Week of April 27 – May 3, 2026

We bought volume — and paid for it. Spend +22% to $354K bought 594 NCs/day (up from 460, basically at the 600 target) and CAC dropped to $85.16 — right at goal. But MER collapsed 19% to 2.71x because revenue actually fell 1.5% to $958K, and Meta CPM ripped +33% to $47 with CTR sliding to 1.34%. We grew the new-customer top-line by leaning into a more expensive auction, not by getting better — that's not a sustainable trade. Hold spend flat next week and force efficiency back into Meta before adding budget.

Top of funnel pumped, bottom got softer. Impressions +39% and Sessions +14% but CTR fell 0.30pt to 1.07% and CVR dropped 0.14pt to 2.70% — we paid more to reach a slightly less-qualified audience. The good news: cart-to-checkout converted hard (Checkout +12% on AtC +6%), so once people commit they're still buying. The bottleneck is sessions-to-cart, which means landing pages and creative-to-LP match — not checkout friction.

Pull $30K out of Meta + YouTube and put it into Google + Microsoft + Other. Facebook is 69% of spend at $146 CAC and 0.53x ROAS — that's $244K bought 1,677 NCs we could've bought cheaper. YouTube is worse: $32K at $169 CAC and 0.37x. Google ($38 CAC, 4.38x), Microsoft ($35 CAC, 5.91x), and Google Canada ($51 CAC, 6.85x) are all under-funded relative to their efficiency — every one of them deserves more budget. Kill FB Canada this week ($236 CAC at 7 NCs is not a market test, it's a tax) and let Axon ($177 CAC) get one more week with a stricter cap before we pull it.

Kill the long tail of $200+ CAC adsets, scale ABO Sandbox. CPM $47 and CTR 1.34% are both deteriorating fast (CPM +33% WoW, CTR -0.34pt) — the auction is punishing us and the creative isn't carrying its weight. Pause this week: conv_ASC_coffee_new-customer_7dc ($6.3K at $251 CAC, 0.89% CTR), Sophia Road Trip ($3.9K at $278), TQE acq Original Starter Kit ($4.8K at $223), og_persona_rise-2-LP Two-Functional-Mushroom-Myths ($5K at $213), and the Spring Sale 43% OFF copy ($4.6K at $304, 0.1% thumb stop — dead). Scale ABO Sandbox FOUNDER vs Mushroom Coffee — at $118K spend it's still our best-performing campaign at $132 CAC, and the ABO-sandbox creatives flagged "with potential" (Shane WL 9x16, SHA TT version, VsRyze GeistM) are all in the $97-109 CAC range and need 2-3x budget. The Sophia partnerships package is broken — both Sophia adsets are at $230+ CAC despite 46% thumb-stops; the hook works, the offer doesn't.

Cut YouTube, double Search Conquesting and Microsoft. YouTube prospecting is $32K (the biggest line item in this whole section) at $169 CPA and 0.31% CTR — we're paying 60% of the Google budget for our worst CPA. Pull it back to $10K, run a stricter audience test, and redirect $20K. Microsoft Ads at $35 CPA on $1.5K spend is criminally under-funded — push it to $5K. Search Conquesting (Ryze) at $90 CPA on $6.4K is doing real work — $3K more next week. NB Mushroom Coffee Broad ($158 CPA) is the only red light in the otherwise-clean Google portfolio — tighten match types or pause.

Sessions hit a 13-week high but CVR couldn't keep up. 237K sessions is the best traffic week in the chart, and CVR at 2.70% is still well above the 2% floor — but it slipped from 2.84% the prior week. The traffic mix is leaning more top-of-funnel (paid prospecting + lower-intent eyeballs) which dilutes the CVR average. Bounce rate jumping from 27% to 35% is the smoking gun — review the LP-to-creative match on the new traffic sources, especially anything pointing at /pages/rise-2.

/pages/rise-2 is the volume LP and the conversion problem. 64K sessions (27% of all site traffic) at 1.87% CVR is a meaningful drag on blended site CVR — every Meta dollar pointing at it is paying full freight for sub-floor conversion. The 30-servings-tin PDP at 4.16% CVR proves the buyers can find checkout when the page is right. Two next steps: (1) A/B the rise-2 hero against a more direct PDP-style block, and (2) divert a portion of Meta traffic from rise-2 to /products/30-servings-tin and measure the lift. /pages/rise-2-coffee at 1.26% is also failing — kill or redirect it.

Net subs went negative the first half of the week (-238, -187, -142, -144 Apr 27-30) before recovering to +82/+156/+157 May 1-3. The Apr 27-30 dip lines up with a likely Recharge billing cycle — worth confirming with the Subs team whether that was a scheduled cancellation batch or organic. The cohort heatmap remains the strongest leading indicator we have: Jan 2026 holding 67.1% / 51.5% / 39.4% (well above target) and Feb/Mar 2026 first-month numbers above target — newer cohorts continue to outperform older ones. Older 2025 cohorts (Apr-Jun) are running 2-3pts below target at every milestone, which suggests a meaningful onboarding/product change between mid-2025 and Q4 2025 that's worth understanding so we can replicate it.

The TWB Newsletter is your highest-yield send by miles — protect it. Apr 28 TWB hit $56.9K revenue / 1,039 conversions on 304K recipients at 51.7% open / 0.50% CTR — that's $0.187 revenue per recipient, top of the chart. Mother's Day on Apr 30 pulled $49.9K with similar reach but a softer 0.34% CTR — the offer/CTA needs to be more direct next time. National Matcha Day on May 2 ($3,879 on 307K) was a flop relative to the other 300K+ sends — either the matcha story isn't landing with the broader list, or the May 2 send was a discovery/awareness play (in which case label it that way and don't compare it to LTO sends). Email is doing $157K / week, ~16% of revenue — keep the 4-5 send cadence and keep TWB-style content in rotation.

+292 followers / ~42 a day is anemic for a 380K account in this category. Competitors are getting double-digit press hits per week (see News section) and we're crawling. Two things to fix: (1) get post-level data into the next pull so we can see what's working, and (2) the IG content engine needs an audit — if we're posting and not growing, we're posting the wrong things. Worth a 30-min content review with the social team this week.

Everyday Dose is winning the press week and they're doing it with a Target launch. Two major positive editorial hits (NY Post/AOL syndication, MSN), a Target Protein Coffee+ tie-in, and a 61-upvote Reddit freebie thread — their playbook right now is paid press + retail distribution + free sampling, all reinforcing each other. Ryze is showing up in two big roundups (Bon Appétit, Good Housekeeping) plus a 33-comment "alternatives to Ryze" thread on r/MushroomCoffee — that thread is a gift, we should have an organic response from a real human on the team in there. We got two co-mentioned roundups (Taste of Home, Bon Appétit) but no solo MUD\WTR press — PR pipeline needs a push, and a Target/retail-launch story would be the best counter-move given what's working for ED.

CSAT 4.83 is healthy — the volume mix is the real signal. 30.5% of all tickets are subscription management and 22.2% are cancellations — over half of CX volume is people trying to leave or change their sub. This maps directly to the negative-net-subs days early in the week. Two action items: (1) cross-reference the cancellation tickets with cancel-survey reasons to find the top 3 fixable drivers, and (2) make sure the self-serve subscription portal is doing its job — if 30% of tickets are sub management, we have a UX gap.