Introducing Earned Growth
What is Earned Growth?
Earned Growth is a valuable metric for measuring your business’s organic growth rate. It reflects how fast your business grows each year—even without spending on sales or marketing.
It does this by only including growth from retention or advocacy, excluding revenue from customers acquired through paid channels.
A high Earned Growth rate signals sustainable growth and demonstrates how much your customers value your brand. High Earned Growth shows growth from returning customers and those who refer friends—a powerful way to grow.
Where did Earned Growth come from?
Earned Growth was developed by Fred Reichheld, creator of Net Promoter Score, and Bain & Company. It was first published in Winning on Purpose (2021) and summarised in the Harvard Business Review as NPS 3.0.
How Earned Growth can transform your business
By measuring and optimising for earned growth, you gain multiple benefits:
- Sustainable organic growth – Reduces reliance on paid marketing, creating a robust business model.
- Enhanced profitability – Lower advert costs free up budget or boost profit.
- Competitive edge – Advocates spend more, refer friends, and return more often. Earned Growth creates a virtuous cycle to transform your economics and make your business more efficient than competitors.
By integrating earned growth into your strategy, you build a more sustainable and profitable business.
How your Earned Growth score is calculated
Your Earned Growth score is the sum of growth from retained and referred customers.
We split your revenue over the last 12 months into three origin sources:
- From existing customers (Growth from Retained Revenue)
- From new customers acquired via advocacy (Growth from Earned Acquisition)
- From new customers acquired via paid marketing (Growth from Bought Acquisition)
We measure advocacy (including outside of Mention Me) using a customer origin survey to estimate how much of your new customer revenue is earned.
All revenue numbers are given as a percentage of the prior 12 months’ revenue—showing their contribution to year-on-year growth:
- Growth from Retained Revenue = Revenue from existing customers (including reactivated) in the last 12 months / Revenue from all customers in the prior 12 months
- Growth from Earned Acquisition = Revenue from new customers in the last 12 months (estimated from survey) / Revenue from all customers in the prior 12 months
We exclude revenue from bought customers to get your Earned Growth score:
- Earned Growth = Growth from Retained Revenue + Growth from Earned Acquisition
All revenue is calculated excluding returns/cancellations.
The Earned Growth dashboard
How do I see my Earned Growth score?
To see your Earned Growth score, you need:
- At least 2 years of continuous historical order data
- A running customer origin survey (shown to a small percentage of first-time customers) with at least 1,000 responses
Go to the Earned Growth dashboard (navigate to Advocacy Intelligence, then select ‘Earned Growth’).
If you don’t have the required data, a notification will show at the top of the screen with next steps. Or email product@mention-me.com for further help.
What can the Earned Growth dashboard do?
- Track your organic growth rate (Earned Growth score)
- Identify opportunities to improve your score
- Monitor the impact of any changes you make
By tracking and improving your Earned Growth, your business becomes more sustainable and profitable.
I can’t see my Earned Growth score on the dashboard. What should I do?
Follow the instructions at the top of the dashboard and click the 'Contact Us' link. Our team will guide you through next steps.
You will see a notification similar to one of the below:
The dashboard includes dummy data visuals to help you understand how Earned Growth works and the impact it can have.
What's the Earned Growth Rate?
Your Earned Growth Rate is a measure of organic revenue growth—tracking revenue due to retention or advocacy only. It excludes paid channel revenue, showing how you’d grow without any paid advertising.
- Earned Growth score = Growth from Retained Revenue + Growth from Earned Acquisition - last period's revenue
Understanding the Earned Growth revenue projection
This calculator shows what happens to gross profit (revenue minus marketing costs) over the next five years if you improve your Earned Growth score. Two scenarios illustrate the real financial impact.
Over time, higher Earned Growth increases your loyal, advocating customer base—these customers spend more, refer others, and make your marketing more effective.
- Revenue from bought new customers stays constant (no paid marketing growth)
- Earned customers are 50% more likely to refer, spend 20% more, and are 20% more likely to be retained than bought customers
- The same proportion of existing customers is earned each year
- Margin of 20% for bought customer revenue
FAQs
How do you recommend engaging senior stakeholders with Earned Growth?
Share Earned Growth insights in regular reports and meetings. Highlight rate changes and take snapshots of dashboard graphs. Earned Growth helps to show the value of advocacy.
How do you tell which customers come from bought channels vs earned channels?
- Set up a customer origin survey shown post-purchase to a sample of first-time customers
- The survey asks how they discovered your brand, with options indicating 'earned' (recommendations, reviews, reputation, previous use) or 'bought' (ads, search engines). 'Other' responses are classified individually.
- After responding, the customer can refer a friend
- Initial data shows minimal referral cannibalisation
I already have a customer origin survey. Why should I use Mention Me’s version?
The Mention Me platform is the only solution able to calculate your Earned Growth score, and benchmarking features are coming soon. The question is consistent for reliable benchmarking, and our clients see 50%+ response rates.
Every customer who answers the origin survey goes on to see a referral offer.
What package is Earned Growth available on?
It's available across all packages.
Will the customer origin survey work with smart experiments?
Yes. If you’re unsure of setup, please contact product@mention-me.com
How do I provide feedback?
Contact your CSM to send feedback or email our product team at product@mention-me.com
Earned Growth is a service mark of Bain & Company, Inc.