# What the Accounts Showed: Findings From Marketing Audits | Crank Source: https://wearecrank.com/case-studies/what-the-accounts-showed Dated, sourced findings from Crank's account audits and managed accounts, grouped by theme, from broken conversion tracking to budgets that could not reach their goal. Each links to its full case study. --- Findings report # What the accounts showed 26 audits and managed accounts, grouped by the problem they exposed. Every figure is traced to a source document or a database record, and every account is described plainly rather than named. Prefer to browse by sector or channel? See the [full case study library](/case-studies). ## Measurement and tracking * 4x Cost per sale, shopping vs. brand search Beauty and home fragrance · 2016 ### The Retailer Whose Cheapest Clicks Were Its Most Expensive Sales Shopping and brand search could be funded on their true unit cost rather than click price, and the mobile gap became identifiable as an experience problem rather than a media one, with visitors who'd been prompted to return giving a defensible, evidenced reason to keep funding demand creation rather than cut it. [Read the full case study: Ecommerce analytics audit for a beauty and home fragrance retailer](/case-studies/beauty-home-fragrance-measurement-2016) * 73.9% → 62.2% Basket completion rate, before the work Beauty and wellbeing · 2017 ### When Neither the Catalogue Nor the Checkout Could Be Seen All five faults were fixed. Revenue recovered from basket abandonment activity rose 150 per cent, which was only possible once the basket persisted between sessions, and basket completion then reached 91 per cent for existing customers and 72 per cent for new ones, against a blended 62.2 per cent before the work. [Read the full case study: Ecommerce tracking audit for a wellbeing brand](/case-studies/beauty-wellbeing-tracking-checkout-2017) * 0 Months of reliable event data before August Men's grooming · 2017 ### The Account Where 'At Best a Guess' Was the Verdict on Attribution Correctly identifying the delivery-cost pattern as a trading decision rather than a broken tag was itself the immediate value of the audit, it stopped a working system being expensively 'fixed' for a fault that didn't exist. The audit also set out the specific route back to reliable attribution, for once its measurement recommendations are followed through. [Read the full case study: Marketing attribution audit for a men's grooming ecommerce brand](/case-studies/mens-grooming-attribution-2017) * £13.94 vs £26.06 Cost per acquisition, starved vs. funded campaign Beauty and skincare · 2024 ### Three Separate Failures, None Visible From Inside the Advertising Platform Coverage was restored, a starved campaign acquiring customers at £13.94 was funded properly against one running freely at nearly double the cost, and the account had 303 additional monthly sales of modelled headroom at £16.02 each once the daily budget stopped switching off the best-performing days. [Read the full case study: Ecommerce account audit for a skincare brand](/case-studies/beauty-skincare-operational-audit-2024) * 10-12% Email open rate found, vs. 30-40% sector norm Gaming · 2026 ### Ten Things Wrong, None Visible From Inside the Advertising Platform With conversions counted correctly and returned in full, recorded cost per acquisition fell and return on spend rose, the account had been understating its own performance, not overstating it. Separating new from existing customers gave the business, for the first time, a real acquisition cost to plan against. [Read the full case study: Full-stack ecommerce marketing audit for a gaming brand](/case-studies/gaming-full-audit-2026) * $208.40 / 0.32x Cost per acquisition and return, isolated cold-prospecting test Skincare · 2026 ### The Customer Database That Was One Setting Away From Being Usable Revenue grew significantly and return on spend fell, because more of the budget was deliberately going toward winning new customers, who cost more per sale than selling again to someone who already buys, the arithmetic of the choice, not a decline in performance. The brand grew overall volume as a result, and is positioned for greater customer value over time. [Read the full case study: Ecommerce audit for a skincare brand](/case-studies/skincare-consent-retention-creative-2026) * 7.9% vs 2.5% Conversion rate, search users vs. non-searchers Luxury department store · 2022 ### A Growing Top Line Was Hiding a Worsening Unit Cost The cross-department activity was built and deployed, and cross-department trading improved as a result, though the size of that improvement isn't separately documented, so it's stated here as direction rather than a number. Unit cost also became visible underneath the growing top line, so a rising cost per customer could no longer hide behind rising revenue. [Read