Episode 12 - The Therapist Turned Retention Marketer: Connor Cohen on Ditching Fear-Based Marketing

Connor (00:04)
Just send out messages that work on your fear receptors and get you to click and buy and purchase. Some marketing — the psychology of marketing — says people buy out of fear, people buy out of necessity. I think it actually goes a level deeper than that: what is that fear telling you? What a lot of marketing is missing is that sense of safety, the ability to create a sense of self and to be connected with your own identity.

Zak (00:41)
Connor, welcome to the podcast.

Connor (00:44)
Yeah, thank you, thank you. So excited to be here, happy to be here and have a good conversation.

Zak (00:49)
I am as well. I'm excited to have you here. Connor Cohen is the retention marketing specialist at Global Healing. In full transparency, Global Healing is one of our clients here at ECD. But Connor, you have a really interesting background, and your knowledge about all things retention is very deep. Before we dive into how you're managing retention marketing at Global Healing, could you give us a little background on yourself?

Connor (01:19)
Yeah, so — Connor Cohen. I definitely don't have the traditional marketing background. I actually come from the therapy world. I'm a licensed master social worker. I was practicing therapy with a wide range of clients, from as young as five years old up to seventy-five, for three to four years — really in the room with clients, diving into some complex issues. Then I navigated my way slowly out of the therapy world and into the marketing world, and it's been no looking back ever since. I've really enjoyed my time in marketing, and I'm excited to see where this road goes.

Zak (02:00)
All right, we're going to dig more into that, because I love that background for a lot of reasons, which I'll go into. But talk to us a little bit about what you do now at Global Healing in detail — and give a little background about who Global Healing is, in case anybody doesn't know.

Connor (02:15)
Yeah, so Global Healing — we like to call ourselves basically the Rolls-Royce of supplements. We're in that luxury supplement space. What's really unique about us is we own the verticals from the farmland to the shelf space — we manufacture in-house, everything is vegan, organic, really that artisan-made supplement design. Everything is built like you'd imagine a Rolls-Royce: so intentional. That's how we run our supplement business, essentially, and that's what we're trying to inject into the industry — transparency, attention to the craft, attention to detail. Day to day, my role in the retention space is everything email, SMS, push notifications, a lot of customer messaging, a lot of customer psychology that we'll dive into. We're expanding with some really cool, unique partners like PostPilot. We work with ECD, as you mentioned. So really ramping up that retention space and seeing what it can take us to, tail end of 2026 into 2027.

Zak (03:31)
Awesome. And you have listeners who've been listening to the podcast for a while — we've had a bunch of founders and people who oversee entire retention departments, and they all have really good stories and really good insights. But you are hands-on-keyboard — you're the executioner. You're creating the strategy and executing on it. So I think your insights are going to be even more valuable to listeners in a lot of ways.

Connor (03:59)
Yeah, that's what I hope to bring — shout out to the little guy, I guess, the guy actually pushing the keyboard. I think there's a lot of skill involved that can get overlooked from higher levels, so happy to speak on it.

Zak (04:13)
Yeah, I mean, you guys are the ones making the companies all their money. So — your background as a licensed therapist might seem unrelated to what you're doing now, but I don't think so at all. I think your background is one of the reasons you're so good at what you do. Can you share some of the lessons you learned as a therapist — through your education in psychology — and how you bring those into what you're doing today?

Connor (04:47)
Yeah, a big lesson social work preaches is unconditional positive regard — if the client is sitting across from you, you're viewing them for their humanity, for the person they are. The example I like to give: if somebody tells you they robbed a 7-Eleven, they're going to have their own reason for why they did that — a reason that makes sense to them. They're going to be the hero of their own story. Therapy trains you to honor that person sitting across from you, regardless of what they actually did. At the end of the day, we're all people, and we're messaging to people, and people want to feel valued. People want to be the hero of their own story. I love empowering people, letting them make their own health decisions when it comes to our supplements — letting them know, hey, here's some recent news breaking in the supplement space, here's what we're doing about it, here's what you can do about it. If you choose to buy our supplement, that's amazing. If not, you're still getting something from that interaction — you're still becoming a better version of yourself.

Zak (06:04)
You mentioned being the hero of your own story — never once did you talk about how your background helps you sell the product better, but how you positioned it is that your background helps you understand people better, to make them the heroes of their own story. That's what it's all about — everyone cares about being the hero. Can you dig into that a little more?

