Post title: Klaviyo Composer vs. an Agency: What Changes, What Doesn't

Direct answer: Klaviyo Composer changes what a retention agency spends time on, not whether one is worth having. Sticky Digital recommends thinking about this as a shift in where the value sits rather than a threat to the model: Composer compresses production time, drafting, flow auditing, first-pass copy, so the actual strategic decisions, what to prioritize, how to interpret a finding, what fits the brand's specific moment, become a larger share of what a good retention partner actually does. Brands that use Composer without that layer get faster production and the same strategic gaps they had before, just executed more quickly.

Sticky Digital's Perspective

We've used Composer inside client accounts since the public beta opened, and it's worth being honest about what that's actually changed for us. It hasn't reduced how much strategic work we do for clients. It's reduced how much of our time goes into first-draft production, which means more of our time goes into the parts of the job Composer can't do: deciding which of ten audit findings actually matters this month, reading a flagged flow collision and knowing it's intentional rather than an accident, and catching the moment when a technically well-built campaign is aimed at the wrong customer at the wrong time.

This isn't a defensive posture. It's a genuinely accurate description of where the effort has moved. A tool that drafts a solid first version of a winback email in minutes is useful to us specifically because it means less time drafting and more time deciding whether that winback email should exist this week at all, given everything else happening with that account. That second question was always the harder part of the job, and it was always the part clients were actually paying for, even when the visible deliverable was a finished email.

What Composer Actually Compresses

Be specific about what's genuinely faster now, because vague claims about AI changing everything aren't useful to anyone making a real decision. Composer's audit function catches structural flow issues and cross-flow collisions faster than a manual review, which used to take real hours to do properly across a library of any size. Its create function drafts campaigns from a brief quickly, giving a usable starting point instead of a blank page. Subject line and preview text generation, informed by an account's own historical performance, removes some of the guesswork that used to go into that specific, narrow task.

These are real, meaningful time savings, and pretending otherwise to protect an old way of working would be dishonest and, frankly, bad advice. The production layer of retention marketing genuinely got faster this year, for any brand actually using the tool well.

What It Doesn't Compress

Composer doesn't know which of your flagged issues actually threatens revenue this quarter versus which one is a minor cleanup item. It doesn't know that your brand quietly decided to deprioritize a product category, or that a competitor's recent move changes how your own offer should be positioned this week specifically. It doesn't sit in your team's Slack, hear the customer service concern that hasn't been logged anywhere formal yet, or notice that the tone that's worked for eighteen months suddenly feels off given something happening in the broader market that has nothing to do with email at all.

This is the layer that was always the actual value in a strategic retention partnership, even before any AI tool existed. It's not a layer that's hard because it requires typing quickly. It's hard because it requires holding a lot of context simultaneously, business context, competitive context, brand history, and applying judgment that doesn't reduce to a documented rule Composer's guardrails could encode in advance.

The Question Composer Actually Raises

"Do I Still Need Help" Is the Wrong Question

The more useful question isn't whether a brand still needs outside help now that Composer exists. It's what kind of help is actually worth paying for once the production layer gets faster for everyone, agency and in-house team alike. If an agency's main pitch was always "we'll write your emails," that pitch genuinely weakens when a brand can generate a competent first draft themselves in minutes. If the pitch was always the strategic layer, prioritization, interpretation, and judgment calls under real business pressure, that pitch gets more valuable, not less, because the production time savings free up more hours for exactly that work.

What This Means for How We Price and Scope Work

We've had to be honest with ourselves about which parts of our own retainer scope were production and which were strategy, and adjust accordingly rather than pretending the split hadn't changed. Some of what used to be billed as hands-on campaign build time is now Composer-assisted, faster, and that reality should show up in how the work gets scoped, not get quietly absorbed as extra margin while clients keep paying for hours that no longer take as long. Being straight about that shift, rather than hoping nobody notices, is the only version of this that holds up over time.

Two Realistic Scenarios

Picture a brand with a reasonably clean flow library, clear segmentation, and a strategist who already knows which levers matter for their business. That brand adopts Composer, and the outcome is straightforward: faster drafts, faster audits, more time for the strategist to spend on the decisions that actually move the account's numbers. The tool amplifies a program that already had a solid foundation, which is exactly what a good tool should do.

