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The Unstoppable Marketer®
Trevor Crump and Mark Goldhardt bring you quick marketing and entrepreneurial tips, tricks, and trends for DTC business owners, entrepreneurs, and marketers. These are lessons they've learned through the years of being right in the thick of scaling dozens of businesses. Whether you have an established business looking to grow, just starting your business journey, or trying to become a digital marketer, this marketing podcast will not let you down.
The Unstoppable Marketer®
Ep. 136 The Cohort Crisis: Is Your Marketing Getting Lost in the Inbox?
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Trevor Crump and his co-host Mark Goldhardt dive into the critical importance of customer retention for e-commerce brands. They explore why cohort data and email performance have declined since 2021, and how this impacts overall business success. The hosts offer unconventional insights on increasing customer lifetime value, including sending more frequent emails, building community, and staying top-of-mind. They challenge the notion that high ROAS is always best, arguing that brands focused on retention can afford lower acquisition costs and ultimately win in the long run.
Follow Trevor Crump on Instagram and TikTok @thetrevorcrump for more marketing insights and to connect directly with the host.
Stay Top of Mind
Speaker 1Stay top of mind. Don't settle with the fact that someone made a first purchase. That's when you should think the game actually starts Like okay, now we have to lock in and make sure they buy again in the next X amount of time. That's the goal.
Speaker 2Yo, what's going on everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. With me, as always, is Mark Goldhart, my co-host. Mark, how are you doing this Tuesday morning? Doing well, good, doing well, good, doing well. Summer is officially over. That's right.
Speaker 1It is At least from a kid's perspective. Yeah, no, this is the last week.
Speaker 2Like the actual.
Speaker 1Yeah, there's a monsoon coming through, so temperatures are going to drop next week Seriously and then they're not going to come back up, I bet.
Speaker 2Really.
Speaker 1We're going to see. We're going to see like the 80s. And then it's probably going to be 80s from here on out, lower 80s and then 70s soon after, and then 60s it's a good time 30s.
Speaker 2It's a really good time. I'm excited Speaking of summer ending, summer's ending yeah, we didn't record last week?
Speaker 1No, we didn't, I was in Yellowstone. Yeah, you were gone Summer's ending yeah, we didn't record last week. No, we didn't.
Speaker 2I was in Yellowstone.
Speaker 1Yeah, you were gone. We'll pass over the videos. Our grizzly bears yeah, I'm sure everyone wants to see it. We saw five grizzly bears that is pretty crazy, one black bear by a bighorn sheep, a female. They're just roaming around A ewe. I think they still call them ewes.
Speaker 2What is that?
Speaker 1Female sheep.
Speaker 2Oh, okay, you saw some bison.
Speaker 1Yeah, we saw the quintessential things like the bison and the elk. What?
Speaker 2about birds Caught some big old bugs. What about some like there?
Speaker 1was a salmon fly hatch going on. So there's some big old. I mean, they're like that big, oh cool. Found the river, pulled out some rocks, found some stone flies.
Speaker 2What about, like eagles? You seen eagles? No, really.
Speaker 1No eagles this time. Usually you do, but a lot of osprey, oh cool, which are cool. Yeah, awesome diving down catching some stuff.
Speaker 2Nice.
Speaker 1But yeah, it was great end of summer trip for us last week.
Speaker 2We won't record now, we should every week yeah, we should, we'll see.
Speaker 1But end of summer means your store might be up or down right now probably feeling a little volatile, but it should be smoothing out into In the next couple weeks.
Speaker 2Yeah, Because you've gotten people like, for example, my kids just went back to school, my nieces and nephews go back to school this week, yeah, and then I was just talking to some people and they go back next week. So we're kind of in this stage of where it's still kind of back to school-ish season, if you have anything like that, that works. But hopefully over the next couple weeks you're going to start to see some improvements because you're going to have people who are going to be more regularly on their phones.
