Why Mack Weldon’s design team thinks like a CX org

Most brands look at retention as a result of fun email campaigns, SMS & push offers hitting at the right times, subscription offerings, and killer loyalty programs.

But top brands bake retention into the core of their business… their product.

Your product design can do much of the hard work to drive retention on its own.

Or, if you get it wrong, it can leave your retention strategy DOA.

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Retention isn’t your email flow. It’s your product memory

Let’s be honest - most brands still treat retention as a marketing play. Get the post-purchase emails right, throw in a loyalty program, and call it a strategy.

But the brands actually keeping customers around in 2025 aren’t relying on lifecycle flows to do all the work. They’re building retention straight into the product. From the way it feels to the way it fits into the customer’s life.

This isn’t just a theory - this is how Mack Weldon built a dependable retention engine that keeps customers coming back.

We just launched the first episode of The Retention Edge Podcast, a series of interviews with retention & CX leaders in retail and ecom, with a discussion with Henry Martinez, Head of Design at Mack Weldon.

And if there’s one thing that stood out, it’s this: good design isn’t just about how things look. It’s about how they make people come back.

You can watch the full episode below, or go straight to Spotify or YouTube to listen to it in your own time (be sure to subscribe to be the first to get each new episode).

Here’s what Mack Weldon’s getting right, and how you can start thinking the same way.

Consistency builds trust (and memory)

Henry talks about how Mack Weldon designs their products to feel like a cohesive system - not a random pile of SKUs. Everything from fabric choice to fit to color palette is chosen with intention, so the whole line feels like “Mack Weldon.”

Why does that matter? Because when a customer knows what to expect, they’re more likely to return. It lowers the mental effort.

They don’t have to guess if the next product will hit the same. They already trust the experience.

That’s what Henry calls “product memory.” The idea that every product reinforces what the brand stands for.

Over time, that creates a loop, where recognition leads to confidence, and confidence leads to repurchase.

Most brands break this loop by chasing trends or launching one-offs that don’t feel connected. But Mack Weldon leans into consistency. And it pays off.

Your catalog should act like a GPS, not a maze

One of Henry’s best lines: “Design is a clarity engine.”

Basically, the role of design isn’t just to look nice. It’s to help people navigate. If your product catalog feels scattered or your naming makes customers guess, you're making them do extra work.

And people don’t come back to do extra work.

Mack Weldon avoids that by making sure everything feels connected. If someone loves a specific sweatpant, they can easily find the matching hoodie or the shorts.

Fit stays consistent. Categories are clean. The customer’s brain goes: “Oh yeah, I get this. I trust this.”

That’s how you build habits. You’re not just selling clothes. You’re building a system the customer knows how to move through.

Retention isn’t just CX’s problem

Here’s a mistake a lot of brands make: putting all of retention on the lifecycle or CX team.

Henry’s team does the opposite. At Mack Weldon, the design org is plugged directly into CX feedback, reviews, and post-purchase data.

They’re not just making things look good - they’re responding to what customers actually say and do.

If returns spike on a certain fabric, that gets flagged. If customers rave about the fit of a tee, that becomes a north star for other categories.

It’s not guesswork. It’s feedback turned into roadmap.

This is a retention loop most brands leave open. They collect the data, sure. But it never makes its way back into the product.

No one comes back for clever emails alone

Let’s call it like it is: If your product didn’t deliver, no subject line or pro-tier email copy can save it.

I mentioned Birddogs’ emails in a previous newsletter (there’s a great breakdown of their email strategy here, for those unfamiliar). And while I love reading their emails (as many others do), that doesn’t translate to sales on its own.

Henry summed it up perfectly: ”The #1 reason people come back to shop again isn’t your email copy. It’s because they loved the product.”

Yes, lifecycle marketing matters. But it can’t fix a product that disappointed. And it definitely won’t build habit or loyalty on its own.

So if you’re trying to lift retention, instead of going straight to your flows, start with the product experience.

What’s getting re-ordered? What’s getting returned? What are people raving about? That’s where the leverage lives.

If you nail this, you’ll find each small lift you make to your email, SMS, push, loyalty strategies will go 10x further.

What you can do right now

Here’s a quick gut-check if you want to make your product experience do more of the heavy lifting:

✅ Is your product line consistent? Do your top sellers share a common thread in look, feel, or function? Can a customer tell it’s your brand (without seeing your logo?)

✅ Are you making it easy to find the next thing? Are your naming, navigation, and product logic intuitive? Does one product naturally lead to another?

✅ Is feedback getting to the people who build the product? Do your CX and design teams ever sit in the same meeting? Does your product roadmap reflect actual customer input?

✅ Would you re-order, full price, no discount? Seriously. If you bought one of your core products as a customer, would you be excited to come back for more, at full price?

The bottom line

Retention doesn’t start with email. It starts the second the product lands in their hands.

The best brands in the game are winning not because they yell louder, but because they design smarter. They create products that feel familiar, solve real problems, and get better every time you come back.

It’s not about hype. It’s about helping the customer build a mental shortcut: “When I need this, I come here.”

That’s what great product design does. And that’s what makes people stick around.

Quick Hits

Here’s what‘s worth your attention from around the ecom & DTC world this week.

Answering the Right Questions

If your marketing isn’t landing, ask yourself if you’re answering the wrong questions.

Brands that do this wrong prattle on about features that customers don’t really care about. While those who do it right make their customers feel heard… and print money as a result.

Read more →

Simple Modern’s Insights from 80k TikTok Shop Orders

Want to know how TikTok Shop really moves the needle for brands?

Bryan Porter, Chief Ecommerce Officer at Simple Modern, breaks it down for you.

Read more →

Boycott Marketing

Amazon was just on the receiving end of an eight-day boycott from activist group The People’s Union USA.

The interesting thing? Their sales rose 6% over those eight days.

Read more →

Does AI create ads? Or images that look like ads?

The world is still reeling (and OpenAI are still trying to cool down their servers) from last week’s launch of Chat GPT’s new image generator.

With marketers everywhere mocking up realistic ad creative in just seconds, this is a question you need to ask before declaring AI the new head of your ad department.

Read more →

Pricing Hack for Same Product Bundles

A little-known psychology hack to sell more bundles (same product bundles; e.g. 4 shirts, 8 pens, 3 cans of salsa):

Make the mental math easy for your customers. Make it easy to see the cost per item.

Studies have shown that 4 items for $16 outsells 4 items for $15.30. Shoppers like easy, they like nice, round numbers - and it seems they’ll pay more for it.

Read more →

Cross-Channel Marketing Insights (Email & SMS)

Customer engagement platform Listrak just released their cross-channel benchmark reports, with some interesting findings.

• Messaging volume (email & SMS sends) up

• Email CTR down 25%

• Both email & SMS revenue per send down (due to higher volume)

• SMS sends & revenue up approximately 200% in some verticals

The report didn’t look at push notifications, which come with many of the same benefits as SMS.

Two things are clear: brands are driving a ton of revenue still through owned channels… and with volume going up, it’s getting harder to break through the noise.

Push is a great way to mix it up, complement your other channels, and increase volume with the directness (but not the costs) of SMS.

Read more →

That’s all for now.

Same time next week, I’ll be back with more to help you level up your retention marketing and CX game.

Remember to check out (and like and subscribe!) our new podcast. We’ve got some great guests lined up over the coming weeks, with candid insights on product, CX and retention marketing that you’re going to want to listen to.

You can find us on Spotify and YouTube.

If you’ve got any thoughts about the episode, and how your brand weaves together product and retention, go ahead and shoot me a reply. I’d love to hear from you!

Until next time,

Pietro and The Retention Edge Team