Customer value optimization: how smart brands actually grow (and keep growing)

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I rented a car recently and was ready for the usual pain: complicated policies. Surprise insurance up-sells. Credit card deposits. Extra charges for a child seat, a second driver, or too many miles.

You know the drill. That awkward, stressful moment at the counter when you’re being guilt-tripped into buying “Ultra-Pro-Diamond-Shield” insurance that covers dents bigger than half an inch.

But this time? Totally different:

• Fully insured. No deposit.
• I could pay with my debit card, no credit card nor deposit needed.
• I didn’t have to inspect the car for damage, because I was already covered.
• Baby seat? Included (even though I didn’t need it).
• Second driver? Included.
• Unlimited mileage? Included.
• No gas markup. Just refill at market price.

The entire process took 5 minutes. I showed my license, paid, and walked out with the keys.

No pressure. No up-sells. No second guessing.

It was the best experience I’ve had so far—I started my vacation relaxed, not annoyed. And when I go back to Gran Canaria, I already know who I’ll book with again.

They didn’t just remove friction. They turned all the usual pain points into value. This made me start the vacation in the most relaxed way possible. That’s what customer value optimization (CVO) looks like in real life.

You make it easier to say yes. You remove doubt. And you leave people so impressed, they come back without even thinking about it.

That’s the essence of CVO: listen to the customer, act on what matters, and make it impossible not to return.

With customer acquisition getting harder, ads costing more, and less reliable targeting, most brands keep trying to grow by spending more on customers they barely understand.

That’s not how real growth works anymore. And it’s not strategy—it’s survival.

If you want to build a brand that lasts, you need to put the customer (not campaigns) at the center of your business.

CVO helps you do exactly that. It’s not about squeezing more revenue out of the same audience. It’s about becoming more valuable to the people you serve, so they come back, spend more, and tell others. It’s about fixing the disconnect between what you promise and what you actually deliver.

CVO gives you a way to close the gaps between:

• What your marketing promises and what your product delivers
• New customers and loyal ones
• Chasing clicks and building actual value

No hacks. Just a smarter, more sustainable way to grow.

In this guide, I show you what CVO really means, how to start using it today, what to measure, and how to apply it inside Klaviyo and beyond.

What is customer value optimization (CVO)?

Customer value optimization (CVO) is the practice of increasing how valuable your brand is to your customers, so that they naturally become more valuable to your business.

It’s not a campaign. It’s not a funnel tweak. It’s a business strategy you commit to—a complete shift from acquisition-chasing to value-building.

At its core, CVO is about shifting the definition of success from growth at any cost to value at every step. Are you growing because customers love what you do? Or are you just pushing more spend through a funnel that leaks? These are the questions CVO asks.

The goal? Less guessing. More profit. And customers who keep choosing you, on purpose.

Why does customer value optimization (CVO) matter?

When done right, CVO becomes a lens you apply across departments, from product to customer support to marketing.

Here’s the real outcome: you stop wasting time and money chasing one-time buyers, and you start growing through long-term, high-value relationships.

CVO helps you:

1. Understand your best customers (not just your most recent).
2. Fix what’s broken in your product or journey.
3. Keep people coming back—on purpose, not by accident.

It’s measurable. It’s strategic. And it works, even when ads don’t.

Step 1: Stop chasing revenue. Start tracking profit per customer

Profit is the foundation of CVO because it shows whether your business creates real, lasting value. Without profit, you’re not scaling—you’re just spending. Revenue might look strong, but it doesn’t tell you if you’re winning or just working harder for less.

That’s why profit is the starting point in CVO. Because you can’t optimize what you can’t see. When you measure profit at the customer level, you begin to understand which products, campaigns, and segments actually grow your business—and which drain it.

Revenue can trick you. Especially when you’re running promos, discounts, or spending big to acquire traffic.

Some consider return on ad spend (ROAS) to be the most important KPI. But it leaves out a critical factor: cost. ROAS looks good in isolation, but without accounting for what it actually costs to fulfill and support a customer, it can paint a misleading picture.

