# Case Study: A Smaller Gap Between a Known Audience and a Cold One, and What It Meant | Crank Source: https://wearecrank.com/case-studies/deesse-pro Where an established audience usually converts many times better than a cold one, this account's gap was small enough to be a finding in its own right. --- Beauty & Skincare Case Study — Deesse PRO # A Smaller Gap Between a Known Audience and a Cold One, and What It Meant Where an established audience usually converts many times better than a cold one, this account's gap was small enough to be a finding in its own right. Challenge A newsletter audience converting only modestly better than cold traffic — a far smaller gap than a warm, established audience usually produces — pointed to a brand that hadn't built the same audience recognition yet, not a targeting problem. Approach Test creative format and click economics on their own terms rather than assume a young brand would behave like an established one, and trace a peak-period conversion drop to its actual cause before acting on it. Outcome User-generated content beat standard creative by 37 per cent, click price and acquisition cost moved in opposite directions during a format test, and a conversion drop during peak trading was traced to a site issue rather than the campaigns themselves. 01 ## A smaller gap than expected During a seasonal sale, the existing newsletter audience converted at 3.43 per cent, against 2.86 per cent on Instagram and 0.34 per cent on Facebook for general cold targeting — a real gap, but a far smaller one than an established brand's own audience typically produces. Read correctly, this is a finding about brand recognition rather than a targeting fault: the audience hadn't been built into the same asset yet. 02 ## Creative that outperformed, and a click price that didn't predict it User-generated content was tested against standard branded creative on prospecting activity: 2.3 times spend against 0.4 — a clear, decisive result. In a separate comparison of creative formats, the cost of a click fell 51 per cent while the cost of a customer fell 34 per cent alongside it — in this case moving in the same direction, which is not something to assume will hold the next time a format changes. 03 ## A conversion drop traced to its cause During the same peak trading period, conversion rate fell 58 per cent against the prior year — the steepest of the comparable drops seen across similar accounts that season. The account's own reporting traced most of the affected activity to a site issue concentrated in the morning hours, rather than a change in demand or targeting quality. ## What a smaller warm-audience gap and a decisive creative test showed 3.43%vs2.86%/0.34% Conversion rate, known audience vs. cold traffic +37% Return on spend, user-generated content vs. standard creative \-51% CPC/\-34% CAC Click cost and acquisition cost, same format test \-58% Conversion rate during peak trading, traced to a site issue Figures drawn from Crank's own managed-account data and account reviews for Deesse PRO, 2023–2026. ## Want to know what this looks like in your own account? These findings came from asking straightforward questions before any budget moved. We're happy to do the same for yours. [ Talk to Wearecrank](https://wa.me/447457416922?text=Help%20my%20business)[Get in touch](/contact) [← Back to all case studies](/case-studies)