Skincare · DTC
22,832 orders.
£100k+ found in the data.
12 months of customer revenue. One LTV insight. 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
22,832
Orders mapped
02
£681,810
Revenue analysed
03
1,248
Active subscribers
04
3.9×
Sub LTV vs one-time
01 · CHALLENGE
Subscribers were invisible in the reporting.
Subscriptions made up about 8% of orders. The team knew they probably mattered more than the headline number suggested, but the existing dashboards rolled all customers into one. The Q2 plan had been built on assumptions about retention nobody had actually tested.
The brief was simple: prove or disprove the assumption that subscribers are worth disproportionately more than one-time buyers — and quantify it well enough to base a budget on.
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 insight. Reallocated paid budget toward acquisition-to-subscription, repriced the welcome series, and set fresh KPIs.
03 · RESULT
A subscriber is worth 3.9× a one-time buyer.
The 12-month subscriber cohort returns 3.9× the LTV of a one-time buyer. Once we had that number, every Q2 decision changed.
One-time LTV
£42
12-month sub LTV
£218
Sub : one-time ratio
3.9×
Q2 budget reallocated
£60k
Acquisition-to-sub uplift target
+25%
Catherine McNamara
Marketing and Sales Director Balmonds
