What Do You Need To Acquire More Customers?

Your weekly dose of growth marketing news & tactics for DTC brands.

Author

Brian Roisentul
August 20, 2025

In partnership with

Welcome to this issue of The DTC Insider newsletter. 👋 

We strive to deliver the latest growth marketing news and trends in the DTC space straight to your inbox every Wednesday.

Do you enjoy reading this newsletter? It'd mean the world to me if you could leave a review here.

Let's dive in!

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 3 Mistakes To Avoid in Q4 (That Cost These 8-figure Brands a Lot of Money)
💠 What Do You Need To Acquire More Customers?
💠 From Garage to $400 Million: The Portland Leather Goods Story with Curtis Matsko

What Do You Need To Acquire More Customers?

You REALLY need this if you want to acquire more customers...

MONEY.

No...this isn’t clickbait. Hear me out. 👇️ 

Everyone wants new customers, but there’s a big problem:

→ Advertising costs keep going up
→ Margins keep getting thinner

That leaves you with less money to acquire customers.

But there’s a way to fix that. And no...it’s not magic or some fad tactic.

If you’re in that position, you need to:
→ Stop asking: “How can we lower CAC?”
→ Start asking: “How can we increase revenue per customer so we can afford a higher CAC?”

Because whether you like it or not, CAC is up for everyone. Sure, you can trim some costs without hurting the customer experience. But let’s be real, how much can you actually cut before it starts hurting your business?

So, back to the real question: how do you increase revenue per customer?

You need to audit your value ladder the same way you audit your costs. Your value ladder is the sequence of offers you present to customers: what they should buy first, second, and so on.

But here’s the caveat...

You might be thinking:
→ “The value ladder isn’t linear.”
→ “I already offer bundles and upsells.”

Okay, but have you validated (with data, not just gut instinct) that your marketing actually aligns with your customers’ behavior?

That alignment is THE KEY to everything else.

You could have the best product in the world, but if the timing is off, or you’re pitching it to the wrong customer, it won’t sell.

Here’s a real-life example:

A brand we worked with had been plateaued in their DTC channel for 2-3 years. After we audited their marketing, we discovered that 72% of their customers weren’t buying for themselves.

Seventy.two.percent!

The shocker? Their marketing said nothing about gift-giving. They were talking to customers as if they were end users. 🤯 

Imagine what happened when they updated their messaging...

How to take action:

If you understand this, you’re already ahead of most brands. Now it’s time to act.

I've recently released a free training showing the exact process we follow at my agency to unlock hidden revenue for our clients.

In case you missed it, it covers:
→ Where most brands are leaking revenue (without realizing it)
→ How to map what your customers buy and when
→ Why your post-purchase emails might be perfectly timed…for churn
→ And how to increase AOV and LTV without spending another dollar on ads
→ If you're stuck, or scaling but unsure why profitability’s not improving, this will bring clarity. 

No fluff. No lead magnets disguised as content.

--
And if you know you need to take action but don’t have time to do it yourself, we can help you unlock hidden revenue and scale more confidently. Book a time to chat with me here.

Big investors are buying this “unlisted” stock

When the founder who sold his last company to Zillow for $120M starts a new venture, people notice. That’s why the same VCs who backed Uber, Venmo, and eBay also invested in Pacaso.

Disrupting the real estate industry once again, Pacaso’s streamlined platform offers co-ownership of premier properties, revamping the $1.3T vacation home market.

And it works. By handing keys to 2,000+ happy homeowners, Pacaso has already made $110M+ in gross profits in their operating history.

Now, after 41% YoY gross profit growth last year alone, they recently reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO.

Paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving a ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals.

3 Mistakes To Avoid in Q4 (That Cost These 8-figure Brands a Lot of Money)

Planning Q4 is no easy task.

Even less in tough and uncertain context like this one.

I'm writing this section because these mistakes were made by 8-figure brands.

They have experience... 
They are well-established...
They know what they're doing... 

And still, this happened to them.

So I just want you to be aware of this, so it doesn't happen to you too.

Let's go through each of them:

MISTAKE #1:

This is a fast-fashion brand.

They produce between 100 and 200 products every.single.week. 🤯 

Taking into consideration how they did during Q4 in previous years, and their goals for this one, we proposed a plan.

They typically do very well in October and November, and then sales go down in December.

So we planned the budget for the ad spend accordingly.

Q4 started...

October was great ✅ 
November was way better than they expected ✅ 

And when they saw that, they wanted more.

Even though we suggested sticking to the plan and scaling down...

...they wanted to keep the same budget, expecting a similar influx of sales.

 

What happened?

As you can imagine, sales matched our planned expectations (which were significantly lower than in November).

...even though they spent way more than we had planned. 😱 

 

The consequence?

This company had a really hard time recovering from that hit. 

It took them almost the entire Q1 to recover.

So, the lesson here is:

👉️ PLAN AHEAD
👉️ Don't get ambitious if you cannot back it up with data
👉️ And if you do get ambitious, measure and scale down ASAP as if you see it's not working

 

MISTAKE #2:

This is a company that sells only one product: belts.

They do great, but last Q4 they suffered a lot.

What happened?

They didn't properly plan the inventory for the holiday season... 

...and they ran out too early! 🤦 

As you can imagine, they learned the lesson, and they started to better forecast the inventory. 

 

MISTAKE #3:

As we all know, on Black Friday:

Some brands have big discounts...

Others do bundles or limited editions of their products...

But some others, like this apparel brand, used it with the ONLY goal of clearing old inventory.

Although there's nothing wrong with promoting products from previous collections...

...it's not the best use of this peak time if you only do that.

Why?

Well, in many cases, it's the first impression they get from your brand.

So, you'd want to promote great deals, with great products.

And if they are already customers, I guess many people would be disappointed by seeing there's no new product included in the deals.

Now you know these 3 mistakes these brands made, make sure to keep them in mind for this Q4.

--
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content in the e-commerce space.

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From Garage to $400 Million: The Portland Leather Goods Story with Curtis Matsko

In this episode of The DTC Insider podcast, Brian Roisentul sat down with the one and only Curtis Matsko (Founder and CEO of Portland Leather Goods) and I dug into...

Sorry...you'll just have to listen to find out. 😉

BUT...fair warning: once you do, you might end up rethinking how you run your business…and maybe even your wardrobe!

Check it out 👇

We discussed:
👉 The origins of Portland Leather Goods and early growth
👉 Authenticity and personal branding on LinkedIn
👉 The mix of factors behind business success
👉 Staying optimistic and leading with confidence
👉 Evolving strategies to stay relevant in changing markets
👉 Hiring and building a high-performing, like-minded team
👉 Moving manufacturing to Mexico and its challenges
👉 Measuring the right business and marketing metrics
👉 The importance of retention and efficiency in DTC
👉 Why struggling businesses often blame agencies unfairly

Tune in:
📺 YouTube
🎙️ Spotify
🍏 Apple
🌐 Website

More episodes our listeners love:

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About The Writer

Brian Roisentul is the founder & CEO of BSR Digital, a growth marketing agency he started in 2013 to help e-commerce brands unlock hidden revenue by identifying misalignments between their marketing and customer behavior. He is also the host of The DTC Insider podcast, where he interviews thought leaders, founders, and directors in the e-commerce space.