The Situation
A fast-growing DTC brand found itself stuck. For two years, topline and EBITDA were flat despite heavy investment in marketing.
The Problem
Data team reduced to manual QA and writing recap decks no one trusted.
CAC looked different in every spreadsheet.
Platform dashboards told each channel manager they were winning, yet the business was not.
MMM reports arrived twice a year, disconnected from what the team had actually done.
MTA tools (like Rockerbox) missed offline and cross-session journeys, making “attribution” meaningless.
“Every Monday, the team lost an entire day debating whose numbers were right. By Tuesday, no one wanted to touch the data again.”
The Shift
We reset from the ground up:
Unified Spend Source: Automated dbt pipelines for digital + manual workflow for offline (TV, OOH, Print). By Monday 11am ET, spend was final.
Single Funnel Lens: From impressions → PDP views → conversions, across every channel, tactic, and even creative theme.
Embedded MMM: Biweekly partner, not quarterly vendor. Forecasts tied to decisions (e.g., when to flight TV and direct mail ahead of peak windows).
First-Party Journeys: Pixel capturing 30% more sessions than GA4, enabling measurement of TOF channels even with delayed conversion.
The Framework
Spend decisions now compound across three lenses:
MMM → budget anchor.
Geo + Lift tests → causal validation.
First-party user journeys → connective tissue to see how lift happens.
The Insights & Actions
Once the system was in place, the team could finally see what was working — and act on it. A few examples:
Flighting TV & Direct Mail: MMM revealed adstock effects. Shifting TV and direct mail to hit 4+ weeks before key commercial periods drove stronger peaks.
Reddit Prospecting: Previously dismissed as “low ROAS,” first-party journeys showed Reddit was a high-quality ToF driver. More budget shifted there with confidence.
Creative Strategy: Funnel breakdowns highlighted that emotion-led creative generated higher PDP engagement vs. problem-solution ads. Channel managers doubled down on that angle.
Branded Protection: First-party journeys exposed cannibalization in branded paid search. Budgets were trimmed and reallocated to incremental channels.
Landing Page Tests: ToF traffic bouncing in <30s triggered experiments with “discover” CTAs and top-product showcases, improving email capture and reducing wasted CAC.
The Outcome
+30% topline & EBITDA growth in first year.
Team gained back Mondays.
CAC made sense — one source of truth.
Creative and channel decisions based on what actually moved the funnel.
