Optimizing retention is tricky business. While there are endless tools and tricks shared in the DTC ecosystem, few have hands-on experience and insight into what actually works.

That’s where Brandon Amoroso, Founder & CEO of Electriq, comes in. Electriq is a growth and retention agency uniquely built for the modern brand, including happy clients like BMW, florence by mills, Martha Stewart Wine Co., Health-Ade, and Soylent. 

We met with Brandon for a deep dive on just how essential personalization is to driving retention, LTV, and incremental revenue growth. Topics include: 

1. The Electriq playbook: pairing personalization and retention
2. Windsor’s key use cases across the customer journey
3. Leveraging Windsor’s AI to drive retention goals

“We're pushing Windsor out to all of our clients because there is a huge opportunity here. It’s a unique differentiator, especially during peak seasons when you’re getting a ton of new customers.” 

How Electriq Leverages Personalization to Boost Retention

First and foremost, Electriq is a retention marketing agency. 

Email and SMS are two of the biggest retention drivers, so most brands use them by default. But Brandon explains that Electriq “approaches things with our retention marketing hats on.” 

For instance, Electriq’s team will leverage zero-party data insights collected on Klaviyo to inform a client’s personalization strategy. Across every client they work with, Electriq will examine how customer information gets pulled into Klaviyo’s dashboard, and then evaluate whether that data can be used to create more personalized experiences across an entire customer funnel.

Through all of this data, Electriq designed end-user experiences that deployed not only through email and SMS, but also through Push, direct mail, or on-site experiences. 

That’s what Brandon calls the Electriq difference: Their know-how of best-in-class Shopify apps plus their relationships with those apps allow them to leverage specific use cases and functionalities across a wide variety of customer outreach channels. 

Focus on Personalizing Email Flows — Not Campaigns

Email flows are an evergreen tool that never stops running — and thus always drive incremental revenue for your business. In comparison, campaigns are quick, one-off hits that temporarily boost sales or achieve specific objectives. 

Between the two, Electriq always aims to help clients architect impactful flows. 

Creating something to be seen by millions over the course of three months feels far more worthwhile than a one-time initiative. 

Levels of Personalization for Email vs. SMS

Brands can personalize their customer experience to varying degrees. With that, Brandon reminds us, “Sending ‘Hi, Your Name Here’ is BS and not true personalization.” 

1. First-party data — Anything based on first-party data (like Shopify info or eCom data) is low-hanging fruit. It’s how you learn about recent purchases or customer LTVs, which can help you, for instance, simplistically segment your Black Friday email campaigns. 
2. Zero-party data — This is where personalization truly kicks in. This is finding and leveraging specific, almost intimate customer info (which they self-provide through tools like surveys) to help convert effectively. 

In Brandon’s experience, many brands start collecting all of this data before they actually understand how to use it. 

They’ll add post-purchase surveys and website quizzes, but they don’t have an implementation strategy in mind for how to operationalize the collected info. 

To put a purpose to zero-party data collection, Electriq would, for instance, advise a skin care brand to gather info on customer skin types and the lengths of their skincare routines. 

From there, the magic of retention marketing can start to happen. 

“Electriq takes a holistic, 360° view of the customer journey to pull out useful zero-party data insights that might inform our personalization strategy.”

Action Items: How Brands Can Uniquely Benefit from Windsor

Personalization is a crucial pillar of the Electriq approach, which is why Windsor aligns so well with the firm’s offerings. 

Brandon highlights a few Windsor use cases that, in his experience, successfully leverage personalization to drive trackable outcomes. 

1. Scaling Personalized Outreach

As a brand scales, the founder can’t keep sending handwritten notes and sending bottles of wine (like Brandon did in Electriq’s early days) to make customers feel special. 

Windsor takes that off their plate by sending automated, personalized videos to thousands of users every day. You can lose the time suck, but not the brand affinity. 

Even better: The apps in your marketing stack can build on top of one another to create deeper Windsor user cases. 

• Brand loyalty programs — Use Windsor in tandem with materials from your brand loyalty efforts within a Klaviyo flow, which then uses data from many disparate apps to create one unique, branded experience. 
• Turn positive reviews into brand loyalty — For instance, if a customer leaves a positive Kendo review, that can trigger Klaviyo to activate a new flow with a Windsor video, sending a thank-you video from the founder. 

Brandon describes situations where up to ten apps can contribute to a flow with Windsor. 

2. An Easy Way to Test ROI

Filming and creating a Windsor video usually takes a few minutes. From there, each video can be placed in multiple flows, so you can test the ROI of personalization. 

Truthfully, personalization isn’t always the ideal path for every brand, and you should only invest in initiatives that actually convert.

Having a built-in method to test drive that strategy is valuable. 

3. Driving Founder Visibility

Electriq has noticed that customers tend to attach themselves to the missions and backstories of a brand’s founder — even more than those of the brand itself. 

As such, featuring your founder in your Windsor deepfakes is a prime opportunity to center them in your customer’s experience. 

4. Focus on Keeping the Customers You Have

Brandon points to the immense value of Windsor videos in post-purchase and abandoned cart flows. Both use cases help brands invest in existing customers, rather than bleeding marketing dollars to chase new ones constantly. 

That’s why he’s excited to see Windsor continue to build out these applications with additional features, such as videos that proactively boost brand loyalty programs. 

Instead of simply zeroing in on abandoned cart conversions, you can utilize Windsor to elevate your brand’s best customers into true brand advocates. 

In 2023, Deploy Windsor as a Brand Differentiator

As an agency, Electriq is constantly solicited by thousands of eCom tools. They have a standard timeline for evaluating new products over a few months before pushing them forward. 

After all, their team comprises Shopify experts with deep knowledge of tech platforms.

When something new like Windsor comes on the scene, they want to ensure they can convert it into value for their clients. 

When Brandon was introduced to Windsor, he realized Electriq was already leveraging our videos with one of their clients — and it had already resulted in positive changes. 

How Windsor Helps Retain New Shoppers

Today, Electriq is seriously pushing Windsor because, according to Brandon, our tool presents a huge opportunity for brands to differentiate themselves. 

This is especially valuable with the new year in full swing. For Electriq’s clients, Windsor is a unique opportunity to test personalization for retention. 

“Windsor is in a unique place in the right market. It’s retention-focused, and that’s where a lot of brands’ heads are at right now. For our clients, the thought is, ‘Wow, Windsor is really unique. Why not try it out?’”