At Evolvoom.io, we’ve seen firsthand how quickly ad costs can destroy profit margins — especially in fashion and lifestyle eCommerce.
Shopify’s latest data shows that the average customer acquisition cost (CAC) for fashion is around $129, and it’s only expected to rise. Instead of constantly fighting to acquire new customers, many brands are now focusing on the ones who’ve already bought — because retention is where sustainable growth happens.
Here’s what’s been working best across the brands we work with:
Segment customers by behavior: Identify who’s loyal, who’s slipping away, and who’s most likely to buy again.
Personalize offers and messages: Use purchase history and timing to reach out with the right product or incentive at the right moment.
Automate the process: Evolvoom connects to your Shopify store, analyzes customer behavior, and automatically sends personalized outreach — re-engaging past buyers, recovering abandoned carts, and encouraging repeat purchases without manual effort.
Focusing on loyalty helps brands reduce ad spend, stabilize revenue, and increase repeat orders — all while keeping marketing efficient and cost effective.
If rising ad costs are hurting your margins, start by investing in the customers who already trust your brand. That’s where the real ROI lives.
@Dima254 Great insights! Totally agree with rising ad costs, focusing on retention and customer loyalty is where real growth happens. Personalized outreach and smart segmentation can do wonders for repeat sales and long-term brand strength.
Love this! Retention is still the most underused growth channel. Curious. Has anyone tried pairing loyalty emails with personalized product recommendations based on past orders? It made a big difference for a brand I was helping recently.
That’s a fantastic! It clearly identifies a major pain point (rising CAC) and presents a logical, compelling solution (retention) while naturally introducing your app.
Yes, and it works especially well when the loyalty data itself becomes part of the segmentation, not just the product history. If someone’s close to a VIP tier or sitting on unused points, that context changes what recommendation actually lands. Growave syncs into Klaviyo for this, so points balance, VIP status, and past reviews show up as properties you can segment and personalize on, alongside the usual purchase history.
Rising acquisition costs have definitely pushed a lot of merchants to focus more on retention. In many cases, improving repeat purchase rate has a bigger impact on profitability than trying to continuously lower CAC.
A few strategies I’ve seen work well are:
Segment customers based on purchase frequency, average order value, and time since their last order instead of sending the same campaign to everyone.
Set up an automated post-purchase flow, replenishment reminders (where applicable), and win-back campaigns for customers who haven’t ordered in a while.
Personalize product recommendations using previous purchases or browsing behavior rather than relying on blanket discounts.
Track metrics like repeat purchase rate, customer lifetime value (LTV), and retention by cohort alongside CAC. Looking at these together gives a much clearer picture of whether your marketing is actually becoming more efficient.
While acquisition costs will always fluctuate, increasing the value of existing customers is often the more sustainable lever because it improves profitablility without requiring you to spend more on ads.
The retention side makes a lot of sense, especially with higher acquisition costs. It’s easy to get fixated on bringing in more first-time customers when there are already people in your store who have bought and had a good experience.
I also like looking at revenue by page and customer behavior rather than just traffic or ad performance. A product page bringing in a lot of visitors isn’t necessarily the one worth pushing harder if another page has fewer sessions but much better revenue.
Having Analytics revenue tied into the SEO side has been useful for that. SiteGuru does this pretty well, since you can see which pages are actually contributing to revenue and prioritize the SEO work around that instead of treating every page as equally important.