 / Acquisition

Most "retention" problems are actually acquisition problems in disguise.

If you're running heavy paid ads targeting bargain hunters with a "10% off first order" hook — of course your retention is bad. You acquired customers who bought because of the discount, not because they wanted the product. No welcome flow saves that. The most honest diagnostic conversation starts with "before we talk email, let's look at who you're acquiring and why."

02 / Restraint

The best retention work is often invisible.

The most retention-positive thing a brand can do is sometimes not send the email — the one they were planning to blast because Q3 sales were down. Most marketers measure their value in things they did: campaigns sent, flows built, tests launched. But for a fatigued list, the most valuable thing a specialist can do is push back: "Your list is fatigued. Quiet for two weeks. Then come back with something genuinely useful."

03 / Insight

The customer service team has more retention insight than the marketing team.

Marketing teams know what they send: open rates, click rates, conversion rates. But they don't know what customers actually struggle with — what confuses them at checkout, what makes them return, what disappoints them after. CS knows all of this. The brands that win at retention build feedback loops between CS and marketing. That's the lens I bring.

About

The customer service desk was the best classroom I never paid for.

Based in Davao, Philippines
Currently CS specialist, Australian activewear brand (157K IG)
Long-running Canadian cannabis ecommerce client (3+ yrs)
Stack Klaviyo · Shopify · Recharge · Yotpo · Tidio · Gorgias

I spent the last few years embedded in customer service for an Australian activewear brand — answering hundreds of customer messages a week, watching what confuses people, what they return, what they ask before they buy.

After a while, I started noticing patterns that nobody on the marketing side seemed to see. The welcome emails didn't address the things customers actually asked about. The flows didn't speak to the segments I was hearing from. That's when I started focusing on retention — because customer service was teaching me what email should actually be doing.

VA work pays the bills, but it has a ceiling — in earnings and in how much you actually shape outcomes. Retention is where I noticed I had a genuine point of view. Two years of customer service at a Shopify brand taught me that most of what I was answering for customers was stuff the brand should have addressed in their email program. The retention layer was where every CS problem started. I figured if I'm already inside that conversation every day, I should be the one designing it — not just reacting to it.

Outside of work, I'm in Davao, Philippines, and I started in digital animation before moving into ecommerce ops. I still make graphics in my spare time — promotional banners, social creatives, the occasional public-service template — because design is the part of me that doesn't ever fully leave.

Let's talk

If you're a founder running a DTC brand and your email feels underbuilt or under-used, let's talk.

Twenty minutes, low-pressure. I'll ask questions, you'll see how I think, and we'll figure out together whether there's a real fit. If not, you'll still walk away with a clearer view of your funnel. Useful either way.

Book a 20-min call ↗ rachel@rachelarela.com

Prefer LinkedIn? Find me here.

I build Klaviyo retention programs grounded in what your customers actually ask before they buy.