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The BFCM Index: three years of Black Friday performance, broken down by channel.

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Go-To haircare flat-lay: Very Luxe Hair Mask, Hair Hero oil and Rapid Scalp Exfoliant on green tile background

ACQUISITION + RETENTION · DTC SKINCARE

Go-To Skincare

Acquisition and retention that keep paying off, across a multi-year programme

Building quarter-on-quarter

New-customer volume

Step-change against prior baseline

Lifecycle revenue

Held through category tightening

Share of voice

Multi-year, thirteen quarters

Partnership depth

EngagementMulti-year partnership
IndustryBeauty
DisciplinesPaid Social, Lifecycle, Creative Strategy, Measurement, Retention, CRO

Channel performance

Where the spend actually moved.

Paid Social

Step-change vs baseline

New-customer efficiency

Lifecycle

Consistent repeat lift

Repeat revenue

Creative

Sustained cadence

Funnel feed

Measurement

Rebuilt baseline

Signal quality

Overview

A category-defining Australian skincare brand with a loyal base, a crowded shelf, and a growth curve that needed rebuilding rather than reigniting. The partnership has spanned more than three years and thirteen quarters across acquisition, retention, creative and measurement: moving from quick-win prospecting tweaks to a rebuilt lifecycle programme, a sharper measurement layer, and a creative cadence built for both new-customer scale and existing-customer depth.

THE CHALLENGE

The brand had earned a place in the bathroom cabinets of a generation of Australian skincare buyers, but the foundations underneath it hadn't kept pace with the audience around it. Acquisition costs in beauty had crept up year on year, the prospecting funnel was leaning on a narrowing band of creative, and the measurement layer wasn't telling a clean enough story about which spend was actually pulling in new customers versus harvesting demand the brand had already created.

Retention was the other side of the same problem. A high-repeat category should keep paying off over time, but the lifecycle programme had been built campaign-by-campaign rather than designed as a system. Welcome journeys, lapsed-buyer flows, and loyalty triggers were doing work, but they weren't segmented sharply enough to separate a first-time hero-product buyer from a multi-category devotee, and the share-of-voice picture against larger global competitors was tightening every quarter.

The brief was not a turnaround. It meant taking a brand that was already working and rebuilding the parts that would let it keep working at a bigger size.

Go-To Skincare editorial beauty photography

THE APPROACH

How the engagement was structured.

We started where the cash was leaking. New-customer acquisition got an early audit and a set of quick wins on the prospecting side: tightening the audience architecture, pruning under-performing placements, and rebalancing spend toward formats and creative angles that were genuinely pulling in first-time buyers rather than recycling existing ones. The pixel and measurement layer was reviewed and rebuilt in parallel so the optimisation signal the channel was learning from actually matched what was happening in the storefront.

Lifecycle was rebuilt as a system, not a calendar. The welcome flow was re-segmented to recognise the difference between a hero-product entry-buyer and a routine-builder from the first session. A recency-frequency-value framework was layered underneath, so the winback programme could prioritise customers with real return potential rather than blasting the whole lapsed file. Templates were reviewed end-to-end against a clearer brief: fewer sends, sharper segments, a measurable line between revenue from lifecycle and revenue the brand would have earned anyway.

Creative ran on its own cadence. We treated short-form and static as a portfolio, with a steady stream of new angles tested against incumbents rather than swapped wholesale. Brand moments were planned to feed both acquisition and retention from a single creative spine, so the same investment in idea and production worked across the prospecting funnel and the existing-customer base. The milestone birthday campaign is the clearest example of that approach.

Share of voice against larger global skincare players was tracked as a standing input, not a one-off audit. The measurement view sat across paid channels and lifecycle together, so trade-offs between chasing new customers and deepening existing ones could be made with the same numbers in front of everyone.

GO-TO SKINCARE · IN THE ROOM

Inside the engagement.

The working moments behind the numbers.

Go-To founder portrait, laughing, white tee, gold jewellery, studio white background (site nav 'Meet the Founder' tile)
Model close-up smiling, holding Very Amazing Retinal serum to her cheek
Editorial beauty profile shot with 'Ingredients' copy overlay (Buriti Oil, Rosehip Oil, Jojoba Oil), Very Amazing Retinal PDP
Model profile shot holding Very Mattifying Primer near her chin
Smiling model close-up holding Very Amazing Retinal serum tube
High-res founder studio portrait, blue curtain backdrop, rose-embroidered denim jacket
Go-To founder portrait, laughing, white tee, gold jewellery, studio white background (site nav 'Meet the Founder' tile)
Model close-up smiling, holding Very Amazing Retinal serum to her cheek
Editorial beauty profile shot with 'Ingredients' copy overlay (Buriti Oil, Rosehip Oil, Jojoba Oil), Very Amazing Retinal PDP
Model profile shot holding Very Mattifying Primer near her chin
Smiling model close-up holding Very Amazing Retinal serum tube
High-res founder studio portrait, blue curtain backdrop, rose-embroidered denim jacket
Go-To founder portrait, laughing, white tee, gold jewellery, studio white background (site nav 'Meet the Founder' tile)
Model close-up smiling, holding Very Amazing Retinal serum to her cheek
Editorial beauty profile shot with 'Ingredients' copy overlay (Buriti Oil, Rosehip Oil, Jojoba Oil), Very Amazing Retinal PDP
Model profile shot holding Very Mattifying Primer near her chin
Smiling model close-up holding Very Amazing Retinal serum tube
High-res founder studio portrait, blue curtain backdrop, rose-embroidered denim jacket

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Go-To Skincare beauty campaign

THE OUTCOME

Acquisition stabilised and then compounded. The early prospecting work delivered a step-change against the prior baseline, and the rebuilt measurement layer meant every quarter after that was being optimised against a cleaner signal, not a flattering one. New-customer volume held through periods that saw category-wide tightening in beauty, and the creative pipeline kept the funnel fed without forcing the brand into discounting it had previously resisted.

The lifecycle programme moved from supporting act to standalone profit centre. Segmented welcome and winback flows lifted repeat behaviour against the prior baseline, and the loyalty layer pulled higher-value cohorts into a more predictable second and third purchase window. Share of voice held against larger competitors through quarters where smaller players in the category were losing ground.

Thirteen quarters in, the partnership covers acquisition, retention, creative and measurement as one connected programme, built to keep paying off as the brand gets bigger.

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50+brands
$750M+GMV
10+years