the full case study: Ecommerce behavioural analysis for a luxury department store](/case-studies/luxury-department-store-behavioural-2022) * 0 Enquiries recorded in a quarter, despite traffic reaching the thank-you page Consumer services selling high-value appointments · 2017 ### The Decline That Wasn't a Marketing Problem A steep performance decline traced back to a business decision, consultation locations cut from ten to four, that had been analysed as a marketing problem until the change was surfaced. Independent of the tracking fix, this business could already state its enquiry-to-order rate and average order value, letting revenue be modelled directly from enquiry volume rather than guessed. [Read the full case study: Lead generation audit for a high-value appointments business](/case-studies/high-value-appointments-mediated-2017) * \-17.5% Conversion rate, even as revenue rose 4% on flat traffic Outdoor clothing · 2017 ### Growing Revenue, Falling Conversion, and Forty-One Ideas With No Order to Do Them In The business had a ranked plan rather than a list of observations, with an owner and a next step against each item. The three highest-priority initiatives carried £1.37 million identified in revenue opportunities for the trading team to implement, at the lowest edge of the scorecard's own benefit bands. [Read the full case study: Ecommerce conversion audit for an outdoor clothing retailer](/case-studies/outdoor-clothing-audit-prioritisation-2017) * 25% More enquiries recorded in the sales system than in analytics, for the same event Executive education · 2019 ### A Quarter of Confirmed Enquiries Had No Matching Analytics Record, and It Took Six Separate Causes to Explain It Seventy-seven per cent of confirmed touchpoints had a matching form submission and 74 per cent a matching goal completion. The shortfall resolved into six separate root causes, each individually diagnosed and each individually cheap to fix — including a hash used instead of a question mark in email links, and campaign names that differed between the two systems. [Read the full case study: CRM and analytics reconciliation audit for executive education](/case-studies/executive-education-crm-analytics-gap-2019) * Field note · Food and beverage · 2021 ### A consent-handling bug corrupted a year of traffic data Without an accepted cookie, no persistent ID was set, so every page view created a brand-new visitor. Direct traffic share climbed from 18% to 70% of the whole site over the year, not a measurement gap, but data actively manufacturing a false picture. * Field note · Home and garden retail · 2020 ### The headline conversion number was wrong by eleven per cent The site's conversion goal fired on reaching a page, not on completing a transaction. It recorded 158,000 completions against 142,000 actual transactions in the same period, the number the account was being judged against was overstated before any campaign decision was made. ## Audience and first-party data * 3.43% vs 2.86%/0.34% Conversion rate, known audience vs. cold traffic Beauty and skincare · 2023–2026 ### A Smaller Gap Between a Known Audience and a Cold One, and What It Meant User-generated content returned 37 per cent more than standard creative on prospecting. In a separate format test, click price and acquisition cost fell together, 51 and 34 per cent, rather than moving in opposite directions, and the 58 per cent conversion fall during peak trading was traced to a site fault concentrated in the morning, so no budget was pulled from campaigns that were actually working. [Read the full case study: Paid social audience analysis for a skincare brand](/case-studies/beauty-skincare-audience-gap-2023-2026) * 19.56% vs 1.45% Conversion rate, known audience vs. cold traffic Beauty and skincare · 2023–2025 ### What Happens When Growth Is Deliberately Chasing New Customers, Not Just Revenue User-generated content returned 81 per cent better than standard creative, confirmed on a repeat test. The blended fall was explained rather than left hanging: Meta conversion moved from 5.0 to 4.0 per cent as prospecting rose, and Google click costs rose 43 per cent under discounting pressure, and in one comparison, click cost rose 102 per cent while the cost of a new customer fell 48. [Read the full case study: Paid social for a skincare brand](/case-studies/beauty-skincare-acquisition-growth-2023-2025) * 10.06x vs 3.70x Return on spend, existing customers vs. prospecting Professional skincare · 2023–2026 ### Why the Blended Return Was the Least Useful Number in the Account Revenue grew 79 per cent to £960,000\. Standard creative beat user-generated content here, confirming that format has to be proven per account rather than assumed from what has worked elsewhere, though the test itself was underfunded, which is itself part of the finding. The ecommerce team is now