Well, hello, and welcome to this week's edition of the eCommercer.

I want to ask you something.

Think about the last loyalty scheme you signed up for. The one that gave you a free coffee for every ten you bought, or ten percent off your next order, or points that built up slowly until you finally had enough to redeem for something. Did you feel grateful when you collected? Or did you feel like you'd simply received what you were owed?

For most of us, it's the latter. And I think that this distinction matters.

So, this week's episode — and an episode I keep coming back to from November — both attack this same idea from completely different angles. One brings the data. The other brings the mechanism behind it.

Have a great week, wherever you are in the world. Until next time,

This Week's Episode of the eCommerce Podcast →

The Metric Nobody Tracks That Drives 56x Subscriber Growth

Jay Myers has been in eCommerce since 1998. He co-founded Bold Commerce and, a few years back, gave a talk at SubSummit that I actually attended. I remember it well.

He walked into a room full of subscription brand operators and asked them to name their most important metric. Churn. LTV. CAC. ARPU. All the usual answers came up. Then he asked one more question → does anyone know their referral rate?

Not one hand went up. Except one guy who laughed and said his was zero.

Here's what the data showed. If you double your acquisition, the flatline moves higher. If you reduce churn, the flatline moves further out. But either way, you still flatline. Every time. Without exception.

The one thing that actually breaks the curve? Referral rate.

Jay ran the model. He took a store with the worst churn in the room, fewer new customers than the others, and changed just one variable. Instead of the average customer referring 0.8 people, they referred 1.2. That tiny shift, compounded over 30 months, produced 56 times more subscribers than the stores that doubled acquisition or halved churn.

56 times. And nobody in that room was tracking it.

Most brands spend less than 3% of their marketing budget on referrals. Their acquisition teams are enormous. Their churn-reduction tools are expensive. And referral? A "share ten, get ten" link nobody clicks.

But Jay's research shows that generic discount codes don't drive genuine referral behaviour. They reward people who were going to share anyway. They subsidise behaviour that would have happened without any prompting.

What works is what Jay calls the golden ticket strategy. One code. No upfront reward for the person sharing. Scarcity, genuine enthusiasm, and an unexpected thank-you after the fact — once the right behaviour has already happened.

I loved recording this episode!

Today's guest: Jay Myers

• Bold Commerce → https://boldcommerce.com

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnmyers/

Related Episode →

The Power of Saying Thank You — Episode 264

This connects to something I recorded back in November, which I've been thinking about ever since Jay and I spoke.

In that episode, I talked about the difference between automated gratitude and genuine gratitude. My starting point was the tenth burrito I get for free at Barburitos. I know it's coming. I expect it. It's built into the price of the previous nine. When I collect it, I don't feel grateful. I feel like I've received what I was owed.

But when the barista says, "this one's on me," which is the same offer, it feels completely different.

Jay's data is the mechanism behind something I believe intuitively. Unexpected appreciation lands differently because it's not a transaction. It creates genuine warmth. And genuine warmth is what makes someone reach out to a friend and say, “you should try this.”

In that episode, I shared how a beauty business achieved 40% repeat purchase rates and 20% revenue growth — not through better discounts, but by embedding genuine gratitude into the culture. Handwritten notes. Staff empowerment budgets. Treating every touchpoint as a chance to say something real to a real person.

That's not just a nice thing to do. It's the mechanism behind referral growth. Jay shows you the data. That November episode shows you where the data comes from.

Episode: https://www.ecommerce-podcast.com/the-power-of-saying-thank-you

Be A Guest →

Got an eCommerce business with stories worth sharing?

Come be my guest on the eCommerce Podcast, where I chat with founders about the wins, the disasters, and everything in between. Your story could be the one that helps another founder grow smarter (or avoid your mistakes). 

Apply to be a guest →