When was the last time anyone questioned the financial outcomes of retention marketing activities?

Going by the logic:

Every action you take must have a future expectation of results...

Nothing should be left to best practices or "experience".

This is the baseline of all good marketing.

And no one should ever settle for less.

Yet this is pretty typical for many agencies...

Trust-me-I'm-an-expert "strategy".

Nurturing customers, meeting the customer where they're at in the journey, personalisation.

Makes sense in theory, but what’s the incremental lift?

Is it the most efficient use of your limited resources?

At the 7-figure mark, trying to break 8-figures, this is an ever more crucial time.

That's what CTC's Global Accelerator Program solves for.

1. Better alignment with traditionally siloed growth <> retention teams.
2. Better agility to support a very dynamic marketing calendar.
3. Better analysis of activities that impact your P&L.

Together with Growth Strategists, Retention Strategists make this work.

At CTC, we always sign our names on the bottom line.

Because we know that’s what it really means to win.

If this speaks to you, let's chat and see if we'll be a good fit for each other.

Josh Tay

How's your email forecast doing?

Question: do you even have an email forecast?

Sending a bunch of emails without an expectation of revenue is dumb.

All forecasts need to be set from top down.

Based on business goals.

Contribution Margin > New vs Returning Rev > Email Rev

Your email contribution must roll up into the big numbers that matter.

Then track the daily and MTD forecast vs actuals.

So you know if you're behind.

If you're behind, bridge the gap ahead of time.

Any email strategy not tied to daily, weekly, monthly goals is not a strategy.

It's probably fluff.

Director of Retention, Common Thread Collective | Building the world’s strongest retention program for 7 & 8 figure DTC brands

4 things you're missing when forecasting email/sms campaign revenue:

When forecasting, you should bias for recency.

But you must also consider seasonality.

Forgetting these will result in revenue expectations being wildly missed. 

That's why we have these built into Statlas:

- Event Effect
- Day Of the Week Effect
- Week Of the Month Effect
- Then a seasonality factor applied on top of it.

And each of these is applied onto our campaign types and subtypes, for us to anticipate revenue for each specific campaign.

Only with accurate revenue expectations can you execute reasonably.

We hold our team to a high standard.

That also means that you can take credit for success.

Because you did everything possible to meet the number you promised.

And no one can take it away from you.

Whoever's ready, step up and DM me your interest to join us at CTC.

When it comes to campaigns, there needs to be a level of offense.

Yes, list fatigue is real.

Yes, deliverability is important.

Yes, content diversification is necessary.

But what's important also is supporting other channels to ensure the business hits targets set.

For far too long, email marketers have been trying to "protect" their channel.

Not realising that the sole existence of these channels is...

To contribute to business growth.

If the mentality is always to hedge downside (and there's merit in that), other channels end up building around the constraints of your email program.

Which doesn't make sense.

All the mitigating factors should already be built into the bigger strategy.

Not about pushing back and saying "no we can't, because it will hurt the list".

But aligning at the beginning of every month on what is reasonable.

To hit channel targets.

So the business can still hit CM goals.

And if not possible, reallocate resources.

Then decide what the gameplan is and how else to support.

Your emails, SMS, direct mail, push notifications, these are levers.

As much as they're not meant to be drivers of growth, they're meant to contribute to growth.

Which means you need to have a clear expectation of financial outcomes.

After which, follow through and uphold the promise.

This might not be a philosophy that every email marketer believes in.

Few agencies are ever built for this model, and they'll fight the change.

But this is the reality of what makes a marketing unit work.

And why we're pushing so aggressively for this shift.

You can't just optimise for your channel.

It's the entire reason why Statlas is built with the ecommerce pyramid of success.

Where everything is viewed top down, not bottoms-up.

In the case of retention...

Every brand must demand their teams be held accountable to targets.

Otherwise that's not a marketing team, it's a very expensive production factory.

So what are you going to do?

Do what's necessary for growth, or live by the old siloed playbook?

With hundreds of active stores in Statlas, our team's got a good enough sample size to come up with benchmarks by business model.

