Tie vs. Retention.com · When good results plateau
Retention.com gets you started.
Tie is where you go when results plateau.
Retention.com identifies some of your anonymous visitors and drops the list into Klaviyo. It works, until the match-rate ceiling and the "is this revenue even new?" question catch up. Tie identifies more of the same traffic, scores who is about to buy (Predict), lands the message in the Primary inbox (Priority), and proves the new revenue with a holdout you can verify yourself.
Retention.com
Attributed flow revenue
G.O.A.T Foods · incrementality report
“They were taking credit for stuff they didn't drive. Tie was just more accurate and more honest.”Jonathan Packer, Co-founder, G.O.A.T Foods
$596K
Net revenue after switching from Retention.com to Tie (G.O.A.T Foods)
2–5×
More emails than the competitors on identical traffic, in a live head-to-head
90%+
Of your returning shoppers identified — up to 70% of all site traffic
Great results, until the easy wins run out.
Most brands see a real lift from Retention.com in the first month or two. Then it settles. The plateau isn’t about how many shoppers get identified — it’s what happens to the list after that. A raw identified list has no read on who is actually ready to buy, so the safe move seems to be to message everyone. But, shoppers who aren’t in the market get tired of the emails and unsubscribe or report spam. Your list shrinks and your reputation suffers. That short-term boost can set your program back 6 months.
The way through? A system that owns the complete lifecycle: identify more shoppers, score who is ready, and place the message where it gets seen. Sharper Image did exactly that: recognized more shoppers, sent fewer emails, and generated more revenue.
The same identity. Four steps of work.
Both tools do step one and put a name to your anonymous traffic. Tie keeps going: enrich for depth, predict who is ready to buy, and place the message so it lands.
G.O.A.T Foods switched. Then they checked the receipts.
G.O.A.T Foods spends heavily on top-of-funnel, national TV on ESPN, CNN, and Fox, so capturing that traffic matters. Their co-founder grew suspicious of the revenue Retention.com was reporting, so he pulled the order files in Klaviyo himself. Many of the credited orders would have happened anyway. He replaced Retention.com with Tie in a single afternoon, and this time the number held up.
“They were taking credit for stuff they didn't drive. Tie was just more accurate and more honest.”
Jonathan Packer, Co-founder, G.O.A.T Foods
This is the difference between attributed revenue and proven revenue. Retention.com routes contacts into Klaviyo and claims credit for the flows, with no holdout and no control group to separate the orders it caused from the orders that would have happened anyway. Tie's proof is a holdout-based incrementality report, the revenue from identified shoppers measured against a group held back, so the number you take to your CFO is lift, not activity.
$596,383
net revenue with attribution he could verify
10,140
new orders from identified shoppers
2.5M
new shoppers identified
Retention.com sells data. Tie sells outcomes.
Retention.com now calls itself an identity data platform, and that’s a fair description: it hands you an identified list. Tie builds on top of identity to turn your list into revenue, with three solutions a data feed alone can’t do.
Predict · who is ready to buy
Not just a list, a scored list.
Negative Underwear scored a 200,000-person list they had written off. Tie Predict surfaced 8,000 shoppers actively browsing that Klaviyo could not recognize across devices. A raw feed cannot tell you which contacts are worth a send. Predict ranks every one by buy-readiness.
8,000
active shoppers surfaced from a 200K list
Priority · deliverability & visibility
Identified doesn’t mean seen.
OluKai was doing everything right and still landed in Promotions. Tie Priority moved their sends to the Gmail Primary inbox in 24 hours. Across 9 A/B tests, revenue per send rose 55%. Tie Priority also guards the sending domain, so identifying more shoppers never costs you deliverability.
+55%
revenue per send
+42%
click-through rate
Enrich · depth per shopper
200+ attributes on every profile.
A list gives you a name and an email. Tie attaches 200+ Attributes to each identified shopper on demographics, purchasing behavior, and interests, so your Klaviyo segments are built on real context, not just a page view.
200+
Tie Attributes per identified shopper
An identity feed, or the layer that turns it into revenue.
Both identify anonymous shoppers and route them into Klaviyo. The difference is everything that happens to the list after that.
Retention.com is a real product with a real customer base and a founder the DTC community respects. It can be a strong place to start.
The question is, “what happens when the easy wins are captured and you want to know which revenue is actually new?” That’s the switch G.O.A.T Foods made. Run Tie alongside your current setup on the same traffic and check the receipts yourself, in your own Klaviyo.
Retention gets you started. Tie takes you past the plateau.
Retention.com identifies some of your visitors and calls the flow revenue a win. Tie identifies more of the same traffic, tells you who is about to buy, lands the message in the Primary inbox, and proves the new revenue with a holdout you can verify in Klaviyo, the way G.O.A.T Foods did.
$596K
net revenue after switching from Retention.com (G.O.A.T Foods)
2–5×
more emails than the competitors on identical traffic, in a live head-to-head
90%+
of your returning shoppers identified, up to 70% of all site traffic
Shopper Intelligence and Artificial Marketing Intelligence™ for ecommerce brands.
Klaviyo Preferred Tech Partner