The World's Best Email and Retention Podcast

Before anyone talks about LTV, retention curves, or lifecycle marketing, there's one window that matters most: the first 30 days. Thomas Lalas, founder of Art of Ecomm and author of Retention Economics, joins Jordan Gordon to break down why the first month after a customer's purchase has an outsized impact on lifetime value, profitability, and long-term growth. They cover why retention is...

All the conversion action on your Shopify store happens in a narrow window. Jordan builds out the diagnostic framework to find it, measure it, and fix it. What's covered: Why sessions, scroll depth, and page depth are all brutally short, and why that concentrates the opportunity The 10 power pages to audit: homepage, top 3 category pages by conversions, top 3 PDPs by conversions, top 3 content...

Email segmentation is getting tighter. Here's what our 2025 research found and what we changed going into H2 2026. We cover implied consent windows, why we pulled back from 150-day open segments to 120, the real revenue math on long buyer lookbacks, and how to structure a mailable segment that sits inside every other segment you send to. Key topics: Implied consent: 95-day default vs. the lega...

Your recommendations flow does more than fill inbox space. It introduces your audience to parts of your catalog they haven't seen, replaces a chunk of your campaign volume, and works on autopilot as your catalog changes. This episode breaks down how recommendations and essentials flows work together, why Klaviyo's default 10-recommendation set limits you to three usable emails, and how to...

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Klaviyo⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ . A men's jewelry brand doing $3K/day sent one email with a password-protected sale page and did $54K in a single day. Henry Banfield, ecom strategist at Pilothouse, breaks down exactly how it worked: the month-long header build-up, the "VIP Access" password psychology, the segmentation behind the send, and why blocking the conversion dr...

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠⁠⁠Klaviyo⁠⁠⁠⁠ . Most brands send a welcome email and immediately dump subscribers into their campaign program. This episode breaks down the automated flow that fixes that gap: the essentials flow. Jordan walks through why campaign revenue is concentrated among people who have visited the site recently, how to run the segment research yourself to confirm it, and why s...

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠⁠Klaviyo⁠⁠⁠ . Consumer psychology is not a channel-specific tactic. It runs underneath your email program, your site, your advertising, and your pricing. In this episode, Jordan Gordon breaks down the psychological mechanics at work across two brands operating from opposite ends of the gender and aesthetic spectrum: Skims and Percival. Topics covered include relative...

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠Klaviyo⁠⁠ . If your open rates have collapsed, your list is shrinking, or you're buried in the spam folder, this episode walks through exactly what to do. Jordan covers the 10 most important moves for recovering a damaged email account, from setting realistic expectations and rewarming your list to running email-only promotions and tracking the metrics that actua...

This episode is sponsored by ⁠Klaviyo⁠ . When in doubt, zoom out. Most brands have a browse abandon and a checkout abandon — and call it done. In this episode, Jordan breaks down the entire conversion funnel support ecosystem: all 9 flows, how they connect, and how many emails each one actually needs. What's covered: The difference between lifecycle and funnel support (and why it matters) All...

This episode is sponsored by Klaviyo . Most ecommerce brands obsess over rates — pop-up submit rate, click-through rate, conversion rate. But rate without throughput is meaningless. In this episode, Jordan breaks down the 15 core touch points every ecommerce brand should be mapping, monitoring, and iterating on — and introduces the framework for how to actually think about them. You'll learn t...

If your store has hundreds — or thousands — of SKUs, your biggest problem isn't your product. It's discovery. Jordan sits down with Julia Whatley, Senior Partner Manager at Rebuy, to break down how smart personalization turns an overwhelming catalog into a guided buying experience. From search-driven add-to-carts to post-purchase subscription upgrades, Julia walks through the full on-site...

In this episode, Jordan breaks down 7 fixes you can implement today to improve your bottom of funnel and turn existing traffic into more conversions. The throughline: you don’t need more traffic—you need to capture more of the traffic you already have. What you’ll learn: How to turn your PDP into a conversion driver (not a dead end) Why small homepage changes can drive outsized revenue The right w...

