Bonus Episode: Reimagining Retention Through Customer Psychology with Sonja Grasser
Sonja Grasser is the Founder of Retention Theory, a consultancy helping CPG brands turn one-time buyers into loyal repeat customers through data-driven retention systems. With a background that spans law school, 60+ countries of travel, and hands-on work with brands like MaryRuth’s Organics, Sonja brings a uniquely behavioral approach to customer retention: rooted in psychology, not playbooks.
After landing in retention by accident as a German-speaking marketer, Sonja discovered her passion for understanding why customers buy, not just what they buy. Her global perspective and analytical mindset help founders identify churn before it happens, build smarter lifecycle flows, and create experiences that keep customers coming back.
Whether you’re a CPG founder tired of chasing acquisition or an operator ready to make retention your growth engine, Sonja shares a masterclass in turning customer behavior into predictable, sustainable revenue.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
- [00:33] Intro
- [01:05] Helping brands turn retention into revenue
- [01:30] Connecting communication to customer longevity
- [02:08] Identifying patterns behind consumable success
- [02:55] Leveraging analytical thinking for stronger retention
- [04:00] Educating first-time buyers before selling again
- [05:25] Helping buyers at their exact stage of the journey
- [07:11] Designing flows that nurture interest into action
- [07:45] Applying retention rules across every direct channel
- [08:18] Stay updated with new episodes
- [08:29] Spotting churn before customers disappear
- [10:19] Timing recovery emails before customers drift away
- [11:39] Resolving customer issues before they walk away
- [12:27] Setting triggers that match real customer behavior
- [14:16] Focusing on results-driven storytelling for CPG
- [15:26] Evaluating why memberships don’t always translate
- [16:36] Building loyalty from your first 100 buyers
- [17:07] Layering time data to reveal true retention health
- [19:08] Applying psychology to make retention truly work
Resources:
- Subscribe to Honest Ecommerce on Youtube
- Helps Ecommerce brands with retention marketing retentiontheory.com/
- Follow Sonja Grasser linkedin.com/in/sonjagrasser
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Transcript
Sonja Grasser
If you want to win, you need to meet the customer where they are and not where you want them to be. There's other metrics that will change how you look at retention. And one of them is time for a second purchase. Your time to second purchase is just really important because repeat rates tell a different story when you layer time to them, right? Because a 60% repeat rate in three months is very different from a 60 repeat rate in 30 days.
Chase Clymer
Honest Ecommerce is a weekly podcast where we interview direct-to-consumer brand founders and leaders to find out what it takes to start, grow, and scale an online business today.
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Honest Ecommerce. Today, I'm welcoming to the show Sonja Grasser. She is the founder of Retention Theory and a fractional retention consultant in the space, helps CPG brands stop the customer churn, and build retention systems that become their most reliable revenue source. Sonja, welcome to the show.
Sonja Grasser
Hey Chase. Thank you for having me.
Chase Clymer
I'm excited to chat. So I introduced you with your awesome byline. Anything that you want to add to what you're up to these days with retention theory?
Sonja Grasser
Yeah, thanks for asking. So yeah, I help CPG brands dial in their retention, which is often on the back burner. So that's when I come into play and help them figure out what to do. So people actually stick around.
Chase Clymer
And I'm just going to ask some 101 level questions here.
Sonja Grasser
Yeah.
Chase Clymer
When you say retention, is this just getting repeat customers or is this more subscription? What are some of those areas of the business to where you're touching?
Sonja Grasser
Yeah. So it really touches all points of the customer journey from second to multiple purchases. And that includes what you mentioned, their subscription program, their customer communication, whether it's email flows, or what they actually send out in campaigns. But it's also understanding what the patterns are and how people consume their product. So it goes much deeper than just surface-level subscription work.
Chase Clymer
You mentioned something just now that was actually my follow-up question. You said consume. So when you're talking about CPG, in my mind, that's consumer packaged goods. And they lend themselves to typically be more consumable. Is that definitely a trait in which most products that you help have?
Sonja Grasser
Yes, absolutely. So I work with brands that are in that space, ranging from vitamins to cosmetics to drink mixes, anything that is actually predictable in terms of consumption when I know the usage frequency of the customer.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. And me as a nerd and have been doing this for a decade, awesome business models.
Sonja Grasser
Mm-hmm.
Chase Clymer
I've obviously just mentioned I've been in the Ecommerce space going on almost a decade now. What was your tenure? What was your career? What led to you launching your own business, planting your own flag and really dialing into specifically this retention element?
Sonja Grasser
Yeah. So my turn is a bit different from most retention marketers I know. I don't come from the typical marketing background. I actually come from a law background and I also traveled a lot. And without even knowing, that was the perfect foundation for getting into retention.
