Building a brand-owned acquisition engine for a DTC activewear brand with 4M+ social following
A beloved brand with millions of followers — and revenue that lived and died by the founder's next post. We built the engine that made growth predictable.
3.4x
blended ROAS (from 1.7x)
+218%
year-over-year revenue
+41%
average order value
31%
of revenue from email/SMS
The challenge
Where they started.
On paper, the brand looked unstoppable — 4M+ followers, a cult community, and sell-out drops. Under the hood, it was fragile. Almost every dollar of revenue traced back to one thing: the founder posting. When she posted, sales spiked. When she didn't, they cratered.
There were no profitable paid channels. A previous agency had burned through ad budget at a 1.7x ROAS — barely break-even after COGS. Email was an afterthought (an unsegmented list doing 9% of revenue). And the product pages, while pretty, leaked buyers at checkout.
The brand didn't need more awareness. It needed an acquisition engine it owned — one that kept selling whether or not the founder picked up her phone.
What we built
The growth engine we put in place.
Meta & Google Ads, UGC creative strategy, Klaviyo email/SMS flows, Shopify CRO, product page optimization, ambassador program
Timeline: First 6 months
Rebuilt paid from creative-first
We threw out the polished studio ads and rebuilt around UGC and creator content — the format the audience already trusted. New campaign architecture across Meta, Google Shopping, and PMax, structured for clean signal and fast iteration.
Turned email into a revenue channel
Migrated to Klaviyo and built the full lifecycle: welcome, browse + cart abandonment, post-purchase, replenishment, and winback — segmented by behavior and product affinity, not blasted to everyone.
Fixed the leaks (CRO)
Rebuilt the product and collection pages around proof, fit confidence, and bundle offers. Added quizzes and social proof where buyers hesitated, and a bundle builder that lifted units per order.
Systematized the community
Stood up an ambassador + UGC program so the brand had a steady pipeline of creator content fueling both organic and paid — without depending on the founder.
The results
The number that goes up.
3.4x
Blended ROAS
Up from 1.7x — paid went from break-even to the brand's most scalable channel.
+218%
YoY revenue
Predictable, channel-diversified growth that no longer hinged on a single post.
+41%
Average order value
Bundle strategy + post-purchase upsells did the heavy lifting.
31%
Revenue from email/SMS
Up from 9% — lifecycle flows recovered carts and drove repeat purchases on autopilot.
−27%
Customer acquisition cost
Creative-first paid + stronger LTV math made every new customer cheaper to win.
62k
Engaged subscribers
A list the brand owns — not rented from an algorithm.
Within two quarters the business looked completely different. Revenue stopped spiking and crashing with the content calendar and started compounding. Paid media — once a money pit — became the growth lever, profitably scaling at 3.4x.
Most importantly, the founder got her business back. The engine ran without her: ads acquired, flows nurtured, the community fed creative, and the numbers went up whether she posted that day or not.
“We needed brand-owned channels beyond founder-led social — Revive built the entire engine.”
Founder
DTC Activewear Brand
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