Retention is a weekly OS

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Together with Section

TODAY: What leaders need to know about AI in 2026 (Free event)

After a year of AI hype, doom, and more hype, get an AI CEO’s no-BS take on what leaders need to know to thrive in the next year of AI.

Today, December 9, join Greg Shove, Section CEO, for an inside conversation about AI strategy (one typically reserved for Section enterprise clients). 

He’ll be sharing the trends he’s already seeing in organizations, and what makes or breaks successful AI investments within a company.

Think of this as a truth serum for your AI strategy. Don’t miss this one-time only event.

🧐Retention is a weekly OS

Retention does not collapse in dashboards. It collapses in a private second when a customer thinks, This feels off, and quietly exits. Agencies avoid that second because it is messy, unglamorous, and impossible to templatize across clients.

A serious operator does not brainstorm retention. They harvest it from exits and turn it into prevention.

What it is, in one sentence

A Churn Autopsy Library is a living catalog of 10 to 15 repeatable churn failure modes, each expressed as a single decision sentence describing the moment belief broke.

Not the complaint. The switch.

Build it fast, without ceremony

Pull the last 200 exits from three sources.

• Refund notes
• Subscription cancellations
• One and two-star reviews

Do not clean the data. Do not argue edge cases. Tag every exit into a human failure mode, not a department bucket.

The 12 failure modes that show up everywhere

Each line is a decision sentence, the part nobody wants to write.

1. Delivery Anxiety: Tracking went silent, and the brand felt gone after taking payment.
2. Expectation Snap: The first touch did not match the story that sold it.
3. First Use Confusion: They opened it, hesitated, and put it away because it felt like work.
4. Outcome Ambiguity: After a week, they could not tell if it helped, so the belief expired.
5. Hidden Friction: The routine required extra steps they never budgeted for.
6. Household Veto: Someone else in the home judged it, and repeated died instantly.
7. Value Shame: The price felt fine at checkout, then irresponsible later.
8. Trust Withdrawal: A tiny mismatch made the brand feel less legitimate.
9. Choice Overload: They tried to reorder, got stuck choosing, postponed, forgot.
10. Reorder Window Miss: They ran out once, and switching became easy.
11. Support Betrayal: The issue was survivable, but the response ended the relationship.
12. Identity Drift: It fit who they were last month, not who they are now.

Turn sentences into prevention assets

A library without deployment is just insight. Convert each failure mode into one prevention asset placed before the switch.

• Delivery Anxiety: delivery certainty card at checkout, plus proactive updates post purchase.
• First Use Confusion: 30-second start path on the confirmation page plus a QR on packaging.
• Outcome Ambiguity: proof ladder with day 1, day 3, day 7 proxy wins.

Prioritize what to fix first

Score every failure mode with a simple triangle.

• Frequency in the 200 exits
• Revenue impact of the affected cohort
• Preventability within 7 days

Pick the top two and ship. No committees.

The weekly cadence that becomes a moat

Every Monday for 20 minutes.

• Add 20 new exits
• Re-tag if language shifts
• Rewrite weak decision sentences
• Assign one prevention fix to ship that week

In 30 days, retention stops being messaging and becomes forecasting. Tickets become a decision map, and the business learns to interrupt the decision before it forms.

🏆 Platforms Roll Out New Tools for Discovery, Ads, and Community Growth

LinkedIn and Instagram are shipping new tools aimed at boosting visibility and creator growth. LinkedIn is leaning heavily into automation and AI-driven ad improvement, while Instagram is experimenting with exclusivity as a lever for follower expansion. 

The Breakdown:

1. LinkedIn Reserved Ads - LinkedIn introduced Reserved Ads, guaranteeing first-feed placement for video, image, or text campaigns to maximize exposure. It mirrors first-view formats on other platforms and gives brands premium reach during key periods.

2. AI Creative Expansion - Advertisers can now auto-personalize copy using member details and generate AI-powered ad variants that stay within brand voice. LinkedIn also previewed flexible ad creation that mixes multiple visuals and text options to optimize performance automatically.

3. Instagram Early Access Reels - Instagram is testing follower-only early access Reels that unlock after a timer, prompting non-followers to hit “follow” to view, building exclusivity, strengthening creator communities, and boosting algorithmic reach through early engagement.

LinkedIn is becoming increasingly automated, helping brands scale campaigns with less manual creative work. Instagram’s push toward exclusivity shows how follower incentives are evolving beyond simple content posting. Together, the tools signal a shift toward personalization, AI optimization, and community-driven growth across platforms.

Together with Insense

HACK: Get 20+ ad variations (per creator) to scale your Q5 ads effortlessly

With Black Friday behind us, it’s officially the scramble phase, the part of Q5 where performance depends entirely on how quickly you can ship fresh creatives.

There’s still time to source fresh content - and Insense makes UGC ads insanely cost-effective.

With Insense, each collab gives you a full bank of raw footage you can mix, match, and turn into multiple scroll-stopping ads. One creator can fuel an entire round of Q5 testing without draining your team’s bandwidth.

• 20+ raw assets per creator you can spin into countless variations.
• Fast 14-day turnaround so you stay ahead of Q5 spend.
• Lifetime usage rights, so every winning asset keeps paying off.

That’s how over 2000+ brands like Beauty Pie, Bones Coffee, Flo Health, and Chomps scale UGC without killing team bandwidth.

Cost-effective UGC with lifetime usage rights? Yes please!!

Book a free strategy call by December 12th and get $200 for your first campaign!

🚀Quick Hits 

🎉 TikTok is rolling out shared feeds, collaborative collections, and festive greeting cards to boost friend connection, offering joint discovery streams of 15 videos per day and Pinterest-style shared saves inside private chats.

🛒 Pinterest has teamed up with Walmart so users can tap “Shop Ingredients” on recipe Pins, add items with real-time pricing, choose pickup or delivery, and move seamlessly to checkout as Pinterest hits 600 million monthly users.

🗣️ Google is denying reports that ads are coming to the Gemini app in 2026, with VP Dan Taylor saying there are “no current plans,” despite advertisers hearing exploratory discussions about future AI assistant monetization.

🛍️ New data shows shoppers are increasingly turning to AI for help, with 38% trusting it for research, 21% for deals, 16% for comparisons, and 30% even willing to let an AI agent complete a purchase.

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