Most marketing teams obsess over dozens of performance metrics. Customer acquisition cost. Click-through rates. Conversion rates. Lifetime value. But Jonny Inglis, co-founder of the wine platform Winedrops, says focusing on too many metrics can distract from the one thing that really drives growth.

In a recent conversation for my Flipping the Playbook podcast, Jonny explains how Winedrops built its marketing engine around a single behavioural signal: whether a customer places their first order in the first seven minutes of joining the platform.

“If a user doesn’t place an order in their first session, it’s very hard to change behaviour later,” he said.

That insight now drives everything from the company’s marketing campaigns to product design and customer onboarding.

Why scrappy marketing beats polished campaigns

One of the most surprising aspects of Winedrops’ growth strategy is its approach to advertising. Instead of investing in highly produced brand campaigns, the company leans heavily into scrappy, founder-led creative and user-generated style content.

The reason is simple: standing out in crowded feeds.

“Pattern interruption is one of the most important concepts,” Jonny said. “How do you create something that stands out against the noise?”

In the wine industry, many brands still rely on glossy imagery and traditional advertising formats. Winedrops deliberately takes the opposite approach, using informal content that feels more native to social platforms. That authenticity helps stop the scroll and capture attention in a space where polished marketing often blends into the background.

Testing at scale: the creative production engine

Another unconventional element of Winedrops’ marketing is the sheer volume of content it produces. The company launches hundreds of ads every week, testing dozens of creative concepts simultaneously.

“We might launch a couple of hundred ads and create 50 pieces of content every week,” Jonny said.

Rather than relying on internal opinions about what will resonate, the team lets the algorithms determine which creatives perform best. Performance data then feeds directly back into production. If ads focused on saving money drive the most efficient customer acquisition, the team produces more variations built around that theme. The result is a marketing engine driven by experimentation rather than assumptions.

The one metric that matters

Despite running large-scale experiments, Wine Drops ultimately judges success using a single core metric: First-day purchase rate. This measures the percentage of new users who place an order during their first session on the app.

The company discovered that customers who complete this action almost always become high-value users.

“They go on to have good behaviour,” Jonny said. “So, we don’t need to focus as much on long-term retention metrics.”

Instead of trying to optimise dozens of downstream indicators, the team focuses on improving the conditions that lead to that first purchase. This includes increasing daily active users, improving onboarding completion, and ensuring the product experience delivers on marketing promises.

Why cheap customers are often the wrong customers

Many brands try to reduce customer acquisition costs by offering aggressive promotions. But Inglis warns that this strategy can attract the wrong kind of customer. A promotion such as a free bottle of wine may drive sign-ups, but it also attracts bargain hunters who may never become paying members.

“You end up acquiring customers who don’t understand the product or don’t actually want it,” he said.

Instead, Winedrops designs its offers to attract customers who already buy premium wine. Discounts still provide strong value, but they also pre-select customers more likely to become long-term members. The result is a higher quality customer base, even if the acquisition cost appears higher upfront.

Building growth through customer advocacy

Beyond paid advertising, Winedrops has also leaned heavily on customer advocacy. The company maintains direct communication with some of its most engaged customers through small WhatsApp communities. These groups allow the founders to gather feedback quickly, test new ideas, and identify problems before they escalate.

“It’s completely priceless for a founder,” Jonny said. “You get feedback faster than your customer service team.”

These communities also reinforce the trust and loyalty that drive referrals and word-of-mouth growth.

The power of focus

Another lesson from Winedrops’ growth journey is the value of concentrating on a single marketing channel. Despite constant opportunities to experiment with new platforms, the company has largely focused its efforts on Facebook advertising. The logic is simple: Mastering one channel often produces better results than spreading resources across many.

“You can get to very large revenue by getting really good at one channel,” Jonny said.

For Winedrops, that focus has allowed the team to refine its creative testing system and optimise campaigns at scale.

What comes next for Winedrops

The company is now expanding internationally, with the United States representing its most significant growth opportunity. In the US market, the business operates under the name CaseDrops, and has already seen rapid early traction.

Jonny attributes this growth to a strong fit between the membership model and American consumer behaviour. Membership-driven retail concepts, such as Costco, are already widely accepted in the US. That familiarity makes the value proposition easier for customers to understand.

The bottom line

The marketing playbook used by Winedrops challenges several common assumptions:

  • Growth does not require perfectly polished campaigns
  • Testing hundreds of creative variations can outperform carefully planned campaigns
  • The most powerful growth lever may be a single behavioural signal.

For Winedrops, that signal is simple: getting customers to place their first order as quickly as possible. Everything else flows from there.

“If you understand the behaviour that creates long-term customers,” Jonny said, “You can design your marketing and product around that.”

Want to hear the full conversation?

Listen or watch the full discussion between Jonny Inglis and Reza Moaiandin on the Flipping the Playbook podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts to learn how Winedrops built a growth engine powered by experimentation, customer insight, and one metric that matters.