Without including those costs, you can’t see whether your marketing is really helping you build a sustainable, profitable business.

What really matters is (gross) profit per order or customer, and over time.

CLV:CAC ratio benchmarks

One of the best ways to see if your business is healthy is to look at your CLV:CAC ratio.

• Customer lifetime value (CLV): how much a customer brings in over time (measured after costs)
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): what it takes to get them (ads, team time/agency costs, tools)

The CLV:CAC ratio tells you how efficient your business is at turning customer acquisition into long-term value. Here’s how to read it:

• 1:1 or below: You’re breaking even or losing money on every new customer. This is unsustainable.
• 2:1: You’re barely breaking even. There’s not enough margin to reinvest in growth.
• 3:1: Healthy and sustainable. You’re acquiring profitably and have room to scale.
• Above 5:1: You may be underinvesting in acquisition. A high return sounds great, but if you’re not reinvesting to reach more of your ideal customers, you’re likely leaving growth on the table.

A balanced CLV:CAC ratio isn’t about squeezing every cent from your spend. It’s about finding the sweet spot between smart acquisition and strong customer value.

Don’t just chase more traffic. Increase your profit per customer first. That’s what gives you margin to scale.

How do you grow both these numbers? You become more customer-centric. “Investing in a great customer experience can be as equally important as investing in your product or service,” says Jemma Sears, digital marketing manager at Kulani Kinis. “It can be the difference between a customer choosing you or your competitor.”

Investing in a great customer experience can be as important as investing in your product. It’s the difference between a customer choosing you or your competitor.

Other metrics that actually show customer value

Most marketers obsess over open rates, clicks, or campaign revenue. But those don’t tell you what really matters.

In addition to your CLV:CAC ratio, here’s what to track if you care about value:

• Customer experience: What are customers saying about you? Look at product reviews and Net Promoter Score (NPS) to measure satisfaction.
• Recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) distribution: Understand the balance between loyal, recent, and at-risk customers and how they change over time (more on this next).
• Profit margin: Not just revenue. Focus on how much you’re actually making per order or per customer.
• Cohort stickiness: Are your customers still engaged weeks or months after their first purchase?
• Retention rate: What percentage of customers are coming back?
• New customer stickiness: Do first-time buyers turn into repeat buyers? This tells you if your experience lives up to the promise.

Tools like Klaviyo’s Marketing Analytics add-on or Reveal by Omniconvert make this easier to track and explain.

Step 2: Break your audience into useful customer segments with RFM analysis

Segmentation isn’t just about sending different emails. It’s about understanding behavior.

If we want to increase lifetime value, we need to know which customers are driving the most value, and which aren’t. That’s where RFM becomes critical. It’s a proven method for identifying your best and least valuable customers based on real purchasing behavior.

The best way to start? Use RFM segmentation.

• Recency: How recently did the customer purchase? A customer who ordered today might receive a score of 5, whereas a customer who hasn’t ordered since last year might receive a 1.
• Frequency: How often did they purchase? A customer who’s placed 10+ orders might receive a score of 5, whereas a customer who’s only purchased once might receive a 1.
• Monetary value: How much did they spend? A customer who spends a lot of money with your brand might receive a score of 5, whereas a customer who doesn’t spend that much might receive a 1.

So, an RFM segment with a score of 555 represents your very best customers, while a segment of customers with a score of 111 includes your least valuable customers.

Pro CVO tip: Depending on your customer’s database size and how granular you want to be, you can choose different RFM scales. At Polaris, we recommend that you use a scale according to how many customers you have:

• Use 1–3 as your scale for less than 30,000 customers.
• Use 1–4 as your scale for 30,000–200,000 customers.
• Use 1–5 as your scale for more than 200,000 customers.

If you’re just starting out, using the Klaviyo default 3 scale is a good starting point.

Understanding your RFM segments

Once you do this exercise, you’ll have a good understanding of the distribution of your customer base. This can help you to identify which customers you should interview and learn more about.

Remember, the goal is to keep your segments actionable. More detail is only helpful if you can use it. Once you create the subgroups, it’s time to bundle some of them and give them a name.

