Martech Click
In my previous essay, Upstream and Downstream of the Martech Click: Why Attention Beats Interruption, I explored the fundamental distinction between the Martech Click and the Adtech Click—and why tracking these two types of engagement is an essential first step towards recovering Rest and Test customers.
The Two-Click Economy
Digital marketing has developed a dangerous blind spot: we obsess over clicks from ads (Adtech) while treating clicks from owned channels (Martech) as an afterthought. Yet these operate on fundamentally different economics. Adtech clicks are rented—purchased in auctions, expensive, and ephemeral. Martech clicks are owned—generated at zero marginal cost from relationships brands control. One is an expense that recurs; the other is an asset that appreciates.
Industry data suggests 70% of marketing spend goes toward reacquiring customers brands already owned—marketing’s most expensive habit, disguised as acquisition. This $500 billion AdWaste exists because brands fail to track what matters most: the transition from Best to Rest to Test, where customers silently slip from engagement toward reacquisition.
I introduced three interconnected concepts to operationalise attention management:
- The Hooked Score: Quantifying Attention Intensity
Not all engagement is equal. The Hooked Score measures attention through weighted actions, recency, and consistency:
- Action weights: Opens = 1 point; Clicks = 5 points; Replies = 8 points; Purchases after engagement = 10 points
- Recency multipliers: Recent engagement (last 30 days) receives full value; older engagement decays
- Frequency bonuses: Consistent patterns (3+ consecutive campaigns, weekly engagement streaks) receive multipliers
This reveals that a user who clicked five times in two weeks (Score: ~35) is 4× more valuable than a user who clicked five times over six months (Score: ~8)—even though binary metrics treat them identically.
- Click Retention Rate: The Stickiness Metric
While acquisition metrics dominate (traffic up, conversions up), they hide the most expensive problem: attention churn. Click Retention Rate (CRR) asks: Of the people who clicked last period, what percentage clicked again this period?
This is marketing’s early warning system. Attention churn precedes customer churn by 30–90 days. Declining CRR in the Best segment today predicts declining revenue next quarter. Even Facebook—with viral mechanics and network effects—discovered that churn and resurrections were each double the size of acquisition. If it mattered that much for them, it certainly matters for every business.
- BRT Segmentation: From Measurement to Action
Measurement without action is analytics theatre. BRT converts metrics into interventions:
- Best (high Hooked Score in past 30 days): Highly engaged, habitual users. Strategy: Defend
- Rest (low 30 days Hooked Score but high in 30-90 days): Engagement declining, but recoverable. Strategy: Recover
- Test (no engagement in past 90 days): Attention depleted, heading toward reacquisition. Strategy: Win-back selectively or suppress
The crucial insight: recovering Rest users costs a magnitude less than reacquiring Test users. The ROI of Rest intervention is extraordinary, yet most brands spend 70% on reacquisition and Best rewards, and almost nothing on Rest recovery. The allocation should be inverted.
By tracking Best→Rest→Test transitions as carefully as we track acquisition funnels, we can intervene before reacquisition becomes necessary. This is the foundation of the Recovery Engine—and the first step toward solving marketing’s invisible problem.
