Scaling Curated for Cars Through Performance Marketing, Retention and Brand Protection
This ecommerce retention case study explores how Adflow Digital helped Curated for Cars combine performance marketing, customer retention and brand protection to support sustainable ecommerce growth.
Adflow Digital works with Curated for Cars, an automotive lifestyle brand specialising in premium car fragrances, diffusers and related accessories.
The engagement extends well beyond paid advertising. Adflow developed an ongoing creative and performance marketing strategy designed to continuously acquire new customers while increasing the value of the existing customer base.
As the brand grew, another challenge became increasingly important. Successful products began attracting low-quality imitations, unauthorised listings and businesses attempting to replicate both the products and the Curated for Cars brand itself.
The growth strategy therefore needed to achieve two objectives simultaneously: continue scaling customer acquisition profitably while protecting the brand, its creative assets and its position in the market.
The Challenge
Car fragrance is a highly competitive ecommerce category with relatively low barriers to entry.
New sellers can enter quickly, price aggressively and imitate successful products, packaging, advertising concepts and brand presentation. This creates pressure not only on advertising performance but also on customer trust.
Curated for Cars increasingly encountered brand impersonation, copied creative assets and lower-quality products positioned to resemble its own, often competing primarily through significantly lower pricing.
For performance marketing, this created a difficult commercial environment.
Adflow needed to ensure that advertising continued to distinguish the original brand from imitations while maintaining acquisition efficiency and giving existing customers compelling reasons to return.
At the same time, paid acquisition could not become the only source of growth. Developing a reliable base of repeat customers was essential to maintaining stronger long-term unit economics.
The Strategy
Adflow Digital developed the strategy around two connected objectives: profitable customer acquisition and customer retention.
Performance campaigns were structured to continuously introduce new customers to the Curated for Cars product range while creative strategy focused on strengthening the characteristics that differentiated the original brand from lower-cost alternatives.
Rather than relying exclusively on individual product promotions, advertising communicated the broader Curated for Cars proposition across fragrances, vent clips, hangers, diffusers and complementary automotive lifestyle products.
Creative development was continuously informed by campaign performance, customer behaviour and the products generating the strongest commercial response.
Retention became equally important.
Campaign and customer data were used to understand repeat purchasing behaviour and create opportunities to bring existing customers back through relevant products, refills and new launches.
This combination of acquisition and retention allowed the business to grow without depending entirely on continuously increasing spend to find new customers.
Building the Campaign
As the brand expanded, creative and media optimisation became an ongoing process rather than a fixed campaign structure.
Adflow continuously tested product positioning, advertising concepts, formats and messaging while monitoring the relationship between acquisition cost, repeat purchasing and overall return on advertising spend.
The product catalogue also created opportunities to introduce customers to additional formats after their initial purchase, helping establish a stronger relationship with the brand rather than treating each transaction as an isolated conversion.
Alongside performance marketing, Adflow became involved in protecting the digital assets supporting that growth.
When unauthorised sellers or competing businesses used Curated for Cars’ creative material or attempted to imitate elements of the brand, Adflow assisted with DMCA takedown processes, trademark protection and marketplace enforcement.
This included helping identify potentially infringing listings, preparing documentation for takedown requests and supporting actions across marketplaces where impersonating products were being sold.
Brand protection therefore became part of the wider performance strategy. Protecting original creative, brand identity and marketplace visibility helped prevent competitors from benefiting from the awareness and demand Curated for Cars had invested in creating.
The Impact
Adflow Digital’s relationship with Curated for Cars demonstrates how ecommerce performance marketing increasingly extends beyond media buying alone.
Sustainable growth required the coordination of creative strategy, customer acquisition, retention, product positioning and brand protection.
Maintaining approximately 30% monthly customer retention reduces dependence on continuously acquiring entirely new customers, while maintaining 4-5x ROAS provides a commercially sustainable foundation for continued paid growth.
At the same time, supporting DMCA enforcement, trademark protection and marketplace actions helps protect the value created by that growth from businesses attempting to imitate the brand or its products.
The result is an ongoing ecommerce growth programme designed not simply to generate transactions, but to acquire customers, bring them back and protect the brand they are returning to.
Key Results
The ongoing strategy has helped Curated for Cars maintain an approximately 30% monthly customer repeat and retention rate, creating a significant recurring customer base alongside continued new-customer acquisition.
At the same time, performance marketing continues to operate at approximately 4-5x ROAS, allowing the business to maintain profitable advertising while continuing to scale.
The combination of acquisition, retention and brand protection has also given Curated for Cars a stronger defence against low-quality imitations, unauthorised use of creative assets and competitors attempting to trade on the brand’s identity or undercut genuine products purely on price.
