As a marketing agency, my team and I at Sticky Digital, my team and I live in the messy middle of retention.
We're one of Shopify's premier retention marketing agencies, serving brands around the world. We’re the ones brands call when they’ve layered on a loyalty program, added subscriptions, built out sophisticated flows in Klaviyo, and then realize they still can’t answer basic questions like:
- Are my loyalty and subscription programs helping or hurting each other?
- Did this campaign actually perform well, or did it just reach people whose subscription was already about to renew?
- Who are my most valuable customers and what should I show them next?
This fragmentation is one of the biggest ongoing problems we see. It’s also one of the reasons we love Klaviyo so much at Sticky: it gives us a unified view of our customers, which makes it easy to pull customer segments like “subscribers who have a certain number of loyalty points” and do custom reporting.
But until now, that’s still required a bit of stitching: extra tools, extra exports, and a lot of manual interpretation.
Klaviyo Customer Hub changes that. For us, it’s one of the most impactful shifts in retention marketing we’ve seen in years. It gives every customer one place to manage their relationship with the brand. And it gives teams a practical, Shopify-ready foundation for building smarter retention programs on top of the customer data they already have in Klaviyo.
“Most people see Customer Hub as a cleaner account experience, and it is,” says Ben Zettler, founder of Zettler Digital. “But that’s only half the story. What makes it a real unlock,” he says, “is that every action inside the hub is a behavioral signal. Favorites, content block clicks, returns, tracking checks—it’s all intent data. You can turn that into revenue if you build around it.”
What makes Customer Hub a real unlock is that every action inside the hub is a behavioral engine.
The persistent pain of fragmentation
Most of the brands we work with have:
- A loyalty program
- A subscription program
- Email and SMS programs
- Campaigns, flows, and promotions layered on top
What they don’t have is a clear sense of how all of this works together.
A few common scenarios:
- A campaign looks like it did very well, but it went to customers whose subscription was already set to renew.
- The loyalty program looks engaging, but no one can see whether redemptions actually improve retention or average order value.
- Subscription counts look healthy, while quiet churn patterns go unnoticed for months.
Unfortunately, none of this is rare. It’s everyday reality for brands and agencies.
Then there’s the account experience. Most of our clients are on Shopify, where the standard account experience was never built with modern retention in mind. That means:
- Whether loyalty and subscription details even appear can depend on how log-in and accounts are set up.
- Customers often have to click through multiple pages just to see loyalty points or manage a subscription.
- Critical actions bounce people to entirely different portals and URLs.
For brands, constantly sending people offsite is not ideal. For customers, it’s clunky and confusing, especially when they lose their place and have to log in again just to make a basic change.
That is not what a retention engine should feel like.
3 ways Customer Hub serves as a lifecycle engine
Customer Hub is the first time we’ve seen all of these fragmented pieces pulled into one actionable, customer-facing view that actually feels natural.
The key shift is this: it unifies the customer experience first and worries about the tools behind it second.
Because you finally have a full picture of the lifecycle in one place, you can do things that were only theoretical before, like:
1. Catch churn risk before it becomes churn
When you can see a customer’s behavior in context, you can act on it.
If you know that a subscription pause of a certain length usually leads to cancellation, for example, that moment becomes a clear save opportunity. In Customer Hub, you can:
- Offer loyalty points on the next order.
- Suggest a smaller size, different flavor, or shifted cadence.
- Surface content that helps them get better results.
“When a shopper goes into Hub to pause a subscription or check on a return, they’re telling you exactly where they’re struggling,” Zettler points out. “In client programs, we use those moments to surface alternatives, perks, or education before churn ever hits. These are incredibly high-intent windows that you simply don’t get anywhere else.”
With Customer Hub, instead of reacting after the cancellation, you intervene at a moment where the customer is already trying to manage their relationship with the brand.
When a shopper goes into the hub to pause a subscription or check on a return, they're telling you exactly where they're struggling.
2. Give high-value customers a truly elevated experience
One thing Zettler and the team at Zettler Digital have noticed is that “VIP customers don’t just spend more. They engage differently. They explore more modules inside Customer Hub, they click deeper, and they actually read recommendations.”
