In this episode, Kunle shares the mic with Michael Greenberg, the founder, and CEO of Retina, a company that brings the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning to the single most valuable metric for marketers: customer lifetime value (CLV). Listen as Michael shares what metrics you should be looking at in terms of CLV and what you might be doing wrong with how you’re currently marketing your business.

Covered Topics:

• About Retina and What They Do
• Customer Lifetime Value
• The BIG Secret You Should Know
• The Next Thing After Customer Identity Resolution
• Forecasting Churns
• More About Retina and Their Integrations
• Focusing on Customer Retention

Podcast Show Notes:

• 01:30 – Get The Ultimate Guide for Crushing Holiday Revenue Targets at Klaviyo
• 02:50 – Join the 2xEcommerce Facebook Group
• 04:16 – Today’s Guest: Michael Greenberg
  • How Retina was founded
• 06:41 – Your Customer Lifetime Value
  • Most equations fail when it comes to CLV
  • From averages to individual CLV
• 08:20 – Michael drops the BIG Secret
  • Shopify store owners need just 3 things
  • Recency, Frequency, and Magnitude
  • Buy ‘Til You Die Models
  • Tracking Customer Identity Resolution
• 13:16 – After Customer Identity Resolution
  • Storing data & using a clustered algorithm
• 15:40 – How Retina’s algorithm forecasts churn
• 16:57 – Michael drops what other businesses can’t
• 18:39 – Using data from Retina for Facebook
• 21:44 – How Retina works with people using Magento
• 21:35 – Building integrations with customer experience platforms
• 26:38 – Michael’s tip to business focusing on retention
  • Look at the ratio of Customer Acquisition to Lifetime Value
• 28:55 – Healthy Retention Rates
  • Michael recommends looking at Taft for their retention strategy
• 32:13 – The Lightning Round
  • Are you a morning person? — “No”
  • What’s your daily morning routine? — “Usually, I take a cold brew and start looking at emails on my way to the shower”
  • What advice would you give yourself 5 years ago? — “Don’t sell that company, it’s going to be worth more in a year”
  • What 2 things you can’t live without? — “Being able to work with really smart people and being able to go after big ideas”
  • What book are you reading and are you going to finish it? — “Influence…and I’m definitely going to finish it”

Topic Takeaways:

• Today, it’s important to start looking at individual customer lifetime value rather than just the averages in your metrics.
• Tracking customer identity resolution is critical in marketing.
• Losing 20% per quarter is a healthy retention rate.

Tweetable Quotes:

You have to stop paying attention to customer acquisition and start looking at the ratio of customer acquisition to lifetime value.

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