Case Study · Food & Drink · D2C
From 3% to 25%+ CRM revenue in 18 months.
air up had the traffic and the product. What they were missing was a CRM engine built to turn first-time buyers into loyal customers. We built it from the ground up.
3% → 25%+
CRM net revenue contribution
2×
Uplift in 30-day retention rate
2×
Share of orders from returning customers
Client
air up
Sector
Food & Drink · D2C
Engagement
Head of CRM · Nov 2020
Focus
Full customer lifecycle build
The Challenge
A fast-growing brand running on manual blasts.
When air up brought me on as Head of CRM in November 2020, they had almost no meaningful automation in place. Revenue from CRM sat at just 3% — a fraction of what a brand with their ambition and traffic should be generating from owned channels.
The team was relying entirely on manual, untargeted broadcast sends to drive email revenue. There was no segmentation, no lifecycle thinking, and no system for turning new customers into repeat buyers. Every send was a one-size-fits-all message to the entire list.
For a brand selling a genuinely innovative product — a scent-based drinking system that flavours water through the sense of smell — the post-purchase journey was a critical missed opportunity. Customers needed education, habit-building, and the right nudges at the right time. None of that existed.
The Insight
Retention starts with a formula, not a flow.
Before building a single email, I used data analysis to identify the lifecycle metric that would define our entire CRM strategy. The goal was a simple, data-driven formula that could predict where a customer was in their journey — and what they needed next.
That metric became the backbone of everything. It let us move away from calendar-driven blasts and towards a lifecycle that responded to actual customer behaviour. When someone bought their first pod refill, they entered a different track to someone who had been inactive for 60 days.
This insight — that a single well-chosen metric could power an entire retention strategy — shaped everything that followed.
What We Built
A comprehensive automated customer lifecycle — from first visit to loyal advocate.
Working with my team, we designed and built a full end-to-end lifecycle covering every stage of the customer journey. Each stage had dedicated automated flows, triggered by behaviour and lifecycle position rather than a send schedule.
Explore & Inspire
Abandoned browse
First purchase programme
Welcome flow
Decision to Buy
Abandoned cart
Back in stock
Onboarding
Post-purchase onboarding series
NPS collection
Order & product review requests
Engage & Activate
Birthday flow
First purchase anniversary
Flavour behavioural triggers
Birthday enrichment
Replenishment & Cross-sell
Free pod replenishment
Cleaning brush cross-sell
Mouthpiece cross-sell
Strap & bottle cross-sell
Loyalty & VIP
Post-purchase points reminders
Birthday loyalty rewards
Monthly points overview
Points expiry reminders
Referral
Retarget non-registered customers
Increase shares
Referee coupon reminder
Referrer coupon reminder
Churn & Win-back
Winback sequence
Lapsed customer reactivation
Evaluation
NPS follow-up sequences
Detractor recovery
Promoter amplification
The Results
CRM went from a footnote to a growth engine.
Within 18 months of building out the lifecycle, CRM had transformed from a minor revenue channel into one of the most significant contributors to air up’s bottom line — entirely through owned, zero-CPM channels.
25%+
Up from 3%
CRM net revenue contribution
2×
vs. pre-lifecycle baseline
30-day customer retention rate
2×
vs. pre-lifecycle baseline
Share of orders from returning customers