Marketing

The Emotional Triggers of Color

Retention isn’t about complicated tech stacks—it’s about showing up consistently, personally, and meaningfully.

Here’s how any brand can start today:

✅ 1. Say Their Name in Email & SMS Use simple merge tags in Klaviyo or Attentive to greet customers by name. Examples:

“Hey , we’ve got something new for you.”

“, your favorites just restocked.”

🧠 Why it works: Personalized messages get opened and clicked more. People like seeing their own name—it’s science.

✅ 2. Show Love for Repeat Purchasers In your order confirmation emails or flows, include a line like:

“This is your 3rd order—thank you for being part of our journey.” You can create a simple Klaviyo flow split by # of orders, or just write multiple blocks for 1st-time vs. repeat customers.

🎁 Bonus: Add a small discount or free shipping code for their next order if they hit a milestone.

✅ 3. Use Product-Specific Follow-Ups Send an email 10–30 days after a purchase with a message like:

“Still enjoying your [Product Name]? Here’s how other customers are using it.” Include review quotes, UGC, or a cross-sell product.

📧 Bonus: Drop in a restock reminder or offer a reorder with 1 click.

✅ 4. Make Your Thank You Pages Work Harder Use Shopify’s basic thank you page to:

Invite them to join your SMS list

Offer a discount for sharing a photo or leaving a review

Link to a “how to use your product” blog or video

🧠 Pro Tip: Even without dev help, this is high-intent real estate that often gets ignored.

✅ 5. Celebrate Small Milestones in Plain Text Send a simple, non-promotional email that says:

“You’ve been with us for 1 year—thank you.” “You placed your 5th order. We noticed. 🖤”

No flows needed—just a calendar reminder and a CSV export. It’s the message that matters.

✅ 6. Create a “Welcome Back” Moment On-Site Can’t dynamically show names? Use Shopify’s announcement bar or homepage text to say:

“Welcome back to our OGs—loyal customers get 10% off with code STAYLOYAL.” Rotate it monthly. Keep it feeling exclusive.

📦 You could also: Add this to the order packing slip with a handwritten note or sticker.

✅ 7. Cross-Sell Thoughtfully in Order Confirmations Instead of upselling at checkout (when people have buyer hesitation), try the confirmation email:

“Here’s what most customers add to their next order…” Use Shopify product links or a product block in Klaviyo—no logic or dev work required.

🎯 Just be human. Think: helpful friend, not pushy salesperson.

💡 Pro Tip: Retention Is a Feeling

You don’t need a custom-coded experience to build customer love. You just need to:

• Notice them • Thank them • Make it east to come back

Your customer shouldn’t have to guess if you appreciate them.

They should feel it—on the homepage, in the cart, and in every post-purchase interaction.

Website personalization is about creating micro-moments that show your customer:

“You matter. And we remembered you.”

Key Takeaways

• Traditional SEO tactics of keyword optimization and backlink building are no longer sufficient in the AI era

• Focus on understanding and addressing searcher intent rather than writing mechanically for search engines

• Use AI as an assistant tool while maintaining strong SEO fundamentals and human oversight

• Google still processes 5 trillion searches annually, making SEO vital but requiring adaptation

• Create genuinely useful content that serves user needs rather than simply copying and enhancing existing content

• Diversify traffic sources beyond Google to build resilience against algorithm changes

• [ ] Learn fundamental SEO principles before relying on AI tools

• [ ] Master understanding searcher intent and user needs for content creation

• [ ] Set up traffic diversification beyond Google

• [ ] Take the free SEO course for beginners mentioned to build strong fundamentals

Since 2009, I've generated hundreds of millions of visitors from Google search. But for the first time in 17 years, I'm questioning everything I know about SEO. SEO used to be simple. You'd find a keyword, post optimized content, get backlinks, and boom.

Huge traffic, huge income. But that playbook is dead. Why? Mostly because of AI. AI has flooded Google with cheap, mass-produced content. And in response, Google has cracked down harder than ever, erasing perfectly legitimate websites from search results. But that doesn't mean SEO is dead.

Google still gets 5 trillion searches a year. That's roughly 100 times more conversations than ChatGPT is expected to have this year. SEO has just evolved. And if you don't evolve with it, you're going to waste months or years on strategies that don't work anymore.

So, in this video, I'm going to share exactly what I'd do if I was learning SEO from scratch in today's AI era. Now, despite all the changes AI has brought to SEO, fundamentals haven't gone anywhere. People still search using keywords and topics. You still need to create content that search engines can find, index, and understand. And backlinks, they still help pages rank high in Google. So the first thing I do to learn SEO in this new AI era is to learn the fundamentals of search engine optimization.

