The card Hole 02 Par 5Yamibuy
Would they have bought anyway?
Growing volume and cutting acquisition cost at the same time, by asking one annoying question.
- Par · the baseline
- Paid acquisition judged on attributed conversions — including customers who were already on their way to buy.
- The lie · the constraint
- Retargeting looked like the best channel on the dashboard. It was also the channel most likely to take credit for someone else’s work.
- The shot · the call
- Cut the retargeting that couldn’t prove it was incremental, move the money to prospecting that could, and judge every dollar on one question.
- Result
- −15%CAC vs. baseline — while growing volume 25% year over year.
Would these customers have bought anyway?
01
Read the lie
The dashboard’s favorite channel.
Attribution rewards whoever touches the customer last. Retargeting touches almost everyone last. That doesn’t make it wrong — it makes it the first place to ask the question.
+25%
Year-over-year volume growth, with CAC landing 15% under baseline.
02
What it changed
Did it work, before who gets credit.
The lesson I took to every team since: answer “did this work?” before arguing about who gets credit. It’s a finance conversation, not a channel conversation — and it’s the difference between spending more and growing more.