We hear it all the time: we don’t want a promotional strategy to hurt our brand.

And we hear that! What can be overlooked though is the math behind building a brand—meaning: a brand can only grow if Customers and Revenue grow.

So for us, it’s about balancing a promotional strategy that:

1. Improves the Cost to Acquire a New Customer

2. Sustains a predictable and profitable Repeat Rate

Because if both are true, your brand and product are resonating with your new and repeat customers AND will enable your brand to scale.

So! Here’s an example of how this is playing out for us right now with a new *subscription* client. Here are the onboarding notes:

Goal: Increase total monthly revenue 5x from current month in 6 months while remaining profitable on first order.

Sounds hard, yea? In some cases, yea. Sometimes it’s right there in front of you: put a promotional strategy in-market that accomplishes both.

Scenario: This new subscription client’s website had One Time Purchase pre-selected on the PDP and beneath a 15% off welcome offer to Subscribe. Their New Customer CAC was at the breakeven threshold.

Recommendation:

1. Increase subscription offer to 30% off → Gives us wiggle room to improve CTR/CPC in ads AND CVR on site. Increases the volume of Users in a New Customer cohort that are more likely to return.

2. Make subscription the default → Choice architecture is real.

So simple. Took less than 60 seconds to implement.

Results:

• Shifted New Customers from 70% One Time Purchasers to 70% Subscribers → Currently feel great about this split.

• 3X Spend WoW (!) and sustained at same breakeven CAC → This will keep going as we unlock creative wins.

• 3X Repeat Revenue in 1 Month → This will continue to compound and we will beat our goal by Month 3 instead of Month 6.

Takeaway: This brand will 6x in 3 months. That means it will reach more people and as long as they use the product, this brand will be in their life.

Here’s the math:

Nuance: There is not a once size fits all. We’ve done a ton of Promotional Strategy testing from Try Before You Buy (Upcoming Case Study!), 50% Off, Gift With Purchase, Welcome Kits, Recurring Discounts for Subscribers — you name it. And we’ve seen brands scale with no promotional offer. It’s about brand/product fit with an audience and how the mechanics of Acquisition and Retention enable that fit to grow.

Chatting about acquisition offers is one of our favorite things. Let’s get the conversation going at [email protected].