Marketing is about customers, not channels.
Channels are just a medium to reach your customers.
They carry the message to your customers.
But at the end of the day, you are marketing your products to customers, not to channels.
Still, most brands plan their marketing strategy by channels.
Not by customers.
That creates some fundamental issues –
Wrong budget allocation
Spending too much on acquisition and too little on acquisition.
Relying heavily on existing customers and not doing enough acquisition.
Wrong messaging along the customer journey.
Not able to promote products effectively as different products would serve best during different stages.
Also, all customers are not created equal.
Not taking care of their VIPs effectively. Treating them like everyone else.
You can solve this by looking at 2 main customer buckets –
New Customers Vs Existing Customers
You can further break them up by
- New customers by organic (or cheap acquisition)
- New customers by paid
- Existing customers (recent)
- Existing customers (VIPs)
- Existing customers (lapsed)
To align marketing along customer you need to
- Monitor revenue per customer bucket
- Marketing budget per customer
- Product performance for each customer buckets
- Communication strategy for each customer bucket
With multiple agencies handling different pieces of the puzzle, it’s the CMO’s role to stitch everything together.
Most brands struggle to stitch consistent customer journeys along multiple channels.
But to scale it’s really important to have your marketing customer-centric, not channel-centric.
One email a week on subscription retention: the numbers, the strategy, and what to fix first.
Rahi Jain
Rahi Jain is a subscription LTV specialist who helps DTC brands maximize their LTV from subscriptions.
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