Why is ROAS the wrong number to run paid media on?
Because every platform grades its own homework. Meta, Google, TikTok and your email platform each report their own attributed revenue, and the total often exceeds what the business actually took in. ROAS also ignores margin: a 3x return on a low-margin product can lose money while a 2x on a high-margin one makes it.
Run paid media on contribution margin and payback: what a new customer costs, against what they contribute on the first order and over the following ninety days.
How should a DTC brand split budget between acquisition and retention?
As one budget, owned by one person. When acquisition and retention are budgeted separately, nobody can say what a new customer is worth or what it is worth paying to get one. Start from the payback window the business can fund, work back to the new customer cost you can afford, and treat the email and SMS program as part of how that customer pays back.
What is usually the real constraint on paid social?
Creative. Platform targeting has become largely automated, so the main lever left to the advertiser is what the ad says and shows. Brands that brief, produce and test new creative on a steady cadence usually outperform brands that spend their time on bid adjustments. If the reporting is all about bidding and none of it is about creative, the effort is going to the wrong place.
What should an email and SMS program include?
More than three flows and a weekly send. At minimum: welcome, browse and cart abandonment, post-purchase, replenishment or cross-sell timed to how customers actually reorder, win-back, and segmentation by purchase behaviour. Track email and SMS revenue as a share of total, and what the program costs to produce, so it is judged like any other channel.
We run paid media across Meta, Google, TikTok and Amazon, plus Klaviyo email and SMS, as one budget managed to contribution margin and payback. See how an engagement works, or what that looked like for other brands.