Brand Building Podcast

After a tough onboarding, we put everything into turning this client’s account around—and tripled their lead volume. When their contract ended, they decided to move on.
Then they tried to hire the person leading their account directly.
In this episode of the Brand Building Podcast, I share what happened, how my team member handled it, and why we’re still giving that client a professional handoff.
We’re talking about loyalty, taking responsibility when your team falls short, and why better performance doesn’t always repair a damaged client relationship.
Your reputation comes from how you act when things get uncomfortable. This experience was a reminder of the kind of business—and team—I want to build.

Most brands lose the customer the moment they file a return. Redo is built to change that.
In this episode, I sit down with Taggart Kruger from Redo to break down how they've built the only end-to-end returns solution in ecommerce — from checkout protection and AI-powered exchange agents to a 120,000 sq ft warehouse that physically processes, grades, and liquidates returned inventory.
What's covered:→ How Checkout Plus makes returns completely free for brands→ How the AI exchange agent drives store credit and repeat purchases over refunds→ What grading, refurbishment, and liquidation look like at scale→ Why bot and agent traffic is already at 60% of ecommerce visits→ How Redo's Commerce Agent protects brand margins in an agentic shopping world
Already working with brands from $5M to Tailormade — this is one to listen to if you're serious about cleaning up your operations.
✅ Elevate your brand's Email & SMS marketing: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7?typeform-source=www.youtube.com🚀 Discuss your growth strategy: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02

Before you touch subject lines, creative, or your offer — check your email authentication.
In this episode, Mark walks through the free 60-second deliverability check every Klaviyo brand should run: SPF, DKIM, DMARC via MX Toolbox, and your sending reputation in Google Postmaster.
You'll hear two real client results:→ Wavy: Klaviyo deliverability score up 11 points after fixing authentication→ Tallman Shoes: up 16 points, Google Postmaster spam rate below 0.03%
Plus the counterintuitive sending strategy that actually recovers deliverability — and why emailing more people when your reputation is down makes everything worse.
Creativity is downstream from deliverability. The best email in the world sitting in a spam folder is worth $0.
Want a full audit of your retention system? Learn how Bread Loaf's complimentary retention scan works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MUGArf4M18✅ Elevate your brand's Email & SMS marketing: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7?typeform-source=www.youtube.com 🚀 Discuss your growth strategy: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02

The most sophisticated Klaviyo account we've audited recently was also one of the leakiest.
Not because they weren't doing enough.Because they were doing too much.
Flows everywhere. Filters everywhere. Exclusions everywhere. Years of logic stacked on top of more logic — and nobody willing to delete anything because nobody wants to be the person that breaks the account.
We found 46 things that needed attention.Most of the fixes were subtraction, not addition.
In this episode of the Brand Building Podcast, I'm breaking down the spaghetti flow problem that hits every mature brand, why exclusions are the silent killers nobody looks at, why stacking email and SMS in one flow costs you money, and the kill list exercise every retention team should run quarterly.
Good systems get simpler over time.Bad systems accumulate barnacles.
→ Want us to run this same audit on your account?Watch this first:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MUGArf4M18
🌐 breadloaf.co📋 Free Retention Scan: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7📅 Book a Call: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off

We audited a Klaviyo account and found 16,000 people actively browsing, adding to cart, visiting the site —who couldn't receive a single marketing email.
Not because they unsubscribed. Not because they complained. The brand had manually suppressed them by following what's considered a best practice: cleaning the list.
In this episode of the Brand Building Podcast, I'm breaking down why suppression becomes a revenue leak most brands never find, what we discovered inside 153,000 suppressed profiles, how to check your own Klaviyo account right now, and the right process to bring people back without destroying deliverability.
The revenue leak isn't always the email you're sending. Sometimes it's the thousands of people you're accidentally not sending anything to.
→ Want us to look inside your account?Watch this first:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MUGArf4M18
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Connect with Me:🌐 breadloaf.co📋 Free Retention Scan: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7📅 Book a Call: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off