At Polaris, we use Reveal. This integration, just like Klaviyo’s Marketing Analytics, uses these names for the various groups:

Klaviyo group names (1–3 scale)	Reveal group names (1–5 scale)
Champions R: 3 F: 2–3 M: 2–3	Soulmates These are your most valuable customers. They buy most often and spend the most money, and they recently placed their latest order. Next actions: Strengthen relationship, show appreciation, learn from them, surprise + delight. R: 5 F: 5 M: 5
Loyal R: 2–3 F: 2–3 M: 1–3	Lovers These are your active customers. They’ve placed a couple of orders, the latest one recently. Next actions: nurture, remove friction R: 4–5 F: 3–5 M: 3–5
	New passion These customers are new and have placed one order with the highest value. They have the potential to turn into lovers or soulmates. Next actions: nail onboarding, encourage them to buy again R: 5 F: 1 M: 4–5
	Flirting These are new customers who were active some time ago. They’ve placed one order of decent value, but not as high as the new passions cohort. Next actions: targeted marketing and offers R: 4 F: 1 M: 4
Recent R: 2–3 F: 1–2 M: 1–3	Potential Lovers These are active customers who have placed a couple orders of high value. Next actions: implement improvements based on research into Don Juan and ex-lovers groups R: 5 F: 1–2 M: 5
Needs attention R: 1–2 F: 1–3 M: 1–3	Platonic Friend These customers are active and buy every now and then, but their orders are of small to medium value. Next actions: find out what would motivate them to order more often to improve their RFM scores R: 3–4 F: 3 M: 3–4
At risk R: 1–2 F: 1–3 M: 1–2	About to dump you These are various customers who placed their latest order a long time ago and are now becoming inactive. Next actions: focus on high-frequency and high-monetary value customers, run tailored re-engagement strategies R: 2–3 F: 1–5 M: 1–5
	Don Juan These customers (previously new passions) placed one order of high value, but never came back. You missed the opportunity for long-term engagement. Next actions: find out what happened (i.e., product quality, poor customer experience, fulfillment issues, etc.) R: 1 F: 1 M: 5
	Ex-lovers These are your former lovers or soulmates who have not placed an order in a long time. Next actions: find out what happened (i.e., product quality, poor customer experience, fulfillment issues, etc.) R: 1 F: 5 M: 5
	Apprentice These are new customers who placed their first or second low-value order some time ago. Next actions: find out what motivates them to engage R: 4 F: 1 M: 1
Inactive R: 1 F: 1–2 M: 1–3	Break-up These customers are inactive and of low value. When they previously shopped with you, they spent a small amount of money. Next actions: none. You can’t win them all. R: 1 F: 2 M: 1

Putting your RFM segments into action

Use your RFM segments to:

• Trigger the right email:
  • when someone is about to churn.
  • when a new potential high-value customer places their first order.
  • when a customer joins the lovers or loyal group.
• Personalize offers based on value, and stop over-discounting.
• Build better loyalty tiers based on actual buying behavior.
• Dive deeper to:
  • understand if specific products drive better customers.
  • see when certain products turn away customers.
  • interview your most valuable customers.
  • find out what made potential valuable customers churn.
• Create Lookalike audiences of your best customers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Google Ads and Pinterest.

Pro CVO tip: Klaviyo manages these segments automatically when you activate Klaviyo’s Marketing Analytics or integrate Reveal.

Step 3: Get real feedback: what customers think, want, and feel

You can’t optimize what you don’t understand. And you can’t understand your customers if you’re not asking the right questions.

That’s why research isn’t optional—it’s fuel for every smart CVO play. Most brands guess. The smartest teams dare to ask. At Kulani Kinis, for example, Sears and her team schedule regular meetings with the customer experience team so they can understand common pain points amongst customers.