Which we've distilled down into three main types:

1️⃣ Continuity
2️⃣ Cycle
3️⃣ Event

How we balance short term rev goals with long term LTV requirements is a completely mathetical approach.

1. Customer churn rate
- Active customer repeat rate vs Non-active customer repeat rate

2. Natural repurchasibility
- One-time order vs repeat order bias

3. First order value
- How much of your LTV does your FOV typically make up

This determines if you track 60-day or 180-day or 365-day repurchase rates.

Then there's a subset of levers within each of those sections.

All of this is built into our methodology.

Whether you're a 7-figure brand or 8-figure brand working with our retention team.

Data integrity + tech enablement + department alignment

Acquisition : Retention aligment is the only way.

New rev expectation vs prev month > Pre-purchase flows

Factor in proportion of new and returning visitors.

Returning rev expectations vs prev month > Post-purchase flows

All actualised every month.

Without insight into Growth Plan, how do you know where you're going to land?

Where you want to be ≠ Where you're likey to be

The execution of bridging actuals and projections, against targets is what determines success.

Every brand must hold their agency or email team accountable to revenue.

And that's why at CTC, we build in an element called Ad Hocs.

This is flex resourcing every month.

Behind on email/sms actuals relative to targets?

Deploy ad hocs to meet the plan.

Behind on returning revenue and need to maintain CM?

Growth team liases with retention team to deploy ad hocs to meet the goal.

The success of your business should not be held hostage by the internal constraints of the email agency you hired, or the reactiveness of your email person.

Your team should be tracking daily, weekly, MTD revenue contribution.

Then proactively anticipating shortfall.

If you have a big marketing moment next week that you anticipate can make up for the shortfall?

Cool.

Otherwise, deploy ad hocs.

This is the way.

You should never look at a snapshot of a single month to make any inference on the strength of your retention program.

This is where your Net Active Customer Report is essential.

General rule of thumb:
Net active customers > Churned = Customer file size growth

But these come with caveats.

Example 1:
Don’t just prematurely celebrate success just because you have positive growth.

If majority of net active customers is NEW customers, you have not done a good job at retention.


Example 2:
Just because you have increasing churn # doesn't mean you’re doing a bad job.

If new customers are flooding in, it’s also natural that there will be larger # of churned customers. So look at churned as a % of total active.


Example 3:
If you recently implemented proactive winback campaigns (not just a winback flow), and see increased reactivated customers, that’s a positive sign.

Your next step is to prevent people from even churning, which means targeting the At-Risk customer segment


Example 4:
If you have high Active New + High Churn, Net Active might look flat. 

But your real audience is volatile and retention is actually very weak. 

Then you combine this with your churn prediction by percentile

Then next it's taking context from your customer churn prediction.

Which is based off your product cycle.

---
Some of these reports and tech enablement tools make a world of difference in understanding next steps on execution.

And having all the NECESSARY actionable tools built into one central platform.

Every tool will have different calculations.

Making tech consolidation ever more important.

To have a single source of truth, all with similar parameters for a more accurate understanding of how you're trending.

More emails = More money

True to a certain extent, with a few caveats.

First thing to consider is the impact of volume per week/per month, for each major segment type you're sending to.

Repeat for email and for sms.

And measure it against:

- Positive metrics like click rates
- Negative metrics like unsubscribe rates
- Revenue based metrics like your RPR

If all else remains constant, history is likely to repeat itself.

Scatter plot analyses help a great deal here.

With a regression line to determine the correlation between X and Y axis.

Then look at concentration and location on the chart.

This is step 1 in balancing impressions from more campaigns and balancing deliverability.

In step 2, you start looking at trends over time.

- Impact during marketing moments
- Impact during evergreen periods

Step 3, do your forecast and determine if your account can stomach the volume.

If no, other channels have to pick up the slack.

This is why cohesion of departments is so important.

It's 2026.

No one's got time for siloed marketing.

As much as being behind on forecasts is bad, being too far ahead isn't good too.

Sure, more money is good.

Definitely better than no money.

But too much email rev right now could mean squeezing the sponge.

