From One-Time Buyer to Brand Advocate

Hey everyone,

Welcome back for another bite to chew on.

Some founders think retention is just looking at open rates and click-throughs on a series of 20% OFF emails they blast to a list once a week. But if that’s all you’re doing, you're blinded by the surface level.

Retention efforts shouldn’t start when a customer churns. They should start before the customer even takes out their wallet on the first purchase.

Today, we’re recapping our deep dive with Feras Khouri and Eric Rausch, the co-founders of New Standard Co. They’re behind the retention engines of heavy hitters like True Classic, AG1, Caraway, and New Era. 

They joined us to break down why common current retention strategies might actually be hurting scale and what you can do about it. 

Let’s get into it.

On the Menu

The hard truth of DTC is that the tactics that make you win Q4 are built in Q1. That’s what makes January such a crucial month: it’s the calm before the storm, when the smartest brands lock in systems that compound all year.

Miss it, and you’re playing catch-up for the next ten months.

One of these things to do is set up your retention marketing for scale. As you prepare to build up your site traffic over the coming weeks, you’re about to acquire thousands of new shoppers you’ll never get a second chance with unless your retention stack is dialed in. 

The influx of new customers means you need to audit your retention marketing plans with it. Here’s what actually matters right now:

This is exactly what Instant was made to solve.

Instant helps brands identify, remember, and personalize 1:1 messaging for their real shoppers, turning retention into a primary growth lever instead of an afterthought. 

Brands using Instant are seeing 3x email revenue in as little as 30 days. Some like Hopr blew past that with 7x revenue growth in just 14 days.

Book a demo by January 26 and get 50% off your first 60 days. That carries you through your ramp up months and sets you up to break new revenue highs by March.

If you ask your email agency how things are going, they’ll probably send you a screenshot of a Klaviyo dashboard showing a 35% open rate and a 20% ‘revenue from email’ stat.

Those are layer one metrics. They tell you if your subject lines are catchy, but they don't tell you if your business is actually growing. 

You can have a 50% open rate and still be heading toward a liquidity crisis.

Feras and Eric argue that 8-figure founders need to stop obsessing over the surface and start digging into Layer Two metrics.

This is where New Standard Co. lives. If you want to scale, you need to track:

The playbook: Every 1-2 weeks, hold a WBR with your channel managers so they don't operate in silos. Your Meta buyer needs to know what the email team is seeing in the Layer Two data. 

If the email data shows people are canceling because the product tastes too sweet, the Meta buyer needs to stop using "Sweetness" as a selling point in the ads.

A lot of founders view their businesses as two separate silos: acquisition (getting customers at the door) and retention (keeping them from leaving).

If your Facebook ad tells one story, your landing page tells another, and your welcome sequence is just a generic discount, you’ve already lost the customer.

Feras and Eric made it clear: retention starts at acquisition. 

You can’t have a Meta ad that promises a miracle cure, but your welcome flow talks about long-term consistency. This creates a cognitive disconnect. 

The customer feels like they’ve been baited into a purchase and switched into a lecture. That disconnection is exactly where churn is born.

Eric shared a framework that every operator should steal. 

Imagine your customer—let’s call him Dave—is at the office shaking up your supplement. A coworker, Karen, walks by and asks: "What is that green stuff you're drinking?"

There are only two outcomes here:

1. Dave says, "I don't know, I saw an ad, and it’s supposed to be healthy." 

In this scenario, Dave can't justify the purchase to his peers (or himself), so he likely won’t buy again.

2. Dave says, "This is my daily nutritional insurance. It has 75 ingredients that replace my multivitamin and my probiotic".

You want #2 every time. You are arming Dave with the language he needs to defend his purchase to the Karens of the world. 

That’s why your welcome sequence shouldn't just be "Thanks for the $50”. It needs to provide that social ammunition. 

To scale like True Classic or AG1, your messaging must be a straight line.

You save a customer and turn them into your hero by making them feel like the smartest person in the room the moment the box arrives at their door.

If you think of retention as a fire to put out once the house is already burning, it’s already too far gone. A spike in cancellations at month 3 won’t be saved by a “come back” email discount on day 85.

The reality is that by the time that customer hits the “Cancel” button, you’ve already lost them. You can't fix month 3 in month 3. You have to fix it in the first 30 days.

Feras and Eric pointed out the inventory pile-up as a psychological hurdle every consumable brand faces. 

If a customer hasn't finished their first bottle of supplements (or bag of coffee, or box of laundry pods) by the time the second one arrives, you have created a bottle graveyard on their kitchen counter.

Every time they look at those unopened bottles, they feel guilt. And guilt leads to a cancellation faster than a price hike ever will. 

They aren't quitting your brand. They are quitting the pressure of the pile-up.

To beat the trap, you have to shift your email and SMS strategy from selling to consumption.

How?

Use your welcome sequence to turn the product into a habit. If it’s a supplement, send a day 3 email on the best time of day to take it. 

Day 7? Send a recipe. Day 14? Ask them how they feel.

If your data shows a customer hasn't opened your "How to use" emails, don't send them a third bottle. Send them a text offering to push their next shipment back by 2 weeks. 

Delaying a shipment for 14 days retains the LTV. Letting them hit ‘Cancel’ because they have too much product kills the LTV entirely.

True retention aims to keep people using the product, not keeping them on a billing cycle. If they don't consume, they won't renew.