You Don’t Need Better Products… You Need Better LTV (Ecom Deep Dive)

How Top Brands Approach Customer Lifetime Value

A lot of e-commerce brands have incredible products, but no matter how much they spend on marketing, they struggle to grow because they can't get enough customers to come back and buy again and again.

On the other hand, you have some of the top ecom brands in the world who might not have much better products than the rest of the market. Yet they've found a way to grow into 8-plus- and 9-plus-figure businesses. They did this by turning a single purchase into years and years of repeat revenue.

What exactly are these brands doing differently? And how much of their success actually comes down to the way they approach customer lifetime value?

We did deep research into 50 of the most successful e-commerce brands in the world. In this video, I'm going to break down the eight that really stood out, what they're doing differently to increase customer lifetime value, and the strategies you can take from them to get your own customers buying more often, spending more, and ultimately sticking around longer.

Honestly, what we found was pretty interesting because some of their most important retention strategies had almost nothing to do with email marketing at all.

If you don't know who I am, my name is Nick. I'm the founder of Barbs Media, and we've helped e-commerce brands generate over $60 million in email-attributed revenue through email and SMS. But for this video specifically, I wanted to look beyond email marketing and find out what these brands are doing to get customers to buy more often and stick around longer.

I'm going to break down six of the biggest findings, how retail and subscription brands do things differently, and what you can take from them to grow your own business.

1. The First Purchase Can Tell You More Than You Think

The first thing I noticed when researching these brands was how much attention they put into getting that first purchase right.

It's really easy to think of acquisition and retention as two completely separate things. But the product someone buys, the offer they receive, and their first experience with your brand are going to have a huge impact on their lifetime value. They're all connected.

Magic Mind is a great example of this. I actually have the product with me right here at home. Before I get into the product, though, if you visit their website, the first thing you're going to notice is how aggressively they push subscriptions, offering up to 60% off compared to one-time purchases.

They make subscribing feel like the obvious choice, like it would be stupid if you didn't choose it, which naturally is exactly what I did, too. This is smart because instead of convincing someone to come back for a second purchase, they're getting customers to sign up for recurring deliveries right from the get-go.

After placing my order for this subscription, I received the product, and honestly, the first thing I noticed was how clean, simple, and easy to digest the packaging was. As you can see right here, it's really clear what this is. It has benefits on every corner. It's really clear what's inside it, too. You open it up, and even the bottles themselves are really interesting to look at. They taste pretty good, too, despite some of the reviews.

This is not an ad for Magic Mind. I have absolutely no affiliation with them. I just really like their product, and I was really impressed with the experience I got from them. Ultimately, that's going to make a huge difference to anybody buying your products. It's the small details that are going to make the biggest impact, like packaging, like knowing what's going inside your body for supplement brands.

Ultimately, though, what makes the difference here, for Magic Mind at least, is that they are super relentless about getting that first order. Between the introductory discounts, subscription offers, and marketing, they're putting in a ton of effort into getting people to try the product. Which makes sense, because if somebody enjoys it and makes it part of their daily routine, that first purchase can turn into months or even years of recurring revenue.

But there's an important lesson here: not every first-time customer is equally valuable. Offering huge discounts all the time is not going to guarantee they're actually going to stick around, which is something I'm sure Magic Mind has figured out.

Before you start aggressively discounting your products to acquire customers, first figure out which ones actually lead to the most repeat purchases. Your bestsellers are a good place to start, but ideally, you want to focus on products that are going to bring in the most valuable long-term customers as well.

2. Customer Retention Starts With the Product Experience

Like I was just talking about with Magic Mind, one of the biggest similarities I noticed between these top brands is how much attention they put into making their products easy to use consistently.

Gruns is another great example. Instead of selling a traditional greens powder that customers need to scoop, mix, and drink every morning, they've packaged their product into individual gummy packs. They're easy to carry around, require absolutely no preparation, and fit into someone's existing routine.

