eCommerce Performance Marketing Agency
The eCommerce Performance Marketing Agency DTC Brands Hire When ROAS Stops Being the Answer
Paid media, lifecycle email and creator whitelisting run by one team, measured against contribution margin instead of whatever the ad platform decides to claim.
- $336M+ in DTC ad spend managed across 218+ eCommerce brands
- $783M+ in client revenue driven
- Reporting that reconciles to your P&L, not to the platform's self-graded homework
- Month to month. 30 day notice. First month money back.
What performance marketing actually means here
Most agencies use "performance marketing" to mean "we buy ads and report ROAS." That number is graded by the platform selling you the ads. It counts a view through from someone who was going to buy anyway, and it books the same order twice across Meta and Google.
We run performance against contribution margin instead. Every channel gets judged on what it added after COGS, shipping and fees, using order data from Shopify rather than attribution claims from the ad account.
That changes the work. Budget moves to campaigns producing net new customers rather than the ones best at claiming credit for repeat buyers. Creative gets tested against CAC on first time orders. Email stops being scored on its own revenue line and starts being scored on what it does to repeat rate and LTV.
In our experience scaling DTC apparel and supplement brands past $10M, the biggest unlock is rarely a better ad. It's finding out which slice of spend was never doing anything.
What we own
Paid social
Meta and TikTok prospecting and retention, built around net new customer cost rather than blended ROAS.
Paid search
Google Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen, with branded and non branded reported separately so brand traffic can't flatter the account.
Lifecycle
Klaviyo email and SMS flows and campaigns, built off the same creative and segment data as the paid side. Klaviyo partner.
Creative
AI assisted production with human approval, briefed from the ads that actually converted rather than from a moodboard.
Creator whitelisting
Creator accounts run as paid placements with full targeting control, not gifted posts and hope.
Attribution and reporting
Server side events stitched to Shopify orders, so every figure traces back to something you can look up. See how the reporting works.
Quick answers
What is an eCommerce performance marketing agency?
An eCommerce performance marketing agency buys media for online retail brands and is measured on the revenue it produces rather than on impressions or engagement. In practice that means paid social, paid search, lifecycle email and the tracking infrastructure underneath all three. The difference between a good one and a bad one is almost always the measurement layer: whether the agency reports the numbers the ad platform hands it, or reconciles those numbers against the store's actual orders.
What size brand does performance marketing make sense for?
Roughly $100K to $25M in annual revenue is where the maths works. Below about $100K there isn't enough order volume to read a test, so you're paying for judgement calls rather than data. Above $25M the economics usually favour an in house team with an agency on the hard parts. Most of the 218+ brands we've worked with sat between $1M and $15M when they started with us.
What does an eCommerce performance marketing agency cost?
Our retainers start at $5,000 per month and scale with the services you take. A brand running paid social only sits near that floor. A brand running paid social, paid search and Klaviyo lifecycle together sits well above it. The number is set by scope rather than by your ad spend, so it doesn't climb just because you had a good month. Month to month, 30 days' notice, and the first month is money back.
Do you work with SaaS companies?
Yes, though it's a small part of what we do. About 90% of our work is DTC eCommerce, and the SaaS clients we take on tend to look like eCommerce anyway: a transactional checkout, a self serve signup, and a paid acquisition problem measured on cost per customer. If you're running enterprise B2B SaaS with a six month sales cycle and an SDR team, we're the wrong shop and we'll say so on the first call.
How we compare
| Top Growth Marketing | In house hire | Typical performance agency | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Measured on | Contribution margin, reconciled to Shopify | Whatever the last dashboard said | Platform reported ROAS |
| Channel coverage | Paid social, search, lifecycle and attribution, one team | One person, one or two channels | One channel, siloed from the rest |
| Creative | Briefed from converting ads, produced in house | Outsourced or founder made | Stock templates, or an upcharge |
| Attribution | Server side events stitched to order data | Platform dashboards | Platform dashboards |
| Commitment | Month to month, 30 day notice | Salary, benefits, 3 month ramp | 6 to 12 month contract |
| Ramp time | Audit in week one, live inside two weeks | 60 to 90 days | 30 to 45 days |
Sound familiar?
Your channels each claim the same order
Meta says 4.2 ROAS, Google says 6.1, and Shopify says you're roughly flat. Nobody can tell you which one is lying, so budget decisions get made on vibes.
Spend went up and profit didn't
Revenue is growing and contribution margin isn't. Almost always that means the growth is being bought from people who would have bought anyway.
Email is a separate company
The email agency can't see the ad creative. The ad agency can't see which segments convert. Both report a healthy number and the blended figure stays flat.
Creative is the bottleneck
You need 20 concepts a month to keep Meta fed and you're producing four. Testing stalls waiting on assets.
Results from DTC partner brands
Apparel & fashion
Premium women's fashion, scaled on paid social and lifecycle together. Read the case study
Beauty & skincare
Full funnel rebuild across Meta, Google and Klaviyo. Read the case study
Supplements & health
Subscription heavy account rebuilt around net new customer cost. Read the case study
Food & beverage
Repeat purchase economics driven through paid and lifecycle in one stack. Read the case study
Our process
Week 1 · Audit
We pull 12 months from every ad account, Klaviyo and Shopify. You get a written findings doc naming the wasted spend in dollars, not a score out of 100.
Week 2 · Blueprint
Channel plan, budget split across prospecting and retention, creative brief, and the target CAC that makes contribution margin work at your margins.
Weeks 2 to 4 · Launch
Tracking gets fixed first: server side events, deduplication, UTM discipline. Then campaigns go live against the plan.
Ongoing · Scale
Weekly optimisation, monthly reporting reconciled to your P&L, and a standing creative pipeline so testing never stalls.
eCommerce performance marketing FAQs
How is performance marketing different from growth marketing?
Mostly branding. Growth marketing usually implies a wider remit including product and retention, while performance marketing implies paid acquisition measured on a revenue target. We do both and don't think the distinction is worth much. What matters is which number the agency is held to.
Which platforms do you run?
Meta, Google, TikTok, and Klaviyo for email and SMS. We're a partner on all four. We'll run Pinterest and Snap where the audience justifies it, and we'll tell you when it doesn't.
Can you work alongside our in house team?
Yes, and it's common past about $8M in revenue. The usual split is that we own paid acquisition and the measurement layer while the internal team owns brand, product and retention. Clear ownership of the reporting is the part that has to be settled up front.
What happens in the first 60 days?
Tracking gets fixed, wasted spend gets cut, and the first creative tests go live. Most brands see a 15 to 20% revenue lift in that window, and it usually comes from fixing Klaviyo flows and cutting spend rather than from a new winning ad.
Do you require a long term contract?
No. Month to month with 30 days' notice, and the first month is money back.
What reporting do we get?
A monthly report that reconciles paid spend, email revenue and Shopify orders into one view, plus a live dashboard. Every figure traces back to an order, so you can check it.
Where are you based?
Los Angeles. We work with brands across the US, Canada, UK, Australia and the EU.
See what your account looks like measured properly
We'll audit 12 months of spend and show you, in dollars, what isn't working. No obligation to hire us.
Get the auditRetainers from $5,000/month · month to month · first month money back