Speaker 1And not just with. You're underneath a bind, though. You're in between a rock and a hard spot.
Speaker 2Explain.
Speaker 1So if you're a store owner, this is what's happening. You have buying, behavior is going to normalize and people get excited because you get back to school, and then you have Labor Day and then you have hey, I need stuff for winter, but then you have oh wait, black.
Speaker 2Friday is coming.
Speaker 1And so then you're going to hit October and feel like, oh no, everything's breaking again. But it's just. There are seasonal trends that you just have to be aware of.
Summer's End & Market Shifts
Speaker 2Totally and remember that. You know, I think, that everybody gets so focused. This is a common thing we're seeing as we're onboarding new clients and talking to new people all the time. There are still people who are so ingrained in I have to have a certain amount of ROAS. My ROAS, or my efficiency metrics, must be X or else it doesn't work out. But you need to look at the bigger picture and not just look at things by week and by month, but start to look at things by quarter, you know, start to look at things by year.
Speaker 2Um, there are plenty of brands that we work with that might break even or even lose money month to month, but once a month, once a quarter, they have a really big launch or a really big sale or something huge that that just crushes and it makes up for any lack of profitability they had in the prior month or prior two months. You know and not saying that that's how we work with all clients, but there's just some scenarios in which it doesn't. You shouldn't slow down just because things get less efficient. Meaning, if we're defining cohorts by people who buy within the same month, right, that's a specific cohort and we're going to talk more about this on the podcast, but we've found that October cohorts oftentimes for brands become the best cohort or best returning customers for November during Black Friday yeah, they do, right.
Speaker 2So a lot of people get scared because your CPA conversion rates dip and CPAs increase in October, and so people stop spending money and they stop acquiring customers and then they get less returning customer revenue.
Speaker 1They do Don't get scared, so look at your data, your data will tell you.
Speaker 2Understand there's times and seasons for everything. And just know that we're about to be in a good. You know, September oftentimes is a good one because you got Labor Day, like you said, and back to school. Yeah, but it might change shortly after.
Understanding Cohort Data
Speaker 1But cohort data is an important piece to the puzzle of how people approach acquisition. I think yeah.
Speaker 2Let's talk about it.
Speaker 1Yeah. So definition of a cohort is, yeah, a group of people. You know when we're talking on Shopify or you know your e-commerce store, a group of people that have bought within a certain time frame. So it's either you have month cohorts, you can have quarterly cohorts, you can have daily, weekly, whatever right, but it's usually going to be by a month off.
Speaker 2At least, that's the metric shop if I will give you yeah, that's the metric by month.
Speaker 1Yeah, um, for the layman, for the layman, and then in that cohort it's going to show you, it's generally going to be laid out as it's generally going to be laid out, as the cohort is going to be the left, the y-axis and then the x-axis is going to be the time that has passed from that cohort. So zero means same month, one is the next month, two is two months later.
Speaker 2Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. We'll even give you a graph here. What you'll see is you'll see the month, you'll see a total amount of revenue. You'll see or percentage, like cause you can do a retention rate or just revenue revenue whatever.
Speaker 2Then the next call will be how much new customer, for example, revenue was made that month Yep. Then you have column zero. For example, revenue was made that month. Then you have column zero, zero month. One month, two month, three month, and so what that means is, of all the people who bought at once in that month, this is how many in month zero came back and spent.
Speaker 1Or how much more money from that cohort.
Speaker 2You can change the metric, yeah so you might have like $100,000 here and then $10,000. And then $10,000.
Speaker 1And then $6,000 in month one, or you might have your retention rate, which would be 3% to 20%, bought within that time frame to the next, to the next, to the next. Yeah.
Speaker 2We'll put a little.
Speaker 1So the reason why it's an important metric is because we all know that lifetime value is going to be heavily dictated upon purchasing behavior within 90 days.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1And even more so within 30 and 60 days.
