Case Studies · DTC Activewear

From 4M followers to a compounding acquisition engine

The brand had audience. It did not have acquisition. This is the engine we built.

The situation

A DTC activewear brand with more than 4 million social followers across Instagram and TikTok. Organic reach was strong. Paid performance was inconsistent. The internal team had built good brand content but had never shipped a direct-response creative pipeline. Meta's attribution had gotten shakier through the year. Klaviyo had a welcome flow and nothing else.

Cash flow was the pressure. Scaling ad spend was not producing matching revenue. The instinct inside the company was "we need more followers." The actual problem was different.

The diagnosis

After auditing the ad accounts, the Shopify store, and Klaviyo, the pattern became obvious:

• 80%+ of the social following was tier-zero cold — followed for content, not product.
• Direct-response creative volume was insufficient. The team was shipping 1-2 new ad creatives per month.
• Product pages were converting at 1.6% — well below what similar brands hit.
• Klaviyo was producing about 8% of total revenue; the benchmark for brands at this stage is 25-35%.

The acquisition cost was not the problem. The conversion and retention arms were not doing their jobs.

What we built

1. UGC creative pipeline (weeks 1-4)

Before turning on prospecting at scale, we stood up a UGC pipeline producing 10+ new creative concepts per week. The team had great lifestyle brand content; we added direct-response content specifically designed for Meta's creative-led algorithm.

2. Meta + Google Ads rebuild (weeks 2-6)

Rebuilt the Meta account around Advantage+ with creative testing as the primary lever, not audience targeting. On Google Ads, we defended brand terms first — we found competitors bidding on the brand name — then ran Shopping and Performance Max on top sellers.

3. Shopify CRO sprint (weeks 3-5)

Rewrote 8 top product pages. Moved reviews above the fold. Added inline UGC video. Rebuilt the size selector. Added a trust bar in the top 600px. PDP conversion rate moved from 1.6% to a range above 3% on the priority SKUs.

4. Klaviyo expansion (weeks 4-8)

Rebuilt welcome (4 touches), abandoned cart (3 touches, email + SMS), browse abandonment (new flow), post-purchase (review + cross-sell), VIP tier (top 10%), win-back, and back-in-stock. Klaviyo share of revenue moved into the mid-30% range within the quarter.

5. Google Analytics + server-side tracking (week 3)

Installed GA4 with Shopify server-side events. Gave the founder visibility into true revenue attribution for the first time. This alone changed what we all argued about in the weekly review.

Outcome

A brand that had audience but no engine now has the engine. The specific revenue numbers, we share after an intro call. The shape of the outcome: prospecting ad spend became survivable because the conversion surface and retention arm were carrying their weight; the "we need more followers" theory got replaced with "we need to monetize the followers we already have."

What it cost to get here

12 weeks of focused work. Month-to-month engagement from the client side. No long-term commitment. No "strategy deck, then we build it over six months." We built while we thought.

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