Skincare · DTC
Two channels compared. Subscribers worth 2.3×.
12 months of customer revenue. One clear finding. A complete rewrite of the Q2 retention plan.
Balmonds - a UK skincare brand specialising in eczema and dry-skin care - had grown subscriptions to a meaningful slice of revenue but couldn't tell whether subscribers were actually more valuable than one-time buyers. We mapped every order across 12 months and found the answer.
PROJECT BRIEF
Client
Balmonds
Sector
Skincare · DTC
Year
2025
Services
Strategy & Ops, CRM
Scope
Customer revenue analysis · 4 weeks
01
2,052
Active subscribers
02
2.3×
Subscriber LTV vs shop
03
75.2%
Subscribers who reorder
04
38.2%
Of shop revenue
01 · CHALLENGE
Subscribers were invisible in the reporting.
Subscriptions made up about a third of orders. The team knew subscribers probably mattered more than that headline suggested, but the existing dashboards rolled every customer into one number. The Q2 plan rested on retention assumptions nobody had tested. The brief was simple: find out whether subscribers are worth more than shop-only buyers, and put a firm number on it the budget could be built around.
02 · APPROACH
Three cohorts.
12 months.
Week 1
Map the data.
Pulled every Shopify order from the last 12 months into a single ledger. Cross-referenced subscription status, product mix, and acquisition channel.
Week 2
Segment by cohort.
Built three buyer cohorts — one-time, repeat (2× / 3×), and subscriber (3mo / 6mo / 12mo). Mapped LTV, AOV, and reorder rate across each.
Week 3
Model the lift.
Modelled the financial impact of converting 10%, 20%, and 30% more first-time buyers into subscribers — accounting for cancellation, churn, and discounting.
Week 4
Rewrite the plan.
Rebuilt the Q2 plan around the subscriber finding. Moved paid budget toward acquisition-to-subscription, repriced the welcome series, and set fresh targets.
03 · RESULT
A subscriber is worth 2.3× a shop-only buyer.
Subscribers return 2.3× the lifetime value of a shop-only buyer, and customers who buy on both channels return 4.3×. Once we had those numbers, every Q2 decision changed.
Subscriber LTV vs shop-only
2.3×
Dual-channel LTV vs shop-only
4.3×
Subscribers who reorder
3.9×
Single-product subscribers
68%
Cross-sell conversion target
+25%
Catherine McNamara
Marketing and Sales Director Balmonds