Now, learning the fundamentals and getting good at executing them used to be enough to drive tons of research traffic before AI tools, but they're no longer enough to stay competitive. And the reason comes down to a mental shift most people, even pro SEOs, haven't figured out yet. Before AI content tools became mainstream, ranking on Google was easy. People would copy the top-ranking page, add a few extra points to make it feel original, sprinkle in some keywords and cover subtopics, get a few backlinks to the page, and first-page rankings would come fast.

Because it worked, everyone did it. SEO copywriting became so mechanical that writing for SEO became an industry phrase. But here's the flaw. Search engines don't buy from you. People do. Now that AI can mass produce this kind of content, it doesn't seem like Google wants to reward writing for algorithms the way it once did. Instead, it seems like Google is doubling down on what it's always wanted, to deliver the most relevant and useful result for any given search query.

And are they getting it right all the time? Not even close, but they're trying. So if I were learning SEO today, I'd ignore many of the outdated mechanical approaches to writing for search engines, and instead focus on creating genuinely useful content with a user-obsessed mindset.

What does that mean? Well, let's say you wanted to rank for the query, how to start a YouTube channel. Instead of asking, how do I rank for this keyword? What do I have to cover? Start by getting obsessed with what the searcher actually wants to know.

Are they a total beginner? Do they need gear recommendations? Are they struggling to find a niche or something else? Then dig deeper. Why do they want to start a YouTube channel? Is it a creative outlet or a way to make money? How do they want the information? Would a checklist, step-by-step tutorial, or interactive guide help most?

If you don't understand the searcher's intent, you'll end up creating content that doesn't actually help the people you're trying to serve. But if you nail what they're really looking for, you won't just rank higher, you'll keep people engaged, build trust, and convert more visitors into customers. Now, that doesn't mean you should ignore AI tools. In fact, I think that every SEO, new and experienced, should be embracing AI tools rather than resisting them.

The problem with generic robotic AI content isn't the tools, it's how people are using them. AI tools are faster and better than most of us at brainstorming, writing, and analyzing data. But the quality of its output is only as good as the guidance it receives. Take Joe Schmoe, a guy who knows nothing about SEO. He can't guide AI to produce good content or to optimize his site for better performance because he doesn't understand SEO himself.

So what happens? AI ends up guiding him. But take Sam Edward O. So instead of avoiding it, learn how to use it properly. And SEO goes way beyond just content creation, so the use cases are truly endless. Bottom line, use AI as an assistant, not a replacement.

Train yourself to be the operator, and you get those operating skills through strong SEO fundamentals and first-hand experience, all of which you can learn for free in our free SEO course for beginners. Now, learning SEO shouldn't just be about learning what to do.

It's also about knowing what to prepare for, because once the traffic starts rolling in, it's going to feel like free money, and that's when things get dangerous. Google's going to keep sending you free and consistent traffic that doesn't fade over time, because that's SEO by design.

The harsh reality is that that traffic can vanish overnight. It's happened to hundreds of creators, and we've actually heard their stories and shared them on our YouTube channel. It's real. that are important to our business. I've done the same with Pinterest, Reddit, eBay, Quora, and the list goes on. From my experience, any platform that sorts and surfaces content based on user queries follows similar core principles.

But if you can master Google SEO, you'll be way ahead of the curve when optimizing for other search engines. At its core, SEO is still about one thing, connecting searchers with the best search results. But in a world where AI can churn out endless mediocre content, copying what already exists isn't enough.

And honestly, You need to be worth finding. So if you want to learn SEO and actually succeed in the AI era, check out our free SEO course for beginners and then apply the rest of what I've shared with you today.

guide a customer through a conversation that causes them to realize they need your product

does the person you're talking to have the problem that your product solves

sentence one you're struggling with x

sentence two i have product to solve that problem

three steps to get them to your solution visit product page-read through the info-add to cart and buy

4th sentence negative stakes what happens if you don't buy it

call the customer to action clearly button ie sleep better tonight

the email itself is so incredibly clear-invite them into the story of their problem-make them the hero for themselves by offering them a way out

do this the next 30 emails you compose and it will become part of your way to write going forward

what do you not like about this house-let the customer discovers their story-what do you not like about your mattress-what needs to be fixed-keep pointing out their dislikes

director of a movie not a salesperson

the guide for the hero of the story

plan of action

write one follow-up email-one person on the fence

use the template on flightplan

do it once and see what happens

Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions