Public Goods
Retention as the engine for a sustainable CPG brand
Services
retention marketing
paid media
Overview
Public Goods is a sustainable CPG brand selling personal care and home essentials across Shopify DTC, Amazon, and a self-serve wholesale portal. Darkroom's engagement began with retention marketing, building the email and SMS infrastructure from scratch, and expanded into paid media, performance creative and creator management as the retention program proved its impact on revenue.
Outcomes
71%
Pre-Memorial Day sale revenue increase vs. BFCM 2024
37%
Quarter-over-quarter growth in retention-attributed revenue
01
Repeat-purchase potential, but no system to capture it
Public Goods sells everyday essentials - hand soap, cleaning supplies, personal care - products with natural replenishment cycles that should drive high repeat-purchase rates. But when Darkroom began the engagement in early 2025, the brand had no structured retention program: no segmented flows, no campaign calendar aligned to purchasing behavior, and no mechanism to turn first-time buyers into subscribers. Darkroom identified that the biggest revenue opportunity wasn't acquiring new customers, it was activating the existing base through lifecycle email and SMS, with campaigns and flows designed around product-specific reorder timing, cross-sell logic, and promotional cadence.
02
A seamless launch
Darkroom partnered with Public Goods to build the retention program from the ground up, launching segmented email campaigns, automated flows, and SMS alongside predictive replenishment and cross-sell triggers. Within the first full quarter, retention-attributed revenue grew 36.85% QoQ, with email campaigns alone up 44.7% quarter over quarter. The pre-Memorial Day sale became the program's breakout moment, generating 71.3% more revenue than BFCM 2024 through a cadence strategy built around early access, stacked offers, and product spotlight emails. By BFCM 2025, retention contribution was up 18% YoY. The results earned Darkroom an expansion into paid media, performance creative, and creator management, proof that a retention-first approach doesn't just protect margin, it builds the case for broader investment.
