Customer Retention Management (2026)

If you want to get really good at customer retention and churn, I’d follow a mix of practitioners who understand why customers leave, experts who know how to keep them, and analysts who can measure what actually works.

For SaaS, subscriptions, and customer success, these are the people and resources I’d start with.

Who to follow

1. Lincoln Murphy

Best for churn fundamentals

Learn why customers stay, why they leave, and how customer success can prevent churn before a renewal is at risk.

• Focus: customer outcomes, onboarding, retention strategy, expansion revenue.
• Start here: Sixteen Ventures and Lincoln's essays. Sixteen Ventures - Lincoln Murphy on Customer Success, SaaS Growth & LTVLincoln Murphy

2. Lenny Rachitsky

Best for product retention

Excellent for understanding how activation, product-market fit, user behavior, and product experience affect retention.

• Focus: improving engagement, retention curves, and product-led growth.
• Start here: What Is Good Retention?. What is good retentionLenny Rachitsky

3. Kyle Poyar

Best for SaaS growth

Follow him to understand how pricing, packaging, customer segments, and expansion affect recurring revenue and churn.

• Focus: product-led growth, monetization, net revenue retention.
• Start here: Growth Unhinged. The 14 Best SaaS Retention & Growth Newsletters (2026)Retention Resources | Amplitude

4. Elena Verna

Great for learning how to turn retention into a repeatable growth engine rather than relying on acquisition to make up for lost customers.

• Focus: activation, habit formation, growth loops, monetization.
• Start with her growth writing and resources. The 14 Best SaaS Retention & Growth Newsletters (2026)Retention Resources | Amplitude

5. Patrick Campbell

Particularly useful if you want to understand the financial side of churn and subscriptions.

• Focus: voluntary vs. involuntary churn, pricing, subscription economics, lifetime value.
• Start with Paddle's resources. Awesome Customer Retention - A Curated List of the Best ResourcesRetention Resources | Amplitude

The best resources to follow alongside them

ChartMogul

Learn retention cohorts, customer churn, revenue churn, and net revenue retention using subscription data.

Read the resources

Amplitude

Learn how to analyze user behavior, activation, engagement, and retention over time.

Retention learning hub Retention Resources | Amplitude

What I'd learn first

Don't just consume content. Work through these topics in order:

1. Retention fundamentals: customer retention rate, logo churn, revenue churn, and net revenue retention (NRR).
2. Why customers leave: poor onboarding, weak product adoption, unmet expectations, pricing, and missing value.
3. Early warning signals: declining usage, failed payments, unresolved support issues, and missed customer milestones.
4. Retention experiments: onboarding improvements, customer education, win-back campaigns, cancellation flows, and targeted outreach.
5. Measurement: compare customer cohorts and measure whether each intervention actually reduces churn.

My recommendation: start with Lincoln Murphy for customer success, Lenny Rachitsky for product retention, and ChartMogul for the numbers. That combination gives you strategy, practical ideas, and the analytical skills to tell whether your efforts are working.

One question so I can tailor the list

What kind of customer retention are you trying to master?

To master customer retention, customer success, and reducing churn, you need to learn from practitioners who deal with subscription metrics, SaaS growth, and customer behavior every day.

Here are the top experts, thought leaders, and practitioners you should follow across LinkedIn, newsletters, and podcasts:

1. The Churn & SaaS Metrics Experts

• Paddle / Maxio (formerly ProfitWell):

• Who they are: A major billing infrastructure and monetization platform for software companies.

• What you'll learn: They publish incredible, data-backed insights on pricing strategies, net revenue retention (NRR), and what causes involuntary vs. voluntary churn.

• Where to find them: Their blog, LinkedIn, and YouTube channel (especially the Paddle Segments show).

• Lincoln Murphy:

• Who he is: One of the founding godfathers of modern Customer Success (CS).

• What you'll learn: How to operationalize customer success so that retention happens naturally because customers actually achieve their desired outcomes.

• Where to find them: His blog (Sixteen Ventures) and LinkedIn.

2. Customer Success & Retention Practitioners

• Nick Mehta:

• Who he is: The CEO of Gainsight, the leading customer success platform.

• What you'll learn: High-level enterprise strategies for retention, how to build a customer-centric culture, and future trends in CS.

• Where to find them: LinkedIn (he is very active and shares practical frameworks).

• Ed Powers:

• Who he is: A consultant and author who specializes directly in customer retention and churn reduction.

• What you'll learn: Tactical, no-nonsense frameworks for analyzing why customers leave and how to fix your onboarding funnel to prevent early churn.

• Where to find them: LinkedIn and his website (Retained.io).

• Kristi Faltýnková:

• Who she is: A renowned Customer Success leader who shares daily, highly tactical breakdown templates on LinkedIn.

