Post-purchase emails, winback campaigns, and loyalty journeys are standard parts of a Shopify retention plan. But are brands focusing on automation before getting their customer service right?
Stefan Chiriacescu, CEO and Co-Founder of eCommerce Today, believes the order matters. His perspective is simple: retention is won with effort first and efficiency later.
eCommerce Today is a Fractional eCommerce Department for Shopify brands, offering Shopify Development, Lifecycle Marketing, SEO & GEO, Design & CRO, and Digital Advertising. It is a Shopify Plus Partner and Klaviyo Master Platinum Partner, with 11 years of experience and 300+ brands served.
For the Flits Agency Interview Series 2026, we spoke with Stefan about customer retention, AI in the eCommerce agency landscape, and what helps agencies build lasting client relationships. We begin with his perspective on retention, followed by his thoughts on AI and agency partnerships.
Automating a cold relationship just makes it cold at scale.
Stefan Chiriacescu, CEO and Co-Founder, eCommerce Today
From your experience working with eCommerce brands, what are the biggest challenges in customer retention, and what strategies can brands adopt to encourage more repeat purchases?
The biggest retention challenge is that brands try to automate their way out of a service problem, but retention is won with effort first and efficiency later, and the order matters. For high-price products that means a real person calling the customer to ask whether their issue was actually resolved, every problem followed through to the end, and every review answered on every platform, negative and positive alike, because that is where repeat purchase intent is built.
Only after the human layer works do you bring in automation, which exists to carry that same standard of care to volumes where humans cannot, since automating a cold relationship just makes it cold at scale.
What this means for Shopify brands:
- Prioritise customer service before automation: Automated emails and retention flows cannot compensate for unresolved customer issues. Brands need to establish a reliable service experience before scaling it through automation.
- Follow up beyond ticket closure: For high-value or expensive products, a support ticket marked as resolved may not mean the customer's problem is actually fixed. A personal follow-up call can help confirm that the issue has been addressed.
- Respond to every customer review: Positive reviews are an opportunity to acknowledge customers, while thoughtful responses to negative reviews show potential buyers how the brand handles problems. Both contribute to customer confidence.
- Build a consistent post-purchase experience: Once the human service layer is working, brands can use post-purchase emails, replenishment reminders, and winback sequences to extend that experience to more customers.
- Use automation to scale care, not replace it: The goal is to make a good customer experience consistent across a larger customer base, rather than automate interactions that already feel impersonal.
How do you see AI transforming the eCommerce agency landscape, and how can agencies leverage it to deliver better results and more value to their clients?
Most of the talk about AI personalization is premature because the models cannot yet personalize at scale without diluting the brand, but what AI can do today is turn every single marketing message into an A/B test. Testing used to be expensive and slow, so most brands tested almost nothing, while now generating variants is nearly free and every email becomes a learning opportunity.
The agencies that win will not be the ones that let AI write their marketing, but the ones that use it to compound learning until their communication is measurably sharper than anyone else's in the niche.
How agencies can apply this:
- Look beyond AI-generated content: According to Stefan, handing over customer communication to AI for large-scale personalisation can risk diluting a brand's identity. Agencies need to understand where AI can add value without compromising the brand's voice.
- Make experimentation more accessible: Testing used to require considerable time, resources, and planning. AI makes it easier to generate multiple versions of marketing messages, giving agencies more opportunities to experiment.
- Test more than email copy: Subject lines, individual emails, and messages within automated flows can all become opportunities for testing. Each variation can help agencies understand what resonates with an audience.
- Turn test results into continuous learning: The value of experimentation comes from applying what each test reveals to the next campaign. Over time, these insights can make a brand's communication more relevant and effective.
- Deliver more value through better decisions: Agencies can use AI to improve the quality of their work and make each marketing message more informed, rather than measuring productivity only by the amount of content they produce.
In today’s competitive eCommerce ecosystem, what do you believe are the key factors that help agencies build trust, retain clients, and establish long-term partnerships?
Trust comes from using context correctly, and most agencies only use one layer of it, which is knowing the client's business. Long-term partnerships are built on two more layers: the context of the relationship, meaning what was promised, delivered, and learned along the way, and the context of the company's DNA, meaning the values and voice the brand will not compromise on.
An agency that works inside all three layers becomes very hard to replace, and that is exactly why we run one retainer with one Account Manager and a full senior team behind them, so the context lives in one place instead of being scattered across five specialists.
The three layers agencies should understand:
- Business context: Knowing the client's products, catalogue, margins, and target audience is the starting point. Agencies need this understanding to make recommendations that fit the business rather than relying on generic strategies.
- Relationship context: Trust develops through the history of working together. Agencies should understand what they have promised, what they have delivered, how previous challenges were handled, and what the client is currently focused on. This helps them make recommendations that reflect the relationship, not just the latest brief.
- Company DNA: Every brand has its own values, priorities, and communication style. Agencies need to understand what the brand stands for and what it will not compromise on, so their work remains consistent with the identity customers recognise.
- Keep context connected across the team: Stefan explains that in eCommerce Today's Full Department model, clients have one retainer, one Account Manager, and a full senior team working behind them. This keeps business knowledge, relationship history, and brand understanding connected instead of fragmented across different specialists.
Key Takeaways
- Customer retention starts with service: Resolve customer problems and build trust before relying on automation to drive repeat purchases.
- AI creates more opportunities to learn: Use it to make experimentation easier and improve marketing communication through continuous testing.
- Long-term partnerships depend on context: Understanding the business, the relationship, and the brand's identity helps agencies become more valuable to their clients.
Thinking about moving to Shopify? eCommerce Today offers a free comparative analysis for brands running on platforms such as WooCommerce, Magento, PrestaShop, or BigCommerce. Brands share a few details about their store and current costs, and the team reviews whether a move to Shopify makes sense for them. The report is sent by email within five business days once all the required data is in.
Are you a Shopify agency working on growth, customer experience, or retention for your clients?
The Flits Agency Interview Series is open. If you're working with Shopify brands and have insights worth sharing, we'd love to hear from you.
