Driving 29% Incremental New Customer Growth with a Starter Pack for Just Bee Honey

The Situation

Founded in Manchester in 2014, Just Bee Honey has grown from a family beekeeping heritage into one of the UK’s most loved wellness food brands. Their range combines natural vitamins and botanicals with premium acacia honey to support a wide range of health needs, from immunity and sleep to gut health and energy. With science-backed formulas, they have delivered results to hundreds of thousands of customers.

The Challenge

Just Bee Honey came to BARK in July 2025 with a clear brief: scale new customer acquisition while protecting profitability. Our integrated approach across paid media, growth marketing, and data science made us a strong fit for where they wanted to take the business.

Just Bee had strong repeat purchase rates but needed to bring more new customers through the door, efficiently. The challenge was finding an entry point that would convert first-time buyers, introduce them to the breadth of the range, and set them up to become long-term customers rather than one-time purchasers.

The Approach

We worked with Just Bee Honey to develop a Starter Pack: a bundled offer for new customers, priced higher than a single product but cheaper than buying each item separately. It gives new customers the full range from their first order, with free gifts included to help close the purchase.

We then used causal inference methods to measure the real impact on new customer acquisition and downstream retention, isolating the Starter Pack’s contribution from the simultaneous increase in media spend and seasonal demand.

The Method

Interrupted Time Series Analysis

To measure the impact of the Starter Pack launch we used Interrupted Time Series Analysis (ITSA). This approach uses regression modelling to forecast new customer acquisition based on spend, accounting for diminishing returns and modelling the effect of spend as moderated by seasonal demand.

Our model trained on data from both before and after the launch. The relationship between spend and acquisition was adjusted depending on which side of the launch date we were on, which allowed us to isolate the uplift specifically attributable to the Starter Pack, while taking into account any changes in media investment and broader seasonal trends.

Validating the Model

We stress-tested our findings in two ways. First, modelling was stable across different training data windows: varying the date ranges used to train the model consistently produced strong forecast accuracy. Second, we cross-referenced the modelled uplift in new customer acquisition against actual Starter Pack sales: a strong correlation there gave us a consistent picture of what was driving the numbers.

The Results

Acquisition

Using ITSA, we estimated the Starter Pack drove a 29% lift in new customer acquisition. This figure is net of the increase in media spend and seasonal demand over the same period, so it reflects the incremental impact of the product offer itself.

Here is how the pre- and post-launch periods compared:

Enriching our MMM

Our Marketing Mix Modelling for Just Bee is enriched by this analysis. A media mix model that does not account for a product launch like this could attribute the resulting sales growth to media campaigns. Getting the measurement right is what makes the decisions that follow from it reliable. Since we can model well the impact of the starter pack launch, we can incorporate this data into our MMM.

Retention and Lifetime Value

We tracked the LTV trajectory of Starter Pack customers from day one. Our analysis found that these customers are maturing in line with the average Just Bee Honey customer. The value they are generating is indistinguishable from a standard acquisition, which means the gains in new customer volume are flowing through into real business growth.

Our always-on LTV monitoring will flag immediately if that changes. Until it does, we have strong evidence that the Starter Pack is driving full commercial value, not just a short-term spike in acquisition volume.

Going Forward

The acquisition and LTV models feed directly into our forecasting work, where we calculate the optimal media investment plan for the months and years ahead. We factor in business costs to give a complete view of how different scenarios affect profitability, not just top-line growth. This modelling allows us to understand what new customer efficiency to shoot for throughout the year, to maximise growth given any efficiency targets. It also helps us to plot a steady course with our budgets in the face of noisy variation in daily sales.

As a result of this work, BARK’s revenue forecasts for Just Bee Honey’s 2026 new customer revenue increased by 25%. A strong acquisition offer, accurately measured and supported by an effective cross-channel media strategy, was central to that outcome.

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