Published October 17-21, 2025
1
Who Really Lost Your Customers?
In my previous essay, “Who Lost My Customers and Killed My Profits?“, I confronted an uncomfortable truth that shook my own foundation. For years, I’d crusaded against the $500 billion AdWaste plague—the staggering burn of marketing budgets on reacquiring customers brands already knew. I’d positioned Google and Meta as the villains, extracting their “revenue tax” every time brands needed to find lost customers.
Then Laura Ries’s “The Strategic Enemy” forced me to reconsider everything. Her thesis: breakthrough companies succeed not by being better, but by defining and defeating a strategic enemy. This made me ask: what does Netcore—or any Martech company—truly stand against?
The answer was devastating: Traditional Martech is the Profit Bleeding Machine.
This isn’t contrarianism; it’s mathematics. The Best-rest-Test-Next (BRTN) framework reveals the truth: 20% Best customers generate 60% of revenue, 40% Rest customers contribute 30%, and 40% Test customers (dormant or churned) account for just 10%.
Here’s what Traditional Martech (TradMartech) actually does:
- Serves the loyal 20% who’d buy anyway
- Abandons the 80% through generic broadcasts
- Loses their lifetime value as they drift away
- Then forces brands to pay more to reacquire them
Consider what a Rest customer experiences: ” I bought twice, loved the product, but you treat me exactly like someone who’s never heard of you. Same generic emails and WhatsApps. Same irrelevant offers. I’m not a person to you—I’m just row 47,293 in your database.”
I bought twice, loved the product, but now I’m just another email address in your database. Your messages don’t remember my journey. Why should I remember you?”
The Triple Failure of TradMartech:
- Failed Economics: Charges for messages sent and active base, not outcomes achieved—profits whether retention works or not
- Failed Engagement: 80% of customers ignored while obsessing over the 20% who would buy anyway
- Failed Personalisation: Millions reduced to “Women 25-34″—that’s segmentation, not personalisation
The mathematics are brutal. A D2C brand with 100,000 customers:
- 20,000 Best customers: Served well, keep buying
- 40,000 Rest customers: Slowly disengaging, ignored
- 40,000 Test customers: Already gone, unreachable
TradMartech monetises the 20,000. Adtech monetises the 80,000. It’s a parasitic relationship where TradMartech creates the leak, then brands pay AdTech to refill the bucket.
This is the double whammy brands face:
- Loss #1: Customer lifetime value vanishes (lost revenue)
- Loss #2: Pay to reacquire them (AdWaste tax)
Martech isn’t fighting AdWaste—it’s feeding it. The Profit Bleeding Machine creates systematic customer abandonment, then charges brands for the transfusion.
The enemy isn’t Google or Meta—they’re just opportunists. The real enemy is the Martech stack, the Profit Bleeding Machine that loses customers by design, not by accident.
2
When Email Lost Its Soul
But why did TradMartech become a Profit Bleeding Machine? The answer lies in a seismic shift 5-7 years ago that vendors completely missed: email lost its killer app.
The exodus was swift. Personal conversations—the P2P messages that made email indispensable—migrated to WhatsApp, iMessage, Messenger, Telegram, Slack. What had been 40% of inbox content collapsed to less than 10%. Email transformed from destination to dumping ground.
This wasn’t just a channel shift; it was an attention catastrophe. When friends and family stopped pulling people to their inboxes, brands lost their captive audience. The daily ritual became weekly chore. Email shifted from pull to push, from anticipated to avoided.
The Compound Crisis
- Mobile Blindness: Desktop-designed emails failed on smartphones. Complex layouts broke. Long content became unreadable. Brands didn’t adapt fast enough for thumb-scrolling, two-second attention spans.
- Desperation Frequency: Brands increased from weekly to daily to multiple times daily. The inbox became a screaming match of subject lines. Customers learned to ignore, not engage.
- The Promotion Trap: Every email became a sales pitch. What marketers called ‘content’ customers saw as ads. Without value, why open?
- Generational Abandonment: Gen Z never knew email’s golden age. To them, it’s where receipts and parents live. They built digital identities on Instagram and TikTok, not Gmail.
- Measurement Darkness: Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection made open rates meaningless. Brands flew blind, unable to see customers sliding toward dormancy until too late.
TradMartech’s Response? Double Down on Failure
Instead of addressing the attention crisis, they added features. More dashboards, more complexity, more reports—everything except solving the core problem: the inbox had become a ghost town, and they were still throwing parties there.
They built segmentation engines for customers who weren’t listening. Journey builders for people who’d left. Personalisation tools that still treated millions as ten segments. They rearranged deck chairs on the Titanic while the attention recession deepened.
