“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t spend anything on past customers,” Kramer stressed. “For us, email and SMS are how we want to drive that repeat customer revenue. It’s just very cost efficient.”
Some brands face a different calculation entirely. Ameetess Dira, CMO of Petzey Pet Telehealth, said her focus is less on acquiring new customers—whose need for the service is often out of their control—than on keeping them long term.
“We want to focus on lifetime value: educating the consumers, educating ecosystems that we already support,” Dira explained. “It’s not just for emergencies; it’s not just for triaging.”
Trusting your gut
As the consumer journey fragments across more channels, marketers have to experiment with different messaging and targeting strategies to drive incremental reach. The more they know their customers—who spends more during the holidays, who tends to stock up on their favorite products—the more impactful their marketing spend will be.
“I’m a very big proponent of understanding consumer behaviors based on your omni touchpoints,” said Marisa Smith, head of growth at Blue Bottle Coffee. “That helps dictate the strategy.”
Pradhan drew a careful distinction between a customer’s lifetime value and their incrementality. A repeat customer isn’t necessarily a sign of effective marketing; it could simply reflect more effective measurement of customers who would have purchased anyway, whether you targeted them or not. “I think holdouts are the main way I would assess whether you’re getting someone who you truly wouldn’t have gotten at a platform level,” he said.
For Kramer, the important metrics to watch are first-click attribution, new visitors versus returning traffic, and overall sales. He may not always be able to tell which channels yield exactly which results, but that’s where instinct comes in.
“Sometimes you just got to have these gut feelings,” Kramer said. “It’s like, all right, one plus one equals two. Let’s keep scaling.” He also uses Shopify Audiences to exclude high-intent users, trusting that Naked & Thriving can convert them in more cost-efficient ways.
