for $500k–$10M ecom brands
The retention system behind an 8-figure ecommerce brand.
Retention Lab gives you the exact strategies, flows, campaigns, designs and numbers ShopSolar uses to generate 60% of revenue from email & SMS.
Get early bird accessYour email should be 40% of your revenue. For most brands, it's stuck at 10–20%.
You know email is supposed to be your most profitable channel. But right now, one of these is probably true:
- You're paying an agency that runs it from the outside. You still bring them the ideas and the offers. Once a month they send a revenue number, and you have no real idea what’s working, what’s broken, or what you’re missing.
- You handed it to someone on your team who's never been shown how. They're smart and willing, but they're learning Klaviyo by trial and error, and nobody's checking the work.
- You're doing it yourself, at 11pm. Klaviyo came with default flows. You turned some on. You send a campaign when you remember.
Meanwhile, the problems stack up quietly: no split testing, no abandoned cart flow, a discount code leaked to every coupon site since spring, and click rates sliding while nobody’s watching.
None of it is anyone's fault. The person running your email has never seen what a great program looks like from the inside.
We were paying $7,500 a month for "fine."
In early 2025, ShopSolar was an eight-figure solar brand paying an email agency about $7,500 USD a month. The results weren't bad. They just weren't great, and nobody could explain why.
Alex, ShopSolar's founder, had everything the agency didn't: years of knowing exactly who his customers were, what made them buy, and when. What he didn't have was time.
So instead of hiring another agency, he brought email in-house and brought me in to run it. He had the customer knowledge. I had the email execution. Together, three things changed:
- The agency worked from a brief. I worked next to Alex, so every email was built on what actually makes ShopSolar customers buy.We knew the customer.
- We moved fast. When a new deal came through, it went to the list the same day, not a month later because the calendar was already locked.
- We found the money hiding in the list. Focused on one brand, we found segments that drove outsized returns, grew the list 5x faster in about two weeks, and fixed the deliverability issues holding sends back.
In 58 days, revenue went up $380k and Klaviyo-attributed revenue hit a new record. That November, ShopSolar had the biggest Black Friday in company history, with 73% of revenue attributed to Klaviyo.
The missing piece wasn’t another tactic. It was turning eight years of founder knowledge into marketing.
Stop outsourcing your owned audience. Start owning it.
Retention Lab teaches the Keystone Method: the system we built to turn a busy founder’s knowledge into a retention system their team can run in-house every week.
In an arch, the keystone is the stone at the top that holds everything else in place. In your email program, that's the founder's knowledge of the customer. The challenge is getting that knowledge into the marketing. Retention Lab gives your team a system for doing it every week.
A real brand's playbook, not theory
You see exactly what an eight-figure brand runs: the promo calendar, the breather weeks between sales, the flows, the numbers.
A weekly rhythm, not a pile of tactics
5 hours a week, the same steps every week. Your coordinator, VA or marketing manager can run it.
Finished work, not a blank page
Start from our Figma templates, flow blueprints and AI prompts instead of building from scratch.
The results, with nothing hidden
"We added a quarter million dollars per month on average. Depending on the week, email revenue is now 50–70%."Alex Smith, Co-Founder, ShopSolar
Is Retention Lab for you?
Retention Lab is built for ecommerce teams that want to own more of their retention in-house.
Founder / Operator
You know your customers better than anyone. Retention Lab gives your team a system for turning that knowledge into campaigns, flows and repeatable revenue without everything depending on you.
Marketing Leader
You own growth, retention or ecommerce and need a system your team can actually execute. Use the same weekly process we run inside an eight-figure brand.
Hands-On Marketer
You’re the one building the emails, flows and campaigns. Get the playbook, templates and processes to run retention at a higher level and bring a proven system to your company.
Best fit
- Shopify brand doing roughly $500k–$10M per year
- You already have traffic, customers and an email list
- Someone on your team can dedicate around 5 hours a week to retention
- You want a repeatable system, not a collection of random tactics
Probably not for you if…
- You’re pre-launch or don’t have a meaningful customer list yet
- You want someone else to handle retention completely for you
- You’re looking for quick hacks instead of building a long-term system
12 modules. Five phases. One weekly system.
Tap any module to see what's in it.
Start
The system on one page
Module 1 The Keystone Method The whole system on one page.
- Why founder knowledge is the keystone to better retention
- Your 5-hour weekly rhythm, day by day
- The 15-minute founder session: pulling out customer insight, offers and timing every week
- Setting your baseline and your 40% email-revenue target
Capture
Get the right people on the list, and into the inbox
Module 2 Stack and deliverability Set it up right and land in the inbox.
- Checking your Klaviyo and Shopify integration
- Sending domain, SPF, DKIM and DMARC, step by step
- Reading your deliverability score and fixing what drags it down
- List hygiene: who to suppress and when
Module 3 Pop-ups and list growth The forms and offers behind our 5x list growth.
- Choosing one welcome offer (not three)
- Pop-up timing, targeting and design that converts
- Unique discount codes, so your offer doesn't leak to coupon sites
- Making sure Klaviyo actually tracks your forms
- Identity tools like OpenSend to capture more of your visitors
Module 4 Segmentation Send to the right people, stop sending to the wrong ones.