The Inevitable Cascade
- Inbox attention died → Email engagement collapsed
- Email engagement collapsed → Customer retention failed
- Customer retention failed → Reacquisition costs exploded
- Reacquisition costs exploded → AdWaste became permanent
Every Rest customer who slipped to Test status became another transaction in the AdWaste economy. Brands knew these customers’ names, emails, purchase history—but couldn’t reach them. The only path back? Bidding against competitors on Google and Meta for customers they’d already won once.
The Perverse Incentive Structure
Here’s why TradMartech will never fix this: they profit from the problem. They charge for emails sent, contacts stored, features used—not for customers retained or revenue recovered. Send a million ignored emails? That’s revenue. Customers churning but send app notifications? Still revenue. Features unused? Doesn’t matter—revenue. It’s like a hospital that profits from keeping patients sick.
You cannot reform a system that profits from its own failure. The cure cannot come from within.
Martech 2.0 is lipstick on a pig. We need something fundamentally different: NeoMarketing, the Profit Recovery Engine.
Where TradMartech bleeds profits through the 80% it abandons, NeoMarketing prevents the loss and recovers the lost. Where TradMartech charges for activity, NeoMarketing guarantees outcomes. Where TradMartech accepts churn as inevitable, NeoMarketing makes it impossible.
The revolution isn’t about more Martech. It’s about replacing the Profit Bleeding Machine with a Profit Recovery Engine. And it starts by solving what TradMartech ignored: bringing the 80% back from the dead.
3
The Tale of Two Losses
Not all lost customers are created equal. The BRTN framework reveals two distinct types of customer loss, each requiring radically different solutions. Understanding this distinction is crucial because treating them the same way—as TradMartech does—guarantees failure.
Test Customers: The Already Gone
Test customers—that bottom 40% generating just 10% of revenue—are marketing’s graveyard. These are the “One and Done” customers who bought once, maybe twice, then vanished. They didn’t leave angry; they left forgotten.
Consider Sarah, who bought yoga leggings from a D2C fitness brand six months ago. Perfect product, smooth delivery. But after purchase, she received the same generic “20% off” emails as everyone else. Nothing referenced her journey. After ten ignored emails, the brand gave up. Sarah didn’t choose another brand—she simply forgot this one existed. Now, reaching her costs more than acquiring her initially.
The Test Customer Solution Cascade
For Test customers, NeoMarketing deploys a three-layer reactivation cascade:
Layer 1: Smart Reactivation (Cost: Zero)
- AMP emails that feel alive, personal, and useful – not desperate
- They remember her purchase, reference her yoga journey, let her build her next outfit right in the email
- Interactive AMPlets for preferences and providing feedback—all in-email
- Zero-cost recovery when it works
Layer 2: NeoN Network (Cost: 30-50% less than platforms)
- PII-based matching finds Sarah in other brands’ emails she opens
- ActionAds in trusted environments—a health newsletter she reads daily
- Complete transactions without leaving the email
- Fraction of ad platform costs, higher conversion
Layer 3: Platform Advertising (Cost: Market rates)
- Only after owned-channel and NeoN attempts fail
- Strategic, not default—paying AdWaste tax only when necessary
- The last resort, not the first response
Rest Customers: The About-to-Leave
Rest customers—the middle 40% contributing 30% of revenue—represent marketing’s greatest tragedy. They’re not lost; they’re losing interest. Every day, thousands slip from Rest to Test, from recoverable to expensive.
Meet Priya. She orders skincare products every 2-3 months, down from monthly last year. She still opens emails occasionally but rarely clicks. The brand keeps sending “You might also like” recommendations that feel generic. Priya isn’t unhappy—she’s uncommitted. In three months, she’ll be another Test statistic unless something changes now.
Rest customers don’t need reactivation—they need a new attention architecture.
The Rest Customer Attention Architecture
The Brand Daily: From Interruption to Institution
- Transform email from weekly promotion to daily utility
- Like media companies, send daily value, not weekly promotions
- Not “Sale today!” but “Your 60-second skincare science”
- Create appointment viewing beyond scanning for receipts
NeoMails: From Dead to Living
- Every email becomes interactive through AMP/AMPlets
- Order confirmation includes skin type quiz
- Shipping notification features 30-second game for rewards (Mu)
- Promotional emails enable full shopping without leaving inbox
- Transform every touchpoint from passive to participatory
Muniverse: The Ecosystem Play
- Restore inbox attention for all brands to benefit
- Daily games like QUEST create appointment viewing
- Prediction markets engage users in current events
- Atomic rewards (Mu) make every interaction valuable
- Rising tide lifts all boats—when users want their inbox, brands win
The Compound Effect
Here’s what makes this approach revolutionary: Rest and Test solutions reinforce each other.
Brands with engaged Rest customers monetise attention by hosting ActionAds for brands reaching Test customers. Muniverse games increase overall inbox engagement, making both Rest retention and Test reactivation more effective. NeoN creates a cooperative network where one brand’s success strengthens others. Every element builds the ecosystem. Every brand that joins strengthens the network. Every engaged customer becomes potential inventory. Every saved customer is one less feeding the Adtech machine.