I'm not saying gummies are necessarily a better product, but from a retention perspective, I think it's interesting because when you're selling something that customers are supposed to use every day, you're going to want to eliminate as much friction as possible.

If someone finds your product inconvenient, forgets how to use it, or struggles at all to incorporate it, there's a good chance you're not going to see them come back to purchase it.

On the other side of that token, you have brands like AG1, and they have a slightly different approach. When you subscribe to AG1, your first order includes a welcome kit with a shaker, canister, and some samples. I actually think that's a smart way to approach that first purchase because they're giving customers everything they need to get started.

Both brands are trying to make their products as convenient as possible, which is particularly important for businesses relying on subscriptions.

Obviously, we don't have access to their internal retention data, so we can't say exactly how much these decisions improve LTV. But the lesson here is that customer retention isn't exclusively a marketing problem. Sometimes improving things like your packaging, product experience, or onboarding is going to do a lot more for repeat purchasing than another email or discount.

3. Giving Customers More Reasons to Buy

This is where I want to make an important distinction between traditional retail brands and subscription businesses.

For a subscription brand, the next purchase is almost always scheduled. The challenge is keeping customers happy enough just to continue. However, for a traditional retail business like an apparel brand, you're going to need to give customers a reason to come back and make another purchase.

Let's look at a brand like Quint. Quint is interesting because of how many different product categories they sell. Someone might discover the brand through a $50 cashmere sweater, but once they're familiar with Quint, they can also purchase bedding, luggage, jewelry, and plenty of other products.

What this does is create an opportunity to increase customer lifetime value without necessarily getting someone to purchase the same product more frequently. Instead, you're introducing them to other products that fit their needs.

This is something all apparel brands should pay a lot more attention to. If someone purchases one of your products and has a great experience, what else could you offer them that would actually be relevant? You don't need to launch an entirely new product category, but you should understand what customers are likely to need after their initial purchase.

Now, let's look at another brand here, SKIMS. SKIMS takes a slightly different approach. Their loyalty program offers customer benefits like early access to new products, priority restock notifications, free returns for eligible US customers, and additional perks as they qualify for higher tiers.

But what's interesting is that they're not exclusively rewarding customers with discounts. They're giving people reasons to continue shopping with SKIMS by making the experience more convenient and giving loyal customers access to benefits they wouldn't otherwise receive.

That's the important lesson. Customer loyalty doesn't always need to come from offering a lower price, which is something that almost every apparel brand in the market is doing right now.

Creating More Relevant Opportunities to Buy Again

Sometimes it's about making the customer feel valued, improving the shopping experience, or simply giving them access to something they genuinely want. For retail brands, the goal should be to create more relevant opportunities for customers to buy again, rather than just relying on discounts to bring them back.

As you're listening to these examples, you might already be thinking about a few things your own brand could improve on. But the harder part is figuring out which opportunities are actually worth pursuing, and that's exactly why we built the retention gap calculator.

If you're interested, all you have to do is answer a series of questions about your business, your customers, and your current retention strategy. It's going to estimate how much additional revenue you could potentially be generating, along with recommendations on where to focus. It's completely free. It takes about 10 minutes or so to complete. You can find it in the description below.

Number Four: Subscription Brands Are Obsessed with Reducing Churn

I think this was an obvious one, but for subscription brands, the strategy is a little different. Instead of convincing customers to make another purchase, the goal is to keep them subscribed for as long as possible.

Here's where the top brands differ: it's the way they keep them subscribed.

AG1 has an interesting approach to this. You can see on their website, customers can purchase once for $99, subscribe monthly for $20 off that, or commit to 90 days for $69 per month, which is $30 less. The longer you commit, the more you save.

This encourages customers to subscribe, increases the amount they spend up front, and gives them more time to build a habit before their next payment. Of course, that doesn't guarantee they'll stick around, but it's an interesting way to structure a subscription.