Speaker 2Do you want to give the stat Depending on AOV? Do you want to give that stat Like why it's so important?
Speaker 1in those first times timeframes.
Speaker 2Well, if somebody doesn't come back and buy within 60 to 90 days period it's usually, your ltv is going to drop by like 80 yeah, within the year yes and on the flip side, it's like if they come back and buy for a second time, yeah, their lifetime value will double in that same year compared to if they don't. It'll take five years for them to reach that, or something like that.
The 90-Day Purchase Window
Speaker 1It's a crazy metric so, yeah, month zero one and two are way more important than I think most people are paying attention to. So we talk about acquisition a lot and, yes, acquisition is going to be the gasoline in the engine, but you have to be checking your oil and that retention is going to be the oil of your engine. You got to make sure that it's actually lubricated and working well. Yeah, right, that you're getting the rotation that you need out of the fuel that you're you're putting into the engine, and what we have noticed is, across quite a few stores, your month zero one and two cohorts have gone down dramatically Since, since 2021.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1There have been changes within deliverability and iOS has changed email. So there's things going on in the email world, for sure, that you might be aware of or you are aware of, but it's a big problem that people need to address because if you just solve that your acquisition you would feel a lot better about your acquisition.
Speaker 2Totally.
Speaker 1Because your acquisition is making you feel a certain way, but if you're not getting people to come back, especially that short time frame. Because I mean there's some brands that had we've looked at some reports and it's like they had a 10 to 15% month zero turnover. So within the same month, if they bought in June, 15% of people were buying again in June. And that's dropped down to like 5%.
Speaker 2Yeah, a lot of it's been cut in half or more, and you're thinking what is going on, right?
Speaker 1So we've been doing digging, we're not going to give away all our secrets. I hope you put a little clip of Frodo saying, yeah, you can keep your secrets then all right, then keep your secrets.
Speaker 2But we, we do want to help, at least guide you guys in the right direction yeah, so you mentioned a couple reasons like should we, let's let's try to address some of the whys?
Speaker 2yeah, so we we've seen that there's some kind of deliverability thing going on, like it appears that email isn't quite reaching the same amount of people yeah, for some for some accounts, or it's not getting delivered or if people aren't paying attention to their email in the same way that they used to yes, I was gonna say you got deliverability plus, you've got just like attention maybe an email fatigue. Yeah, like everyone's getting a million emails, yeah I think right now, like if I look at my phone, look at your phone too. Like what does your app say? How many emails do you have unopened emails?
Speaker 1unopened emails.
Speaker 2Yeah, like do you have the little like icon oh, I'll tell you, I'm gonna bet you that mine is over yours.
Speaker 1Really.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 1Okay, what's yours?
Speaker 2$28,920 $28,000? $28,000.
Speaker 1Wow, it's hiding some of mine, but yeah, mine says $2,200, oh $24,096. Uh, it's hiding some of mine, but yeah, mine.
Email Fatigue & Deliverability Issues
Speaker 2Mine says 2200, oh 24,096 now, to be fair, I don't use my personal email very much for this reason. Right, it's because it's just like it's overly fatigue, like the. The idea of going into that and like dealing with that just makes me sick yeah, you, you know, so Makes you nauseous, you know, and I also have 94 under answer texts Like that's actually kind of crazy too. Well, all mail.
Speaker 1So there's communication fatigue. I do. I do declare email bankruptcy, like twice a year, though.
Speaker 2Yeah, meaning what?
Speaker 1I just delete everything.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, I I should do that, but there's not like an easy way to do it. Somebody's been talking about like ai agents that will do this for you.
Speaker 1I just declare it and just delete it. Yeah, say sorry if you want to hopefully there's nothing important here, so okay, so back to it.
Speaker 2You've got email fatigue. Why do you have email fatigue?
