I’m going to keep this simple.
We send ~10,000,000 emails every month across our clients. We work with some of the most exciting brands in the space, including Fazit, LinkSoul, Optimize Minerals, Heirloom Coffee and we audit dozens more on an annual basis.
And across the board, they all use:
Same platforms and the same tools.
Yet some brands print money… and others barely move the needle.
So what actually separates them?
After watching this play out across dozens of brands, it comes down to three things.
1. Winning Brands Are Obsessed With Customer Acquisition
Not interested in it.
Not “working on it.”
Obsessed.
The best brands treat acquisition like a sport.
They’re constantly asking:
How do we get more attention?
How do we stand out in a sea of sameness?
How do we make someone stop scrolling?
And then they actually do something about it.
What this looks like in the real world:
High volume of creative (not 3 ads… think 100+ per week)
Constant testing across hooks, formats, and angles
Collaborations with creators and other brands
Leaning into weird, bold, and sometimes uncomfortable ideas
this is most winning brands' number one skill
They don’t wait for perfect.
They ship, learn, and iterate.
Meanwhile…
Losing brands:
Drip out a few generic creatives each month
Copy competitors instead of leading
Play it safe (and invisible)
Here’s the truth most people don’t want to hear:
You cannot out-retain bad acquisition.
If the front end is weak, everything downstream suffers.
2. Winning Brands Are Ruthless About Cohorts
This is where things really separate.
Winning brands don’t just celebrate a first purchase.
They immediately ask:
“How do we get the second?”
Because they understand something critical:
The second purchase is where the real business begins.
What winning brands do differently:
They track cohorts weekly
They know exactly what % of customers come back for purchase #2
They analyze time between orders
They build strategies specifically to shorten that gap
They’re constantly testing:
Post-purchase flows
Offers + incentives for repeat buyers
Product recommendations based on behavior
key timing for upsell moments post-purchase
Action item for you: go to Shopify, open the little AI agent in the top right, and ask, "What is the average time between a customer's first and second purchase?"
then ask your team:
Does this average time between 1st and 2nd correlate to all of our retention efforts? What changes should we make based on this finding?
Retention isn’t a channel to them.
It’s a system.
Losing brands:
Focus almost entirely on acquisition
Assume email/SMS will “just handle retention”
Don’t deeply analyze customer behavior after purchase
They look at top-line revenue…
But ignore the engine driving it.
3. The Hard Truth: Your Product Matters More Than You Think
This one stings a bit.
But it’s real.
Some products are naturally built for repeat purchases.
Others… aren’t.
Example:
If you’re selling:
Daily supplements
Skincare
Pet food
You’re in a consumption-driven category.
People need to come back.
Retention is baked into the product.
If you’re selling:
Hoodies
Furniture
One-off products
You’re in a consideration-driven category.
People don’t need 10 hoodies a year.
So retention becomes harder by default.
This doesn’t mean you’re screwed.
It just means you need to be smarter.
Winning brands in low-frequency categories:
Expand product lines intentionally
Build ecosystems (bundles, collections, drops)
Create reasons to come back beyond the original product
just look at what Cut's Clothing does with their Friday projects, it's a brilliant example of testing into new categories every Friday to encourage repeat purchase rates
They manufacture repeat behavior.
Losing brands?
They just hope it happens.
The Big Takeaway
If you zoom out, the best brands do three things incredibly well:
They win attention (acquisition)
They maximize value (cohorts + repeat purchases)
They align their product with behavior (or adapt when it doesn’t)
Most brands only focus on #1.
The elite brands master all three.
If I Were Starting Today…
I’d ask myself three questions:
Are we producing enough creative to actually win attention?
Do we know our second purchase rate cold?
Does our product naturally drive repeat purchases… and if not, what’s our plan?
If you can answer those honestly, you’ll know exactly where you stand.
Because at the end of the day…
It’s not about sending more emails.
It’s about building a business people come back to.
Again.
And again.
