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Case Study · Meta Acquisition

A consumer membership brand

Cut paid CAC by 67% by fixing the conversion rate, not chasing CPL.

+120%

Paid click-to-lead conversion rate, trough to recovery

−67%

Tracked paid CAC reduction

+236%

Weekly purchases attributed to paid

Michelle Puccinelli

"After 7 months working with Bridgette, we've enjoyed these INSANE wins in our Meta ads: Cost per Lead has dropped by 42%, Cost per Acquisition has dropped by 71%, Doubled Ad Spend (profitably).

I've worked with a lot of media buyers over the years and NO ONE is like Bridgette. She is the perfect mix of creative and analytical. I can rely on her sharp marketing brain to make strategic recommendations, and her quick analytical skills to support those recs with real data."

Michelle PuccinelliVP of Marketing

The brands behind the account

Chalene Johnson on Instagram
Chalene Johnson
Brock Johnson on Instagram
Brock Johnson

The Result

Paid CAC, monthly trendline across continued engagement

From the brand's scorecard. Ad spend over total paid purchases, nine-month window later in the engagement.

9-MONTH AVERAGE peak trough PAID CAC
Paid CAC, monthly 9-month average

What was broken

A backend reindex six months prior had quietly broken the destination, dropping the paid click-to-lead rate from 65% to 18%. The prior agency had kept optimizing for CPL on top of a funnel that no longer converted, which sent the algorithm chasing cheaper clicks into a leakier and leakier path.

What we did

01

Diagnosed the break.

Walked twelve months of daily data backwards to the inflection point. Single week. A backend reindex Meta had quietly deprioritized.

02

Optimized for Conversion Rate, not CPL.

Reset the goal so the algorithm was paid for finding buyers, not the cheapest clicks. Higher CPL in the short term was the price of fresh buyer signal.

03

Fixed the funnel.

Cut checkout load times and simplified the path to purchase, so the opt-ins the algorithm started finding could actually complete.

04

Implemented the Creative Engine.

Fresh creative every three to four days. Broad audience reorganization, casting the widest net the budget would carry.

05

Sharpened the message.

Refocused all ad copy on the single feature customers actually bought for, then tested sub-features and emotional angles underneath it.

The Lever

Paid click-to-lead conversion rate

Three months before engagement and three months into the work. The metric that moved first when the optimization goal was reset.

BEFORE ENGAGEMENT pre-break recovery CLICK TO LEAD %
Before engagement Engagement Engagement period

The Proof

Paid cost per lead, same window

CPL collapsed because the rate recovered. It is the byproduct, not the lever.

BEFORE ENGAGEMENT pre-engagement peak collapsed CPL
Before engagement Engagement Engagement period

Paid Snapshot, initial recovery

Same audience, same product, same offer. Different lever.

Movement, start to recovery

Click to lead rate+120%
Cost per lead−71%
Tracked paid CAC−67%
Weekly paid spend+29%
"We spent the first month figuring out all the metrics and CPA's and CAC, and since then we have been off to the races." Bret Johnson, CFO
The story is signal, not creative. By the time we took over, the original break (a backend change that had dropped the conversion rate off a cliff months earlier) was no longer the active problem. The platform had already deprioritized the account hard and was not revisiting it for premium inventory. The prior team had been optimizing for performance the whole time, but did not know how to signal the platform back: what data to feed it, what creative cadence, what optimization goal to pair it with. The work was signal and performance, in parallel. CAC, CPL, and paid purchases are what happen downstream of that.

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