There are three big milestones in e-commerce:
Going from $0 to $1M.
Going from $1M to $10M.
Going from $10M to $25M.
Of course, there are bigger milestones as well, but only a select few brands ever get there.
This post focuses on the $0 to $1M.
Specifically, the retention strategies you should focus (and shouldn’t focus) on when trying to hit your first $1,000,000.
There’s a lot of conflicting advice out there on the internet, so the only thing I can do is chime in…
I’m trying to hit $1,000,000 — how much should I focus on retention?
The TL;DR answer is… not much.
At this stage, you’re trying to crack product/market fit. You don’t know what your hero product is (yet).
Assuming the product you sell is Meta-friendly, meaning:
- Your margins are over 70%
- Prices are between $50 –$200
- It has low return rates (> 25%)
- It addresses a customer problem or pain
- It’s eye-catching/trendy
Then testing different Meta ad creatives is the highest-leverage use of your time.
Here’s why:
The average eCommerce brand can only retain 20-30% of buyers. And if you think about it, some of those customers would buy from you again even if you did zero marketing.
So why spend hours trying to retain 10 customers when you could focus on acquiring 100 new ones?
There’s only so much you can do with retention at this stage.
Let’s do the math:
Industry: Travel accessories
Annual revenue: $550k
Customer retention rate: 15%
Revenue from repeat purchases: 10%
Say you increase retention from 15% → 22.5%.
Repeat purchase revenue ONLY grows by $27.5k.
Is that enough to invest hundreds of hours of effort into retention activities?
Not if you ask me.
My advice to any DTC brand trying to crack $1M is this:
Set up the 80/20 and focus on acquisition instead…
Here’s what you should do:
Collect email addresses
You’ll usually see email list growth from two sources: people who opt-in at checkout, and those who sign up via a pop-up form.
What you can do here is set up a welcome promo (but you don’t have to). There are many incentives you can offer, like free shipping, a welcome gift, exclusive access, or just a classic 10% discount code.
All these work, you just have to figure out what works best for your brand. I’ve worked with luxury companies that simply can’t give discounts (or do any pop-ups at all) because it damages their brand image.
Just think about it like this: if you want to grow your email list, you need to offer a compelling incentive.
Email your list 1-3x/week
Emailing your list a few times a week is probably a good idea.
One of the biggest mistakes brands make here is they start running promotions left and right.
There isn’t a rule for how often you should run promos, but roughly 80% of your campaigns should have no discount codes at all.
Also, the earlier you can get your founder involved in email strategy, the better. That means sending plain-text emails about the brand’s founding story, product stories, monthly recaps, etc.
If you struggle to come up with email campaign ideas, then here is the easiest way to never run out content.
It’s also worth checking out my 43 No Discount Email Campaign Ideas.
Set up a welcome sequence + abandonment flows (site, browse, cart, checkout)
An effective welcome sequence answers the question “Why us?”
If you look at the buyer’s journey, a welcome sequence falls right between the “consideration” and “acquisition” phases.
Most prospects here are already sold, while others need a bit more convincing.
You want to have at least 5-8 emails here.
Here’s a framework I like to use:
Email 1: Welcome + give incentive + introduce best-seller
Email 2: Founder story
Email 3: Answer one customer objection
Email 4: Introduce social proof (UGC + reviews)
Email 5: FAQ style email + discount reminder
Email 6: Problem-agitation-solution
Email 7: Final reminder + urgency
The rest of the abandonment flows (site, browse, cart, checkout) will help you recover lost sales.
These five email flows are more than enough for you.
Any email agency saying “you’re leaving money on the table” because you don’t have a super-duper cross-sell sequence set up either:
- Doesn’t know any better
- Is trying to get you on their payroll
Hint: there’s a lot of people wandering around who fall in the a) category (I used to be one of them).
Don’t fall for it.
Find ways to support other channels
Can you use email to collect reviews + UGC which you can then use in your Meta ads AND strengthen website CRO?
Or reduce support tickets by proactively communicating critical updates with customers?
Or survey your best customers and collect qualitative data?
Probably, yeah.
My point is, you should find ways to incorporate email into your overall marketing strategy.
Use my templates
And finally, don’t spend hours designing “on-brand” emails at this stage. It doesn’t really matter that much.
What matters way more is that you’re selling a great product, and you’re targeting the right people.
If your product isn’t visual, you could even do text-heavy emails only. You can find a great example of this here.
But if you still want your emails to look beautiful, you should use my 12 highly converting email campaign templates.
You could literally put together a world-class email within minutes.
And if you need help with uploading them into your ESP, I’ve got you covered.
Take a look below:
