Free Retention Audit for Attentive, Postscript, and Klaviyo Brands: What’s in It, What Access We Need, and How Long It Takes

Direct answer: Sticky Digital’s free retention audit reviews your email and SMS program on Attentive, Postscript, or Klaviyo and returns a 35 to 40 page report with every fix ranked by revenue. We sign an NDA first, then ask for admin-level access to each platform you run. The finished audit arrives 2 to 4 days later, followed by a walkthrough call. The standard audit is free, since it is how we scope work and how you decide whether we know your category. Loyalty specific and subscription specific deep dive audits are separate and cost $1,500 each.

Sticky Digital’s perspective on a free retention audit

A brand usually arrives at an audit with a theory about its platform. The SMS tool is too basic, or too expensive, or the support is slow. Sometimes the theory is right. More often the audit finds the money somewhere the theory never looked: a sign-up unit that is not showing, a journey that exits people too early, a discount that stacks when it should not.

We read a lot of these accounts, on Attentive, on Postscript, and on Klaviyo, and the platform matters less than people expect when the settings are wrong. A good platform with a broken trigger still earns nothing. So the audit is built to separate the two questions: what is the tool doing, and what are you asking it to do. Our retention services start from the same split.

That framing also makes the audit useful if you are not shopping for an agency at all. If your team can run the fixes itself, the roadmap works as a to-do list.

What’s in a 35 to 40 page free retention audit?

The spine is the same on every platform, and the platform-specific pages change with what you run:

• Revenue and customer mix. First-time versus returning revenue, how each moved over 90 days, and how much of it email and SMS actually touch.
• Repurchase behavior. Your real window between first and second orders and your RFM segments, so timing is based on data and not on a guess.
• Sign-up capture. Submit rate by device and offer, plus whether the form is showing where you think it is.
• Flows. Every live journey or automation, its logic, its length, and what it earns per recipient, plus the ones you are missing.
• Campaigns. Top and bottom performers, send cadence, and who is getting hit too often.
• Segmentation and exclusions. What exists, what gets used, and who should be kept out of which message.
• Attribution. How email and SMS divide credit, and whether the numbers add up.
• A 30, 60, 90 day roadmap. The ranked fixes, in the order we would do them.

On Attentive

We go through your Journeys, sign-up units, segments, and attribution windows, and review Attentive Email alongside SMS if you run both. Attentive now handles email as well as text, so the audit looks at how the two channels hand off to each other, not just at the texts.

On Postscript

We review your automations, pop-up and on-site opt-in, Smart Sending settings, and the AI features if you have them on, including Shopper and Infinity Testing. We also check how Postscript connects to your email platform, since that connection is where a lot of data goes missing.

On Klaviyo

Klaviyo is where we spend most of our time. The audit covers flows, segments, deliverability, and list health, the same way a dedicated Klaviyo audit does, with SMS read in the context of email.

What access do you need to give us for a retention audit?

We send an NDA before we ask for anything. Once it is signed, we ask for admin-level access to each platform in the program: Attentive, Postscript, Klaviyo, or whichever combination you run. Admin access lets us see journeys, automations, forms, segments, and reporting without a pile of exports.

That is the only requirement to begin. Handing over a login deserves a paper trail, and the NDA is that paper trail. If you commission one of the paid deep dives, we may also ask for analytics access to your loyalty or subscription platform, and we will say so before you sign anything.

What should you have ready before the audit?

Less than you think. Admin access and the NDA are the requirements. Beyond that, three things speed up the call that follows.

First, the question that is actually bothering you. Flat SMS revenue, a list that stopped growing, a platform contract coming up for renewal. We build the roadmap around that question, not around a template. Second, a list of every tool that touches your customer data: pop-up, subscription, loyalty, reviews, and any analytics or identity tools. Third, if a platform change is even a possibility, your contract end date. As the short code example later in this piece shows, that date often sets the whole timeline.

How long does a free retention audit take?

Two to four days from the day we have access. Most of that is analysis. Ninety days of campaign and flow data has to be pulled, read journey by journey, and written up with a recommendation attached to each finding. Then we get on a call, walk through the deck, and agree on the roadmap.

If you run more than one platform, the audit takes the same stretch of time, since the comparison between platforms is part of the work. An hour-long scan is a different product. It has its uses, and it stops where the real reading starts.

Is a free retention audit really free?

Yes. The standard email and SMS audit costs nothing.

The reasoning is simple. The audit is how we scope work, and it is how you find out whether we understand your category. If it is thin, you lost a few days and we lost the deal. If it is sharp, the next conversation is short.

The exception is the deep dives. Loyalty specific and subscription specific audits are $1,500 each. They are separate documents, not add-ons to the free one. A loyalty audit looks at who redeems and what redemption does to repeat purchase. A subscription audit looks at churn, cancellations, and failed payments. That is a different analyst workload and we price it that way. If you want one, say so when you request the audit and we will scope it alongside.

What a retention audit finds: sample findings from SMS and email accounts

These come from audits and account reviews on real DTC brands. Names are removed. The numbers are the ones we saw.