In this episode, Jordan dove into the data of 20 ecommerce brands to see what actually happens when you add email and SMS into the mix. The result: → 3.3x higher median growth → More revenue from repeat customers → Stronger overall efficiency (MER, ROAS, P&L) Email and SMS don’t just drive extra revenue. They make your entire acquisition system work better. In this episode: Why retention drive...

Most brands are producing content. Very few are turning it into authority. In this episode, Jordan and Chris Panteli from Linkifi break down how content actually drives growth beyond your own channels—and why backlinks, brand mentions, and external coverage are becoming critical in both Google and AI-driven search. If you’re only thinking about email, ads, and your website, you’re missing a major...

Most brands don’t have a testing problem. They have a targeting problem. In this episode, Jordan is joined by Pilothouse strategist Chris Richards to break down why “marketing to everyone” is quietly killing performance — and what to do instead. The reality: growth doesn’t come from more creative, more tests, or more spend. It comes from choosing the right customer and building your entire system...

Email deliverability isn’t a single metric. There’s no dashboard that tells you exactly why you’re going to spam. In this episode of The World’s Best Email & Retention Podcast, Jordan sits down with Pierre Pignault, founder of MailSoar and an “email guy’s email guy,” to break down how deliverability actually works in 2026. From misleading open rates to spam filter behavior, this is a deep dive...

Most ecommerce brands obsess over conversion rate. But according to Dylan Ander, that’s the wrong metric to optimize. In this episode of the World's Best Email & Retention Podcast, Jordan sits down with Dylan Ander — founder of Heatmap.com and author of Billion Dollar Websites — to break down the psychology behind how people actually buy online. Dylan introduces his “Gator vs Judge” framew...

What changes when you run email every single day? In this episode of the World’s Best Email & Retention Podcast, Jordan Gordon sits down with Rebecca Knight from DTC Newsletter to break down the differences between running email for an ecommerce brand and operating a large daily newsletter. While ecommerce email programs rely on segmentation, automation flows, and purchase signals, newsletters...

In this Segmentation Super Episode, Jordan Gordon breaks down the exact segmentation frameworks the Pilothouse retention team uses to drive more revenue from the customers you already have. If your Klaviyo account feels messy, underperforming, or overly broad, this is your reset. You’ll learn why bad segmentation quietly kills inbox placement, how to structure high-signal engagement windows, and t...

How do you actually build an email audience in 2026 without burning your list or wrecking deliverability? In this episode, Jordan Gordon breaks down the math and mechanics behind sustainable audience growth. From unsubscribe modeling to engagement windows, this is a tactical walkthrough of how smart operators forecast list health and protect future revenue. If your list growth feels unpredictable...

In Part 2 of this deep dive, Jordan breaks down how to attribute your post-click ecosystem without relying solely on platform reporting. From estimating CRO uplift to sizing Rebuy’s true contribution and pressure-testing retention performance, this episode walks through the math and the mindset operators need to understand where low-cost revenue is really coming from. In this episode: How to estim...

Most brands track repeat rate. I don’t. In this episode, Jordan breaks down the five customer retention metrics he actually uses to judge whether an email and SMS program is driving real business results — and the one popular metric he ignores entirely. Because the truth is: strong retention programs don’t always make your email metrics look better. In fact, sometimes open rates and click rates go...

Attribution doesn’t stop at ads. In this episode, we walk through how to measure the full post-click ecosystem (from email and SMS to CRO and retention) and how these channels work together to drive low-cost revenue. Jordan shares a practical model for evaluating channel impact beyond standard multi-touch attribution, why some of your most important revenue drivers get under-credited, and how to i...

Email is still the most predictable revenue channel in ecommerce—but most brands don’t forecast it correctly. In this episode, Jordan Gordon breaks down a simple, highly accurate system for predicting your 2026 email revenue before the year even starts. You’ll learn how to model email revenue using six core components of a healthy email program, including campaigns, welcome flows, post-purchase, r...

When email revenue drops, most teams guess. This episode shows how to diagnose it systematically. Jordan breaks down the two real drivers of email revenue decline: fewer emails sent and lower revenue per email sent — and walks through the exact hierarchy of metrics that explain what’s actually happening inside Klaviyo. You’ll learn how to: Identify whether the problem is frequency, send size, segm...