At Polaris, we focus on these techniques for the qualitative and quantitative research phase:

• NPS surveys to measure loyalty and spot red flags (this is your guardrail metric)
• Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)-style interviews to discover motivations and moments of struggle
• On-site polls and post-purchase surveys to capture real-time reactions, doubts, and zero party data to drive relevant journeys
• Support tickets and reviews to identify recurring friction and motivation

This isn’t about collecting data for the sake of it. This is how you discover:

• What your customers value most
• What frustrates them
• What makes them come back
• What language and words they use

This turns ideas into insights. And those insights drive profit.

Research spotlight: NPS surveys

It’s important to keep track of customer satisfaction over time. Measuring pre-delivery and post-delivery NPS is a great place to start because it tells you if there are issues you’re unaware of, like if something about your purchase experience is sub-par or doesn’t match your promise. This is also a great guardrail metric for spotting issues quickly.

As soon as you know someone received and has used their products, it’s a good time to send out a post-delivery NPS survey. If your NPS score is low, then you need to figure out where you’re going wrong, especially if the pre-delivery (expectations) was higher.

When you set up your NPS collection processes, don’t stop at getting a number—always add a follow-up question for each group to understand why they gave a specific score. You may even discover specific elements of your customer journey, like bad products or shipment issues in certain regions, that cause low NPS, making good RFM customers churn.

With Reveal, you can automate NPS collection in combination with Klaviyo. Even better, you can create automatic tickets in Gorgias—for example, for your very best customers who gave you a low NPS score. That way, your support team can proactively reach out to them, or you can add automations with self-service options so customers can resolve issues themselves.

Research spotlight: JTBD-style interviews

Once you know who your best customers are, it’s time to conduct JTBD-style interviews and gather insights from them.

As Daphne Tidemann phrased it, “A job to be done is not what your customers buy, but rather the change they wish to experience with your product.”

If you sell drills, for example, then your customer’s goal is to drill a hole. But the job is something else entirely—it might be to create a nicer home environment by putting up some paintings.

Now, consider the construction worker: their job to be done for the same drill might be getting work done faster and better, and having a durable long-lasting product without any cords they might trip over.

When applying this framework to your interviews with customers, you’re seeking to understand:

• The customer’s ultimate desired outcome
• The circumstances and environmental factors that influence the customer’s decision to “hire” a product or service to get the job done
• The emotional, social, and functional factors that motivate the customer to “hire” a product or service.

Research spotlight: post-purchase surveys

If the JTBD framework isn’t something you and your team have the bandwidth for, consider beginning with post-purchase surveys instead.

“Twice a year, we conduct 3 different types of customer surveys to stay ahead of shifting consumer behaviors,” says Carlie Paluzzi, co-founder and COO of BWH Plant CO.

“The gardening industry saw a massive boom during COVID, but the landscape has changed, and so have our customers and their needs,” Paluzzi explains. “Regular surveys help us ensure we’re using the right tactics to connect with and educate our audience effectively.”

By surveying our customers regularly, we’re able to optimize their journey, improve retention, and increase lifetime value.

“By staying close to our customers, we’re able to optimize their journey, improve retention, and increase lifetime value,” Paluzzi adds.

Similarly, at Kulani Kinis, Sears and her team send a post-purchase flow that asks which products customers would like to see next. “This not only influenced our designers,” she says, “but also helped us scale.”

Post-purchase surveys that ask which products customers would like to see next have not only influenced our product designers, they’ve helped us scale.

Kulani Kinis’ founders would reply to the emails as they came in, helping foster brand loyalty and trust. “We were actually listening to and engaging with what our customers had to tell us,” Sears explains. “This type of flow is a great one for smaller businesses. Your customers have powerful insights that can lead to growth and help you unlock the next steps to scaling your business.”

Step 4: Turn customer feedback into smart, targeted improvements

Once you’ve gathered the data, NPS, JTBD interviews, support tickets, you need to act on it.

But that doesn’t mean rebranding or redesigning everything. It means starting small, with the things that frustrate your best customers the most.

Here’s where to look:

• Do your emails match what your product actually delivers?
• Are customers confused by shipping times or policies?
• Do you have complicated return policies?
• Are reviews easy to find, or buried?
• Are buyers dropping off after purchase because of support delays or delivery issues?
• If you want to know what customers want from you, ask them directly with Automated SMS Conversations

These aren’t email design problems. They’re trust problems.

