How Lilac St. supercharged their growth with SourceMedium and Loop Subscriptions

KEY
STATS

82%

YoY growth (until end of November) in Repeat Customers

124%

Difference in subscriber vs. one-time LTV by month 6

16%

Run-Rate increase in MER, with a 43% GMV increase

"Thanks to SourceMedium and Loop, we have a pulse on data in real-time and can make decisions much faster.”

Alicia Zeng

Founder & CEO

"SourceMedium’s objectivity connects everything together, delivering only the facts."

"SourceMedium is our command center."

About

Lilac St. is a fast-growing consumer brand that sells eyelash extension products via DTC and Amazon. Alicia Zeng founded the brand. And like many brands during the pandemic, Lilac St. was born out of Alicia's apartment in San Francisco.

With salon closures due to safety reasons in 2020, Alicia was motivated to bring high-quality extensions to customers who – like her – wanted to maintain some of their pre-COVID self-care and beauty routines.

So, she and her husband started selling and shipping products from her living room. And it didn't take long for them to grow quickly, either.

In the first year, they 10x'd their revenue. Since then, the business has grown a steady 4x in year two, and they plan to double that this year.

And they've done it all without fundraising.

"We didn't want to raise venture dollars because we felt like it would force us in a direction we weren't ready to commit to," explains Alicia. "We wanted the freedom to do things our way. So, we've focused on profitability from day one."

The challenge

In the early days, Alicia spent far more time than she’d hoped, pulling analytics from random dashboards and tools like Shopify, Google, and Recharge (before they turned to Loop) to make sense of their sudden growth. As a founder with endless fires to put out, it was draining Alicia’s time.

Alicia had a problem.

It was less about the time-suck and more about keeping pace with the company's growth. As Lilac St.'s needs became more complex, they needed solutions to help them get granular while simultaneously consolidating large swaths of data into an authoritative source.

They needed all their tools to talk to each other.

“When you’re a young company, the numbers just need to be directional so that you know you're “generally” headed the right way. But as our business needs became more sophisticated, we knew we needed a platform that could provide us with detailed analytics and reporting.”

Since each platform uses different terminology and time slices, obtaining comprehensive insights without spending untold hours “jerry-rigging” a system that would work in the short term was challenging.

Lilac St. needed something comprehensive, streamlined, and authoritative.

The solution

When Lilac St. went from Recharge to Loop Subscriptions, it gave the brand greater freedom and customization to build compelling customer subscription offerings. Loop's gamified bundle builder unlocked a powerful customer experience with buy move save more options.

That, coupled with tapping into SourceMedium’s all-in-one data solution, Lilac St. was quickly able to centralize their data tech stack and solve reporting woes.

Finally, they could track and analyze subscription data, marketing campaigns, operational metrics, and sales channels from one place.

That meant no more piece-mealing tools, spreadsheets, and dashboards together to understand their customer’s LTV.

“Many tools can be biased towards propping up their own features. But SourceMedium’s objective voice connects everything together, delivering only the facts.”

But beyond the time-saving benefits of working with SourceMedium and Loop, Lilac St. has significantly improved their ability to track events in real-time, ultimately allowing them to make decisions more quickly and efficiently.

A few areas they've taken advantage of:
1. Seeing LTV of subscribers vs one-time customers.
2. Centralizing their data instead of using disparate sources.
3. Monitoring impacts of changes like subscription discounts.
4. Tracking subscription revenue trends throughout the month.
5. Understand ROI on ad spending and optimize it across channels.

“We only used to touch on analytics periodically. But now we have a pulse on everything in real-time and can make decisions much faster.”

The results

This has led to impressive qualitative and quantitative results for the nimble but mighty team at Lilac St.

<h3 id="h3-result" class="text-rich-text-two" style="color: none;" fs-test-element="test">82%</h3>
YoY growth (until end of November) in Repeat Customers
<h3 id="h3-result" class="text-rich-text-two" style="color: none;" fs-test-element="test">124%</h3>
Difference in subscriber vs. one-time LTV by month six
<h3 id="h3-result" class="text-rich-text-two" style="color: none;" fs-test-element="test">16%</h3>
Run-Rate 16% increase in MER, with a 43% GMV increase

Supercharging growth with SourceMedium and Loop

Lilac St. is now empowered to move beyond “surface-level” analytics across multiple dashboards, graduating to a more comprehensive, customizable solution for data analysis.

This transformation allowed Lilac St. to make more informed decisions, optimize advertising budgets, and enhance customer loyalty through personalized subscription offerings.

The success of the integration might highlight the importance of leveraging advanced analytics tools for scaling businesses in a competitive market. But for Alicia and the Lilac St team, it represents their relentless focus on mastering the foundations of running a company.

“We’re all coming off this euphoric high for both e-comm and consumers during the pandemic. 2023 has just nailed in that fundamentals matter, and the common sense business basics still reign.”

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