Because of the things I learned back then and when I moved to the US, I'm from Europe originally, I landed in retention by accident because someone was looking for a German speaking marketer.
And I fell in love with retention and specifically with CPG because of that requirement to be analytical, to have somewhat an understanding of consumer psychology, and not just marketing tactics.
Chase Clymer
Before this, you did say that you're going to try to be as actionable as possible for the listener.
Sonja Grasser
Yeah.
Chase Clymer
And we're going to try our best here. So I've got my first question here. Probably an easy one for you. What is the biggest mistake you see CPG brands making in regards to retention?
Sonja Grasser
Yeah. Great question. So most CPG brands, what they do, they communicate with all customers in very similar ways. So whether you bought one six months ago, or whether you bought three times in the last two months, you are getting the same communication, the same frequency of communication like everyone else.
And that is a huge mistake where you leave a lot of money on the table because those two consumer cohorts require completely different approaches. Someone who purchased once, they need more education, they need social proof, they need to build more trust.
And if it's been a while, then that tells you already that it's going to be more difficult to get them to their second purchase. Someone who has purchased repeatedly, they need something completely different. They need perhaps novelty at one point, or just help with understanding how to use the product better. So you have those two ends of the spectrum. If you send them all the same, you will bore your repeat customers and you will overwhelm your new customers.
Chase Clymer
Gotcha. So the biggest mistake here is we're just going to use up a fictitious brand. They sell deodorant, right? And this brand is just blanket emailing all of their customers, their campaigns, or their automations even within. Arguably, it's probably going to be Klaviyo. But the messaging is just buy another one.
And it's not targeted to educate that buyer that hasn't done a second purchase or even done a purchase before. And then it's not maybe more incentivized or there's other solutions that can help you speak a different language to a VIP buyer. None of that is in consideration. They're just the same message to everybody. That's a giant big mistake.
Sonja Grasser
Yes. And there's a typical marketing structure brands follow, which means they want to sell more of their products, they want to cross sell into other categories. And there is rarely consideration when it's the right time to do that, or whether it's even the right time to do that. So once everyone can take today is to audit their flows and branch out those customer groups right away, right?
Branch out customers who purchased once and then branch out by multiple purchases. And if you want to get extra points, have multiple branches based on how often people purchase, right? Be even more specific. But even that one branch between bought once and bought more often is going to help you become so much more relevant in your communication for the customer. And you can actually, instead of trying to just sell them another item, you can actually help them with what they need in that step of the journey.
07:11 Chase Clymer
That makes sense. And so you mentioned that your job really comes in taking a customer and repeating it. But when you're building up those cohorts, I would probably argue that also there's a cohort for people that haven't purchased yet that signed up for your emails because they are interested and you're just not doing a good job telling them why they should buy your product.
Sonja Grasser
Absolutely. And you can probably do less inflows because they won't probably enter too many of the flows before purchase. However, when you send out campaigns, it's an absolute must to have your segments split out by prospects and customers.
Chase Clymer
Now, on the opposite side of that spectrum. And this is something that I see often on Klaviyo. And we're going to circle back to Klaviyo a lot in this conversation. But it's just a placeholder for whatever your email platform is, even though it is the best, I think, in the ecosystem.
But it's attentive out there. But also, these rules also apply through texting. Also, I see that direct mail is getting very popular again. So these same strategies apply through all these different direct channels. But we're probably going to default to talking about it through the lens of Klaviyo because it's just easier for a lot of people to understand.
Chase Clymer
Hey everybody, just a quick reminder. Please like this video and subscribe if you haven't. We're releasing interviews like this every week, so don't miss out. Now back to the interview.
Chase Clymer
You've got prospects and then you've got customers and then you've got people that are potentially going to churn, which means they are going unsubscribe from your list, possibly unsubscribe from the subscription to that recurring revenue product. How do you identify folks that are going to churn?
And is there a way to maybe make them not churn?
Sonja Grasser
Yeah, absolutely. And there are actually signals that will tell you if someone is more likely to churn. There are 3 main signals. And brands might or might not be aware of those. They are all aware that those actions happen. They just often don't interpret them as a signal for churn. One is customer service tickets. If someone reaches out and complains about filling the product or anything else that makes you understand that there is an issue, it's a signal for churn. Another one is deviation from the purchase cycle.
So if you have customers or a group of customers that purchase relatively consistently every 30 days, and now it's been 40 days, then likely they found another brand or to reduce their consumption. And both are just an indicator that they are. closer to churn than not.
And then the third one is what's called an engagement cliff. So groups of customers that typically open 60% of your marketing emails if that number drops. And I'm not talking about industry standards. I'm talking in comparison to their prior behavior. So if you always open emails of brand A by 60% and then you don't, you open them only 20% of the time, then I will predict that you're about to turn.
