Customer story

How NokNok London recovered
their CAC faster by shifting
to email and US retargeting

Born in Ibiza. Designed in London. Selling globally — but paying too much to acquire customers they already had. Here's how they fixed it.

Brand NokNok London
Category Sustainable fashion & footwear
Key markets UK, USA, South Korea
Platform Shopify
3.2×
Lower CAC from email vs cold paid acquisition
41%
Lower retargeting CAC vs cold US audience
2.4×
LTV of US customers retained into second purchase
60s
To connect Shopify and get first profit briefing
The situation

Global brand. Rising acquisition costs. Invisible true margin.

NokNok London had built something real. A cult sustainable fashion and footwear brand — edgy, rebellious, handcrafted in Italy and Spain — with a growing international following in the USA and South Korea alongside a loyal UK customer base.

Revenue was growing. But Angel, the founder, had a feeling that the cost of acquiring customers internationally was eating into profit in ways the Shopify dashboard wasn't showing. The brand was spending heavily on cold paid acquisition across all markets. What they couldn't see was the true CAC per market, the true profit per first order, or how much cheaper it was to re-engage an existing customer vs acquiring a new one.

When e-comProfitAgent connected to their Shopify store, the numbers told a clear story.

What e-comProfitAgent identified
True CAC per market was invisible — Shopify showed revenue by country, not profit after acquisition cost and international shipping
Cold paid acquisition in the US was significantly more expensive than retargeting existing US customers and website visitors
A large existing email list was being underutilised — email CAC was a fraction of paid social
US customers who purchased once had strong repeat purchase intent — but no structured retention sequence to convert them
International shipping costs were factored into revenue reporting but not into per-order profit calculation
Budget allocation was based on revenue by channel — not profit by channel
The core insight
The cheapest customers to acquire were
the ones they already had.
The Profit Agent identified that NokNok's email list and existing US customer base were being significantly underinvested relative to their acquisition cost advantage. Reactivating a previous customer or retargeting a warm US audience cost a fraction of cold paid acquisition — and converted at a higher rate. The opportunity wasn't to spend more. It was to spend smarter on the audiences already in their ecosystem.
The execution

Three moves. Same budget.

01
What we did
Shifted a portion of paid budget toward US retargeting audiences
e-comProfitAgent showed that cold US acquisition CAC was 41% higher than retargeting US visitors and previous customers. NokNok reallocated a meaningful portion of their US Meta spend from cold audiences to warm retargeting — website visitors, add-to-cart abandoners, and previous purchasers. Same budget. Significantly lower CAC.
Outcome
41%
Lower CAC on US retargeting vs cold acquisition. First-order profit margin improved on US orders without increasing spend.
02
What we did
Activated email as a primary acquisition and retention channel
The Profit Agent identified that NokNok's email list was one of their most cost-effective acquisition channels — but it was being used sporadically. A structured email programme was built: a welcome sequence for new subscribers, a reactivation campaign for lapsed customers, and a loyalty sequence for repeat purchasers. Email CAC came in at 3.2× cheaper than cold paid social across all markets.
Outcome
3.2×
Lower CAC from email vs cold paid acquisition. Email became NokNok's highest-returning channel by profit — not just revenue.
03
What we did
Built a post-purchase retention sequence for US customers
US customers who bought once had high repeat purchase intent — but were falling out of the funnel with no structured follow-up. A post-purchase email sequence was built specifically for US customers: brand storytelling, product education, an exclusive offer timed at 45 days post-purchase. The goal was to recover the initial CAC fully through a second purchase rather than paying cold acquisition costs again.
Outcome
2.4×
LTV of US customers who received the retention sequence vs those who didn't. CAC fully recovered by second order.

We were spending a lot to bring new people in when we already had an audience who wanted to hear from us. e-comProfitAgent made that completely visible — and the shift to email and retargeting changed the economics of how we grow.

AN
Angel Nokonoko, Founder
NokNok London · noknoklondon.com
The bigger picture

Most DTC brands are overpaying for customers they already have.

The default for most growing DTC brands is to pour budget into cold paid acquisition — Meta, Google, TikTok. It works, up to a point. But as CPMs rise and competition increases, the cost of cold acquisition grows while the existing customer base sits underutilised.

e-comProfitAgent makes the true cost of acquisition visible per channel, per market, and per customer segment — so you can see exactly where your budget is working hardest and where it's being wasted. For NokNok London, that meant email and retargeting. For your brand, the answer might be different. But you can't make the right call without the right data.

See where your budget is
working hardest.

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