This is NeoMarketing: the Profit Recovery Engine that turns abandonment into retention, and churn into growth. A system that prevents abandonment before it starts (“Stop Loss”) and reactivates loss at near-zero cost (“Lost & Found”). Not paying to get customers back but ensuring they never leave. Not fighting for attention but architecting it.
Test customers need a rescue mission. Rest customers need a relationship. TradMartech provides neither. NeoMarketing delivers both— and cures what TradMartech created: the systematic loss of customers and profits.
4
From Recovery to Growth
Stopping the leakage is only the beginning. Preventing Rest customers from drifting and reviving Test customers from dormancy gives brands back the revenue streams that TradMartech abandoned. But NeoMarketing doesn’t stop at profit recovery. The real power comes when these recovered customers are pushed into sustained growth, compounding over time.
This is where the Twin Factory, Brand Twins, and Progency transform the economics of marketing from cost centre to profit engine.
The Twin Factory: Scale at the Individual Level
Every recovered customer gets a Brand Twin—a digital advocate that represents them inside the brand. The Twin Factory mass-produces these at scale, ensuring each customer has an intelligent representative tracking preferences, purchases, and potential.
A Twin knows not just what Priya bought, but why she skipped her last order, what new category she’s exploring, and when she’s most likely to convert. This isn’t segmentation pretending to be personalisation. It’s true N=1 understanding—a “Department of One” for each customer.
Consider what this means for recovered Test customers. They’re not thrown back into the generic email pool that lost them originally. Instead, their Twin ensures every interaction builds on the last, every message acknowledges their journey, every offer reflects their actual needs. No recovered customer is left to randomness again.
Brand Twins: From Recovery to Compounding
The Brand Twin doesn’t merely retain—it compounds value. Like a skilled portfolio manager growing investments, the Twin grows the customer relationship systematically.
For Sarah, the once-forgotten yoga customer, her Twin orchestrates a value journey:
- Month 1: Recovery through smart reactivation
- Month 2: Second purchase via perfectly timed complementary product
- Month 3: Subscription upgrade based on purchase frequency
- Month 6: Advocate status, referring yoga class friends
For Priya, the skincare shopper, the Twin builds trust through tailored education and rewards, naturally leading to higher frequency and basket size. What begins as recovery becomes growth. The lost become loyal. The overlooked become profitable. Test becomes Rest, Rest becomes Best.
Progency: The Hedge Fund Model for Marketing
But brands don’t always have the bandwidth to execute at this level of sophistication. That’s where Progency revolutionises the game—operating not as a traditional agency but as an Alpha Engine for customer growth.
The hedge fund model works like this:
Baseline = Beta: Current revenue from existing customers represents the expected return. If Rest customers generate ₹10,000 annually, that’s Beta.
Growth = Alpha: Progency targets returns above baseline. Moving Rest customers from ₹10,000 to ₹15,000 creates ₹5,000 of Alpha per customer.
Payment = Performance: Progency earns a percentage of Alpha generated, not fees for activity. No growth, no payment. Perfect alignment.
The PEAK framework powers this transformation:
- Platform: Full utilisation of martech capabilities (vs 30-40% typical usage)
- Experts: Domain specialists who understand industry-specific triggers
- AI Agents: Orchestrating thousands of individual customer journeys simultaneously
- Kaizen: Continuous improvement ensuring performance compounds over time
Unlike agencies charging retainers regardless of results, Progency profits only when brands profit. This isn’t just service delivery—it’s investment partnership.
The Long Tail Monetisation
Progency’s focus on the Rest and Test segments—the ignored 80%—unlocks massive hidden value. While brands concentrate internal resources on Best customers who’d buy anyway, Progency systematically mines the long tail.
Every Rest customer prevented from sliding to Test preserves ₹10,000 in annual value. Every Test customer recovered and grown to Rest creates ₹10,000 from zero. When 20,000 Rest customers are elevated to Best status, that’s ₹200 million in incremental revenue—pure Alpha that didn’t exist before.
The Compounding Flywheel
Together, these elements create a self-reinforcing growth system:
- Recovery stops the bleeding (Test customers return)
- Twins lock in the value (Personalisation prevents re-churn)
- Growth multiplies the return (Rest become Best)
- Progency ensures execution (Alpha model guarantees results)
- Network effects compound (Success strengthens ecosystem)
Each recovered customer strengthens the system. Their engagement creates NeoN inventory for other brands. Their data makes Twins smarter. Their success proves the model, attracting more brands to the network.