Speaker 1Well, everybody's emailing, but the email has become the house mailbox. You're just expecting a certain level of spam Totally. It just kind of is what it is. But I mean, I don't know if the behavior has changed that much over five years. Maybe it has. But there's also some deliverability things going on with, like email providers. It appears that, um, that might be going on, but the big, the big thing is I just think people don't send enough emails, like you. People just are not communicating enough with their customer. I think that's really totally like that's and that's the only thing you can change in some of these situations well, yeah, and a lot of people are thinking to themselves, um, like, like.
Speaker 2So a lot of people hear this like oh well, if everyone's overdoing it, does email even work. Should I even do it? Means, you should do it more yeah, it means you should do it more. Yeah, right because, like, because you're trying to catch them.
Speaker 1Yeah, like a good chance. Your email is just getting below seven other emails.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's an at-bats game. Yes, it is totally an at-bats game.
Speaker 1And all the DTC darlings that you guys hear about online. We have tracked their emails they are sending. If you're listening to this podcast, you are probably behind them by 90%. They are probably out sending you 10 to 1. Totally, especially within the first 7 days of sign up and then after purchase.
Speaker 2Those first 10 days are crazy, the brands that are crushing it. Those first 10 days are nuts 1 to 3 emails a day and you might say I don't want to scare them off. I think people used to get scared off, but people's intentions aren't like. I don't want to scare them off. I think people used to get scared off, but people's intentions aren't like. I'm unsubscribing from these people and guess what? If they're unsubscribing, that's totally fine. In fact, that's going to save you money down the long run.
Speaker 1Yeah, you don't want people. You don't even want to be emailing people if they're not going to buy right.
Speaker 1So the point is A a look at your cohort data. Try to figure out if there is a correlation with your cohort data and performance I guarantee there is and look at your email performance over time, like, are you a brand and there's a good chance you are that you're thinking, hey, maybe performance has gone down. Or, you know, if maybe you're looking at a blended metric, maybe you're looking at what I mean, I don't know what your performance metrics that you're looking at, we look at ours that we deem are the best. But if you're, if your performance is going down, it's probably a combination of yes, there's acquisition problems, probably, but there's probably a bigger thing that's going unknown and unseen in your cohorts.
Speaker 2And a quick, a quick way to look at this is just look at, like, compare the last for the last five years, what your annual clicks are from email Like. That's a really easy way to just look at it.
Speaker 1You can look at a third party like Google or even Shopify, will show you.
Speaker 2Klaviyo will show you too, you know or whatever email provider.
Speaker 2Just say what were my clicks in 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024? And now you might have grown from those times. So you'll have to look at that in relation to sessions as well. So look at like overall sessions. So, for example, if you had 100,000 sessions in 2021 and you had, you know, 50,000 clicks or whatever you know from an email, you can also look at the ratios too. But if you're going down, you don't even need to look at the ratios as much. Right, if you're going downhill you went 100,000 to 90,000, to 80,000, to 60,000, you can just start to see like well, what is my ratio on email?
Speaker 1Yeah, like why and why is it going down?
Speaker 2Yeah, email and SMS, by the way. And then I think the other thing that's important to note as to why these cohorts are lower and dipping is like. I think we've also seen a massive decrease in reach, organically, for a lot of brands.
Speaker 1We're organically um for a lot of brands we're for sure seeing such a big, such a big decrease in reach organically. If you are a brand, you have felt your brand's reach go down organically and that's a fact yeah, and that helps.
Speaker 2Obviously, reach is good for acquisition, but like also just being top of mind for your current customers as well.
Speaker 1well, for example, let's go back to the chronological feed of 2016. If you're a brand and you're launching a new product, you could count on your feed reaching your audience and letting them know you have a new product, and you could count on your emails reaching your audience, or vice versa, right, they saw it on their feed and then they see their email and then they come to site, so that you had this natural flywheel, organic effect of reaching your audience very directly and very quickly yeah that you are, you don't have anymore.