Fixing them earns loyalty. That’s where CVO lives—in the details your customers notice, even when you don’t.

As you start improving these small wins, your NPS scores should start moving as well.

Step 5: Map the journeys of your most valuable customers

Once you know who your high-value customers are, you need to understand how they buy, and why they stay.

That means mapping more than a funnel, and following the steps they take:

1. Awareness: what brought them to you in the first place
2. Conversion: what message or promise got them to click and buy
3. Fulfillment and follow-up: what happened after the sale
4. Retention and loyalty: what keeps them coming back, or what drives them away

This isn’t a one-time task. Review this often, especially after big marketing pushes or product launches.

Once you know who your best customers are and what they care about, follow their footsteps. Find out:

• Where do they come from?
• What content or offer did they click?
• What did they do before they purchased?
• What made them return?

Map it like this:

1. First impression (ad, referral, organic)
2. First interaction (email, landing page, product)
3. First purchase experience (check-out, shipping, follow-up)
4. Post-purchase communication (support, loyalty, win-backs)

Look for patterns. Then reinforce what’s working. Here are a few ideas for doing that:

Invest in your VIP segment

Knowing who your very best customers are using RFM is the best way to set up VIP flows.

Whenever someone becomes a high-value brand evangelist, build on their engagement by sending them a personalized email written by your CEO or even a gift as a token of your brand’s appreciation.

Also, learn from them—what else would they like from you as a company? Send them some samples or include them when testing new products.

Incentivize VIP referrals

Chances are, a VIP from your 555 segment will be more willing to give a referral for your brand than a customer from the 111 segment. Test this out, and maybe even employ a new system of offering a couple of vouchers people can hand out as influencers of your brand.

Remember: intrinsic motivation works better than extrinsic. The best systems are designed to boost intrinsic motivation and loyalty to your brand.

Paluzzi and her team actively engage their VIP segments through referral contests. “Our most loyal customers have the opportunity to share their love for the brand, and when they successfully refer a set number of new customers, we reward them with limited-edition swag, exclusive to VIPs,” she says.

During the holidays, for example, the brand offered a potting apron to top referrers. “We included custom notecards from the team in each package and encouraged VIPs to share their stories and showcase their aprons on social,” Paluzzi explains. “This not only rewarded their loyalty, but also organically drove user-generated content from real customers, amplifying their voices and strengthening our brand community.”

With tools like Klaviyo’s Marketing Analytics or the Klaviyo x Reveal integration, you get even deeper segmentation and customer-level reporting to guide these plays.

The result? Less guesswork, more connection, smarter automation that feels personal at scale, and marketing that actually reflects what your best customers care about.

Our most loyal customers have the opportunity to share their love for the brand, and when they successfully refer new customers, we reward them with limited-edition swag, exclusive to VIPs.

Step 6: Use Klaviyo to act on everything you now know

Here’s how to use Klaviyo as your CVO engine:

• Personalize high-value flows using RFM segments.
• Automate win-backs based on predicted churn or low engagement.
• Trigger NPS surveys and segment people based on satisfaction, then ask high-satisfaction customers for a review.
• Route VIPs into loyalty flows with early access or exclusive offers.
• Send “non-buyers” down a different path with education or low-ticket bundles.
• A/B test subject lines and copy per segment to learn what resonates, and use findings from JTBD.
• Add JTBD-style pop-ups or zero-party data questions to uncover individual customer goals,— then tailor flows, campaigns, and product recommendations accordingly.
• Create onboarding flows based on goals, not just products. Help customers get the most from what they bought to reduce returns and increase retention.
• Use Klaviyo’s audience syncing to create lookalike audiences of your VIPs and reach more of the right people with ad platforms.
• Run win-back campaigns on additional channels like PostPilot, ad platforms, or SMS for high-value churn risks—don’t rely on email alone.

When everyone’s aligned around value, not just volume, growth stops being random. It becomes intentional. Predictable. Scalable.

No tricks. No gimmicks. Just thoughtful growth from the inside out.

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