“When the signed-in experience reflects the level of the relationship,” Zettler adds, “VIPs respond in ways that directly impact lifetime value.”
Because Customer Hub brings together orders, frequency, browsing, loyalty, and subscription behavior, we can:
- Give early access to new products in a way that actually feels exclusive.
- Highlight next best products based on how similar customers shop.
- Build a VIP-only view in Customer Hub and support it with targeted campaigns.
When the email says, “You’re the only one who has access,” the experience in Customer Hub backs that up.
VIP customers don't just spend more. They engage differently.
3. Keep lifecycle messaging consistent
We’ve all seen brands promise “VIP access” or “limited-time offers” in email, then drop customers on a generic product page.
With Customer Hub, we can send a VIP launch email and know that when someone logs in:
- They see the product featured in Hub.
- Their perk or access window is clear.
- They can act without hunting around the website.
That consistency doesn’t just drive conversions. It builds trust by showing you’ll honor your marketing promises everywhere a customer interacts.“One of the biggest gaps in retention is when the email says one thing and the website shows something completely different,” says Zettler. “With Customer Hub, the promise and the experience can seamlessly match in an easily-manageable way. If you tell someone they have early access, they log in and see it immediately. Conversion tends to jump because the context is consistent.”
The brands we use Customer Hub with see customer value increase, even when we can’t always attribute it to a single module. What’s clear is that when a shopper’s account becomes a place where everything relevant to them lives, they’ll come back more often and engage more deeply.
With Customer Hub, the promise and the experience can seamlessly match in an easily-manageable way.
3 ways Customer Hub changes our agency’s day-to-day
From an agency perspective, Customer Hub changes how we design and operate retention programs. Here’s what that looks like in practice:
1. Fewer tools, more focused work
We value our partner ecosystem, and there will always be reasons to use specific tools. But for many brands, Customer Hub reduces the need for:
- Extra tools for cross-sell or wishlist behavior
- Separate wishlist apps
- Custom development just to show loyalty points or subscription controls in useful places
If a brand previously needed engineering time every time they wanted to tweak the account experience, we can now do a lot of that inside Customer Hub.
“Customer Hub is especially valuable for brands that rely on multiple third-party apps,” says Priscila Villamizar, program manager at A-Game Digital. “It won’t replace those tools, it enhances them. Instead of functioning as another layer of redundancy, Customer Hub acts as the unified source of truth all your apps can rely on.”“It doesn’t compete with your existing stack,” Villamizar emphasizes. “It fills the gaps between apps, eliminates data silos, and ensures that every tool, from personalization apps to loyalty programs to support platforms, is working off the same accurate view of the customer. The result is smoother workflows, stronger segmentation, and smarter personalization across your entire ecosystem.”
Customer Hub doesn't compete with your existing stack, it enhances it.
Ultimately, Villamizar says, Customer Hub “empowers every app you use to work smarter with a clean, centralized customer profile.”
Zettler and his team have had a similar experience. “Before Customer Hub, we spent far too much time rebuilding basic account functionality just to make loyalty, subscriptions, or order data usable,” he shares. “Now, we can devote that development time to the world that actually drives revenue: better journeys, smarter perks, and more personalized modules. It shifts the entire focus toward impact.”
2. Custom development where it actually counts
The real win with Customer Hub is shifting development effort away from rebuilding account basics and toward unique brand experiences, like:
- Special loyalty perks
- Brand-specific modules in Customer Hub
- More nuanced lifecycle journeys for key segments
Customer Hub gives us a consistent foundation so we can spend more time on the creative that makes each brand distinct.
3. Better alignment between strategy and execution
Customer Hub also tightens the link between what we plan and what customers actually see.
We work with brands that offer unique loyalty experiences, such as monthly live sessions with a well-known brand ambassador who teaches customers how to use the products.
Instead of relying on a single email or custom development to highlight those offers, we can treat Customer Hub as the home for all those “extras”:
- Rewards
- Special events
- Personalized recommendations
- Exclusive perks
Email’s job becomes clear: get people back to the brand’s website, where they can see everything that’s relevant to them and act on it.
