Awhile back the idea of “mobile-first” websites started to grow. It meant a change in how websites are build. Instead of building a website for a regular desktop user and then trying to shrink it all down to fit on a phone, developers would build the phone-sized system first and then scale it up for …
Tag: retention
The five core marketing metrics
I’m starting to unify much of my marketing around a set of core metrics. There are five general categories: Traffic Leads Conversions Retention Revenue I then adapted them for Repeat Customer Insights to fit its business model (subscription software as a service): Traffic became Total traffic Leads became App installs Conversions became Trial completions Retention …
Tracking retention for different types of Shopify stores
Yesterday I was going through the sales process for Repeat Customer Insights and assigning one metric to watch for each stage of the process. I’m doing this so I have a focus for optimizations. At a glance I can see where problems arise and the overall health. (I’m also using the Green/Yellow/Red light system which …
Even the best marketers forget about retention
Savvy marketers will calculate their Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) to make sure they are acquiring customers cheaply enough to turn a profit. Most of that goes towards upfront costs like advertising or paid deals, leaving very little to actually retain a customer. Which is silly because retaining the customer will boost how much they spend …
Send your customers a goodie package to boost customer retention
I had to upgrade one of my infrastructure services for Repeat Customer Insights. It out-grew the plan it was on. Instead of just locking me out or upgrading me automatically, their support reached out to me. We ended up having a conversation about trying to squeeze back into the old plan but I still couldn’t …
Plan to lose the majority of your traffic and customers in the long-term
I’ve planted a few hundred beans in the garden this year. Every time I plant beans, only about half of them survive past the baby stage. I’ve learned to expect to lose many of them to slugs, squirrels, and poor soil in general. I can do some things to minimize the losses but nothing works …
How marketing strategies mirror plant lifecycles
Last week I received a couple of perennial kale plants along with seeds to grow another couple hundred. Perennials are useful food plants. Since they can live for years they take more planning and patience than annuals (which will only live for a year-ish). You have to research what kind of environment it needs, how …
Too busy for customer retention
I heard from a Shopify store that they are too busy for customer retention because all their time is focused on customer acquisition. They didn’t realize that they were the ones creating the problem with their business. When you ignore customer retention, customers will leave. Some might stick around but those will be the minority. …
Is it cold in here?
It’s starting to get cooler here as we get into autumn. Cool, but not quite cold yet. You know, that borderline area where you might turn the heat on for a bit but it’s not quite needed all the time yet. This year we also replaced our central heat with per-room heaters. They’ll be more …

Remarketing strategies to acquire and retain new and repeat ecommerce customers
The hardest part of e-commerce sales is cutting through the information overload to get people to your store for the first time — or a repeat visit. Online and brick and mortar retailers often spend big money trying to get in front of the right people to land customers and sales. If a customer does …