focused on understanding lifetime value, working toward what an acquired new customer is worth. [Read the full case study: Paid social for a professional skincare brand](/case-studies/professional-skincare-retention-split-2023-2026) * 40x Cost per enquiry variance between formats, same audience, same week Data infrastructure software · 2025–2026 ### A Two-Year B2B Programme, and the Same Finding Twice A warm audience of 78,661 people, built at a penny each, stopped expiring unused and became the starting point for the next campaign rather than something rebuilt from zero each time. Splitting it into named companies also gave sales a route to organisations that had engaged without ever enquiring, reach that had appeared nowhere in the enquiry count. [Read the full case study: B2B paid social lead generation for data infrastructure software](/case-studies/data-infrastructure-b2b-two-year-programme) * 2.5x and 3.1x vs 1.4x Return on spend, with early access vs without Beauty and skincare · 2023–2025 ### Three Brands, Three Years of Peak Trading, and the Year Spending More Bought Less Early access separated the brands consistently. In the most recent year the two brands that ran it returned 2.5 and 3.1 times spend, against 1.4 for the brand that did not. And across the group, the year spend rose hardest was the year return roughly halved. [Read the full case study: Beauty ecommerce peak trading across three years](/case-studies/beauty-group-peak-trading-three-years) * 26x Growth in monthly leads Content management software · 2020 ### From Broad Targeting to Named Accounts, and a 26x Change in Lead Volume Leads grew 26x to over 900 a month, cost per lead fell 69 per cent, and revenue doubled year on year — delivered by a team embedded inside the business's own marketing function, which kept strategy, execution and account targeting aligned as the programme scaled across three regions at once. [Read the full case study: B2B account-based marketing for content management software](/case-studies/content-management-software-abm-programme-2020) ## Creative capability * Field note · Data security software (B2B) · 2024 ### A format that won at one B2B account lost, by more than double, at another Document ads had beaten single-image ads by a wide margin at a data-infrastructure account. At this data-security account, the opposite happened: single-image ads produced enquiries at £303 against £712 for document ads, same platform, same month. Separately, fifteen named target accounts were tracked individually for engagement rather than reported as one blended figure, genuine account-based measurement, rare in this evidence base. ## Budget adequacy * +£1m / +£0.3m real Marketing budget growth, cash terms vs. after media inflation Consumer leisure · 2024 ### The Budget Increase That Was Actually a Cut An additional £1 million of second-quarter paid search was forecast to return £4.4 million in revenue and £1.6 million in contribution, a net benefit of £2.6 million after the spend itself, against a do-nothing scenario showing around £7 million of revenue lost in the same quarter. [Read the full case study: Marketing budget analysis for a consumer leisure brand](/case-studies/consumer-leisure-budget-marginal-return-2024) * Field note · Technology infrastructure · 2026 ### The same advert cost three times as much depending where it ran Three campaigns promoting the same product, on the same platform, over the same five weeks: Europe cost $3.81 a click, North America $2.36, Asia $1.31\. In the same account, narrow B2B lead generation into Asia and India cost $18.96 and $18.12 a click against $5.86 into Latin America, geography moved price roughly threefold, and audience narrowness moved it further still, in the opposite direction. ## Product data and feed quality * 13.4% / 12.9% Gift guides and wishlists, against a 2.9% site average Cross-account · 2017–2022 ### Five Retailers Measured Whether Content Readers Buy More. The Answer Depends on Which Kind of Content. Editorial and expertise content pointed in different directions on different accounts. Functional content — site search, wishlists, offers and gift guides — beat the site average on every account that measured it, usually by several times over. [Read the full case study: Content marketing for ecommerce](/case-studies/content-engagement-five-retailers-cross-account) * 1.3m vs 1,530 Monthly searches — the category vs the sub-category Wine and spirits · 2021 ### The Category Everyone Was Investing In Was One Per Cent of the Demand Wine generated 1.3 million searches a month. Wine investment generated 1,530 across 79 keywords — less than one per cent of the category, with the single best term drawing 300 searches. People were looking for wine first and investment a distant second. [Read the full case study: Search demand sizing for a wine and spirits