5 Lifecycle Email Mistakes That Kill Retention

By Chris Johnson, Lifecycle and Retention Strategist

Quick take: Most ecommerce brands are not losing revenue because of bad products. They are losing it quietly through overlooked email mistakes that crush engagement and damage long term loyalty. These are the five most common retention killers I see in every audit and exactly how to fix each one.

Introduction

Retention is the new growth engine.

As customer acquisition costs rise and ad platforms deliver diminishing returns, the smartest brands are investing in deeper relationships with people they have already paid to acquire.

Email should be the backbone of that retention strategy. But most ecommerce programs rely on generic campaigns, bloated lists, and shallow metrics.

I have audited more than two hundred ecommerce accounts across Braze, Klaviyo, Iterable, and custom platforms. These five email mistakes are by far the most common. None of them look like a big deal at first, but all of them quietly kill retention and slowly erode your customer lifetime value.

Mistake One: Sending a Welcome Email Without a Plan

Why it kills retention: The first email your customer receives is the most important. A plain message that says thanks for subscribing does not build trust, does not explain your value, and does not move them any closer to a first purchase.

What to do instead: Create a welcome sequence with purpose. Three to five emails is ideal. Start by telling your brand story. Explain what you do differently and why it matters. Use real customer quotes and images to build trust.

Give people a reason to try your product with an incentive or offer, but frame it in a helpful way. The goal is to move someone from interest to action.

This sequence should begin the moment someone signs up. Never wait for your next newsletter to introduce yourself.

Mistake Two: Sending Too Many Promotional Emails

Why it kills retention: When every email is a sale, customers stop paying attention. Over time, they stop opening your messages entirely. Once your engagement drops, email providers begin to treat your messages like spam. That means fewer people see your emails, no matter how good they are.

What to do instead: Balance promotions with value. If you are sending ten emails a month, at least four should be purely helpful. This can include tutorials, product tips, founder updates, or user generated content.

Build automated flows that respond to behavior. For example, someone who browses without buying should receive a different message than someone who just placed their third order.

You can do this easily using Klaviyo, Braze, or Iterable. These platforms allow you to create behavior based flows that speak directly to each customer’s experience.

Mistake Three: Holding on to Inactive Subscribers

Why it kills retention: Inactive subscribers bring down your performance metrics and hurt your sender reputation. Eventually your emails stop reaching the people who actually want to hear from you.

What to do instead: Filter your list every ninety days to find people who have not opened or clicked. Place them into a reactivation series that asks clearly whether they want to stay on your list. Give them the option to stay, pause, or unsubscribe.

After that, clean your list. This is one of the most overlooked steps in email marketing. You cannot keep sending to dead email addresses and expect strong deliverability.

I recommend Kickbox for this. It checks every contact and flags addresses that are outdated, fake, or harmful to your sender reputation. Running your list through Kickbox before every big campaign is a smart, low effort way to protect long term revenue.

Mistake Four: Using the Same Send Schedule for Everyone

Why it kills retention: Different customers want different levels of communication. When you send emails at the same pace to every subscriber, you risk burning out your new leads and annoying your best customers.

What to do instead: Segment your list by engagement. Send more frequent updates to your highly engaged audience and slow things down for those who are less active.

Use send time optimization tools inside Klaviyo, Iterable, or Braze. These tools help your emails land when each subscriber is most likely to open.

Also track complaint rates. If one segment starts clicking spam more than others, that is a clear signal that your cadence is too aggressive.

Mistake Five: Tracking the Wrong Metrics

Why it kills retention: Clicks and opens are not enough. Open rates are unreliable and clicks do not always mean people are buying. If you are only tracking surface metrics, you are missing the big picture.

What to do instead: Track real retention metrics like second purchase rate, average order value, and revenue per recipient.

Tie every lifecycle flow to a financial outcome. If your post purchase flow is not increasing second purchase rate within thirty days, then it is not doing its job.

Use your ESP or a tool like Looker or GA to surface these numbers in a way that helps you act on them.

One Last Mistake: Ignoring Deliverability

Most brands do not think about deliverability until it is too late.

You can write the best emails in the world, but if inbox providers think your messages are low quality or spammy, they will never reach the people you are trying to retain.

Deliverability is not about luck. It is about behavior. When you send to bad addresses, ignore engagement signals, or overload people with promotions, your deliverability gets worse.

Kickbox helps prevent that by validating your list before you send. A clean list means stronger engagement, better inbox placement, and higher revenue per message.

If you want your emails to actually work, deliverability has to be part of the strategy.

Summary Table

Final Thought

Email marketing is not just about what you say. It is about whether your audience sees it, trusts it, and wants to act on it.

If your retention numbers are flat, it is probably not the content. It is the structure, the hygiene, and the strategy behind it.

These five mistakes are silent revenue killers. Fix them and your customer lifetime value will begin to shift in the right direction.

If you want help spotting and fixing these issues, I am available for short term projects or ongoing strategy work.

🔹 Book a free twenty minute retention audit 🔹 Hire me through MarketerHire if you need retention strategy without the overhead.

P.S. Before your next campaign, run your list through Kickbox using my referral link. It takes five minutes and could add thousands in revenue. Click here to get started.

Chris Johnson is a lifecycle marketing consultant who builds high performing email and retention programs for ecommerce brands ranging from two million to two hundred million in annual revenue. He works fluently across Klaviyo, Braze, Iterable, and just about any stack with an API and a customer list.