Connor (06:33)
Definitely. I could sit here and tell you I use my psychology background for evil, for capital gains — but realistically, what I do is use that background to empower and educate the customer. I think that's where we stand out from a lot of our competitors: we're not just a product to sell. We want you to actually live this healthy journey — to be better than you were six months ago because you signed up for our emails, or three months ago because you signed up for our text messages. I could just send messages that work on your fear receptors and get you to click and buy. Some marketing — the psychology of marketing, at least in those classes — says people buy out of fear, people buy out of necessity. I think it goes a level deeper than that: what is that fear teaching you? What is it telling you? What a lot of marketing is missing is that sense of safety, the ability to create a sense of self, an identity, and to be connected with your own identity. Are you a person who hikes, walks, drinks enough water? Are you actively living the lifestyle you want? A lot of traditional marketing will tell you: just use fear to sell supplements — you don't want to get old, you don't want to be in pain. My psychology background is about building the person up instead: what do you want to be, where do you want to go, how can we help you get there? That's realistically what I do in therapy — sit down in the first session and ask where we want to go, what we want to accomplish, who you want to be at the end of our twelve, fifteen, twenty sessions, sitting face to face. I take that same philosophy into marketing: who does our customer want to be, what am I helping them achieve, and how am I helping them get there with each message?

Zak (08:38)
Yeah, I like that. Selling on fear works — you'll buy this product because you don't want to get old, or even something small, like the fear of loss: hey, we're almost out of stock. But as you're talking, it made me realize — what you're also doing when you sell that way is training the customer to feel fear every time they think about your brand. They might not even know why they're feeling that discomfort, but it's because of how those products are being marketed through fear. So you're teaching people to—

Connor (09:16)
I don't want to cut you off, but that's classical conditioning — the classic Pavlov's dog story, where every time he rings the bell, the dog salivates for a treat. That's what you're doing with your audience when you use fear — utilizing those base emotions without digging into what's underneath: what's creating or stirring up that fear, that desire for security and safety, that want to live a long, happy life. That's what I'm really after.

Zak (09:45)
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you guys have high lifetime value with your customers, and that they stick around for a long time. Is that accurate?

Connor (09:57)
That is a very accurate statement.

Zak (09:59)
That's a good lesson for anyone thinking about marketing products: yes, that first purchase is awesome, but what's even better is the fifth purchase, or the tenth.

Connor (10:10)
Yeah — and getting to hear the stories, especially in the supplement industry, of "I tried this for a month and I feel better" is great. But then hearing "I've been using your products for three, four, five years, and it's not only changed how I'm interacting with the world but changed my own internal habits" — we have people going from "I'm just going to try turmeric because my foot hurts" to "I tried the turmeric, it's helping, and now I'm able to walk more and be more active, more the person I want to be." That's at the heart of what I'm trying to do here.

Zak (10:50)
That's awesome. What's a retention marketing decision you've made, because of your background, that a traditional marketer wouldn't have made?

Connor (11:01)
I think the best example is implementing surveys with our audience and treating it more as two-way communication, rather than the traditional approach of just sending "here's five percent off," "we noticed you purchased X, Y, Z, here's ten percent off," or "we haven't heard from you in a while, here's this or that." I really try to build a system that's a conversation with the customer. We were testing different protein powder flavors, and rather than just sitting in the lab trying to figure out what tastes best, I put out a survey and asked our customers: what flavors are you interested in? Do you care if we add a third flavor? Do you care if these other two go away? What do you mix your protein powder with — almond milk, soy milk, water? Because that changes your perception of the product and how you enjoy it. Getting those data points has been super helpful — even though one person wrote back that they mix theirs with a spoon. Not wrong — they do technically mix it with a spoon — not the most useful information given the survey, but I appreciated the honesty.

Zak (12:38)
That's pretty funny. I know you guys are currently implementing Klaviyo's customer agent, and as you're talking about these surveys, that would be a really cool use case for it — building survey questions into email or SMS flows, and then, based on the responses, adding those as customer properties in Klaviyo and creating email segments and flows off of that.

Connor (13:09)
Yeah, and that's the thing I love about Klaviyo so far — the more we can use it like a brain that holds all this information, the more I can understand. I think that's ultimately what we're trying to do in retention marketing: can I understand you as a person, as a customer? What drives you? Are you the type who likes vanilla or chocolate protein? What does that mean if you prefer one or the other? Having Klaviyo, especially the AI, implementing flows with so many different data points, has been so helpful for getting a better picture. I kind of view it as taking a daily snapshot of our customers — who are you today? Because I think we often get stuck on this idea of an "ideal customer" — someone between thirty-five and fifty, who makes a certain income, who hikes on weekends — and that's one way to view an ideal customer, but I think it's always changing. Our customer base — we're dynamic beings by nature. I think running a retention marketing program in a way that honors the journey means honoring the fact that you can wake up and decide you don't eat chocolate anymore, and that's fine — we'll figure it out with you.