Where you bring forward revenue that should have been realised at a later month.

This could mean a negative impact on returning rev in the future.

When you're pacing too far ahead, pull back.

You need to be ruthless in staying close to the forecast.

Not beating it for a dopamine kick now.

Because it very well might kick you in the ass real hard later.

Trying to winback churned customers is hard.

Save rate is low. 

And expensive to reacquire.

You have to go upstream.

Look at your at-risk customers.

Go multi-channel if necessary to reach out to customers.

Email, sms, direct-mail, web push, mobile push etc.

Based on our data model, we get our inputs.

This feeds into our net active customer report.

After executing, you should be tracking the impact on your customer file.

That pulls into a customer segment tracker to show % of reactivated, % one-time customers, % two+ customers etc, tracked bi-weekly.

Then observe trend line over time to see the downstream effects.

Why has no one questioned the incrementality of email and sms?

Or any retention effort to begin with.

There's so much focus on meta, tiktok, snapchat, applovin incrementality.

How many have looked into the real contribution of retention activities?

5 day open and click on klaviyo. 

Everyone complains how it's inflated.

If that's true, how and why are you reporting on them?

Not all products have LTV baked into them.

For these brands, you can't have the same LTV growth rate expectation over the next 60-180 days.

One of our clients sells furniture.

People who buy, buy during a new home reno or refurbishment.

After that, there's no real need to buy again.

Trying to use emails to upsell would be a futile effort.

Even if you gave 80% off, there's just literally no reason to repurchase.

So you need to start looking at frontloading the LTV by increasing first order value instead.

There were many things we wanted to do, and will be testing.

- Quiz finder with product recommendations
- Interactive "room builder" with AR features
- Bundle tests
- Cart drawer upsells
- free gift with threshold + progress bars in cart drawer

In this case, we worked on post-purchase upsell funnels first.

It’s important that retention teams work with growth teams on this.

Because you can’t magically make LTV appear from thin air. 

Definitely not by sending a few emails

This is one of the beauties of having your teams synced.

People who are going to buy, are going to buy however they want to.

You can influence it to a certain extent.

But you don't control it as much as you think you can.

We see 3 product highlight campaigns.

Of which, you realise that the actions taken on your target product has a much lower response rate than you'd expect.

And we see this remain consistent across different product/collection focused campaigns.

This isn't just peculiar to this one brand.

It's across our entire portfolio of clients.

So there are three things you can do:


1️⃣ Only send to people who have shown interest before

Tactic: Hypersegment with tight product interest definitions

Pro: Max engagement, likely higher RPR

Con: Miss out on potential rev from other profiles


2️⃣ Send to people who have broad similar interests

Tactic: Engagement window-based collection interests, frequently purchased together

Pro: You get more impressions, high degree of insights from audience breakdown

Cons: Mid engagement


3️⃣ Continue sending to general engagement segments

Tactic: General engagement window, product interest segments added on

Pro: Max recipients, likely higher total campaign rev

Cons: Engagement lowest, likely lower RPR

*Note: You can choose to split further into prospects vs customers etc, but that's not the purpose of this post.
---

Here's how I think about it.

I'd be most hesitant to go with option 1.

While there is merit in content relevancy, we also lose out on opportunity from profiles who aren't "logically" in-market.

I usually go with option 2.

Email is very much also a top-of-mind game.

People will buy whenever they want to, just like how they will buy however they want to.

You have to balance resource efficiency with revenue generation.

And for most, you have limited bandwidth.

Unless you have capability to send 4 campaigns per day to micro segments, that is.

Otherwise, keep volume high (within reason), and just ship it.

Honestly, you don't need another email/sms audit done.

Neither do you need a design refresh because it's not meeting "best practices".

What you need are 3 things:

1. Alignment

Your channel goals must come from your CM and revenue targets.

Your retention team must know how you're pacing every day and week.

2. Accountability

Your team must set an expectation of future financial outcomes.

You must hold them accountable to the number. No excuses.

If they're unwilling to commit, that's not partnership.

3. Agility

Your team – growth, media buying, retention, all must be flexibile.

