You don't build a house on sand.
The course the Devs are on right now is good. Field terminals will give new players something to enjoy without requiring a huge time commitment. Field terminals on Beta and their associated taxation by outposts will provide an incentive for newbies to go there (mo' money mo' problems). Restructuring Beta connections and NPC static spawn removal will help make living on Alpha without commitment less viable for competing in the end-game.
Everything is going in a good direction right now. First the root of the problem must be fixed before a higher retention rate can be achieved. A lot of selfish and bad ideas were listened to, and now the mess needs to be fixed. The overall experience must be improved, one tweak at a time.
The only real course is bring in the improvements discussed before Winter sale, and go on sale with a big discount. Retention from the winter sale will still be bad, but it should be better with the changes then before. Then there's another cycle of development until summer sale - more good improvements need to be worked on to ensure a higher percentage of retention rate. Newsletters for every patch cycle. Blah blah, it's Marketing 101 we shouldn't even be discussing it.
A lot of players will try it for 2 hours then refund if they don't like it. The players that will stay will research the game and making kneejerk decisions like what Jita proposes would be suicidal for the game because those players would be turned away.