- Engagement tiers: who gets what, and how often
- Buyers vs. non-buyers vs. VIPs
- Finding the hidden pockets in your list that drive outsized returns
- Sunset rules that protect your sender reputation
Automate
Revenue that runs without you
Module 5 Core flows The automations that earn while you sleep, built from our blueprints.
- The welcome flow (the one our guarantee is built on)
- Site, browse, cart and checkout abandonment, as one coordinated system
- Post-purchase: reviews, cross-sells and repeat orders
- Winback and sunset
- Quote follow-up for high-ticket products
Module 6 SMS Texting that adds revenue without burning your list.
- When to text and when to email
- Compliance, consent and quiet hours
- The SMS flows worth running
- SMS campaigns: frequency and offers
Campaign
What to send, when, and how it looks
Module 7 The promo calendar How an eight-figure brand plans its year.
- Sale windows and breather weeks: why we rest the list between sales
- Mapping your year around holidays and BFCM
- Same-day deal emails: moving when the opportunity shows up
- A walkthrough of ShopSolar's real promo calendar
Module 8 Ideas and copy Never run out of things to send.
- The campaign angle bank
- Subject lines and preview text that get opened
- Writing in your founder's voice
- AI copy prompts
- Your monthly A/B testing plan
Module 9 Design in Figma On-brand emails, fast.
- Setting up the template library for your brand
- Building a campaign email from a template
- Keeping buttons, logos and fonts consistent
- Real product photos over generic AI imagery
- Getting designs from Figma into Klaviyo
Module 10 Repurposing One email, many channels.
- Turning emails into blog posts
- Turning emails into social posts
- A simple weekly publishing workflow
Measure
Know what's working every week
Module 11 Weekly numbers Know what's working every week.
- The KPIs that matter: click rate, flow revenue, % of revenue from email
- Building the weekly report we use
- Diagnosing a drop before it costs you
- The 30-minute self-audit, to rerun every quarter
Tricks Of The Trade
The tools and tactics we use every day
Module 12 Tools & AI workflows
- Claude and ChatGPT for strategy and planning
- AI for design and reporting
- A walkthrough of the prompt library
- What's next: AI agents for email and SMS (coming in the weekly drops)
Everything you get with the Retention Lab
- Retention Lab: the Keystone Method course, 12 modules $1997
- Klaviyo flow blueprints, with copy $997
- Figma email template library $297
- AI prompt pack for strategy, copy, design and reporting $297
- Weekly drops: new templates, campaign ideas, real-time results $197
- Promo calendar template $97
- Founder-knowledge worksheet $97
- Weekly KPI tracker $97
- Early bird bonus: a personal Klaviyo teardown video audit of your account $997
- Total value $5,073
Templates, blueprints and your teardown unlock today.
The Build-One-Flow Guarantee
Build the Keystone welcome flow within 30 days of joining. If it hasn't earned back what you paid in its first 30 days live, send us a screenshot of the flow and we'll refund you in full.
We only ask you to build it because we know what happens when you do.
Rather have us run it?
Some founders go through the course and decide they'd rather hand it off. That's fine. AfterFlow, our agency, runs this exact system for brands, and your Retention Lab purchase goes toward your first month.
Built by the two people who actually run it
Bryce O'Farrell
Head of Retention, AfterFlow and ShopSolar
Bryce runs email and SMS for ecommerce brands every week — strategy, Figma designs, campaigns, flows, and the numbers behind it all. He’s the one you’ll see on screen, walking through the exact systems he uses.
Alex Smith
Founder, ShopSolar. Advisor, AfterFlow
Alex has spent eight years building ShopSolar, with about $200M in sales. He got his start in ecom by buying a $497 course in 2015. He knows a course can change the direction of a business, because one changed his.
Questions
I already have an agency. Is this for me?
Yes. Run your account through the course and you'll know exactly what your agency should be doing, and whether they are. Many founders use it to manage their agency better. Some use it to bring email in-house.
I don't have time for a course.
You don't take it, your marketer does. The weekly system takes about 5 hours, and you spend 15 minutes of it sharing what you know about your customers.
Is this only for high-ticket brands like ShopSolar?
No. ShopSolar is where we built it, and we run the same system for Curio Blvd, a very different brand. Flows, segments and a promo calendar work in any category.
My list is small. Is it worth it?
The Capture phase is built for that. It covers the pop-ups and offers behind our 5x list growth.
Do I need Klaviyo?
The course is built in Klaviyo. The strategy carries over to any platform, but the step-by-step walkthroughs are Klaviyo.
When do I get access?
The templates, blueprints, prompts and your teardown unlock the moment you join. The full course opens on Dec 15.
Do I get updates?
Yes. Founding members get lifetime access, including every weekly drop of new templates and lessons.
What if it doesn't work for me?
Build the welcome flow. If it doesn't earn back what you paid in its first 30 days live, we'll refund you.
Ready to own your retention system?
You can keep renting your email program, or you can own the system an eight-figure brand runs, for less than a single day of agency fees.
Get early bird access for $497First 50 members only. $997 at launch.