Hey, fellow grower. Welcome to another edition of The ROAS Report, where 1x per week we, fellow growth operators who work at America’s most-exclusive newsletter network (15M+ subscribers, 85+ newsletters, hundreds of consumer and b2b advertisers), provide growth-marketing news, tactics, tips, and tricks - backed by proprietary data from our live advertising campaigns.

In this week’s newsletter:

🤕 How costly reporting mistakes can manifest IRL
🖱️ The ad wars are shifting from attention to intent
🤔 What do CFOs really want from you?

Did someone forward you this email? Subscribe here for free.

DATA INSIGHT

🙃 When the “right” marketing move is actually the wrong one

In the days after launching a big advertising campaign, you probably feel like Tupac: “All Eyez on Me.” Execs who you never really hear from ask for updates. Team members ping you on Slack with a deluge of technical and operational issues. Reporting data starts flowing in. To put it succinctly: the demand to perform is higher than Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg after hanging out together for three hours.

Well, today’s insight is aimed at slaying that dragon. Because the moves made early on in campaigns are often make-or-break - and, as we almost found out last week while making scaling decisions on two internal campaigns for advertising partners of ours, the wrong move can be quite costly.

By the numbers

How the launch of the two campaigns in question went:

💰 A financial education company invited readers of financial newsletters in our network to register for a live webinar about improving swing-trading precision, timing, and confidence. The initial few placements produced a pretty brutal 0.13% verified click-through rate (for context, our verified CTR floor for a bad newsletter placement is typically 0.25%)...but it eventually converted ~53% of the unique clickers, working out to $15-$20 per quality lead. Our brand partner was used to a ~$50 CPL.
💬 A popular language-learning brand ran eight dedicated placements in our network during late September and early October, split between a larger travel newsletter and a smaller travel newsletter. The larger newsletter produced 165% more verified overall clicks…but, as time went on, the smaller newsletter generated 67% more verified conversions.

Our almost-costly mistake: We got the click data back first and were convinced we knew what the winning creative angles for both were going to be. We had even started prepping to scale - until the conversion data trickled in a week later, forcing us to scrap most of our previous plans. (But at least we were able to; costly mistake avoided😅.)

What both campaigns had in common

Early reporting data pointed to the wrong creative being the winner. Had we scaled either of those campaigns aggressively with the early CTR “winners” - without exhibiting patience as the leads progressed through the funnel - there would’ve been a lot of money left on the table (at this level of spend and reach, it could've easily been a $1M+ mistake).
The real creative winners asked prospective customers for the right action, not the easiest or lowest-friction one. Having a call to action of “Register Now” - versus “Learn More” or “See how you would benefit” or “[Insert whatever lead-magnet copy your team comes up w here]” - requires more conversion intent than opening an article or putting in your (probably throwaway) email address. This introduced friction reduced casual traffic, but the people who continued were more useful to the advertiser.
To be clear: this is not to say that other types of campaigns aimed at different parts of the buyer journey shouldn’t have different metrics to maximize. It’s just to say that we as growth leaders should make sure to drill down on the actual, granular north-star measurement metric of each campaign, then optimize for that. Exhibiting patience, all the while.

Bottom line: When launching and scaling a campaign, especially one that involves a longer sales cycle, don’t forget why you’re actually running the campaign in the first place - to generate straight cash, homie. Or, in business terms: “revenue.”

📝 Practical steps for your next campaign: Define the valuable action first, then work backward to the eyeball, because optimizing for the wrong metric too early is how good lead-generation campaigns get accidentally "fixed" into worse ones. When talking with your team, report CTR, but place conversion rate, qualified-lead rate, cost per lead, and downstream pipeline beside it so that no one can stop the conversation at the most convenient column. If the CTR is soft and the post-click economics are strong, test the hook without rebuilding the offer that’s doing its job. A low CTR isn’t automatically a creative emergency; sometimes it’s a secret speakeasy that, once you have the password, leads to a room full of the right people.

One last thing that maybe this goes without saying: make sure to set up your ads in Meta/Google/wherever properly. Early on in campaigns, especially when you have a longer sales-cycle product, these platforms, out of necessity, have a tendency to automatically prioritize ads that you ultimately DON'T want prioritized (ex: they optimize for a certain type of lead that doesn't turn into actual revenue b/c there's more volume signals there, but this could hide approaches that generate less “optimal events” yet more actual $$$).

NEED TO KNOW

What you may have missed this week

🖱️ ~~Cruel~~ Duel intentions: The ad wars are shifting from attention to intent, leaving last-mile platforms like Amazon and Google poised to capitalize (scroll to #6 after clicking link).

💖 On that note: How brands can turn passive audiences into fandoms, according to The Sims, Oreo, and more.

🎓 Feeling blue? Read this right meow: What do Blue Man Group, Meow Wolf, and Cirque du Soleil have in common? This one marketing expert. And he’s sharing his lessons.

🔍 Worth a peek: MarketingProfs surveyed a mix of “B2B and B2C marketers in the United States with budget responsibility” regarding macroeconomic conditions and their budget outlook over the next five years, then put it into this email-gated report.

THE HELP DESK

Stuff that makes your output better and your job easier

📬 Is your email program creating pipeline, or just sending more junk into the inbox void? This practical guide covers common email marketing mistakes and how to avoid them, complete with a 30-day action plan that by the end should have your system rocking and rolling like a prime Mick Jagger.

🧌 Fee-finance-fo-fum: Turn the large, angry CFO into a teddy bear by ensuring you align on what the numbers actually mean b/f a campaign launches - use this five-question executive diagnostic as a compact meeting agenda to help you slay the fire-breathing financial behemoth.

🤑 Showwww me the money! Check out cloud-based data platform Snowflake’s model for finding more revenue using AI. It has an acronym and everything.

That’s all, folks. Happy growing; see you back here next Wednesday✌️.

-Peter & Scott

P.S. Meta or Google not providing the same bang for your advertising buck? At DONUT Press Media, we have 15M+ premium subscribers across dozens of highly engaged niche audiences. 43% have a net worth over $2M. 87% are decision-makers. If you're considering diverting some test spend to newsletters to capture the “halo effect” 😇📈, you should definitely check us out.

Growth-focused CEO or marketer? Meet ur new best friend.

😅POV: avoiding a $1M+ mistake