The book
Fix the Leak
A No-Jargon Guide to Customer Retention for Ecommerce Founders
Stop replacing the customers you are already paying to lose.
Most small businesses spend their marketing budget filling a leaky bucket. They acquire constantly because they are losing constantly, and the treadmill moves fast enough that nobody looks too closely at the hole in the bottom.
Fix the Leak is a no-jargon guide to customer retention for people running real ecommerce and subscription businesses, not enterprise brands with a CRM team. It is about the quieter, slower work that actually compounds: keeping the customers you already have, through a system of small, consistent touchpoints rather than louder emails or bigger discounts.
Inside, you will learn how to:
- Calculate the one number most business owners have never worked out, and why it changes every decision you make
- Map the real customer journey, gaps and silences included, instead of the clean version in your head
- Build a three-layer system across onboarding, ongoing engagement, and intervention
- Turn customer support from a cost into a retention channel
- Run win-back, loyalty, and discounting without eroding the margin you have worked to protect
- Turn all of it into a Monday morning action you can actually take this week
Written for the founder who is also writing the emails, handling the support, and trying to find time to think strategically in between.
What is inside
Why retention beats acquisition
The number most businesses do not know. Acquisition as a tax on a broken business. The 5 percent rule. What consistent pressure actually means.
Plug the gaps first
Mapping the real customer journey. Why the first thirty days decide everything. Why customers go silent. The support conversation you are wasting.
The pressure system
Touchpoints rather than campaigns. Email done right. The win-back window. Loyalty that earns it. The discount trap.
Grow what you have
Selling more to people who already trust you. The referral you never asked for. Segmentation without the spreadsheet panic. Price, value, and the customer who stays anyway.
Making it stick
The metrics that actually matter. Building a retention calendar. Small team, big system. The compounding effect in practice.
Twenty-two chapters, and a closing chapter of Monday morning actions, one for every chapter in the book, so the reading turns into doing.
Read Part One free
The book is not on sale yet. In the meantime, the first two chapters cover the number most businesses never work out, and why a five percent improvement in retention is worth far more than it sounds. I will send them over, and tell you when the full book is available.
About the author
Samantha Goodwin has spent over a decade running Lean Greens, a direct-to-consumer subscription brand, building the systems that kept customers coming back rather than just the ones that brought them in the door. She now runs Leithen Lane, working with ecommerce founders and small businesses on the retention and operational work that most agencies skip past on the way to the next campaign. Fix the Leak is built from what actually worked, not what looked good in a case study.
More about Samantha