Speaker 1Sure, like you post that you have a new release, like you're not necessarily reaching totally your audience in the way you used to be, yep. So like you said, the organic piece, that we're not saying, that yeah, the acquisition side for sure, but if you're not reaching people about a new release or whatever, the sale or whatever, or new content that's just fun and engaging.
Speaker 1Then those retention rates go down right. They don't know about it. So we have to reframe going forward with marketing and, yes, we're biased, we have an agency, but you're, you're gonna have to. Everyone has to rethink of how you get the attention of not only prospects but of your customers. Again, you do need to focus on acquisition and what your actual new customer returns are and your profits. But within that 60-day, 90-day period, whatever it is, you'll have to determine that in your data.
Declining Organic Reach
Speaker 1You're going to have to start making some decisions that might hurt you as a store owner or as a marketer, but you're going to have to start thinking about what happens to my retention rate if we test A, B or C.
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Speaker 2Well, I have a third thing I want to bring up as to why it's it's hurting, so I'll bring that up. But I also want to just bring up this analogy. It's it's it's a very similar situation is like if you are in the dating market and I have not been in the dating market for 16 years, so things may have changed, but if you're in the dating market and you go on a date with you know somebody and you really like her or him, do you wait 30 days?
Speaker 1some do.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's called the game but, but it probably never wins. All playing the game, right, but it but, but like if you, but if it's 30 days, that's not going to win.
Speaker 1Oh, you can't text them too soon.
Speaker 2Yeah, sure, you might wait a day or two if you want to play the game, right To not be overly enthusiastic, but you're going to have to make contact with that person in a meaningful way within a shorter amount of time, absolutely Right Now. The third reason why I think.
Speaker 1But playing the game, yeah. I don't think playing the game works for anybody In the long run.
Speaker 2No For the most part. Yeah For long-term healthy relationships.
Speaker 1Right.
Speaker 2Yeah, I guess it depends on what your goal is.
Speaker 1You're just trying to psychologically manipulate people, yeah, but guess what? We're talking about stores and people and, like you're not in a relationship and like you're, it's just about being top of mind. It's that simple. We don't have to even turn this into something, it's not. It's same thing that we talked about with Sydney Sweeney. What is she doing for these brands is she is making all of them top of mind, because she is top of mind Totally.
Repetition & Standing Out
Speaker 2That was going to be my third thing. That was going to be my third thing is, like, I think the other thing that's helped that's hurting brands. So, if you look at 2021 versus 2025, one huge factor that we haven't discussed but we talk about all the time on the podcast is that it's never been easier to start a business. So in 2021, you had sure you had competition, but competition, but your everyone's competition has grown 10x. I think you go back to 2018, but yeah, totally, yeah, right, everyone's competition grows every single year, and which goes back to the top of mind. So, like, everybody's got an idea, how did american eagle become top of mind? They did something different and they were top of mind, right, right. So not only did they take cindweeney, who was top of mind, but they took a controversial topic. That just differentiated them from other people as well, well, it wasn't even.
Speaker 2Well.
Speaker 1It turned controversial Totally. It would have been viral no matter what, because it's.
Speaker 2Sidney Sweeney. Again, we're talking about yes.
Speaker 1She's a voluptuous.
Speaker 2They just did something different, right? They were showing her off and she likes to show off, so brands that are doing things in a different way is also a very big win when it comes to standing out. You just have to do things different.
Speaker 1Yes and be top of mind. And top of mind is repetition. Yeah, right, like how many times?
Speaker 2One of the ways to be top of mind is repetition right.
Speaker 1In fact, I would say that's the most scientific way of standing out is repetition. If you see something multiple times, you're psychologically, scientifically, it starts being associated in that person's mind as truth.
Speaker 2For sure.