• What you'll learn: Real-world playbooks for customer health scores, churn prediction signals, and QBRs (Quarterly Business Reviews).

• Where to find them: LinkedIn.

3. Newsletters, Communities & Podcasts

• Retention Masterclass / Lenny’s Newsletter:

• While Lenny Rachitsky's newsletter (Lenny's Newsletter) covers broad product growth, he frequently publishes deep-dive guides written by top retention experts on habit loops, activation rates, and reducing churn.

• The Customer Success Café Podcast:

• Hosted by Nilu Karunaratne, this podcast features interviews with top CS leaders sharing exact playbooks on how they turned high-churn businesses around.

• Churn the Podcast:

• Dedicated specifically to subscription metrics, growth loops, and retention strategies.

Suggested Action Plan to Start Learning Today:

1. Follow Nick Mehta and Kristi Faltýnková on LinkedIn and turn on notifications for their posts to get daily, bite-sized tactical advice.

2. Subscribe to ProfitWell's blog/newsletter to study the hard data behind pricing, packaging, and churn benchmarks.

3. Read Customer Success: How Smart Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue by Nick Mehta, Dan Steinman, and Lincoln Murphy if you want the definitive book on the subject.

Are you looking at retention from a specific angle - like SaaS/software , an e-commerce brand , or a subscription box? Let me know, and I can narrow down the recommendations to fit your exact industry!

To master customer retention, reducing churn, and scaling customer success, it helps to follow industry pioneers, growth strategists, and platforms specifically engineered around the science of keeping customers. Lincoln Murphy - I help you unlock revenue from the customers you already have. I also invented Customer Success. | LinkedInTop 100 Customer Success Influencers5 of my favorite new retention techniques that you may not

The top experts, writers, and company resources to follow include:

• • ** Lincoln Murphy** (Founder of Sixteen Ventures & LTV:Max): Widely known as a foundational pioneer of the modern Customer Success and retention-economics discipline. He is famous for his no-nonsense perspective that churn is a symptom of a deeper product or sales alignment issue rather than something you can just "fix" with superficial check-ins. Churn is a symptom, not the problem | Lincoln Murphy posted

• ** Elena Verna** (Growth Marketer & Writer): A prominent growth expert who specializes in B2B/B2C subscription retention, product-led growth (PLG), and fixing voluntary vs. involuntary churn. Her Elena's Growth Scoop Newsletter offers tactical, data-driven frameworks on how retention acts as the ultimate product-market fit feedback loop. How to improve your voluntary churn - Elena's Growth ScoopRetention: The situationship of SaaS - by Elena Verna

• ** Nick Mehta** (CEO of Gainsight): As the chief executive of a leading customer success platform, he writes extensively on enterprise metrics, Net Retention Rate (NRR), Gross Retention Rate (GRR), and how macro-economic shifts impact customer loyalty. Churn Is Coming: 12 Learnings From A Survey Of SaaS CxOs

• ** Annette Franz** (Founder of CX Journey): An authority on customer experience (CX) and employee experience. She focuses heavily on the holistic customer journey mapping required to organically prevent churn from day one.

• Industry Blogs & Research Hubs:

  • Gainsight Blog: Excellent for big-picture SaaS benchmarks, data surveys on churn, and community metrics.
  • ChurnZero Blog: Great for tactical, proactive retention strategies, health scoring, and automation plays.
  • SaaStr: Broad B2B and SaaS scaling content that regularly highlights retention milestones and founder playbooks. Nine proven tactics and strategies for proactive customer

If you let me know whether your focus is B2B SaaS , DTC/e-commerce , or another model, I can tailor these recommendations to the specific metrics and playbooks that matter most for your business.

I’d start with Lincoln Murphy, Elena Verna, and Casey Winters. Together, they cover customer-success-led retention, product-led retention, and how to measure whether customers actually stick around. My shortlist leans toward SaaS and digital products.(sixteenventures)(churntools)(lennysnewsletter)

Who to follow - and what you’ll learn

Person	Best for	Where to start
Lincoln Murphy	Customer success and churn prevention. His writing connects retention to helping customers achieve their desired outcomes, from onboarding through the entire customer lifecycle.	Sixteen Ventures; start with “Customer Success: Customer Engagement Across the Entire Lifecycle.” (sixteenventures)(sixteenventures.com)
Elena Verna	Product-led growth, activation, and retention. A useful choice for learning how product and growth work fit together rather than treating churn as solely a customer-success problem.	Her newsletter, Elena’s Growth Scoop. (churntools)(elenaverna)
Casey Winters	Product retention and measurement. Especially useful for understanding what good retention looks like across different business models.	His joint retention analysis with Lenny Rachitsky, “What is good retention.” (lennysnewsletter)
Lenny Rachitsky	A broad learning feed spanning product, growth, activation, and retention, with practitioner perspectives rather than one single methodology.	Lenny’s Newsletter and podcast; the retention-benchmark article is a concrete starting point. (lennysnewsletter)(lennysdata)
Doug Zarkin	Consumer-brand loyalty and customer experience. He offers a useful counterweight to SaaS-heavy advice, connecting retention to trust, operations, and the experience customers receive - not just marketing.	His interviews, including the Marketing Vanguard conversation “Is Retention the Real Problem in Marketing?” (adweek.com)

