https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-640&utm_medium=podcast

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Hannah Fleming runs performance marketing at Carve Designs (carvedesigns.com), the Northern California swim and apparel brand founded in 2003 and acquired by Komar Brands in December 2025. Before Carve she spent years at Amer Sports on the digital team behind Salomon, Atomic, Suunto, Arc’teryx and Wilson.

If you run retention or growth at a brand with a seasonal core product and a loyal base you have not fully mined, this one is for you.

What’s inside:

• The retention rebuild: what was already working at Carve after 20 years, and the one thing they were not doing with their customer data
• Mapping the full customer journey in Figma, then finding the gaps where nobody was talking to the customer and the places where they were talking too much
• RFM segmentation as the floor, then layering category purchase behavior on top to move a swim buyer into denim
• The cohort analysis that changed the media mix: dresses and accessories produced the highest-LTV customers, so those categories now lead the creative and seed the look-alikes
• Direct mail as a performance channel: 5 to 6 catalogs a year to prospects and past buyers, plus programmatic postcards that only drop if the email win-back does not convert
• Employee-generated content, and how one test turned into a full content pipeline with the organic social team shooting UGC-style video on the catalog shoots
• Connected TV without a commercial budget: an agency turns UGC and EGC into the spot, the founder does the voiceover, and success is measured on cost per site visit with MMM picking up the Amazon halo
• Loyalty built on early access and product feedback instead of percent-off, with roughly 2x the LTV of a non-member
• Q4 without heavy discounting: point multipliers and added value inside the tentpole moments
• What she is using AI for right now, from LTV dashboards in Moby 2 to Orita surfacing customers when they are most likely to buy

Who this is for: retention and lifecycle leads, growth marketers at seasonal brands, and operators who moved from a big portfolio company to an SMB.

What to steal: run LTV by first-purchase category before you plan next season’s creative mix. And give partnership content 6 to 12 months before you call it. Hannah says that is how long it took at Carve before influencer content started working.

Follow Hannah: LinkedIn, Hannah Fleming | carvedesigns.com

Timestamps:

00:00 Building Loyalty Beyond Discounts

05:00 Using Customer Segmentation for Retention

10:00 Direct Mail as a Performance Channel

16:00 Building a High-Value Loyalty Program

24:00 Testing Direct Mail and Connected TV

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