The month is £69,650, £2,322/day average, forecast landing £215,657 = 83% of the £260,511 goal, banking £23,300 of September profit. Four budget changes, all on a Thursday. Days 1 and 2 are actuals (£1,382 and £1,429 against a £1,750 plan, because the budget was never raised on the 1st); the ladder below spends the remaining £66,839 over the 28 days left.
| Set on | Meta budget to SET | Step | Total £/day | Forecast CAC | Forecast NC ROAS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Thu 3 Sept days 3-9 | £1,691 | +52% | £1,900 | £44.38 | 1.64x |
| Thu 10 Sept days 10-16 | £2,064 | +22% | £2,250 | £45.73 | 1.59x |
| Thu 17 Sept days 17-23 | £2,383 | +15% | £2,550 | £46.75 | 1.56x |
| Thu 24 Sept days 24-30 | £2,700 | +13% | £2,849 | £47.67 | 1.53x |
Set the Meta budget to SET figure, not the total (Meta under-delivers its configured budget ~6%; Google floats at ~£310/day and is auction-limited, a forecast not a decision). The first move is a 52% jump from the £1,110/day the account is on today, which will reset learning: do it now, on the cheapest days of the month, rather than mid-launch. Every later step is 22% or less, inside Meta's reset threshold, and each rung runs a full 7 days so it produces one clean 7-day CAC read before the next step. Step only if trailing 7-day CAC is under £50. Hold the current rung otherwise; the last rung forecasts £47.67, so there is under £2 of headroom by month end.
Last September the incremental budget was split between a new dedicated Autumn campaign (2.71x Meta ROAS, £27 CPA) and the ASC (1.89x, £45 CPA, down from 2.16x the week before). The Autumn campaign was the best thing in the account and was capped at £137/day. This year the same trap in a different shape: 15 of the 30 autumn ads sit inside the Evergreen CBO next to proven Tomato Vine winners where the algorithm starves them (Ads 843, 844, 846, 852 and 834 took £5 to £53 each across 1 to 2 Sept), and the dedicated Testing Autumn campaign is on £50/day.
| Window | Autumn | Evergreen | Roses | Subs | Total | Autumn share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sept 3-9 | £400 | £1,131 | £100 | £60 | £1,691 | 24% |
| Sept 10-16 | £600 | £1,304 | £100 | £60 | £2,064 | 29% |
| Sept 17-23 | £750 | £1,453 | £120 | £60 | £2,383 | 31% |
| Sept 24-30 | £900 | £1,610 | £130 | £60 | £2,700 | 33% |
£400/day clears roughly 70 conversions a week at the £40 CPA the autumn creative is currently running, enough for the ad set to exit learning before the 12 Sept drop rather than during it. Do not assume last year's 2.71x holds at scale - a £137/day campaign harvests the best inventory, and the early read on 1 to 2 Sept is autumn creative at 1.80x / £40 CPA against 2.64x / £28 for everything else. Ring-fence a measured budget, step it with the ladder, and cut it back if the gap is still there on the 10th.
Spend runs the ladder; revenue is shaped by her email calendar and the drop, which the ads do not drive. Both lines are shown together so the days where they deliberately diverge are visible.
| Day | Spend | New-cust rev | Subs | Returning | Total revenue | CAC | On the calendar |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Tue actual | £1,382 | £2,402 | £3,948 | £3,200 | £9,550 | £42 | Scent of the month: Fig (launch email) |
| 2 Wed actual | £1,429 | £2,469 | £1,283 | £1,041 | £4,793 | £42 | |
| 3 Thu | £1,900 | £3,121 | £1,558 | £1,621 | £6,300 | £44 | Cook / back-to-school email |
| 4 Fri | £1,900 | £3,121 | £1,635 | £979 | £5,736 | £44 | |
| 5 Sat | £1,900 | £3,121 | £1,533 | £1,749 | £6,403 | £44 | Fig Reviews email |
| 6 Sun | £1,900 | £3,121 | £1,696 | £1,267 | £6,085 | £44 | |
| 7 Mon | £1,900 | £3,121 | £1,642 | £1,653 | £6,416 | £44 | Last Chance Citronella & Roses email |
| 8 Tue | £1,900 | £3,121 | £1,011 | £1,039 | £5,171 | £44 | |
| 9 Wed | £1,900 | £3,121 | £1,513 | £1,636 | £6,270 | £44 | Autumn is coming email |
| 10 Thu | £2,250 | £3,589 | £1,714 | £1,026 | £6,329 | £46 | |
| 11 Fri | £2,250 | £3,589 | £1,746 | £979 | £6,314 | £46 | |
| 12 Sat | £2,250 | £3,589 | £1,382 | £9,800 | £14,771 | £46 | AUTUMN LAUNCH: Rust & Amber (her sheet: £14,000 day) |
| 13 Sun | £2,250 | £3,589 | £1,575 | £2,889 | £8,052 | £46 | day after launch |
