Stepped ramp, £69,650 for the month (£2,322/day average). Forecast landing £215,657 = 83% of the £260,511 goal, banking £23,300 of September profit. Landing the goal in full would take £105,124 (£3,504/day) on the measured response curve, spend we have never run in September.
| Window | Total £/day | Meta budget to SET | Forecast NC ROAS | Forecast CAC |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 7 Sept | £1,750 | £1,606 | 1.67x | £43.75 |
| 8 to 14 Sept | £2,100 | £1,979 | 1.61x | £45.18 |
| 15 to 21 Sept | £2,500 | £2,404 | 1.57x | £46.58 |
| 22 to 30 Sept | £2,800 | £2,723 | 1.53x | £47.52 |
Set the Meta budget to SET figure, not the total (Meta under-delivers its configured budget ~6%; Google floats at ~£240/day and is auction-limited, a forecast not a decision). Step up only if trailing 7-day CAC is under £50. Hold the current rung otherwise.
Spend and revenue deliberately do not move together inside the month. Spend runs the flat ramp above; revenue is shaped by the email calendar and the product drop, which the ads do not drive (launch days are list days: measured launch-email lift is +£4,118 on a £3,131 no-email baseline). Forecast days come from the frozen tracker model at pott-sep-forecast.pages.dev.
| Week | Planned spend | Forecast revenue | On the calendar |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 7 Sept | £12,250 | £45,715 | Scent of the month launch: Fig (1st), plus 3 emails |
| 8 to 14 Sept | £14,700 | £52,355 | AUTUMN LAUNCH: Rust & Amber (12th), modelled £13,352 day |
| 15 to 21 Sept | £17,500 | £48,365 | Meet Amber / styling / autumn-scents emails |
| 22 to 30 Sept | £25,200 | £69,223 | Goodbye Diffusers email; biggest spend rung |
The drop moved 11 days earlier this year: Rust & Amber lands 12 Sept vs the Autumn Pott's 22 to 23 Sept last year. So week 2 carries the launch spike this September where last year week 4 did, and any weekly year-on-year read is shifted by that. Last September for reference, with what actually ran:
| Week | Spend | Revenue | NC revenue | What ran |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 to 7 Sept 2025 | £5,749 | £19,798 | £9,836 | Scent of the month: Cucumber (2nd) |
| 8 to 14 Sept 2025 | £6,473 | £19,959 | £10,336 | Back to School emails (9th) |
| 15 to 21 Sept 2025 | £6,561 | £23,692 | £11,802 | Season look-back; Last Chance for Summer Scents (20th) |
| 22 to 30 Sept 2025 | £11,000 | £42,575 | £17,502 | AUTUMN POTT LAUNCH (22nd to 23rd) + Autumn Starter Pack (27th) |
Last year's launch week did £42,575 = 40% of the month on £11,000 spend, and the launch built over several days (the 23rd to 27th) rather than spiking on day one. If this September's 12th lands softer than the modelled £13,352 but the following days build the same way, that is last year's pattern, not a miss.
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.