2.6→4.1 ROAS

Situation

A UK skincare brand had the retention profile every DTC founder wants — customers who came back for a second and third order — but acquisition was stalled. First orders lost money on paper, so the team capped prospecting at a token daily budget and leaned on retargeting, which was quietly running out of audience to retarget.

Diagnosis

• The CAC ceiling was set against first-order margin, ignoring that a customer's 90-day value was 2.4× the first order.
• Single-product offers kept average order value too low to give acquisition any room.
• Prospecting creative had narrowed to one proven but exhausted concept.

System built

We modeled 90-day customer value by cohort and reset the CAC ceiling against it — the "unprofitable" acquisition was, on real numbers, the cheapest growth available. Bundle-led offers lifted first-order value by 18%, widening the margin further. Meta prospecting was rebuilt around the three strongest creative concepts from a structured testing month, and the spend mix shifted from retargeting-heavy to prospecting-led.

Results

Five months later ROAS stood at 4.1 with prospecting carrying 62% of spend — the account acquires new customers profitably on first order, and everything after that is margin.

Before / After

Case studies are anonymized to protect client confidentiality. Metrics reflect actual account performance over stated periods.