Another thing I noticed was how much flexibility these brands offer. Take Lollipop, for example. Customers can change flavors, skip deliveries, or even manage their subscriptions through text messages.

This is important because sometimes customers aren't canceling because they dislike your product. It's possible they have too much of it, want to try something different, or just don't want another delivery yet. Giving your customers that type of flexibility is going to keep them around longer without constantly offering discounts.

Here's what I'd recommend for subscription brands in general: pay close attention to when your customers cancel, how often they skip deliveries, and which subscription options keep people around the longest. Because even a small reduction in churn can make a massive difference in your customer lifetime value over time.

Number Five: Understand Your Customers Beyond Your Website

One of the most unique strategies I came across was actually from Lollipop as well. They have a loyalty program that allows customers to earn rewards by uploading receipts from purchases made at physical retail stores. I think this is super cool.

When you think about their business model, it makes a lot of sense as well, because it sells products through its own website, but it's even bigger across retailers across the country.

Imagine a customer discovers Lollipop online, makes their first purchase, and then starts buying it every week at their local grocery store. From the perspective of the e-commerce website, the customer might appear to have stopped purchasing. But in reality, that's still a valuable customer who regularly buys their product. They're just doing it offline.

By incentivizing customers to upload their receipts, it's creating an opportunity to maintain a direct relationship with those offline customers, even when they're purchasing through another retailer.

Obviously, not every customer is going to be able to upload their receipts, and not every brand has their product in physical retailers. This doesn't give complete visibility into every purchase, but I think the underlying idea is very interesting.

Customer lifetime value shouldn't necessarily be limited to what someone spends on your website. If you're selling through multiple channels, you need to think about how those channels influence each other and the overall customer relationship.

Even if you're exclusively selling online, understanding how customers interact with your brand outside of the purchasing process is extremely valuable. Because the more you understand your customers, the better equipped you are to create more relevant experiences that encourage them to stick around.

Number Six: Use LTV to Make Better Acquisition Decisions

You've probably heard Hormosi say this before, but the top e-commerce brands know how to use their LTV to make better acquisition decisions.

Hims and Hers is one of the few brands I've mentioned in this deep research that actually shares their shareholder letters. In their 2025 letter, they reported that it typically took around six to seven months to recover the cost of acquiring a customer through the gross profit that customer generated.

This is something every e-commerce brand should try to understand.

In layman's terms, imagine your average customer spends $100 on their first purchase, and it costs you $50 to acquire them. At first, it might seem expensive, but the customer comes back another three or four times throughout the year. That $50 acquisition is starting to become a good investment, depending on what your profit margins are.

That's why it's important to look beyond the first purchase and understand how much profit your customers generate over time.

I take it one step further by breaking down LTV by acquisition channel versus product purchase and customer cohort. You might discover that customers from one channel are worth twice as much as customers from another, or that certain products consistently attract your most valuable customers.

Once you understand those differences, you can make much smarter decisions about where to spend your marketing budget. The goal isn't to acquire customers as cheaply as possible. It's to acquire customers who are going to generate profit for your business over time.

Improving LTV Goes Beyond the Next Purchase

After looking at all these top brands, especially the eight that I mentioned in this video, I think the biggest takeaway is that improving customer lifetime value goes way beyond simply getting people to buy again.

It's about understanding your customers, what makes them come back, and how you can give them more reasons to keep buying from you in the future.

The good news: you don't need a massive budget or a nine-figure business to start applying these strategies. You just need to understand where your customers are at and focus on improving their experience over time.

Growing Your Email Revenue

If you're looking to grow your email revenue specifically, I made another video called The Fastest Way to Make $100,000 with Email Marketing.

Spoiler alert for this video: the answer probably isn't what you think, because it actually has a lot more to do with how much you're spending on ads than anything you're doing with your emails.

I'll leave that video right here, and I'll see you over there. If you haven't already, please subscribe. It helps me out a lot to keep posting cool videos like this. I'll see you in the next one.