Speaker 1However, you want to define that word truth in that person's mind as truth For sure. However, you want to define that word truth. So the best way to stand out yes is oh, I saw that red beamer. Oh, I saw that red beamer. Oh, I saw that red beamer, yeah, yeah. Why am I seeing red BMWs? Have you ever gone through a day and you start noticing something pop up five different times Totally?
Speaker 2Oh, now I'm thinking about like, yeah, tesla did this really good. Right. Like Tesla went from like only the rich and famous oh, that's a cool car. That's a cool car. And now it's such a common car because it was just everywhere, so people started to believe like, oh, this is a good car, this is something I need, this oh, it's reliable.
Speaker 1Like I'm going to the, I'm going to invest my money into it because I'm going to, I'm going to invest my money into it.
Speaker 2Because I'm going to save, I'm going to do-do-do yes.
Speaker 1In fact it's such a common car. The social factor here, right is like repetition, like you can cut through the repetition to truth with like social proof, right. So using other people's voices and having validation around it. But at the end of the day, the best way to repetition well, it is repetition, but it cuts through the, the idea that, like hey, I now trustworthiness.
Speaker 1I now believe that this is a trustworthy car, like Tesla, cause I've seen it so much, so it must be good if so many people are getting it totally like that happens over time. But you can cut through that with ads. But with the repetition part is, the more someone sees you, the more top of mind you are.
Speaker 2And this is why product seeding is also a really cool thing too.
Speaker 1Yes, I know a lot of people are kind of over it.
Speaker 2But it's like once again, like how did Comfort, the Swe sweatpants and sweater company, become a $300 million company? It's because every single person on Tik TOK.
Speaker 1Oh, it must be a good company.
Speaker 2I've never experienced sweatpants like them before. I must.
Speaker 1I must think you know. And so I think sometimes with marketing guys, I the lesson here, with cohorts and just staying top of mind and getting people to come back, is, I think we sometimes, as marketers and businesses, try to outthink. First, principles and the name of the game of marketing and it always has been and always will be is top of mind, and that involves repetition. So, yeah, yes, that that's part of the acquisition side, but then the retention side too. Like they bought your product, you are now top of mind. You now have an opportunity to not just be a product they bought and forgot about, but be a brand that is embedded into their lifestyle for sure, and oftentimes after selling them and they, they spent their. That's the most powerful vote in America, right? Is they spent money on your thing?
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1And now you're just going to like, let them hang out, like, oh, I don't want to talk to them, like, uh, totally, maybe they're busy. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Uh, we'll give them till next week. Yeah, it's like just, they don't have to open an email, guys. Yeah, you're not calling them, they don't have to open a text. 100% Follow up with them, be top of mind and then and offer them stuff. Yeah, offer them upsells.
Community Building as a Solution
Speaker 2Treat them like the people who just supported you. Yes, you know like. Treat them well. You know it's like there's not a single restaurant nowadays that you go to that doesn't have some sort of. Oh, you've shopped with us four times, you get a free drink in fact, there's a great example.
Speaker 1I want to bring this up. There's a good argument to be made that you should people always look at discounts as a way to get new customers. There's actually great evidence, depending on your brand, um that you should probably not ever give a new customer a discount totally but the deeper the discount the deeper the discount for new customers the worst type of customers they tend to be totally they're not going to come back very often.
Speaker 1They're not going to have high lifetime values. They're discount shoppers, yeah. And if you are a discount brand, whatever but most of you probably aren't yeah, but you're returning customers. You've already made an impression on them. Now you could get to make them feel special by curating an offer for them, totally. So, going back to what you said, like hey, I go to whatever I get a free drink after 10 times, yeah, oh, that makes me feel special, like I'm not really doing it to get that free drink, totally no, no no.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm not going to buy 10 drinks to get one drink Right.