Attentive: the program that plateaued

A retailer on Attentive with about 154,000 SMS subscribers had SMS revenue that had stopped growing. The gaps were not exotic. Segmentation was thin, so most messages went to the whole list. Post-purchase messaging had gone stale. Abandoned browse and cart journeys brought in a lot of revenue, and almost nobody could say how much of it SMS had earned versus email, because tracking between the two was limited.

None of that is a verdict on the platform. It is a description of a program that had been set up once and left alone.

Attentive: the sign-up unit that does not convert

One brand ran a full-screen spin-to-win on its native pop-up tools. The submit rate was 1.5%, in a range where a dedicated pop-up tool often reaches 6% to 10%. Doubling that rate would have sent roughly 3,000 more profiles into the welcome journey. Every other number in the program, from welcome revenue to SMS list size, hangs off that one.

Postscript: the list that stopped growing

One Postscript account saw about 20 new SMS opt-ins in 30 days. The conversion rate had not collapsed. Pop-up impressions had. Either a stray “/” sat in the excluded pages setting, or a recent theme update was blocking the pop-up script. No amount of copy testing would have found that. Reading the settings did.

Postscript: the customer who gets too many texts

On another account, some customers were getting three or four messages from campaigns and AI replies together without answering any of them. The fix was Smart Sending on for newsletters and educational sends, left off for launches and promotions so the full audience still hears about them. The review also caught that a recent order-related flow text had suppressed a pre-launch campaign for at least one person, which is the kind of overlap you only see when you check flows and campaigns together.

Postscript: flow logic that quietly stops firing

A newly launched abandoned cart setup was not reaching everyone. A clearance version required every item in the cart to be clearance, so any mixed cart skipped it. A “viewed product” exit trigger pulled people out of the flow early. The delay was three days, which was too long. The fixes were to change the filter to “any are clearance,” remove the exit trigger, and shorten the delay to two days.

The flow that earns on email and the SMS that gets the credit

Attribution deserves its own line. On one account, a contact-card message happened to be the last SMS click before many purchases, which inflated the revenue SMS appeared to earn. On another, we added short delays to the text so email got the first chance to convert. A program that counts the same order twice looks healthier than it is.

Klaviyo: SMS that keeps recruiting people who already joined

A wellness brand had restarted its SMS program after roughly six to eight months of silence. Campaigns had strong click rates and a healthy unsubscribe rate. The flows had a high one. The reason was plain once we looked: people who had already converted, including subscription members, kept receiving acquisition-style flows. The fix was a set of exclusions so existing subscribers stop getting messages written for strangers.

Why most SMS audits disappoint

The usual SMS audit checks the channel in isolation. How many subscribers, what is the click rate, what is the revenue figure the platform reports. The platform’s own dashboard is the source, so the audit confirms what you already knew.

The better question is what the number leaves out. SMS and email abandonment run as separate programs on most stacks, so the same shopper can get both. Attribution windows decide which channel gets credit. A list can be growing on paper while the pop-up that feeds it has quietly stopped showing. None of that appears in a single-channel report.

The other common failure is the 60-item list with no order. A small team does the three easiest items and the three that mattered stay untouched. An audit that does not tell you what to fix first has handed you the analysis and kept the judgment.

What happens after the audit: stay, fix, or move

The walkthrough call is where the audit turns into a plan. Each finding gets a place in the 30, 60, 90 day roadmap, ordered by revenue.

Sometimes the roadmap is mostly fixes on the platform you already have. If the audit shows the platform itself is the constraint, we say that too, and we can plan a move to another one. Timing matters when that happens. On one migration off Attentive, the carrier transfer for the short code took 4 to 6 weeks and was the longest dependency in the plan, so the request had to go in well ahead of the contract end date. Planning backwards from the contract date, not forwards from the decision, is the lesson.

The audit is also a conversation, and we revise it. After one Klaviyo audit, the brand explained that its separate browse, cart, and checkout flows existed because four identity-resolution partners each used a different event trigger. Our consolidation advice did not hold up, so we rewrote it. An audit that cannot be argued with is a report. We would rather deliver a plan.

Clients usually see 25% to 40% of store revenue coming from email within six months of working with us, and it starts with a ranked list like this one. If you want to know who does the reading, the team behind Sticky Digital is the same team that runs the accounts.

FAQ

What does a free retention audit include?

Sticky Digital’s free retention audit runs 35 to 40 pages and covers revenue mix, repurchase behavior, sign-up capture, every live journey or automation, campaigns, segmentation and exclusions, and attribution across email and SMS. It closes with a ranked 30, 60, 90 day roadmap.

Do you audit Attentive and Postscript accounts?

Yes. Sticky Digital audits email and SMS programs on Attentive, Postscript, and Klaviyo, including programs that use more than one. The audit reviews each platform’s setup and how the channels work together.

What access does an agency need to audit an Attentive or Postscript account?

Sticky Digital asks for admin-level access to each platform in the program, after both sides sign an NDA. Loyalty or subscription deep dives may also need analytics access to those platforms.

How long does a retention audit take, and is it really free?

The audit takes 2 to 4 days from the day Sticky Digital has access, followed by a walkthrough call. The standard email and SMS audit is free. Loyalty specific and subscription specific deep dive audits are $1,500 each.

Brands that want the audit can request it here, or read more on the Sticky Digital blog.

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.