Rebuilding a D2C revenue engine around retention
A premium skincare brand stuck at flat revenue despite rising ad spend. We rebuilt their email programme, restructured paid media around profit, and lifted repeat purchase rate — growing revenue 84% in nine months.
Aurelia had built a loved product line but hit a growth ceiling: every additional pound of ad spend returned less, and 78% of customers never ordered a second time. Email was a monthly newsletter sent to the whole list; there were no automated journeys at all.
Leadership was considering cutting marketing spend entirely. The real problem wasn't the traffic — it was everything that happened after the first purchase.
The approach
Retention audit and flow architecture
We mapped the full customer journey and designed eleven automated flows — welcome, abandonment, post-purchase education, replenishment timed to product usage cycles, and win-back.
Paid media restructure
Campaigns were rebuilt around new-customer acquisition efficiency rather than blended ROAS, with creative testing cycles feeding winning angles from organic social.
Conversion optimisation
A/B tests on product pages and checkout — bundles, social proof placement, and shipping threshold messaging — lifted revenue per session 19%.
Within nine months, automated flows and campaigns grew from under 5% to 38% of total revenue. Repeat purchase rate rose from 22% to 29%, fundamentally changing unit economics: the brand could now pay more to acquire a customer than any competitor and still profit.
With retention economics fixed, paid spend scaled 60% while efficiency improved — and the founder stopped thinking about cutting marketing.
“They fixed the part of our business we didn't know was broken. The email programme alone paid for the entire engagement many times over.”
Elena Vasquez
Founder, Aurelia Skincare
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