| 14 Mon | £2,250 | £3,589 | £2,156 | £1,058 | £6,803 | £46 | |
| 15 Tue | £2,250 | £3,589 | £2,502 | £1,633 | £7,724 | £46 | Meet Amber email |
| 16 Wed | £2,250 | £3,589 | £1,070 | £1,041 | £5,700 | £46 | |
| 17 Thu | £2,550 | £3,978 | £1,382 | £1,621 | £6,981 | £47 | Ways to Style your Potts email |
| 18 Fri | £2,550 | £3,978 | £1,794 | £979 | £6,752 | £47 | |
| 19 Sat | £2,550 | £3,978 | £1,714 | £1,749 | £7,441 | £47 | Three perfect autumn scents email |
| 20 Sun | £2,550 | £3,978 | £1,641 | £1,267 | £6,887 | £47 | |
| 21 Mon | £2,550 | £3,978 | £1,314 | £1,058 | £6,351 | £47 | |
| 22 Tue | £2,550 | £3,978 | £1,372 | £1,633 | £6,984 | £47 | Saying goodbye to Diffusers email |
| 23 Wed | £2,550 | £3,978 | £1,585 | £1,041 | £6,605 | £47 | |
| 24 Thu | £2,849 | £4,359 | £1,385 | £1,026 | £6,770 | £48 | |
| 25 Fri | £2,849 | £4,359 | £1,827 | £979 | £7,165 | £48 | |
| 26 Sat | £2,849 | £4,359 | £1,277 | £1,154 | £6,790 | £48 | |
| 27 Sun | £2,849 | £4,359 | £1,757 | £1,267 | £7,383 | £48 | |
| 28 Mon | £2,849 | £4,359 | £3,620 | £1,058 | £9,037 | £48 | |
| 29 Tue | £2,849 | £4,359 | £2,159 | £1,039 | £7,556 | £48 | |
| 30 Wed | £2,849 | £4,359 | £5,140 | £1,041 | £10,540 | £48 | |
| Month | £69,650 | £110,201 | - | - | £215,657 | £46 | 1,511 new customers |
Last September ran £29,782 (£993/day, 86% Meta) and did ramp: up 43% from the first third of the month to the last. It ramped into the wrong thing.
| Block | Spend/day | CAC | NC ROAS | Blended | Meta CPM | Demand (k) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-10 Sept | £840 | £43 | 1.57x | 3.11x | £14.17 | 5.15 |
| 11-20 Sept | £938 | £42 | 1.79x | 3.59x | £14.60 | 6.00 |
| 21-30 Sept | £1,200 | £48 | 1.62x | 3.85x | £17.14 | 5.61 |
The Autumn Pott drop lifted the list, not acquisition. Spend went up 26% into the drop week and new-customer revenue moved 13%, while returning and subscription revenue moved 71%. CAC went £42 to £49 and Meta CPM £15.28 to £17.83 to buy it.
| Around the 23 Sept drop | Spend/day | New-cust rev/day | Base rev/day | NC share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15-21 Sept (week before) | £937 | £1,686 | £1,699 | 50% |
| 22-28 Sept (drop week) | £1,183 | £1,911 | £2,903 | 40% |
| 29 Sept-5 Oct (week after) | £1,404 | £2,438 | £4,484 | 35% |
The obvious next move is to point spend at the days that convert best. The data will not support it. Measuring demand strength as k in NC/day = k x spend^0.824 (which strips out the spend level, so windows at different budgets compare), a five-day window carries a standard error of ±0.70 in 2025 and ±1.39 in 2024, against a full between-window spread of only 0.86. The two years also disagree on where the good windows are, and their autumn drops fell on different dates (18 Sept 2024, 23 Sept 2025, 12 Sept this year), so neither a calendar nor a drop-relative profile replicates.
And it would not be worth much if it did. Holding the response curve constant, the entire spread between the best and worst possible September ramp shape is £440 of new-customer revenue on a £69,650 budget - 0.4%. That is why the ladder above is built for risk management and Q4 readiness (clean CAC reads, learning-safe steps, autumn creative out of learning before the drop) rather than for revenue optimisation, and why no step lands on 12 Sept.
Where ramp shape was worth real money last year, it went the wrong way. The heaviest week of the year ran at the worst CAC of the year, and then spend was cut by 31% just as demand doubled.
| Window | Spend/day | CAC | NC ROAS | Demand (k) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1-10 Nov | £2,681 | £58 | 1.52x | 6.10 |
| 11-20 Nov | £3,754 | £63 | 1.39x | 5.87 |
| 21-27 Nov (BF run-up) | £2,578 | £32 | 2.55x | 10.62 |
| 28-30 Nov (BF weekend) | £6,804 | £26 | 2.82x | 13.03 |
Reshaping that month on the same budget - first 20 days down to £2,300/day, the money into the 21-27 Nov run-up - models +£20,431 of new-customer revenue (+10.4%), about £11,543 of extra contribution. Two honest caveats: Only 7 days above £4,000/day and 4 above £5,000/day were ever actually run, so the target level is an extrapolation; and some of the BF-week demand is harvest of the earlier prospecting. This is the number to carry into the Q4 plan, not into September.