How I’d prioritize them

• For a B2B customer-success or account-management role: start with Murphy. His lifecycle approach focuses on helping customers realize value before the renewal conversation.(sixteenventures)
• For a product or growth role: start with Verna and Winters, then use Rachitsky for broader examples and frameworks.(churntools)(lennysnewsletter)
• For a consumer brand or service business: start with Zarkin, whose retention perspective extends beyond software usage into brand experience and operations.(adweek.com)

One important filter when learning from any of them: check what “retention” means in the example. Winters and Rachitsky’s benchmark article measures users who remain active six months after signup; that is a different lens from Murphy’s focus on customer outcomes and continuing customer relationships. Matching the lens to your business makes the advice much more useful.(sixteenventures)(lennysnewsletter)

If you want to learn about customer retention and churn, follow leaders in customer success, lifecycle marketing, and retention strategy such as Val Geisler, Chase Dimond, Sticky Digital, and Chelsea McClure. These experts consistently share actionable frameworks, case studies, and retention-first strategies across SaaS and ecommerce.

📌 Key Experts to Follow

Expert / Organization	Focus Area	Why Follow Them
Val Geisler	Lifecycle marketing & SaaS onboarding	Known for customer onboarding flows and retention sequencing; strong insights on early-stage churn reduction.Who Are Thought Leaders in Retention Marketing? (2026 Guide for Ecomme – StickyDigital
Chase Dimond	Ecommerce email marketing	Shares Klaviyo-focused retention strategies, campaign optimization, and benchmarks for repeat revenue.Who Are Thought Leaders in Retention Marketing? (2026 Guide for Ecomme – StickyDigital
Sticky Digital	Shopify/DTC retention infrastructure	Advocates treating retention as infrastructure, not campaigns; emphasizes behavioral segmentation and lifecycle systems.Who Are Thought Leaders in Retention Marketing? (2026 Guide for Ecomme – StickyDigital
Chelsea McClure (OneSkin)	Direct-to-consumer retention	Senior Director of Retention & Lifecycle; experience in loyalty and growth at Ritual and FanDuel.[10 churn reduction experts
Destinee Mack (Helia Care, ex-Workzone)	SaaS & healthcare retention	Led organizations with 99%+ gross retention; 20+ years in customer success leadership.[10 churn reduction experts
Jonathan Kilton (Search Atlas)	Enterprise retention	Chief Retention Officer; improved net revenue retention to 105% and reduced churn significantly.[10 churn reduction experts
Nieves Canada (SettleMint)	Customer success outcomes	Advocates focusing on customer outcomes over KPIs; builds tailored success plans.15 CS leaders on how to reduce churn in 2025 - SaaSiest
Custify Influencers (e.g., Con Cirillo, Adam Smith, Hannah Dean)	Customer success & onboarding	Share practical advice on onboarding, retention, and value creation.Our Top Customer Success Influencers of 2024 - Custify Blog

🔑 What You’ll Learn From Them

• Retention as infrastructure (Sticky Digital): Think beyond campaigns; design lifecycle systems that drive predictable revenue.

• Onboarding excellence (Val Geisler, Custify influencers): Early customer experience is the biggest predictor of churn.

• Behavioral segmentation & personalization (Chase Dimond): Tailor communication to customer behavior for higher loyalty.

• Customer success leadership (Destinee Mack, Nieves Canada): Build human-centered strategies that balance automation with personal touch.

• Data-driven retention metrics (Jonathan Kilton, Chelsea McClure): Learn how to track net/gross revenue retention and reduce churn systematically.

⚠️ Risks & Challenges

• Over-reliance on metrics: Many companies chase KPIs without focusing on customer outcomes. Experts like Nieves Canada warn against this.15 CS leaders on how to reduce churn in 2025 - SaaSiest

• Ignoring onboarding: Poor onboarding is one of the biggest churn drivers; Val Geisler and Custify influencers emphasize this repeatedly.Our Top Customer Success Influencers of 2024 - Custify Blog

• Treating retention as campaigns only: Sticky Digital stresses that retention must be systemic, not just email blasts.Who Are Thought Leaders in Retention Marketing? (2026 Guide for Ecomme – StickyDigital

👉 To deepen your learning, I’d suggest following these experts on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, and their blogs/newsletters. Would you like me to curate a list of their most active platforms (LinkedIn, newsletters, podcasts) so you can start following them directly?