Speaker 2But that's fun, but that is something that keeps me like that's a thought for sure. Yeah, you know, like if I'm listen, I have like Mark will laugh, but there's like you know five, you know maybe three or four restaurants we eat at and but there's one specific that I will always pick If no one has an opinion. Yeah, I'm always going to pick one restaurant and part of that is because of that. Like they just like one. I love the food and it's healthier.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2It's cleaner. But then it's like these guys are constantly giving me $10 off. Oh nice, yeah, you know, and it's like if I'm gonna pick the, if I like, four things the same, but these people treat me a little better. Who am I going with these people? Now? The office gets more sick of the food than I do, but it's a different story.
Speaker 1It's fine though. Yeah, it's good, yeah, but to wrap this up, the last thing that I think brands and this one's so hard, and we know it's hard and I'm sure a lot of you have tried this. But the community side right know it's hard and I'm sure a lot of you have tried this, but the community side right, there are Facebook groups that literally buoy brands through, oh my gosh the year, oh my especially the hard times and it's because it's direct and there's people engaged in the community.
Speaker 1And no, it's not. I don't know. People are gonna say it's not technically owned like an email or whatever, but it's. It's more of an owned audience and you're gonna get to them a lot sooner and a lot faster because of the notification within the groups. Uh, we see some brands tinkering around with like discords, so be thinking about your own media. I. If email isn't reaching people in the same way, is there a place that you can get your most loyal customers to make sure that they see your product and also use them as propulsion to reach other people?
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, I know you might think it's silly, like why would anybody want to create a community around?
Speaker 1Chapstick.
Speaker 2Yeah, but Burt's Bees had a oh yeah dude rabid base.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's just interesting.
Speaker 2Some people just like need to be attached to something and they're passionate about it and they become your most loyal, successful, highest revenue profitability generating people.
Speaker 1Yes, they do.
Speaker 2And I think a lot of people overlook the community, and we know it's hard, totally.
Speaker 1I'm sure a lot of people are rolling their eyes. Build a community, yeah, harder said than done. Or harder done than said, easier said than done. Easier said than done, yeah, but or harder done than said, easier said than done, easier said than done, yeah, oh, I'm dyslexic, um, but yes, do that.
Speaker 2Think about it yeah, and also remember just like I want to end on this note also a lot of changes you make in something that people don't like. Going back to email Sometimes, if you make changes on email and you stop the outreach I know email is oftentimes meant for retention, but there are a lot of people who subscribe who have never bought from you that your email impacts net new acquisition as well.
Speaker 2And impacts it way more than you would, so much more than you think we've run into a couple people this year who it has it tanked their overall acquisition, where their first order offer.
Speaker 1Email wasn't sending or yes they changed to pop up or totally there's little details that can impact your brand.
Speaker 2So remember, yeah, it impacts acquisition too. It's not just like paid ads that drive everything. Oftentimes paid ads might introduce, but the email might be the thing that converts.
Speaker 1So look at those metrics. There are great email people out there that do great work Totally. Check your metrics. Check your metrics, check your cohort, see what's going on, because a lot of you might be able to fix and be on the right path just from fixing that alone yeah.
Speaker 1Like you might be thinking about hey, my agency or hey, this guy or my marketing guy isn't doing a good job and unfortunately for them, or the marketing guy or your internal team, their performance is dictated oftentimes by this month zero month, one Totally Retention rate, and that might be down 30, 40, 50 percent remember we had a cody wittek on the podcast, yeah, a couple months ago, so he's been on the podcast a couple times.
The Value of Retention vs. Acquisition
Speaker 2He's also another agency owner. Yeah, we need to bring him back. It was such a good episode. Um, I like cody, but anyways, he said something on the podcast that I know we've said before, but he just came out and bluntly said it, which was like the lower my ROAS can be, the better the brand is. Right, everyone's wanting a high ROAS and he was saying this as like a. Well, if I'm you know competitor A and competitor B. If competitor A is focused on a three, ro B, if competitor a Is focused on a three row as and competitor B is Focused on a one, which one's gonna win, well, the one's always gonna. One's Gonna win, right, and so why Can competitor be? If it's same product, same AOV, why can competitor B be More focused on a one versus a three over here? It's because this person has Somebody who's coming back and buying more frequently or at least they understand there's an operational side to it.
