From a near-breakeven account to a $100K Black Friday.

Situation.

DTC was a new department at NESTOUT when I joined, and the brand had just been burned by an ad agency. Old, out-of-season ads were still running. Meta sat near breakeven at about 1x ROAS. On the site, the Klaviyo pop-up was broken by an accessibility app, and even when it loaded, the design, copy, and offer were generic.

What I did.

1. Copy and creative, built for Andromeda.

   I cleaned up the Meta and Google accounts with detailed brand exclusions and fresh creative. Meta's Andromeda system works best with a wide spread of creative, so we moved from small test batches to as many as 30 creatives per ad set: UGC, product demos, single images, and more. I rewrote the ad copy and the copy inside images and video, and wrote scripts for each customer avatar.

   Each season got its own angles. The fall 2025 copy doc runs a fall gear angle, a daylight savings angle, and a Halloween angle. The same doc covers the NESTOUT Gear Case, and some primary texts quote customer reviews.

   Fall gear

   Your Fall Adventures, Fully PoweredDon't Let Autumn Stop Your Adventures

   Daylight savings

   Daylight Savings ExtenderThe sun may set earlier, but your adventures don't have to end.

   Halloween

   Ghouls, ghosts, and great battery life.No Jumpscares with NESTOUT: Keep the lights on

   Gear Case

   Rugged Protection. Smarter Storage.Durable Case. As Light As Your Backpack.

   Headlines and primary text lines from the fall 2025 copy doc.

   

   

   

   I wrote the scripts around five customer avatars. I laid them out in a content meeting on October 14, 2025: who they are, what frustrates them, and what they want.

   Avatars

   The Urban AdventurerThe Overland ExplorerThe Self Reliant OutdoorsmanThe Nature ConnectorThe Active, On the Go Sportsman

   Pain points

   Gear that breaks easilyDevices dying, and the fear of getting lostA mess of different cords and devicesDiscomfort and inconvenience

   Desires

   FreedomMobilityAdventure

   From the October 14, 2025 content meeting.

   New products gave the ads something to say. The Air Pump launched on November 6, 2025, with Meta ad copy built on one idea: camp set up should take minutes, not your first evening. The Gear Case and Air Pump ads were very well received, and the Air Pump product video was the best performer in the November report.

   Air Pump

   Easy Camp Set Up In A BoxInflate Your Camp Mattress In MinutesFirestarted & Bed Inflated In Minutes

   Primary text

   Stop fighting with your inflatable mattress and start sleeping on it.From flat pad to fire time fast.

   Best ad

   Air Pump product video, 3.56 ROAS and $47.21 per purchaseThe whole account averaged $84.15 per purchase in the same period

   Lines from the Air Pump launch copy doc. Results from the Nov 1 to Dec 2, 2025 report.

   The January update shows what was live and which ads drove purchases. The Air Pump product feature ad and a Gear Case set up video were both in the top five by purchases.

   

   

   The full set, with what each piece was for, is in the portfolio.

2. Email capture.

   I fixed the broken pop-up and rebuilt it mobile-first with a design that fit the Q3 and Q4 seasons. The offer stacked a lot of value, could combine with the seasonal promos, and included a free shipping option. Klaviyo showed it to first-time customers only. Conversion went from 0.94% to 4.98%.

   The version shown here offers 10% off the first purchase plus free shipping on orders over $99.

   

3. Lifecycle.

   I added segmentation to keep deliverability healthy and started sending two campaigns a week on top of the flows (welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase, and re-engagement), so offers and education reached the right people.

   Two header options for the welcome email, both under "Why NESTOUT."

   

   

   In January 2026 I wrote a 20-slide email and SMS crash course for the NESTOUT team. It covers what email and SMS marketing is, how inboxes sort messages, flows versus campaigns, lists versus segments, the KPIs we track, and why lifetime value decides what we can spend to get a customer.

   The strategy fits in one line: be willing to break even on the first order, then use the channels that cost nothing to get the second.

   

   

   Q1 plan

   Test more offers, like buy X get Y and a percent off accessories and attachments.Test more funnels: a quiz, a contest, an advertorial.Clean the list, reach out to old leads and churned customers, and sunset the people who never engage.Build launch lists and flows for new products.

   From the Q1 strategy slide.

4. Reporting.

   Weekly numbers to leadership on CAC, CVR, and channel efficiency, with attribution reconciled across GA4, Meta CAPI, and Triple Whale.

   Every two weeks I also put together an update for the team: what was running, which ads drove purchases, and the weekly trend. In January 2026, purchase ROAS climbed from about 1.3x in the first week to about 2.9x in the last, and cost per purchase fell from about $100 to about $52.

   

   

   Ads

   Offers work, but they are expensive for us.Multiple campaigns serve multiple purposes.Keep pushing attachments and accessories.

   Giveaway

   Require an email sign up instead of a double entry.Use text on the image, or better, video.Boost to two audiences, new and existing.

   Next

   Test customer retention bidding in Google Ads.Content emails are strong performers.

   Takeaways from the January 2026 update.

The BFCM report.

This is from the update I wrote for Nov 1 to Dec 2, 2025, the stretch that covered Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

• A bonus offer set the pop-up record.

  Klaviyo pop-up lead conversion reached 3.4%, a NESTOUT record at the time, after I added a bonus offer for Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

  Klaviyo, Nov 1 to Dec 2, 2025
• A single interest was the best audience.

  The Glamping interest was the best performing audience at $73.59 per purchase, against $84.15 across the account.

  Meta, Nov 1 to Dec 2, 2025
• Very few poor performers.

  The initial launch was soft because ad sets needed time to learn and Black Friday and Cyber Monday had not hit yet. Overall performance was solid. The call afterward: shift into more holiday and winter content.

  Meta, Nov 1 to Dec 2, 2025
• More campaigns and SMS helped retention.

  The Shopify cohort data suggested that sending more email campaigns and adding SMS was improving retention after the first purchase. Improving the post-purchase flow was the next priority.

  Klaviyo and Shopify, Nov 1 to Dec 2, 2025

Takeaway.

No single trick did this. Creative volume, a pop-up that worked, and segmented email each fixed a different leak, and the update every two weeks told us what to push next.