Three different breakevens, used for three different jobs. All include the audited constants: 56.5% contribution margin, £28,896/month overhead (verified against the KC dashboard 1 Sept), and £105,431 of September subscription + returning revenue that ads never touch.
| Breakeven | CAC / CPA | NC ROAS | Blended ROAS | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First order pays for the customer | £41.21 | 1.77x | - | Above this CPA a new customer is bought at a first-order loss and pays back over the 36-month curve instead. |
| Extra budget still pays for itself | £33.95 | 2.15x | - | Each budget increase works a little less hard than the last: measured, +10% spend brings about +8% new-customer revenue. So the newest slice of budget always earns less than the account average shows, roughly 82p per average £1. For that newest slice to still break even on first orders, the account average has to read 2.15x. Between 1.77x and 2.15x average, the account as a whole is profitable on first orders but the top slice of budget is not; we knowingly run there, because that slice is repaid at £103 per customer over 36 months. |
| The whole month clears £0 (at £69,650 spend) | £73.64 | 0.99x | 2.50x | Overhead and the subscription + returning base included. The base contributes £30,673 after overhead, which is the pool that funds acquisition below first-order breakeven. |
September is profitable at a 2.50x blended, not 5x. The 5x figure divides the revenue goal by spend, but £105,431 of that revenue arrives with zero ad spend against it. As spend scales, blended ROAS falls by arithmetic while profit can still rise; that is why the guardrail is CAC, never blended ROAS.
September forecast at the ramp, against the two most honest reference points: August 2026 (full closed month, Summer Sale included, so CAC runs flattered) and September 2025 (same season, last year's account).
| Metric | Sept 2026 forecast | Aug 2026 actual | Sept 2025 actual |
|---|---|---|---|
| New-customer ROAS | 1.58x | 1.78x | 1.66x |
| Blended ROAS | 3.10x | 3.94x | 3.56x |
| New-customer CAC | £46.09 | £40.95 | £44.39 |
| New-customer AOV | £72.93 | £72.72 | £73.73 |
| 36-month value per new customer | £103.18 | - | - |
| 36-month value : CAC | 2.2 : 1 | 2.5 : 1 | 2.3 : 1 |
Each pair separates a different problem, which is why both CAC and ROAS are tracked:
Same machine, seasonalized: each month's response curve carries last year's seasonal shape anchored to the closed August actual, and each month's breakeven falls as the subscription + returning base grows against flat £28,896 overhead. The first two breakeven lines above (first-order £41.21 CPA / 1.77x, marginal £33.95 / 2.15x) hold all year; only the whole-month line moves.
| Month | Revenue target | Planned £/day | Forecast landing | Breakeven blended | £/day to hit target |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October | £489,000 | £3,159 | £344,182 (70%) | 2.29x | £7,124 |
| November | £894,000 | £5,964 | £587,705 (66%) | 2.06x | £14,027 |
| December | £662,000 | £4,276 | £482,941 (73%) | 2.16x | £8,699 |
Planned spend is the client sheet (target ÷ 5x): October £97,920, November £178,920, December £132,552 for the month. Every month of it is comfortably profitable (forecast profit £67,647 Oct, £124,237 Nov, £111,414 Dec), but on the measured curve it lands 66 to 73% of the targets, because the account delivers ~3.3 to 3.6x blended at those spends, not 5x. Landing the targets in full prices at 2 to 2.5x the sheet (October £220,835, November £420,824, December £269,665), spend far beyond anything the account has ever run (last November peaked at £3,427/day sustained). The honest plan: run the sheet as the floor, re-anchor this curve at each month close, and step toward the target-spend numbers only as the CAC guardrail keeps clearing.
| Last year, same month | NC ROAS | Blended ROAS | CAC | Spend /day |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 2025 | 1.76x | 4.21x | £48.08 | £1,844 |
| November 2025 | 1.91x | 3.98x | £42.80 | £3,427 |
| December 2025 | 1.97x | 4.51x | £37.44 | £2,281 |
Q4 efficiency genuinely improves (last year's Q4 NC ROAS ran 1.77 to 1.97 at 2 to 3.5x September's spend), which is why the curve supports much bigger budgets in Nov and Dec. The stop-CAC can loosen from £50 to the mid-£50s in Nov and Dec as the subsidy pool grows (£79,823 Oct → £134,004 Nov); it never loosens to the whole-month breakeven, because that line assumes the base shows up in full.