Gousto

As competition in the meal kit category intensified, Gousto faced a challenge familiar to many subscription businesses. While value-led acquisition tactics were driving sign-ups, they were not always creating long-term profitable customers. Growth would only be achieved by attracting households more likely to stay, order frequently, and deliver stronger lifetime value.

The Brief

We wanted to identify and engage Gousto's most valuable future customers, shifting the focus from generating the highest volume of sign-ups to acquiring subscribers with the greatest long-term potential.

To achieve this, we needed to move beyond broad demographic targeting and create a bespoke audience strategy that could identify high-income, convenience-driven households with a natural affinity with the brand. 

What We Did

A custom data-driven audience solution was developed using Gravity Connect, the7stars' proprietary data platform.

We combined Gousto's high-value customer data with TGI insight, O2 mobile behavioural data, and household income indicators derived from Open Banking data to build a privacy-centric geo-behavioural model.

This created Confident Adventurers+, a precision growth audience designed to identify consumers most likely to become loyal, high-value Gousto customers. While competitors focused on broad-scale reach, we focused on reaching fewer but more profitable households.

By using postcode-level modelling as a common identifier, the audience could be activated directly across media platforms, eliminating reliance on off-the-shelf targeting solutions available to competitors.

Meta, YouTube, and Pinterest were selected based on their proven effectiveness, geo-targeting capabilities, creative flexibility, and optimisation tools. The same Confident Adventurers+ audience was deployed consistently across all channels, ensuring cross-channel reinforcement and increasing share of voice among Gousto's highest-value prospects.

To measure the true commercial impact of the strategy, a four-cell geo-based incrementality test was conducted. Carefully matched regions were selected using historical sales correlations, allowing us to isolate the effect of the audience strategy beyond platform-reported metrics.

The Results

By combining advanced audience profiling with consistent activation across channels, Gousto transformed its approach to customer acquisition.

The Confident Adventurers+ strategy delivered a 4.9% uplift in sign-ups compared with business-as-usual targeting during the test period.

More importantly, customer quality improved. Independent incrementality testing demonstrated a 2% increase in eight-week order frequency at a 99.8% confidence level, proving the audience was not only more likely to subscribe, but more likely to remain engaged.

The campaign also generated 1,300 incremental box orders compared with the control group.

In a category dominated by discount-led acquisition and broad-reach targeting, Gousto showed that growth does not have to come at the expense of profitability. By identifying, reaching, and converting higher-value households, the brand shifted its focus from driving trial to building long-term loyalty.