Zak (14:39)
When Klaviyo first — I think maybe a year ago, maybe a bit more — started referring to the platform as the "D2C CRM," in full transparency, I couldn't go talk to clients or prospects about it as the D2C CRM, because it didn't quite click for me. It didn't quite make sense. But then last year they made huge improvements to marketing analytics, and this year they launched Customer Agent and Customer Hub and some other products. Now it just makes sense — yeah, it's the D2C CRM. Doing some of these flows and automations — sending very unique emails to people based on different things they've said or done, little data points they've given you — historically it would take hours and hours to do, and sometimes it might only drive an extra $500 or $1,000 a month. So how worth it is it? But now, leveraging AI, Klaviyo's built-in AI, and their full suite, you can build these automations super quickly and just make them run and drive revenue.

Connor (15:59)
Yeah, I love the plug-and-play nature of it, and the way AI is making it so I still get to be the driver behind the wheel and make the strategic decisions, but it's not as much of a lift. It's not "okay, I have to build this whole flow, think through every little detail" — it's letting me take a step back rather than get stuck in the weeds. I'm very much a person who will get stuck in the weeds if you let me, so being able to say "I have the data, I know what I'm trying to do," and have Klaviyo's AI make sense of what I word-vomit onto the page, is amazing.

Zak (16:48)
Yeah, and the more that you're using Klaviyo's AI, or Claude, or one of your other platforms — as AI improves, the execution layer is being automated to a large extent. Historically that execution layer is what your job is, and what us as an agency do — a lot of it's being automated. But I think that's awesome, for the same reasons you just said, because it frees up your time to do the high-level strategy thinking and orchestrate all these AI agents across the different platforms you're using.

Connor (17:24)
Definitely. I make music in my free time, and it very much feels like that when I use different AI agents and tools at work — okay, if I want a bass line here, what's that going to be? A drum line here, what's that going to be? It's getting it all to work together in a very harmonious, kind of musical way, honestly.

Zak (17:45)
I like that — like you're conducting an orchestra.

Connor (17:49)
Yeah, very much so. I've got to add conductor to my resume now.

Zak (17:55)
Connor, the retention conductor — I like that.

Connor (17:59)
There we go.

Zak (18:01)
That should be the new job description. You mentioned at the beginning that you're just getting launched on PostPilot — which, no secret, I'm a huge fan of, given how much revenue we're able to drive for clients leveraging it. Talk to me about what got you excited about PostPilot and made you decide to jump in with two feet.

Connor (18:28)
Yeah, for me the most exciting part is having another way to make that connection. A lot of marketing views it as "here's another touchpoint, here's another contact" — I view it as "here's a connection, a chance to reach people." I'm in the weeds of our SMS program — I get those messages, "you send too many texts," "I don't want text messages," all that comes with owning an SMS program. I think this is a way to reach people that gives them a chance to be more receptive to another form of communication. That's the value-add for me: this other, third avenue is a way to reach the people who hate the first two — who hate getting emails, hate getting SMS. It's a way to build retention that speaks to them, in a way they're open to. I think that's the ultimate value there.

Zak (19:30)
I love that. You can reach so many more people than with email or SMS — because when someone says "you send too many texts," they unsubscribe from SMS and email, but they still love your products. You can't email or text them anymore, but you can send them postcards in the mail.

Connor (19:55)
No, it's true.

Zak (19:59)
That's great. Any other new software you're adding to your tech stack?

Connor (20:06)
We're in the final stage of investigating a really cool tool with Yotpo called Claim, which would let us provide loyalty points based on purchases not made directly on our site — Amazon purchases, purchases at a retailer like Target. I'm really excited about that. It finally lets retention branch out from just sitting in the e-commerce bucket into a company-wide retention strategy — super excited.

