Part six · Chapter 24

THE LOOP SCORECARD

Eleven lines, read aloud every Monday by one owner. A loop nobody reads weekly stops turning without anyone noticing.

A loop crosses every team: product builds the trigger, lifecycle sends the ask, support handles the reward, finance pays for it, legal clears it. That's exactly why nobody owns it. Give it one owner and one page, read aloud every Monday.

The eleven lines

  1. New customers, totalWith the share that came through an existing customer, and store revenue beside it.
  2. K, trailing 90 daysReferred completed first orders per active customer. Signups don't count.
  3. Cycle timeMedian days from an inviter's first order to their friend's.
  4. Reward costPer referred customer and per incremental one, beside paid acquisition cost.
  5. Referred cohort quality90-day second-order rate and refund rate, referred against paid.
  6. Top-tenth shareThe share of referred customers brought by the top tenth of inviters.
  7. Active customersThe fuel. If this falls, line 2 follows.
  8. Voided rewardsCount and rate. A sudden rise is a fraud ring finding you.
  9. Holdout leak checkHoldout profiles who saw a referral ask this week. It should be zero.
  10. Waitlist before launchFor drops, seasons and giveaways: people signed up for the next cycle.
  11. One change shippedWhat changed in the loop this week, and the date its read is due.

Read the numbers aloud, not in a dashboard nobody opens. A falling line read out three Mondays in a row becomes impossible to ignore. The Second Order's Monday Scorecard works the same way, and the two fit on one page.

A loop nobody reads weekly stops turning without anyone noticing.

Who owns it

One person, with the authority to change the trigger, the reward and the terms without a queue. At a small brand that's the founder or the head of growth. At a larger one it's whoever owns retention, because retention is the fuel and they already own the flows the loop runs through.

Do this

This is one chapter of Close the Loop, which is free and readable in full on a single page with no form in front of it.