The Ultimate Transformation
A brand with 100,000 customers sees this progression:
Before NeoMarketing:
- 40,000 Test: Near-zero value, expensive to reacquire
- 40,000 Rest: Underperforming, slowly churning
- 20,000 Best: Carrying the entire business
After NeoMarketing:
- Test recovered to Rest: 20,000 × ₹10,000 = ₹200 million recovered
- Rest elevated to Best: 20,000 × ₹10,000 increase = ₹200 million growth
- Best becoming Advocates: Organic acquisition reducing CAC by 30%
The mathematics are undeniable: ₹400 million in value creation from customers already in the database.
This is the hedge fund model applied to marketing. Not hoping for returns but engineering them. Not accepting churn as cost-of-business but treating every customer as an appreciating asset. Not paying for activity but investing in Alpha generation.
The Ultimate Transformation
TradMartech bleeds value. NeoMarketing compounds it.
This isn’t incremental improvement—it’s exponential transformation. The 80% that were a cost centre become the profit engine. The forgotten majority become the growth driver. The lost become the found. The abandoned become the advocates.
Test customers needed rescue. They got it. Rest customers needed relationships. They’re building them. Best customers needed recognition. They’re receiving it.
But the real revolution is what happens next: systematic, measurable, compounding growth from the very customers TradMartech abandoned. Every recovered relationship becomes a source of enduring Alpha. Every saved customer strengthens the network. Every success makes the next success easier.
This is NeoMarketing: where customer loss is impossible, not inevitable. Where growth comes from retention, not acquisition. Where the 80% aren’t the problem—they’re the opportunity. And brands finally have a system that doesn’t just manage customers—it multiplies their value.
5
The Path Forward
The evidence is overwhelming. TradMartech—the Profit Bleeding Machine—loses 80% of customers then forces brands to pay to get them back. It charges for activity while ignoring outcomes. It profits whether retention works or not. The $500 billion AdWaste plague isn’t an accident—it’s the inevitable result of a broken system.
NeoMarketing—the Profit Recovery Engine—reverses every failure. It prevents customer loss through attention architecture. It recovers the lost at 70% less than platform costs. It transforms the abandoned 80% into the growth engine. It charges only for measurable outcomes, aligning vendor and brand incentives perfectly.
The choice seems obvious: abandon the bleeding, embrace the recovery. But transformation isn’t simple. Revolution requires evolution.
The Migration Reality
Brands can’t simply flip a switch. They have existing Martech investments, running campaigns, integrated systems. Teams are trained on current platforms. Contracts are in place. The shift from TradMartech to NeoMarketing must be strategic, not sudden.
This is why the revolution begins with addition, not replacement:
- Keep existing Martech for managing the Best 20%
- Add NeoMarketing for recovering the Lost 80%
- Let success prove the model
- Expand systematically
Start with Test recovery through NeoN—immediate impact, clear ROI. Add Rest retention through NeoMails—higher engagement, prevented churn. Deploy Progency for systematic growth—outcome-based, risk-free. Each success makes the next step obvious.
Martech 2.0: The Bridge Forward
Traditional Martech vendors face a choice: evolve or become extinct. The smart ones will build bridges to the future. This means fundamental changes:
From Input to Outcome Pricing: The 70-30-30 model
- Base fee: 70% of traditional cost (reduced risk for brands)
- Performance bonus: Up to 30% more for hitting milestones
- Total potential: 130% for exceptional results
- Result: Vendors profit from success, not activity
From Broadcasting to Intelligence: AI Agents Collective
- Move beyond segmentation to individualisation
- Deploy AI agents for each customer journey
- Enable true N=1 personalisation at scale
- Transform from message delivery to relationship orchestration
From Complexity to Capability: Simplified execution
- Reduce feature bloat, increase actual usage
- Automate the repetitive, focus on the strategic
- Make powerful simple, not simple powerful
This isn’t about adding AI features to broken foundations. It’s about rebuilding the foundation with aligned incentives, genuine personalisation, and measurable outcomes.
The Future Is Recovery
The next decade of marketing won’t be about finding new customers—it’ll be about keeping and growing the ones brands have. Not about better broadcasting but deeper relationships. Not about more features but measurable outcomes. Not about managing the willing but recovering the lost.
TradMartech created a $500 billion problem by losing customers then charging to get them back. NeoMarketing solves it by making customer loss impossible and growth inevitable. The Profit Bleeding Machine becomes the Profit Recovery Engine. The abandoned 80% become the alpha generators. The revolution transforms marketing from cost to profit.
The strategic enemy has been identified. The solution has been built. The choice is simple: The revolution doesn’t need permission — only decision. Keep bleeding or start recovering. Keep feeding AdWaste or start compounding profit.
This is NeoMarketing. This is the future. And for those ready to embrace it, this is the beginning of marketing’s next era—where every customer matters, every relationship compounds, and every brand becomes a growth engine powered by the very customers TradMartech abandoned.