This comes also with alignment, but the ability to reallocate quickly and efficiently whenever you're too far ahead of behind.

All three are quantifiable.

And that's the fairest way to gauge performance.

No finger-pointing at other departments.

You just make it work.

Talking about strategy is one thing.

Ruthlessly executing so you achieve the modelled outcomes is another.

Reschedules and skips are your early warning signs of churn.

We find that a subscriber taking either of these actions, results in ~23% churn risk.

And when someone cancels, save rate is only 2-4%.

While winbacks make sense, it's often too late.

You should be going upstream too.

This combined with your existing MoM subscription retention drop-off...

Tell you that you need something bigger.

Bigger than just setting up more emails in a flow.

Backend subscription offers and "streaks" are the solution.

- deeper discount on big drop-off month(s)
- freebie on big drop-off month(s)
- stack offer with loyalty program to create "switching barrier"

Build them all into your:

- subscription confirmation emails, to pre-empting
- upcoming order emails, reminding of what's to come
- customer portal, gamified with progress bar

This is the same for subscription programs and membership programs.

Aggressively test your offers.

Offers impact your retention rates more than anything.

Test with front-end subscription offers too and do cohort analysis comparisons.

Most marketers don’t have a strategy problem.

They have an execution + accountability problem.

Everyone has “ideas.”
Everyone has “tests.”
Everyone has a “framework.”

But is this the best use of your limited resources right now?

That's why we have ADmission:

> Weekly coaching calls with the CTC team
> 100+ deep-dive training videos
> 50% off 1:1 consulting with specialists
> Discounts on Statlas + partner bonuses
> 30-day money-back guarantee

This is the closest thing to CTC-level support without paying the agency price tag.

BUT...

CTC is shutting down open enrollment on Jan 28.

After that, it’s invite-only.

If you join now, you lock in the lowest price it’s ever been:

$247/mo (down from $347/mo) — for life.

What you’re really buying isn’t “mOrE CoNtEnt.”

It’s access to the same operators and systems that power the agency.

That allow our growth, media buying, creator content, retention, search teams to win time and time again.

28 Jan.

Get in here:

Open article: ADmission Membership is Closing Soon! Secure Your Spot by bit.ly

ADmission Membership is Closing Soon! Secure Your Spot

Novelty is one of the biggest purchase drivers.

We're leveraging this with a few brands.

- Site takeover
- New popup design
- Email design update
- Reuse email heros as static ad creative
- Automated direct mail winbacks with seasonal designs

Within a year, you should have your 4 peaks.

But you should have mini-peaks within each month, if not season.

Founder - Customers Who Click | CRO for eCom brands - turning traffic into customers using "The U.A.M Method"

Most DTC brands want to scale their paid media. But few focus enough on converting that traffic.  

Customer acquisition costs are rising, and while brands invest heavily in driving traffic, too many are wasting thousands of dollars sending traffic to friction-heavy, confusing websites with poor user experiences.  

The brands that win are not just the ones with the best ads. 

They are the ones that ensure every click leads to a seamless, high-converting customer journey from the first visit through to repeat purchases.  

Yet, many brands still rely on best practices, gut instinct, or copying competitors instead of using real customer insights to optimise their websites and landing pages.  

This is where CRO comes in.  

Through data-driven research, behavioural psychology, and rigorous testing, we help brands remove friction, increase conversion rates, and maximise revenue from their paid traffic.  

Giving them room to scale comfortably, and profitably.

At Customers Who Click, we specialise in turning more visitors into buyers, helping ambitious e-commerce brands scale profitably and sustainably.  

We’ve helped businesses see real improvements, like:

🚀 MOD Lighting added $3,300,000 in additional annual revenue.
🚀 Ozarke saw an increase in Revenue Per User of 37.8%.
🚀 Groove increased conversion by 53% and AOV by 23% in 6 months.
🚀 D.Louise added $372,000 in revenue from their existing traffic.
🚀 neat. Doubled AOV and increased revenue by 102.3% with bespoke landing pages.

If you want to get the most from your paid media and scale efficiently, let’s talk.  