5 ways to future-proof your retention with Customer Hub
The closer we get to bringing all of these experiences together, the more honest insight we get into how customers behave, and the better we can serve them.
Here’s how I’d think about using Customer Hub to revamp a retention program:
1. Make Customer Hub the signed-in home base
Treat Customer Hub as the control center for your relationship with each customer:
- Centralize orders, subscriptions, loyalty points, store credit, shipments, and core account actions.
- Use it as the “do anything / fix anything” destination from email, SMS, and support.
When customers know, “If I log in here, I can handle anything,” they may be more likely to stay with you.
2. Use Customer Hub for website personalization
As the relationship changes, the signed-in experience should reflect that. Use Customer Hub to:
- Tailor the view by lifecycle stage (e.g., first-time buyers, subscribers, VIPs, lapsing, and so on).
- Swap in different sections and calls to action based on what each person is most likely to need next.
Think supplement timelines, full-look beauty routines, or age-based views. These are the patterns that reflect how people actually use your products over time.
3. Bake “save paths” into churn moments
Don’t treat churn like a mystery. Design what happens at the riskiest points. For example:
- When someone starts to cancel, offer structured alternatives instead of a single “cancel” button: cadence shifts, smaller sizes, swaps, or bundles that better match their reality.
- When there are failed payments or long gaps between orders, use Customer Hub to give people simple, self-serve paths to fix the issue and keep going.
The goal is to make staying feel easier and more valuable than leaving.
4. Treat Customer Hub as a lab
Because Customer Hub is a contained, signed-in space, it’s perfect for testing. You can:
- Pilot “secret” perks, hidden collections, or early access just for certain segments.
- Watch how people interact with those experiments before you expand them across channels.
- Use engagement in Customer Hub to decide which ideas get more investment and which to quietly sunset.
It’s a low-risk way to keep innovating on retention without disrupting your whole website.
5. Model your lifecycle inside the experience
Finally, think about lifecycle not just as an internal framework, but as something the customer can see and feel.
Use Customer Hub to:
Show timelines for long-horizon categories, like what results could look like over 12 months. For example:
- Supplements: a month-by-month progression showing when foundational changes typically begin, when habit consistency matters most, and what realistic milestones look like at 3, 6, and 12 months
- Fitness or performance products: a training-style track illustrating how consistent use impacts stamina, recovery, or performance over weeks and months
Or, use Customer Hub to build routines and milestones that evolve as the customer does. For example:
- Dynamic routines: Start customers with a beginner routine, automatically expand it as their usage grows, and surface “next-level” products when they’re ready.
- Milestone unlocks: Celebrate key moments like “first refill,” “60 days in,” or “VIP status achieved,” and tie each milestone to education, perks, or recommended next steps.
- Category-specific journeys:
- Beauty: Stage timelines showing how long different activities take to show results, when to introduce new products, and when to expect visible improvements.
- Kids: Update suggestions based on size, age, or developmental markers.
- Bicycles: Suggest maintenance products on a proper schedule, upgrades, replacements after part lifespan, etc.
When Customer Hub reflects where someone is in their journey and what’s next, it stops being a static account page and becomes a living map of the relationship.
“If you only treat Customer Hub as a self-serve portal, you’re leaving money on the table,” Zettler says. “When you treat it as a conversion touchpoint where engagement triggers flows, perks, up-sells, or save paths, it becomes a profit center. Support becomes revenue. Self-service becomes retention.”
The future of retention is authentic connection
Retention is not a channel. Retention is the sum of your communication with each customer, over time.
When you bring those experiences together (when loyalty knows subscription status, when subscription behavior shapes what you highlight, when campaigns respect all of that context), you’re not just squeezing out more revenue.
You’re making it easier for customers to keep choosing you.
From where I sit, that’s the future of retention: brands that genuinely remember who their customers are, meet them where they are in their journeys, and make it simple to stay.
Klaviyo Customer Hub is the strongest foundation I’ve seen yet for building that kind of relationship.
