Scaling startups Getmyboat, PatPat, and Dysolve on their winning customer acquisition strategies:
- To attract new customers, businesses are using data to design and guide marketing campaigns across channels like social media and email.
- Proven tactics such as word of mouth and personal referrals continue to play a strong role in winning and retaining customers.
- Leveraging and nurturing brand ambassadors helps drive customer acquisition and retention, said the executives.
To acquire new customers, today’s businesses are increasingly relying on data to shape and drive marketing campaigns across channels like social media and email. Quality data is among the biggest factors influencing marketers’ customer acquisition success, according to a report from performance marketing solutions firm Stirista.
Brands with successful strategies prioritize social media, digital advertising, and targeted email campaigns, says Stirista. But even in a digital-first world, tried-and-true methods of acquiring and keeping new customers, such as word-of-mouth and personal referrals, remain powerful drivers too.
From the so-called Airbnb for boats to an artificial intelligence (AI) company making dyslexia treatment more accessible to a global apparel e-commerce brand, three companies share their winning customer acquisition strategies with CO—.
Boat rental business Getmyboat’s hypertargeted, data-driven approach to customer acquisition boosts booking numbers and revenue
When Co-Founders and entrepreneurs Sascha Mornell and Raf Collado founded marketplace business Getmyboat in 2013, their vision was to turn idle boats into income by connecting owners with renters whenever vessels would otherwise be docked.
To build its customer base of would-be renters, the company leaned in to search engine optimization (SEO), optimizing the website with keywords and meta descriptions and creating content designed to rank well in search results. SEO was the main growth lever for renters and to generate customer demand, said Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Koenig. Then in 2021, Getmyboat saw a surge in demand and usage, driven by pandemic-driven shifts to outdoor, socially driven activities.
Shortly after, the company hired Koenig, who’d held roles at companies such as Chewy and Zillow, to lead marketing efforts and transform organic growth into purposeful, demand-driven growth.
“The first thing I looked at was data at the market level,” said Koenig. “So, how dependent are we on individual cities and the weather in those cities? Your keywords can be great, but if it’s raining, it doesn’t matter. I wanted to get deeper into what was working.”
He identified priority cities where boating was popular and competition high, like Miami, and devised a strategy to divert more marketing funds toward those key cities over ones with less competition rather than continuing with a one-size-fits-all approach.
“I’m thinking of it like a portfolio,” Koenig said. “You want some aggressive and some safe investments. Your portfolio should balance out your goal.”
A 360-go-to-market Miami plan included billboards for the first time for Getmyboat in the city, radio ads, and targeted programs on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
“That really did pay off,” said Koenig. “We were declining in Miami when I came on. Now, it’s one of our fastest-growing markets.”
Customers were drawn to the company’s “Made Perfect” social media campaign, which included images specific to Miami, like palm trees and yachts. Posts featured special events like bachelorette parties and wedding proposals, made better because they were on a boat.
“I’ve tried to really encourage the team to think about these different personas and these types of experiences with a lot of empathy,” Koenig said.
Empathy conveyed in emails to both renters and owners helps with customer retention, he said, when both feel supported and that the company is proactively addressing pain points.
“It’s about stepping into their shoes,” he said.
Today the company bills itself as one of the world's largest boat rental marketplaces. For the six months ending in June, Getmyboat’s number of trips booked rose by 33% in Miami from 2024 to 2025. Revenue was up over 50% in the same time period. Now, with AI muting the impact of SEO, the company is working to adapt customer acquisition strategies to the world of AI.
Quality data is among the biggest factors influencing marketers’ customer acquisition success, according to a report from performance marketing solutions firm Stirista.
“We’re still figuring it out, like most companies are,” Koenig said, adding that Getmyboat is getting a fair number of links from the large AI platforms.
Meanwhile, another customer retention strategy in the works involves using data to better help customers figure out optimal pricing in their unique market, especially around high-demand times of the year for boating, like July 4th.
“We’re just starting to get our heads around how to price for that kind of demand surge,” said Koenig, “and we want to get more sophisticated. If there’s a surge or a lull in demand, what should owners do?”