👉 Book a free conversion discovery session at www.customerswhoclick.com/apply

Or, if you’re not quite ready, follow along as I share practical tips and insights on optimising your website’s performance.

Will Laurenson

Most brands could add 10–15% revenue without a single new visitor.

Yet ecommerce teams still try to grow by pushing harder on traffic or conversion rate.

More ads. More tests. More pressure.

But one of the cleanest revenue levers is usually underused: AOV.

When AOV works, everything compounds:

- Paid media gets more efficient
- CRO wins get bigger
- Revenue grows without more traffic

The problem? Most AOV tactics are bolted on and feel salesy.

What actually works is relevance, timing, and low effort.

Here’s a practical AOV playbook we use with clients 👇

👉 Default to multi-unit packs if customers naturally buy more than one

👉 Build bundles that complete a job, not bundles you want to sell

👉 Add upgrades between PDP and cart that remove future problems

👉 Use cart upsells to nudge people over shipping or promo thresholds

👉 Keep checkout upsells simple, priority shipping, order protection, no thinking required

👉 Add post-purchase upsells, zero risk once the order is placed

👉 Follow up post-order with a plain text email offering to add relevant items to the same shipment

If an upsell makes someone stop and think, it’s already hurting conversion.

Good AOV doesn’t feel like selling more.

It feels like helping better.

We’ve got room for 2 brands to properly optimise AOV. Our average client sees a 12% lift within a couple of months.

If AOV is a concern for you, is it worth a conversation?

$50m+ Generated for DTC Brands With CRO | Host of Customers Who Click 🎙️ (500,000+ downloads)

Most comparison pages fail for one reason:

They try to do too much.

We rebuilt a comparison page for a mattress brand that was getting traffic, but generating almost zero revenue.

The page wasn’t “bad.”
It was just doing too much.

- Long
- Dense
- Pushing for a purchase too early
- Too focused on features instead of benefits

So we changed the goal.

Not more persuasion, better direction.

Here’s what we did instead:

– Stripped it back to a clean, collection-style layout
– Removed anything that didn’t help a next-step decision
– Repositioned the page as a gateway, not a checkout replacement

The result?

- The page now actively converts, and at a higher rate than any actual mattress page

- It’s the 4th highest-value page on the site by revenue per session (for pages above 1000 sessions)

- Clicks to product pages come with higher intent

Less content.
Clearer purpose.
Revenue followed.

P.S. If you’re not tracking revenue per session on comparison pages, you’re probably flying blind.

Shoutout to heatmap for helping with the analytics on this!

This funnel turned Trinny London into a $100M beauty empire…

and it’s sent my girlfriend’s skincare budget out of control.

She goes in for one product. Comes out with a cartful.

Their funnel?

A masterclass in persuasion.

It’s not just clever ads.

It’s a full system designed to make you feel like the products were made for you, and make sure you come back for more.

We broke it down into 4 core pillars:

1. Traffic & Ads
- UGC
- Static creatives
- Direct response angles

2. Conversion Flow
- Their unique quiz funnel
- Landing pages built for persuasion
- Sales copy that taps into identity & desire

3. AOV Boosters
- Smart bundles
- Urgency nudges
- Friction-free UX

4. Post-Click Tactics
- Cart psychology
- Checkout flow
- Seamless repeat purchase flow

They’re playing the long game:

→ Building trust
→ Hyper-personalisation
→ Cultivating loyalty

Nativ Yanko and I spent hours breaking down their entire funnel.

Click by click. Step by step.

Want the full teardown?

Drop FUNNEL in the comments + connect with me, and I’ll send you the full breakdown.

It’s packed with ideas you can swipe and test.

PS: If your skincare budget is safe, maybe don’t look, this funnel is dangerously persuasive. 😅

Most brands guess their free shipping threshold.

They pick £50 because…well, it sounds nice.

But that kind of guesswork usually kills your margins or tanks conversions.

Here’s a better way:

Start with your modal order value, not your average.

(Modal = the amount most customers actually spend.)

Then: Add 15–20%

That’s your free shipping threshold.

Why?