Most people think email marketing started with Klaviyo.
Mine started at a winery in Paso Robles in 2011.
In this episode of the Brand Building Podcast, I'm taking you back to where it all began — how I taught myself email marketing running a wine e-commerce startup, moonlighting it while working at top Southern California agencies, and eventually running $15M/year Toyota lead gen programs through event marketing at NASCAR, Bass Pro Shops, and Stagecoach.
From there: Director of Ops at Stealth Venture Labs, founding Bread Loaf in 2016, and generating over $1 billion in attributed revenue for our clients through retention and lifecycle marketing alone.
No overnight success. No shortcuts.Just 15 years of figuring it out — before anyone was calling it retention marketing.
📋 Free Retention Audit: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7📅 Book a Call: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off

Most ecommerce brands doing $5M to $100M have the same blind spot.
They're spending real money on paid acquisition. New customers are coming in.
But once they're on the list — nobody really knows what's happening to them.
Old automation. A list with hundreds of thousands of profiles nobody has looked inside in years. Monthly reports with open rates that never tell you if you're actually leaving money on the table.
In this episode I'm breaking down the four things we find broken in almost every Klaviyo account we audit — and what a real retention program actually looks like when it's working correctly.
Plus — how to get a free 28-point Retention Scan from our team at Bread Loaf. No pitch. No obligation. Just a real audit.✅ Elevate your brand's Email & SMS marketing: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7?typeform-source=www.youtube.com🚀 Discuss your growth strategy: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02

I was in the room in Boston when Klaviyo announced Composer at K:BOS 2026.
And I don't think most brands or agencies understand how big this is yet.
Composer isn't another AI writing tool. It already knows your customers, your campaigns, your flows, your segments, and your performance data — and now it can start doing the work.
In this episode I break down exactly what Composer is, what it can already do today, what's still rolling out, and what it means for D2C brands and retention agencies heading into Q4.
The job of the marketer doesn't disappear. The job changes.
And the agencies that don't adapt are going to get exposed faster than anything else has exposed them before.
✅ Elevate your brand's Email & SMS marketing: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7?typeform-source=www.youtube.com🚀 Discuss your growth strategy: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02

Just got back from K:BOS 2026 in Boston.
Second year attending. First year sponsoring as a Silver Partner with a booth on the floor and a seat at the Partner Advisory Council with Klaviyo's executive team.
In this episode I'm breaking down everything that happened — what Klaviyo announced, where the platform is going, and what it means for D2C brands and retention agencies right now.
The biggest release: Composer. A natural language SQL interface that queries your entire Klaviyo database on demand. No data scientists. No SQL queries. Just type what you want and it pulls it.
The biggest shift: agencies are no longer going to be valued for their deliverables. They're going to be valued for the strategic insights they bring on top of them.
This is the episode to listen to before Q4 hits.
✅ Elevate your brand's Email & SMS marketing: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7?typeform-source=www.youtube.com🚀 Discuss your growth strategy: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02

Most retention agencies are still doing reporting the hard way.
Manual decks. Static reports. Data that's already out of date by the time the client opens it.
The agencies doing $100M in client revenue aren't doing it that way anymore.
In this episode I sit down with Zac Cherin, founder of Hiro Analytics — the tool running inside Bread Loaf and some of the top retention agencies in D2C right now.
We've been customers for five months. This is a real conversation, not a pitch.
10 hours back per client per month. Every single month. That's what we actually experienced.
If you run a retention agency or work inside one — this episode is for you.
Guest: Zac Cherin, Founder — Hiro AnalyticsBook a demo: heroanalytics.com
✅ Elevate your brand's Email & SMS marketing: https://breadloaf.typeform.com/to/rotiGDm7?typeform-source=www.youtube.com🚀 Discuss your growth strategy: https://calendly.com/markmilutin/retention-audit-kick-off?month=2025-02