[Read more: 3 Consumer Brand Founders and CEOs on Finding Growth in B2B Channels]
Kids’ e-commerce brand PatPat leans on TikTok and affiliates who are passionate about the brand to bring in new customers
PatPat Co-Founders Albert Wang and Ken Gao and their wives started acquiring customers for their global children and matching family apparel e-commerce brand, which is based in Mountain View, California, by meeting their target audience of new and expecting moms on Facebook.
In 2014, they crafted “real, relatable content” that created a sense of community, said the company’s Head of Marketing, Ranu Coleman. Coupled with limited-time product drops and other exclusive releases, the strategy drew customers in. The next step was identifying micro-influencers, moms who loved and wanted to promote the brand.
Now, the $3 billion brand has shifted as online audiences have. Today, “TikTok has honestly been one of our most powerful drivers,” said Coleman. PatPat works with thousands of affiliates a month through TikTok Shop. Affiliates get free products and discounts in exchange for creating video content around PatPat products.
Most recently, PatPat has started to use AI to hone in on the best influencers and creators to work with and the types of content most likely to attract and keep customers. Its licensed products — PatPat has over 65 licenses, including Disney and Mattel — also naturally pull in the well-known brands’ loyal customers, and once the customers buy PatPat products, they tend to stick around, Coleman said.
For retention, PatPat has moved beyond pure discounts to a gamified loyalty program. For example, a customer spins the wheel and may get a free pair of shoes with their order or a percentage discount off their next purchase.
The brand adapts messaging to align with local holidays and traditions, tailors content for region-specific social media platforms, and partners with influential parenting voices in different countries. It’s an approach, Coleman said, that serves to deepen customer engagement and brand loyalty across the globe.
Combined, PatPat’s strategies have helped the brand acquire some 21 million customers in 140 countries. The key to successful customer acquisition and retention, she said, is balancing data-driven decision-making with creative, culturally relevant storytelling backed by localized influencers.
[Read more: How 3 Startups — Duckbill, Harbor, and OneRail — Landed Funding Windfalls]
For Dysolve, a gaming program for children with dyslexia, word of mouth attracted families, who then became brand ambassadors
As Dysolve Founder and clinical linguist Coral Hoh, Ph.D., launched her AI-powered dyslexia solution in 2017, she already had a loyal following of subscribers with paid subscriptions.
“We had them even as we were going through product development because the solution is so needed,” she said.
From the start, she invited several families in her Hudson Valley, New York, area to test the product, which screens children for language processing issues like dyslexia and provides a customized, game-based online intervention program. Families were so pleased with the results that they organically spread the word, she said.
“The families who benefited from Dysolve from the very beginning became our advocates, and they paid it forward,” Hoh said. They talked to new registrants, explained the process, and shared the benefits they saw with their own children.
Word spread from there through local parent communities both online and in person. Local pediatricians who heard about the solution from their patients told other patients whose children were having reading or learning challenges.
In 2022, Dysolve’s independent nine-state clinical trial of its solution in schools, run by the University of Delaware’s Center for Research in Education and Social Policy, put Dysolve on schools’ radar. Many schools signed on with the brand after the trial “because for the first time, they can see improvement in students they hadn’t previously seen,” Hoh said. The brand is helping with pain points, including special education teacher shortages and more language-related disorders coming out of the pandemic.
The company’s success in customer acquisition has come as “we’re solving a very important problem for people from multiple angles and filling a gap,” Hoh said. Dysolve is currently used in 31 schools, 23 districts, and 10 states. Individual subscribers are in 46 states, plus Canada, Australia, and Europe. “One hundred percent of schools have renewed because there’s no similar solution out there and they could see the results,” Hoh said.
Over the past 12 months, Dysolve has experienced 200% growth in its user base, a strong foundation as it heads into a multimillion-dollar capital raise.
“It’s not just about the capital,” said Hoh. “It’s about finding the right strategic partner so we can scale as efficiently as we can and reach as many children as possible. Through [brand] ambassadors is probably how we’ll continue to grow our community.”
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