I favor entrepreneurs with a keen focus on pipeline metrics. Etsy has some great ones worth noting:
- Only 2% of sales goes to marketing. Pretty amazing for a consumer facing business.
- 93% of traffic is from organic marketing channels; leaving only 7% from paid traffic. Note that organic includes direct and email referrals.
- 78% of purchases are from repeat customers. Now that’s customer loyalty.
Another interesting fact: One reason for Etsy’s high repeat usage is that it isn’t greedy in its fees to customers. Etsy’s revenue, as a percent of its overall gross sales to consumers, is 8-10%. Some marketplaces charge 20-30%.
Great metrics for a company tracking to raise $100 million in an upcoming IPO with a potential $1.7 billion valuation.
These metrics are from Etsy’s S-1 filing as analyzed by Paul Bennetts at AirTree Ventures.