Most customers will never buy from your online brand the first time they come across your website. They need to become comfortable and accustomed to your brand before making a purchase. The rule of 7 means that, on average, potential customers need to come across your brand 7 times.
The more they see your brand, the less risky a purchase seems.
For years, brands have relied on paid ads to complete the Rule of 7. The logic was simple: if customers need to see your brand seven times before they buy, just show them seven ads.
Sounds easy… until you realize every single touchpoint costs money.
Paid ads force you into an expensive cycle:
You’re essentially renting your familiarity instead of building it.
And with ad costs rising every quarter, the price of “staying top of mind” has never been higher.
This creates two major problems:
You might need to show a prospect 7-12 ads before they buy.
But CPM inflation means each of those touchpoints cuts deeper into your margins.
$10 CPM used to be normal.
Now $20–$40 is standard in some niches.
Multiply that across seven impressions?
Your Rule of 7 quickly becomes a Rule of “We Just Burned Money.”
Ads are interruptive by nature.
People scroll past them.
They don’t feel personal.
And they aren’t delivered at moments of genuine intent.
You’re paying for the privilege of reminding strangers you exist and not building trust.
This is why the old approach to the Rule of 7 collapses:
You can’t afford to buy your way to familiarity anymore.
Retention channels solve this problem completely…
But that’s the next section.
While paid ads force you to pay for every touchpoint, retention systems let you build them automatically, repeatedly, and at almost zero marginal cost.
This is where modern brands win.
And this is exactly why retention outperforms acquisition for completing the Rule of 7.
With email, SMS, and lifecycle automation, you aren’t paying Meta or Google to reintroduce your brand every time a customer forgets about you. Instead, your touchpoints come from owned channels that cost the same whether you send 1 message or 100,000.
The result?
You create familiarity, trust, and repetition without lighting your ad budget on fire.
Here’s why retention delivers better and cheaper touchpoints than any acquisition channel:
Once a customer joins your email or SMS list, each touchpoint costs pennies, or nothing at all.
A welcome flow? Free.
A product launch? Free.
A reminder? Free.
Retention turns repetition from a cost center into a compounding asset.
Retention channels deliver messages when customers are already engaged:
These touchpoints feel relevant, not interruptive.
And context dramatically accelerates trust.
Customers chose to hear from you.
They opted in.
They want updates, value, and exclusivity.
So when you show up in their inbox or phone, it doesn’t feel like another ad; it feels like a brand they know.
This is the psychological unlock:
Familiarity created through permission-based channels is significantly more trustworthy than familiarity created through paid impressions.
A simple lifecycle setup gives you:
All happening 24/7, automatically.
Paid ads get attention, but retention touchpoints earn trust, and trust is what actually moves customers toward a purchase. Even if a prospect sees your brand seven times through ads, those touches rarely carry the same psychological weight as an email, SMS message, or personalized flow.
Here’s why retention touchpoints feel fundamentally different:
Ads interrupt people.
Retention messages are invited in.
When someone signs up for your email or SMS list, they’re raising their hand and saying:
“I want to hear from this brand.”
That opt-in creates automatic psychological trust because the interaction starts on the customer’s terms, not yours.
Ads appear while someone is:
Their intent is focused elsewhere.
But retention messages land during natural moments of engagement:
Context makes the message feel useful instead of intrusive.
Useful → trusted.
Intrusive → ignored.
Ads are built for audiences.
Retention is built for individuals.
An SMS saying:
“Hey Sarah, your order just shipped 🚚”
will always feel more trustworthy than a Facebook ad shouting:
Personalization triggers a psychological shift where customers perceive the brand as “for me,” not “at me.”
Ads always ask for something:
Buy this.
Click this.
Come back.
Retention channels can deliver value without asking for a purchase:
Providing value without expectation builds trust at scale.
That trust compounds over each touchpoint.
Ads often create skepticism (“Is this legit?”).
Retention channels reduce skepticism by answering the questions ads can’t:
Trust signals (reviews, guarantees, shipping updates) delivered through retention feel more credible because they come from a channel the customer controls.
People trust what they’re familiar with.
And nothing builds familiarity faster than consistent, value-driven communication.
Retention touchpoints feel like a relationship.
Ads feel like a billboard you keep passing on the freeway.
This is the psychological advantage:
Familiarity from retention feels earned.
Familiarity from ads feels purchased.
The Rule of 7 hasn’t changed, but the most effective way to complete it has. You can keep paying Meta and Google to remind customers you exist, or you can build retention systems that create familiarity, trust, and repeated exposure for a fraction of the cost.
Retention doesn’t just help you hit seven touchpoints.
It delivers those touchpoints in a way that feels personal, timely, and genuinely valuable, the exact conditions customers need to feel safe enough to buy.
At Avalon, we build retention engines that turn first impressions into lasting familiarity, and familiarity into predictable revenue. When you stop renting attention and start owning your touchpoints, growth becomes significantly cheaper and infinitely more reliable.
Ready to see how retention can double your lifetime value? Book your free retention audit today.
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