It nudges customers to spend just a bit more without feeling like a stretch.

Small increase in order size = big lift in total revenue.

But the threshold is only half the equation.

To make it work:

- Add a free shipping progress bar in the cart
- Offer upsells that are 15–20% of the product price
- Make sure those upsells are relevant to what’s already in the cart

That combo drives higher AOV, no heavy decisions, and a better customer experience.

P.S. Want me to review your cart and checkout UX?

Drop a quick comment below or DM me

Most A/B tests don’t fail in the tool.

They fail before they start.

Because the idea was weak.

Testing doesn’t create insight, it magnifies it.

If your hypothesis is vague, the test just proves that faster.

“Let’s try a bigger CTA”
“What if we move the USPs higher?”

Those aren’t hypotheses. They’re opinions.

A real hypothesis answers three things:

1. What user problem are we solving?
2. Why should this change fix it?
3. What measurable outcome would prove it worked?

Example:

"We believe users bounce because they don’t understand the value fast enough. If we replace the generic hero with a benefits-led headline, we expect ATC to increase 5%.”

Now the test teaches you something - win or lose.

Bad tests don’t just waste time, they mislead teams, kill trust, and stall growth.

So before you test anything, ask:

👉 What’s the actual problem here?

Because most tests don’t fail in the experiment.

They fail in the thinking.

- - - 

Enjoyed this post? Join 5,000+ DTC marketers who receive our weekly newsletter. Link in the comments

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Incredibly proud of the team for the amazing work they did on these new landing pages.

We’ve just wrapped a set of paid-traffic landing pages for Raw Generation.

The goal wasn’t just to “make it look better.”

It was to rebuild the page around:

- What customers actually cared about
- What they were unsure or anxious about
- What outcome they were really buying into

What changed

- Redesigned the page around top Voice-of-Customer themes
- Clarified the value proposition immediately above the fold
- Simplified the product education flow (less effort, fewer decisions)
- Directly addressed common anxieties around the products
- Anchored messaging to the results customers wanted, not features

No gimmicks.
No “conversion hacks.”

Just small structural changes, clearer messaging, and better alignment with intent.

Pretty ≠ profitable.

Clarity usually wins.

P.S. I’ll drop a few more landing page examples in the comments 👇

- - - 

Follow me Will Laurenson for daily CRO tips - or join our newsletter to receive CRO deep dives, actionable tips & test examples each week - link in the comments.

Most brands start the year by tweaking ads.

Smart brands fix their conversion rates.

Here’s why...

A 10% boost in ad performance? 
Nice, you’ll see a few more customers from that campaign.

A 10% boost in conversion rate? 
Now you’re seeing more customers from every campaign, every channel.

Layer on a 10% improvement in AOV and you’ve got scalable growth.

This is where the best brands focus in 2026.

They’re not just obsessed with acquisition.

They’re obsessed with revenue.

And that starts after the click.

More AOV. More LTV. More growth.

Let’s make it a year of smarter scaling.

Most brands don’t have a growth problem.

They have an efficiency problem.

I sat down with Pete Stirling, CEO & co-founder of Skout's Honor® , and we went way deeper than I expected into what actually drives growth when you’re building a science-backed consumer brand.

Skout's Honor operates in a heavily regulated category, but what fascinated me wasn’t just the product science, it was how obsessive Pete is about efficiency. 

Not “cut costs” efficiency. 
Decision-making efficiency. 
Focus efficiency. 
Signal-over-noise efficiency.

A few things we unpacked:

- Why most brands drown in data but still can’t tell what’s working

- How they connect Amazon, paid media, retail, and content into one mixed media view (without overcomplicating it)

-What social listening really looks like when you care about sentiment, not vanity metrics

- Why influencer size matters less than timing, relevance, and credibility

And a line I loved: "products need to ship at 100%, tools can live at 90%"

We also talked about educating customers without over-educating them, especially when you’re dealing with things like the topical microbiome. 

The takeaway? 

Outcomes beat jargon. Every time.

If you’re building a DTC or omnichannel brand, anything in a regulated or trust-sensitive category, or you’re feeling the pain of tool overload and “shiny object syndrome”

…this conversation will give you a lot to think about.

