Retention over reach – and what data says about loyalty – Seema Shah (Sensor Tower)

Seema Shah, VP of Research and Insights at Sensor Tower, dispenses with the industry’s fixation on superficial growth metrics. Her analysis exposes the fundamental asymmetry in e-commerce: scale without retention leads nowhere, and price wars favor only those insulated by infrastructure and sunk-cost bias. Shah parses the machinery of loyalty and why brands that depend on incentives or viral hacks collapse as soon as ad spend falters. She dissects the nature of ‘engagement’ and how most apps can mistake installs for allegiance. She also explores why friction points like returns, shipping, and checkout, aren't a minor feature set, but the primary front in the battle for behavioral lock-in. This challenges the fantasy that small brands can out-spend or out-feature incumbents, insisting instead on granular tactics: how to interrogate user data, how to manufacture urgency without eroding trust, and how event-driven design transforms disposable installs into measurable lifetime value.   

Questions Seema answered in this episode:

• What is Sensor Tower, and how does it analyze the digital retail economy?
• What tactics actually drive engagement and conversion for e-commerce apps?
• How are loyalty programs, membership fees, and incentives engineered to retain users?
• Why is ‘engagement’ more critical than mere app downloads?
• What happens when acquisition ad spend dries up (Temu, Shein) and retention isn’t there?
• How do free shipping, fast returns, and frictionless checkout rewire user habits?
• What does the data say about the new ‘in-app event’ wars among major retailers?
• What are the most common blind spots for mid-sized brands trying to compete with giants?
• How can smaller brands leverage data, urgency, and unique value to build sustainable engagement?
• What emerging trends should e-commerce marketers prepare for?

Timestamps:

(0:00) – Intro: Sensor Tower, Seema’s role, scope of data and products
(3:00) – Why engagement beats downloads: session length, frequency, retention
(4:00) – The mechanics of loyalty programs: Amazon Prime, Target Circle, Ulta, and more
(8:30) – Tariff threats and the new ad spend math: what happens to MAU when you cut UA?
(11:00) – Small brand playbook: driving downloads, boosting engagement, and using incentives
(23:32) – In-app events: the new engagement arms race (Amazon, Walmart, Target)
(26:00) – The difference between frequency and discretionary shopping
(34:00) – Platform evolution, removing friction, and why smaller features win
(37:00) –Emerging trends in e-commerce apps
(52:15) – Wrap-up: How to connect with Seema, Sensor Tower, and what’s next

Quotes:

(8:50) “Since the removal of the de minimis tax exemption and also the tariffs, we’ve seen a decline in advertising spend and a shift to other countries.”
(13:43)  “If you’re a smaller brand and you want to compete, you have to really know who your customer is and what attracted them to you in the first place.”
(24:45)  “Frequency seems huge for retention and how much time they’re spending on the app, but how do these top brands keep users coming back without fatiguing them with advertising?”

Mentioned in This Episode:

• Sensor Tower
• Seema Shah Linkedin