Chase Clymer
Yeah, those are some interesting signals that you can find with smart softwares that you're already paying for and using. So let's pretend that this deodorant company that we are talking about wants to change their ways and improve things. And they're recognizing some of these signals and they want to attempt to not persuade people to stick around but just make them feel better and reduce that churn? What are some of the actions they could take after recognizing these signals?
Sonja Grasser
Yeah. So most brands have their standard wind backflow setup, the typical fire after 90 days, which is very late. If you wait 90 days after not purchasing, likely the customer has moved on. But you can set up profile properties to actually trigger flows off of those indicators like a customer service ticket or like a delayed purchase timeframe.
And then you can trigger a flow that actually addresses that. And that's not generic, we miss you email. That is something very specific to the trigger. And it will depend what the trigger was, but addressing that and providing solutions or remedy plus an incentive increases the likelihood that the customer rethinks their decision.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. And as you were just talking through that, it really depends on what scale you're at, at a business. This might be an opportunity that needs to end up in the founder's inbox and they need to reply to this person or reach out to this person.
Sonja Grasser
Yeah. So as an example, if all 3 of those signals actually trigger, there shouldn't be an automation. There should be a personal outreach.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. Yeah. And those are the things that don't scale. But if you do help resolve whatever issue it is that customer had with their experience or maybe the product, but it's probably more likely their experience, you can turn them from churning into an advocate for the brand because they're like, “Look how nice they treated me and how well they responded to when I was feeling not so great about it.”
Sonja Grasser
Yeah, 100%.
Chase Clymer
We talked about it a little bit before. It's consumable. But are there any other differences between CPG and other Ecommerce verticals? For example, apparel. Are there some more specific strategies that are for retention itself in that CPG space?
Sonja Grasser
Yeah. So CPG is fundamentally different because it's all about consumption and repeating patterns. For example, in fashion, it's about novelty and excitement. So that makes it relatively easy to actually determine how you communicate with the customer. Because when the product predictability is there, like for CPG, you can basically mathematically understand when the next purchase should happen.
And then you can, like what we talked about just before, you can basically set those triggers with an action. When it comes to fashion, you cannot predict when your customers will want another shirt. That is really out of your hands to understand. You can only present them with novelty as much as you can.
So the predictability is like the biggest difference. The second one is the emotional connection because CPG is all about results. It's not about aspiration. While fashion, it's about wants and aspirations and how you make them feel. In CPG, it's about, what results do I get with the product? Like that, you're going to run a company or any vitamin or protein company. And then there's this competitive window that's very different because in CPG, when you lose a customer once, they likely replace your product with someone else's product. But let's say in fashion, they might come back next season.
Chase Clymer
As we've been walking through it in this conversation, I've just felt myself realizing those differences that I knew were there, but I never thought about it in such a distilled way about those things. And it's making me think creatively about our agency and maybe the types of customers or clients that we want to take on because of the types of problems that they're experiencing and just the things that we find fun.
Sonja Grasser
Yeah. And I think it's really important to keep it in the back of your mind also when you create content for the different types of brands because in CPG, if you focus on consumption tracking and usage patterns, you'll do better than if you focus on brand storytelling. But in fashion, brand storytelling is really important because the aspiration is there to just be part of something bigger or something that's trendy, if you want to call it so. While in CPG, that plays a little bit of a role, right? Oh, it's a known brand. Results are really what matters.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. What's been interesting over the last year or two... And this is probably a result of me being so into the subscription space now with the connection of SubSummit, which is where we met, by the way. Everybody shout out SubSummit. We're seeing subscription and consumable businesses. Investors like those types of business models.
And now we're seeing membership become a thing in the apparel space and these other non-traditionally consumable industries trying to mimic those types of strategies with memberships or subscription elements to them. Have you explored that much? Do you have any experience in that space?
Sonja Grasser
I don't have experience in that space, but I have a very strong opinion about it.
Chase Clymer
Oh.
Sonja Grasser
Which is that I understand the intent of mimicking exactly what you just said, mimicking those strategies and profit off of them. In my opinion, it can work, but they are so much more vulnerable than a true CPG brand using those strategies. So don't expect it to work the same.
Chase Clymer
Have you heard the concept of your 1000 fans? If you're going to have a sustainable business, it doesn't matter what you're doing. It's like your first 100 customers, you need to treat them right. You're going to have 1000 fans. Those are going to be what's the most profitable lifetime value throughout the history of your business. I think that membership in those types of non-consumable spaces. It's almost playing off of the people that love the brand for the brand and being like those true 1000 fans.