I took pages of notes from this one.

👉 Give it a listen and let me know what lands for you most - link in the comments

P.S. I’d love to hear if you’re in the “do fewer things better” camp, or still wrestling with it.

Let's be honest, January sucks - especially in the UK. 

It's dark, grey, cold and wet 99% of the time, and it's draining...

I didn't realise just how much the start of the year drains me.

Q4 is full of energy, it's exciting, everything is moving fast and we've got the holidays to finish it off with.

and then January often feels like back to BAU.

But it's the remote aspect that I think can be most difficult.

It just slowly drains the edge.

- No real-time feedback.
- No offhand comments that spark better ideas.
- No one pushing back on your thinking.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve deliberately changed that.

- A few coffees.
- A handful of proper calls.
- A couple of in-person conversations with people who excite me.

The change I've noticed is fantastic.

- More energy.
- Clearer thinking.
- Better decisions about where to focus, and crucially, what to ignore.

Not because the advice was revolutionary.

But because these conversations have given me the chance to think properly, and get another opinion on things.

So if you’re feeling flat, stuck, or oddly unmotivated, don’t default to “work harder.”

Get out there and speak to people.

Book the coffee.
Take the call.
Go to the event you’ve been putting off.

Even if you’re an introvert. (I am too.)

How are you powering through the January blues? 

and god help anyone who says move to Dubai...

Most brands think CRO is about increasing conversion rate. It’s not.

It’s about increasing revenue.

Sometimes that means improving conversion rate.

But other times, it means reducing it slightly to increase AOV or LTV.

Sure for some businesses like subscriptions there will be a strong focus on conversion, and customer acquisition.

While for one time purchase brands there'll be a stronger emphasis on AOV and maximising that first purchase revenue.

But for the majority of brands out there, finding that balance is key.

Where can you find the highest conversion rate, that also drives the highest AOV, while also acquiring you long term customers who don't return their products.

Because it's not just about the first purchase either.

If you get loads of new customers to spend loads of money but they all return their products - you're worse off.

If you get loads of new customers who buy once and never come back - you're worse off.

and that’s the shift most teams (including agencies) miss.

They chase higher % rates on individual metrics, while losing sight of what really matters.

Because the real win isn’t a prettier dashboard, it’s more profitable customers.

That’s Customer Revenue Optimisation.

The reason most testing programs don’t show ROI isn’t because testing doesn’t work.

It’s because they’re testing low-impact changes.

Tiny tweaks.
Micro-optimisations.
Insignificant differences.

and tests that just aren't based on any research.

Things like:

 – CTA copy
 – Button colours
 – Minor spacing changes

Here’s the problem:

Small changes require more data and deliver less learning.

They’re narrow in scope, they answer small questions, and even when they “win”, the impact is forgettable.

High-impact testing looks different.

It asks bigger questions of users:

– What happens if we add or remove this step?
– What if we change the structure of the page?
– What if we redesign the flow entirely?
– What if we remove friction instead of polishing it?

That’s where insight comes from, and that’s where your ROI comes from.

If your tests are asking:

“How do users react if we change this text…”

Don’t be surprised when the result doesn’t move the business.

Big changes create learning.

Learning creates leverage.

P.S. If your testing roadmap feels “safe”, it’s probably underpowered.

Site search users convert up to 8x higher than non-search users.

Which means if your site search is bad, you’re not “missing opportunities”, you’re actively losing money.

Search users aren’t just browsing, they’re telling you exactly what they want.

And most brands still treat search as a checkbox item during site build.

That’s a mistake.

Here’s a simple checklist to turn site search into a revenue driver:

1️⃣ Make search impossible to miss

– Prominent in the header (centre or right)
– Magnifying glass icon
– Example queries inside the field (not empty placeholders)

If users can’t find search instantly, they won’t use it.

2️⃣ Reduce effort before they finish typing

– Auto-suggest + auto-complete
– Suggestions include categories AND products
– Clicking the search box shows:
   – Recent searches
   – Common searches

Don’t make users think. Show them paths.