Zak (20:43)
And what that's also going to do is give people more education — because if they're going to your website to claim loyalty points and signing up for your emails, newsletters, postcards, you're able to educate them more on the benefits of the product, and how it can help them be the heroes of their own story. Getting more integrated, I like that a lot. And that sort of fits in with some of the—

Connor (21:17)
Yeah, I think, because we know the average consumer, if they want something in a day and a half, is probably going to go to Amazon — so the idea of rewarding people for what they're already doing, making them feel valued, is such a great thing for retention marketing to be able to do. Give them credit for what they're already doing — you're already shopping our products, it just happens to be on Amazon. So you deserve to feel a little special, get a little something free every once in a while. And if you have to come back to the website to use the points — well, while you're there, if you want to buy a little extra, it wouldn't hurt.

Zak (21:58)
That's great. What are some AI workflows you're leveraging internally to be more efficient?

Connor (22:10)
Definitely setting up webhooks within Claude to scour the internet for breaking news — one of my favorite things to do, especially in the supplement and vitamin industry. That's something I've implemented here. An informed consumer is a better consumer, in my opinion, and if I can help them know more and stay on top of their health journey, we're working toward that goal together. So definitely those webhooks. And I'd be lying if I didn't say I use AI for copyright reviewing, compliance reviews, things that can get stuck in the weeds, overall messaging tone. It's been super helpful. I've heard it put this way: you can either be a marketer who fights AI and gets left behind, or a marketer who adapts and utilizes it. I think you can humanize it — there's a harmony you can reach where it's not all AI, but it's also not all just you at the keyboard doing everything. It fits the right balance.

Zak (23:28)
Not everything about AI is positive, right — there are plenty of drawbacks and negatives. But what you're saying is: AI is here, and it just keeps getting better by the second, by the minute, by the hour, and sometimes you get weeks of just huge improvements. People can fight it, but if you fight it, you're going to get left behind. That's just how it is. You can be upset about it or not, but you'd better be at the leading edge if you want to keep leading.

Connor (24:06)
Yeah, and I think we've seen that throughout history — TV commercials, radio commercials, the old-new media, right — it's just a trend in human nature that these technologies come along, disrupt things for a bit, and then we adapt. The dot-com bubble — everybody thought everything would go online and nobody would shop in person anymore. Is that true for some industries? Sure, but not all of them. During the pandemic, most everything went online, and therapy was all online too. But life goes on, and we're much more adaptable than we give ourselves credit for.

Zak (24:57)
I agree with that completely. No one really knows what's going to happen two years, five years from now — but I'm not a doom-and-gloom person who thinks AI is going to take over all the jobs. Not by any means. I think it's going to change all of the jobs, and in a lot of ways it'll free us up to do the higher-level strategy things, like you said — automate a lot of the execution so we can focus on higher-level strategy.

Connor (25:25)
Yeah, and in my time at Global Healing, with some time saved from AI tools and working with Klaviyo's AI, I've had a little extra time to help on the creative side — I pitched a commercial, and it ended up getting made. That's not something I'd have had time for if I were stuck in the weeds, working forty, fifty, sixty-hour weeks. But AI lifted a little bit off my plate, so I could say, "hey, I have this idea for a commercial," pitch it to our brand director, and he liked it enough that we made it.

Zak (26:02)
That's awesome. Where are you running that commercial?

Connor (26:05)
LinkedIn, Instagram, Google Ads — all over the place. It's on YouTube too. It's a really proud moment for me — I never thought I'd make a commercial, but here we are.

Zak (26:17)
That's awesome. Have you guys looked at Vibe, or any of the other streaming platforms for commercials, yet?

Connor (26:26)
Not yet. I'd love to get more into it, though.

Zak (26:29)
Yeah, it's awesome — it's one of the other levers we pull. It doesn't work for all of our brands, but for a lot of them it's a lever we pull, and it lets you run streaming ads on streaming services that then connect back with your Klaviyo and Shopify accounts, so you get a good sense of the attribution you're seeing. Has your therapy background changed how you're implementing AI in a client-facing way — on the website or anywhere else?

Connor (27:08)
Yeah, I think it makes me a little more — I'll say cautious, but not in the traditional sense of inaction. More cautious in the sense of: what's the reception from the customer base going to be? Really understanding the psychology — some of our clientele skews older, and technology adoption isn't quite all the way there for that part of our customer base versus another. So I take time to reflect and meet with our customer service specialists, get their perspective: let's go through the most common questions this AI tool is going to face. Can it handle them? Can it handle the off-the-wall questions at 3 a.m.? Can it handle the incoherent writing a lot of us tend to do once we realize, "hey, this is a chatbot, I can say whatever and it'll come up with a response"? Understanding the psychology of how we interact with something when we're not expecting a person on the other end helps me shape what I want that experience to look like. I don't want to shape it in a way where somebody's confused and feels lied to because they think it's a person — that's not what we want. It allows me to shape it in a way that's transparent and upfront: here's what this AI tool can do, here's what it can't do. Not "take it or leave it," but leading with that transparency, that honesty — because in the age of AI, it's very easy to feel lied to. So leading with honesty seems to be the way.

