Helio Commerce cut CAC 34% while scaling paid

Helio runs a direct-to-consumer catalog with heavy Meta and Google spend. Rising CPMs and soft landing conversion were eating contribution margin. The brief was clear: lower CAC without throttling growth.

Diagnosis

Account structure mixed prospecting and remarketing. Landing pages carried too many offers. Attribution stopped at last click, so creative winners were misread. We mapped the funnel from ad to purchase and found the largest leak on product and offer pages — not on the ad itself.

What we shipped

Paid was rebuilt with clearer audience tiers and a creative testing grid. CRO ran a focused backlog on PDP and checkout: offer clarity, trust modules, and faster mobile LCP. Offline purchase data fed back into bidding within thirty days.

Outcome

CAC fell 34% over nine months while new-customer revenue more than doubled. Landing conversion rose 41%. MER stabilized at 3.9x. The team now runs a weekly test cadence instead of quarterly redesigns.