What Happens When Brands Rethink Measurement: Lessons from Andie Swim

With more sales and marketing channels than ever, and growing pressure on marketing teams to deliver efficient returns on every ad dollar, understanding what’s truly driving growth has never been more critical.

We sat down with Morgan Decker, Head of DTC Marketing at Andie Swim, to explore how the brand has rethought its approach to measurement and unlocked smarter, more effective media investment.

Q: Before working with Fospha, how were you measuring performance across your marketing channels?

A: When I first came into Andie, everything was exclusively on Last Click. So it was a combination of utilizing GA4 in-platform data and post-purchase survey data.

The discrepancy between Last Click and ad platform data was totally astronomical. And post-purchase surveys only capture 10–30% of customers at best - making the insights patchy and purely directional.

So there was a big piece of the puzzle missing there.

Q: What was the turning point that led you to explore full-funnel measurement?

A: We had been searching as a brand for a while. We're very bottom-of-funnel focused, and  like what happens to a lot of DTC brands when you're chasing efficiency, upper funnel investment gets more and more difficult to justify, as their results are often invisible through GA or ad platform, and their impact can take longer to materialize anyway.

So last summer, I started shopping for tools when I was looking to explore diversification of our channels into TikTok, Pinterest, and CTV.

We connected with Fospha and it was a super seamless onboarding process that literally only took one day, if not even, to set up all the integrations. We were up and running within 24 hours of signing a contract, which is crazy.

Q: You mentioned TikTok and Pinterest specifically as channels you were interested in. What were the biggest differences you noticed to Last Click when you logged in to Fospha for the first time and saw your full-funnel measurement data?

A: Straight away we saw areas where we were over-investing to the point of no longer getting incremental value, and other areas where we were under-investing across our business.

There were other channels that weren’t receiving enough credit,  although they were  actually bringing in a lot more new conversions than we saw through Last Click and the ad platforms. 

So within Fospha, we were able to hone in on the campaigns that were best for us and pull back where we needed to.

We've used it across the board and across channels to really configure our spend and our funnel in a new way.

Q: So it sounds like there were quite a lot of changes that you were able to make through adopting Fospha. How did that impact your blended results?

A: We’ve had consistently positive growth within our blended ROAS across the business over the last year or so. Every single quarter we continue to improve and be a lot more efficient in the way that we're spending our ad dollars.

Q: What was your experience of shifting the mindsets of internal stakeholders like your CFO or finance team from a last click or GA perspective to a more full-funnel, incrementality-based approach?

A: The biggest area that we've been able to shift that internal dialogue is with our investment in around TikTok specifically.

We used Fospha’s forecasting tool, Beam, to see that if we're only spending, say $500 to $1,000 a day on the platform, we're missing out on a lot more predicted revenue.

We were able to use that saturation curve to justify doubling our investment month-over-month to find new customers in a different way. This  would have been really difficult to justify from a Last Click perspective.

Q: Great to hear that tool was so helpful! Are there any specific metrics within the Fospha platform that you find yourself reaching for a lot?

A: Percentage of new customers as well as new customer conversion is definitely paramount for us. We have a really strong retention within our audience. Once a girl buys an Andie swimsuit, she'll come back every single year and re-purchase.

But new customer acquisition, as any marketer knows in this landscape, continues to be a lot more expensive and a lot more difficult, especially in this economic climate within the US.

So being able to lean on Fospha and looking at what percentage of new conversions are coming from specific channels and what percentage of new conversions are coming into us at scale is really helpful.

Q: What advice would you give to another brand considering investing in a full-funnel measurement tool?

A: I would say that it's a no-brainer to invest and test the Fospha platform.

You guys are phenomenal partners and are constantly innovating and adding new components to your tool that makes it really easy to optimize spend across an omni-channel strategy e.g., with the recent incorporation of Amazon sales and marketing measurement.

With features like being able to tag your promotional periods for early planning for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or even looking at peak seasons and how your customers are coming in versus evergreen days, there's a lot of capabilities Fospha has in a very usable interface that makes difficult measurement simple.

Thank you Morgan, the Fospha team have loved working with Andie Swim and we can’t wait to see what is next for this partnership!

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