Nearly doubling The Herbtender’s revenue while cutting CAC 39%

Client: The HerbtenderHealth and wellness
Scope: Meta adsGoogle adsCreative strategy

(→) Headline results

+87%

Store revenue

+108%

Orders

-39%

Cost of acquisition

(01)Background

The Herbtender wanted a partner to help make paid profitable and scalable

The Herbtender is a premium brand specialising in adaptogenic products designed to support wellness through a unique blend of herbs and botanicals. Their products are crafted with high-quality ingredients to help promote balance, relaxation, and vitality.

They came to us in August 2024 wanting real growth, without the cost of winning each customer climbing to pay for it.

(02)Challenge

Grow the top line and cut acquisition cost at the same time

Two things that usually pull against each other. It meant finding efficiency inside the accounts rather than buying volume, and building a creative engine good enough to keep feeding it.

The brand wanted DTC to catch up with the growth it had already seen in wholesale and on marketplaces.

(03)Approach

Efficient scaling across Meta and Google, powered by a stronger creative engine

Channel by channel: what we changed, and what it moved.

(01)

Meta ads

Rebuilt the account structure and leaned into broad targeting and ASC+ to find efficiency at scale, fed by a steady stream of tested creative and new concepts with more emphasis on video and user-generated content.

Formed a strong test and learn process and began testing new creative in sensibly structured testing campaigns.

Introduced sitelink extensions and info labels + removed unwanted automatic enhancements to increase ad engagement.

We implemented the use of Post IDs in the Meta ad account which allowed our ads to accumulate more post engagement than ever before, further allowing us to scale spend without resetting ad learnings.

(02)

Google ads

We focused on improving the quality of RSA copy and extensions by focusing on core USPs and reinforcing stronger call outs.

Tested bid strategies in brand (tROAS vs TiS) to understand how we could maximise impression share and ROI due to aggressive retailer competition.

Began utilising shopping and search promos to advertise website offers and subscription plus first-order incentives.

Split products by high and low price point, which gave us far more control over the cost per acquisition we were driving at each end of the range.

(03)

Creative strategy

We rebuilt the creative testing process around a monthly round of fresh concepts, each one built from a real customer pain point and the product that answers it.

Winning concepts we found were scaled and we tested iterations to find even more winning ad creatives, allowing us to scale ad spend efficiently.

We worked with influencers to write UGC scripts to test, focusing on winning concepts and customer pain points.

(04)Results

What it did to the numbers.

Every figure is redrawn from The Herbtender’s own platform exports, with the point we took the account over marked on each one.

The Herbtender, indexed changeBaseline = 100

Store revenue+87%

Before

After187

Orders+108%

Before

After208

Cost of acquisition-39%

Before

After61

(01) Result

Revenue nearly doubled, and acquisition got cheaper

In our first full year store revenue grew 87%, on 108% more orders and 122% more new customers. Cost of acquisition fell 39%. All of it came on 34% more ad spend, so most of the growth was bought with efficiency rather than budget. Comparing January to July before us against the same months under us, revenue was still up 82% and acquisition cost down 38%.

(FIG. 01)The HerbtenderSince IcatchaStore orders

Icatcha onboarded

13 months of account data. Redrawn from the client’s own platform export.

(02) Result

New customers up 122%, at a lower cost each

Creative testing on Meta and a tighter Google structure meant we could buy new customers more cheaply as we bought more of them. Return on total spend improved 39% across the year.

(FIG. 02)The HerbtenderSince IcatchaNew customers

Icatcha onboarded

13 months of account data. Redrawn from the client’s own platform export.

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(05)In their words

“We’ve been working with Icatcha for a few months now and are very pleased with the results. Paul has been fantastic to work with. He’s knowledgeable, responsive, and truly invested in helping us achieve the best possible outcomes.”