Speaker 2Yeah yeah, but let's just, let's just take the the retention side into this, versus like they've got their opex dialed it's because they're they're focused on making profit on round two yeah, they understand how to get this person to come back x amount of times.
Speaker 2And so what? Because of that, they are able to scale so much more on the net new acquisition, which will then come back X amount of times. And so, because of that, they are able to scale so much more on the net new acquisition, which will then come back and help them win in the long run. You know what I mean. And so retention has the ability to chase almost a zero-sum game on the acquisition side. You know the race to the bottom, I guess I would say, and maybe not the zero-sum.
Speaker 1Well, a race to the bottom, not in the sense of the value of the product, but just a race where, like the lower you can go, Cost to acquire, doesn't? Yeah, and this is just how an auction works.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1If you can afford to pay more, and this is also marketing 101, if you can afford to pay more for a customer, you're often going to win Totally. Now, yes, that's a dangerous game. You can go out of business doing that. Yep, you don't have again the right retention and the right game plan. So we're not saying just go out there and lose a bunch of money on your first customer.
Speaker 2Yeah, you've got to understand your cash flow and your profitability and your products that are.
Speaker 1You have to be first time profitable, right 100. But yeah, lesson number one is if you're top of mind, you're gonna win, and being top of mind often means you're willing to pay more for a customer because you're gonna be top of mind pay more in time and money.
Final Thoughts & Key Takeaways
Speaker 1Yes, yeah, time meaning I'm sending eight emails out a week versus two now, once you acquire that customer with the retention rate going back to that, I just want to say stay top of mind. You were through top of mind. If you're top of mind enough to get them to buy, stay top of mind and see what happens. Don't settle with the fact that someone made a first purchase for sure, like that's when. That's when you should think the game actually starts. Totally, totally, like okay, now we have to lock in and make sure they buy again in the next, yeah, x amount of time, like that's the goal a thousand percent not the first time.
Speaker 1It's gonna come back again what is it?
Speaker 2I can't remember. It's like if you can increase your retention rate by like five percent, it increases your like revenue by 25, or something like it. There's these yeah, because you retention yeah yeah, yeah, like you could just do that alone and revenues increases by 25% because it starts compounding.
Speaker 1Yeah, with those cohorts, it might even be more than that. I can't remember what the numbers are, so yes, do that everybody if nothing else changes. Right like you already got these people in your freaking funnel what the numbers are. So, yes, do that everybody, if nothing else changes. Right Like you already got these people in your freaking funnel, they already bought.
Speaker 2Yeah, it doesn't cost you anymore.
Speaker 1Maybe a discount. It might cost you more, but it's worth it. It's going to cost you a lot less to get them to buy a second time. Yeah, and it's going to cost you to get someone to buy a first time?
Speaker 2Yeah, and it's going to cost you to get someone to buy a first time? Yeah, like four and a half times less or something Like. The numbers are weird.
Speaker 1They're crazy.
Speaker 2Way less Retention. Retention Focus on it more. I know acquisition is great, but also create better products too. I know we didn't really talk about that, but obviously better products than everyone else. Yeah, if your products suck, then sorry, your retention's going to suck too, so you got to have, yeah, baseline.
Speaker 2You have to have a good product Right. You can't have something crappy that's going to fall apart or break or be hard to use or whatever it might be. Okay, awesome, all right, everybody. Thank you so much and we will see you guys next week. Thank you so much for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer podcast. Please go rate and subscribe the podcast, whether it's good or bad. We want to hear from you, because we always want to make this podcast better. If you want to get in touch with me or give me any direct feedback, please go follow me and get in touch with me. I am at the Trevor Crump on both Instagram and TikTok. Thank you, and we will see you next week.