Zak (28:59)
Want to see where your e-commerce brand is leaving money on the table? Book a free revenue audit with the team at ECD Digital Strategy and get a clear plan to increase revenue. Go to Klaviyo.com/ECD to schedule yours today.

Zak (29:15)
I love that — training your agents to do exactly that. And that ties right back into how we started this episode: not leading from fear, not marketing through fear.

Connor (29:31)
Yeah, definitely — empower.

Zak (29:33)
I like that, and that fits so well with your guys' products, too. I'd always known your brand, but the first time I used your products was at a marketing event in Austin, in March or April — an overnight event, and some of your products were in the gift bags. I started using them, and now I love them — I use them regularly. Those supplements make a big difference, and they empower you to live a better life.

Connor (30:05)
Yeah, I think that's all we're trying to do. At our company meetings — every quarter, every half-quarter — we don't really lead with "how many of XYZ did we sell?" It's "how many lives did we touch?" Kind of like the old McDonald's billboards — "so many hamburgers served" — an astronomical amount, but for us it's how many lives we touched, how many people we impacted. Maybe you don't buy our supplements, but maybe you share a blog post that encourages you to go for a walk, or encourages a family member to drink more water, whatever it is for their path. That's what we try to gauge success by.

Zak (30:54)
Love that. So that messaging, all the way from the top to the bottom, is pretty deeply woven into your guys' brand.

Connor (31:04)
Yeah — I can definitely see that. At first, when I made the transition here to the marketing side, there was a little bit of imposter syndrome — like, what are they going to get out of a therapist doing marketing? But then it clicked: I'm kind of doing therapy, just in a different way. I'm guiding people on their journey, advising them, giving helpful tips. I'm talking about the same breathing techniques I'd give a client face-to-face or over Zoom who's having anxiety — the same tips, just in a different realm, not necessarily in a therapeutic sense, but as a helpful tip to reduce some anxiety, some stress, and be a better version of who you want to be.

Zak (32:06)
And now you're able to touch a lot more people — not as deeply, but you're still able to touch a lot more people and have an even bigger impact on everyone.

Connor (32:17)
Yeah, it's kind of wild to think about — going from a very one-on-one-centric profession, where I'd see maybe twenty, twenty-five, thirty people a week, to millions of people reading these things I'm putting out and having a hand in. It's a surreal moment to sit back and think, okay, that's kind of wild, that's kind of cool. I'll often find myself, at the beginning or end of the day, taking the elevator down and thinking, it's pretty cool that I'm here. I don't quite know how I got here, or what I did to be so lucky to be where I am — but it's pretty cool that I'm here.

Zak (33:04)
It is — and whatever it is you're doing, keep doing it, because it's working out real well. All right, we've got some rapid-fire closing questions. You ready? One retention metric everyone over-indexes on. One thing brands should stop doing to keep customers engaged.

Connor (33:15)
Open rate. And I'd say over-relying on sales — or, my second option, using fear, the dark side of psychology, if you will.

Zak (33:41)
Right. And if a brand hired you tomorrow with zero retention infrastructure, what's the first thing you'd build?

Connor (33:48)
The very first thing I'd build is a loyalty program. People deserve to feel special — they deserve to feel honored in their journey with you as a company, whether you're selling socks or supplements. They want to feel a connection and a reason to keep coming back. So, definitely, a loyalty program.

Zak (34:09)
I like that. All right, Connor, it's been a pleasure having you on. I think you had some great insights, and the way you look at things — I think everyone listening could take at least a little piece of that into what they're doing.

Connor (34:27)
I'm looking forward to hearing feedback from people. I know I have friends and family waiting on this to come out — they're eagerly awaiting to hear everything I have to say about marketing.

Zak (34:40)
That's awesome. All right, Connor, thanks for coming on. Before we wrap up — if you're serious about growing your e-commerce brand, go grab a free revenue audit. We'll find the revenue you're leaving on the table — analyzing your store, marketing, and retention channels to show you exactly where the biggest opportunities are. It's completely free, and you'll walk away with a clear growth plan. Just go to Klaviyo.com/ECD and book your audit today.

Connor (34:43)
Awesome, thank you so much.