3️⃣ Handle real human behaviour

– Supports typos and synonyms
– Search box wide enough for real queries
– Hitting “enter” always returns results

People don’t search like marketers. Your search engine should know that.

4️⃣ Make the results page do actual work

– Clearly shows what was searched
– Easy to edit and re-submit the query
– Results are clear, useful, and ranked by relevance
– Common searches return curated results
– No-results pages guide users forward (categories, bestsellers, help)

A dead-end results page kills high intent.

5️⃣ Treat search like a product, not a feature

– Optimise it
– Curate it
– Review search terms regularly

Search is one of the highest-intent moments on your site.

Ignoring it is choosing to leak revenue.

P.S. If you want help auditing or upgrading your site search, DM me “SEARCH” and I’ll tell you exactly where the money’s being left on the table.

- - - 

If you enjoyed this post follow me Will Laurenson for more CRO tips or grab our CRO checklist in the comments

Amazing opportunity with a really awesome UK brand here!

Ads get clicks.

Websites get judged.

Revenue happens after the click, but most people still treat CRO like:

button tests
random experiments
a “nice to have” once ads are scaled

That’s the old CRO.

It’s outdated.

CRO 2.0 is Customer Revenue Optimisation.

Not “how do we increase conversion %?”

But: “How do we increase the value of every visitor to the site?”

Look at the maths

If you’re spending $100k/month and converting at 2%, that might feel fine, but that $100k gets you less and less every month.

At 3%, you just unlocked 50% more customers without spending a single $ more on ads.

Same traffic.
Same ads.
Different outcome.

That doesn't even account for what we can do with AOV.

Few brands have a problem with traffic.

It's the post-click where performance is letting the team down.

High-performing sites don’t just convert.

They re-hook.

Re-hook attention - Message match. Immediate clarity. No guessing why you’re here.

Re-hook interest - Clear outcomes, real proof, objections handled before they form.

Re-hook action - Remove friction. Reduce effort. Make the decision easy.

That’s CRO 2.0.

Ads buy attention.

Your website decides what that attention is worth.

If you’re scaling paid and growth feels harder than it should, that’s where to look.

P.S. If your website had double the traffic tomorrow, would revenue scale cleanly with it?

Be honest.

PSA – if an app promises a huge uplift and claims you won't need to do anything except plug and play...

Run away.

Here’s why that’s a red flag:

1. Nothing is truly plug and play.

Every app needs time, setup, and a strategy. If you don’t invest that, it won’t deliver anything meaningful.

2. You’ll burn hours on tools that don’t move the needle.

Endless demos. Unused trials. Back-and-forth emails. All for features that never get implemented, or used at 10% of their potential.

We audit multiple brands a week and there’s always an app graveyard:

- Tools installed but never trialled.
- Tools trialled but ditched.
- Tools kept but barely used.

It adds bloat to your site. Slows your team down. And delivers zero value.

Here’s what we ask clients to do before installing anything:

- What problem are you solving?
- What’s your hypothesis for this tool?
- How will you measure success?
- Will it impact revenue in 30 days?

Take 5 minutes to think.

Instead of wasting 5 hours.

One 10-person dinner taught them more than months of research.

That’s one of the moments that really stuck with me from this week’s podcast conversation with Thea Mathias.

Thea leads international growth at Our Place, and what I loved about this chat is how grounded it was in real experiences, not dashboards, not frameworks, not “best practice”.

We talked about:

- Why cooking is inherently cultural. and why you can’t just copy-paste a launch playbook from one country to another

- How a single dinner with customers revealed insights no survey ever could

- How to talk about non-toxic cookware without leaning into fear-based marketing

- And the unglamorous work of building trust, market by market

There’s also a great section on partnerships and credibility, including why working with people like Kenji Lopez-Alt sends a much stronger signal than chasing mega influencers.

If you’re building a brand, scaling internationally, or trying to stay human as you grow, this episode is full of practical, thoughtful insight.

🎧 Give it a listen here: https://lnkd.in/eh-m4d4f

Not my first choice questions for post purchase 🤔

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