merchant](/case-studies/wine-spirits-merchant-demand-sizing-2021) ## Customer separation and value * 75% Of quarterly sales came from non-promotional activity Prestige beauty · 2018 ### The Channel Giving the Deepest Discounts Was the Most Profitable One Discount depth predicted almost nothing. The channel taking 43 per cent of all discounts was also the most profitable per order. The device with the deepest discount had the lowest profit. And the campaign with the smallest discount fell furthest below the average profit per order. [Read the full case study: Promotion profitability analysis for a prestige beauty brand](/case-studies/prestige-beauty-promotion-profitability-2018) * Field note · Footwear retail · 2019 ### A rare example of customer segmentation done properly, before any campaign was built Most accounts in this evidence base have no separation between new and existing customers at all. This one had four segments, new, active, lapsed, and in-store-only, each with tracked year-on-year movement, forecasted revenue, and a named action. ## Store conversion experience * \-54% Revenue, year on year Beauty and home fragrance · 2018 ### The Site Relaunch That Cost Half the Revenue While Traffic Barely Moved The diagnosis moved off media and onto the site, which is where the money was actually being lost, and media budget was not cut in response to a problem it had not caused. [Read the full case study: Ecommerce replatform audit](/case-studies/beauty-home-fragrance-replatform-2018) ## Enquiry definition and value * £360,000+ Opportunity value, from £3,000 of spend Financial technology · 2022 ### Sixty-Four Enquiries, £3,000 of Spend, and £360,000 of Opportunity Sixty-four enquiries at £46.88 each — roughly half the published cost for the sector. More to the point, those enquiries produced two direct sales opportunities worth over £360,000, against £3,000 of total spend. [Read the full case study: B2B lead generation for a fintech first campaign](/case-studies/fintech-first-campaign-opportunity-value-2022) * 311 @ £169 / 166 @ £275 First campaign, forecast vs. actual Speciality chemicals · 2025 ### What a Business's First Digital Campaign Actually Costs to Build Cost per enquiry ranged four-fold between five campaigns run side by side on the same platform to the same market, from £226 to £886, turning one blended average into a clear case for which product was worth scaling and which was worth stopping. £53,176 of the £55,000 budget was spent, and the shortfall against the original forecast is the honest expectation to set for a business with no historical data to base one on. [Read the full case study: First digital campaign for a speciality chemicals business](/case-studies/speciality-chemicals-first-time-advertiser-2025) * £1,058 vs £69 Cost per enquiry, brand text vs. demand campaign Commerce software · 2020 ### The Month a Quarter of the Traffic Disappeared and Enquiries Tripled The following month, traffic fell 25 per cent and enquiries rose 218 per cent, a quarter of the traffic disappeared in the same month that produced the best enquiry volume on record, which reported on volume alone would have read as a failure. [Read the full case study: B2B lead generation for commerce software](/case-studies/commerce-software-integrated-campaign-2020) ## Sales feedback and follow-up * £901 vs £665 Cost per qualified enquiry, cheap channel vs. dear channel Social impact software · 2026 ### The Channel That Looked Eight Times Cheaper and Was a Third More Expensive Budget decisions gained a different basis to move on, cost per qualified enquiry rather than cost per enquiry, which reverses the ranking of the two channels. Across £16,481 of spend, 128 enquiries produced 31 marketing-qualified contacts and one sales-qualified, roughly ten weeks to the first real opportunity, the expectation that stops a working campaign being cancelled at week six. [Read the full case study: B2B lead generation for social impact software](/case-studies/social-impact-software-qualification-2026) * Field note · Business systems consultancy · 2026 ### Half the enquiries were not people you could sell to Every contact from two months of automated-campaign enquiries was reviewed by hand. Of 68 enquiries, 11 were a real company with a relevant job title. Headline cost per enquiry was around £58; cost per genuine business enquiry was £385. * Field note · Workforce software · 2023 ### Qualification came back at 70%, and revenue never did Of 35 enquiries, 25 were confirmed valid, an unusually good 70% qualification rate. But pipeline value and deal value were never filled in, so a cost of £255 per valid enquiry couldn't be judged against what a customer was worth. Separately, of 368 people who opened the same business's enquiry form, only 35 finished it, a 9.5% completion rate, with cost per open at £11.13 and cost per finish at £182.