Sonja Grasser
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Chase Clymer
Back to CPG though. I got one final question for you. Probably not. I'm sure I'll ask far more. But if I am a consumer package, a good founder, CPG founder, I've got a consumable product, what are the metrics that I should be tracking in this retention space that I may not be tracking, I might be ignoring?
Sonja Grasser
Amazing question. So most founders or CEOs that I meet, they obsess over cost of acquisition, customer acquisition cost, just basically the purchase rates. But there are other metrics that will change how you look at retention. And one of them is time for a second purchase. Your time for a second purchase, it's just really important because repeat rates tell a different story when you layer time to them. Because a 60% repeat rate in 3 months is very different from a 60% repeat rate in 30 days.
Chase Clymer
Yeah, that's double the cash flow.
Sonja Grasser
Exactly. So that's one thing that just needs to be measured with that extra layer. Another thing is consumption cohort analysis. We all analyze our cohorts on a monthly basis, but very few brands analyze them by consumption patterns and group high consumers and low consumers together because they have completely different patterns and they have completely different LTV and outcome.
However, they are treated the same and they are both valuable as individual cohorts. Most brands want all customers to behave the same. They want them all to be high consumers, frequent purchasers.
Chase Clymer
Good luck. Good luck with that.
Sonja Grasser
Good luck with that. I understand the intent. However, if you want to win, you need to meet the customer where they are and not where you want them to be.
Chase Clymer
So could I ask. I think I have an example of this. Deodorant doesn't work well unless I want to make a crude joke. So I'm going to move on to a protein, like a whey protein brand, and the consumption patterns, right? So they sell a 30-day supply. It's their bestseller. People are on subscription. But they notice that there's a particular cohort that is skipping every month, every other month, and they're not doing anything about it. That's something they should be paying attention to?
Sonja Grasser
Yes. Or they do the wrong thing about it. They try to force another purchase when it's not time for the customer. This is a great example, actually. Because if they had asked the customer at first purchase what their goal is, or where they're at, they would know why it's happening. Because one customer is a busy single mom and the other one is a college athlete.
Chase Clymer
Yeah. One is in the gym 5 days a week and they are using the product almost every day. Another is lucky to get in the gym 3 days a week and they miss it half the time and they're using half of that product. So it lasts longer for them.
Sonja Grasser
Right. Or they use it differently because the single mom uses it as a meal replacement when she's very busy. And like you said, the college athlete goes to the gym, uses it once or twice a day. So one needs convenience, the other one needs results and predictability.
Chase Clymer
Yeah.
Sonja Grasser
You gotta understand that.
Chase Clymer
And you can get that information. I told you I was gonna ask more questions than I thought I would. So does this lean into the quizzes that became super popular in the last couple of years. And I still think a lot of people are not doing them at all, which is weird to me. This is information you would learn upfront through a quiz to then help power these retention strategies.
Sonja Grasser
Have you ever, I'm sure you have, purchased a product and then on the confirmation page, they ask you, where did you find us?
Chase Clymer
Yeah. I fill those out because I know why they're there and I want to be a nice person. It's like a little inside baseball. Like, yeah, I will help you. I actually found this through Google.
Sonja Grasser
So while it's great to understand the source, this is an amazing opportunity to ask, “Hey, what's your goal? Why are you buying this?”
Chase Clymer
Yeah.
Sonja Grasser
And most of those surveys are powered in a way that they can pass on profile properties to Klaviyo. So there you have it, right. So now you know, busy mom, college athlete. Now you know, branch out your flow. Now you know, give them different content. Now you know by cohort, “Oh, I'm not expecting them to repeat in 30 days, but maybe in 60.” Or if I give them some recipes, what else to do with protein and just a shake? Maybe the mom uses it for the muffins. So you got to get creative on what to do.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely, Sonja. Now, is there anything I didn't ask you about today that you think would resonate with our audience?
Sonja Grasser
No, I think you asked me basically enough for everyone listening to that to take action. What I would want your listeners to take away from this is don't think about potential marketing as just a marketing channel. Think about it as applied psychology, basically. Be more interested in why customers do what they do than what they do. That's not enough. What they do is not enough. You need to understand why they do it. So once you have the why, you can use all those strategies and more to optimize your attention.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely. And all the why questions not only help in marketing, but they also help in conversion rate optimization and building more profitable bundles. All of this information is useful all over the place. If I'm out and about online and I want to potentially you on LinkedIn or subscribe to your newsletter. Where should I go? What should I do?
Sonja Grasser
Yeah. LinkedIn is the perfect place. You can find me under my name, Sonja Graser. And I also have a newsletter. I send out tips and tricks once a month, not overwhelming anyone. Retentiontheory.com is where you sign up.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Sonja, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Sonja Grasser
Thank you for having me.
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