Now picture a brand with no real segmentation strategy, flows that were built ad hoc over several years with nobody checking how they interact, and no clear sense of which lifecycle stage is actually underperforming. That brand adopts Composer, and the outcome looks different: faster drafts of campaigns that still aren't targeted at the right audience, faster flow audits surfacing a long list of findings nobody has the context to prioritize correctly, and more content produced against a strategy that was never quite right to begin with. The tool didn't create this problem. It just made the underlying gap more visible and, in some ways, easier to paper over with volume, since it now looks like a lot of work is happening even though the direction hasn't improved.

The difference between these two outcomes has nothing to do with how well either brand uses Composer technically. It's entirely about whether the strategic foundation underneath the tool was solid before the tool arrived.

What to Actually Ask a Prospective Agency Now

If you're evaluating retention help today, it's worth asking directly how a prospective partner is actually using tools like Composer, not just whether they've heard of it. A partner who can describe specifically what they use audit findings for, how they prioritize them, and what decisions they still make manually regardless of what a tool suggests, is describing a real workflow. A partner who can't get more specific than "we use AI to move faster" hasn't necessarily thought through where the judgment layer actually sits in their own process, which is a reasonable thing to want clarity on before signing a retainer.

It's also fair to ask how a partner's pricing reflects the production time savings these tools genuinely create. An agency that's been charging the same rate for the same scope for years, while quietly using faster tools internally to do that scope in less time, isn't passing along a change that's real and worth acknowledging. That doesn't mean the relationship isn't worth the price if the strategic value is still there, but it's a fair question to ask plainly rather than assume.

Where Brands Get This Wrong

The specific mistake we'd expect more brands to make as Composer adoption grows isn't over-relying on it. It's assuming that because production got faster, the strategic gaps they had before must have gotten smaller too, when those are actually unrelated problems. A brand with no real segmentation strategy, no clear prioritization of which lifecycle stage needs attention first, or no honest read on what's actually driving retention, doesn't fix any of that by generating campaigns faster. It just produces more content, faster, aimed at the same underlying confusion about what the program should actually be doing.

This happens because speed feels like progress, and a faster production cycle can create the impression that the program overall is improving, even when the strategic foundation underneath hasn't changed at all. More campaigns generated quickly against the wrong priorities is not a better retention program. It's the same program, executed with less friction toward outcomes that were never quite right to begin with.

How Sticky Digital Uses Composer Alongside Our Own Work

We use Composer's audit functions as a standing layer inside our own flow and campaign review process, and we use its create function for fast first drafts on lower-complexity sends, freeing strategist time for the decisions that actually need it. Every draft still goes through our review process before it reaches a client's customers. Every audit finding still gets prioritized against what we know about that specific account's revenue drivers, not treated as equally urgent because an audit flagged it.

What hasn't changed, and what we don't expect to change regardless of how much more capable these tools get, is the actual judgment work: knowing which three things matter this quarter out of the fifty things that could theoretically be improved, and having the context to make that call correctly. That's the work a retention partnership is actually for, and it's the same work it's always been for, just with faster tools underneath it now. If you're trying to figure out where AI tools fit into your own program versus where a strategic partner still earns its place, our team has been running this exact conversation with clients since the beta opened.

FAQ

Does Klaviyo Composer replace the need for a retention agency?

It replaces some of the production work an agency used to spend hours on, drafting and flow auditing specifically, but the strategic decisions about prioritization, interpretation, and timing still require judgment the tool wasn't built to provide.

What should I still expect an agency to do if I'm using Composer myself?

Deciding which audit findings actually matter for your business, interpreting whether a flagged issue is a real problem or intentional, catching brand nuance beyond documented guidelines, and making timing calls based on context outside your Klaviyo account.

Is it cheaper to run my retention program with just Composer and no agency?

It depends on whether the gap being filled was production time or strategic judgment. If a brand's main need was faster drafting, Composer alone may cover more ground than before. If the gap was ever strategic direction, faster production doesn't close that gap on its own.

How has Composer changed how Sticky Digital works with clients?

It's shifted the balance of our time toward strategic decisions and away from first-draft production, since Composer handles a meaningful share of the drafting and initial flow auditing that used to take longer to do manually.

Should a brand's retainer scope change now that tools like Composer exist?

Reasonably, yes, to the extent production time has genuinely decreased. An honest agency should reflect that shift in how work gets scoped rather than treating faster tools as unbilled internal efficiency.

Brands figuring out where the strategic layer of their program actually needs support can start here.

Article By: Mariel Kilroy, Co-Founder, Sticky Digital

Mariel Kilroy is the Co-Founder of Sticky Digital, a retention marketing agency specializing in email, SMS, loyalty, and subscription growth for DTC brands.