A cornerstone of our work in D2C and subscription — and a partnership that tested every assumption about what subscription customers actually wanted, before, during, and after a pandemic.
Pact Coffee was founded in 2012 with an unusually direct ambition: to take the ten middle parties out of the coffee supply chain. Today they operate one of the UK’s largest independent roasters, source from more than nine origins, and hold long-term relationships with over 150 farmers — paying them premium prices for premium beans.
24
90
29
% reduction in cost per acquisition
% increase in conversion rate
% increase in attributed leads
The brief
Pact wanted to grow — reaching new audiences with the curiosity and palate to value what they do. Paid search and paid social were the right channels for that conversation, but the question underneath was bigger: how do you grow a subscription business when the customer’s relationship with subscription itself is shifting?
Our approach
We sharpened search first: relevant queries, a cleaner channel mix, and the kind of PPC fundamentals that quietly compound when done properly. On paid social, we built six distinct audience clusters and tested them over a two-month run, watching daily first-impression ratios through Facebook Delivery Insights so we could see, in close to real time, which audiences were opening up and which had run their course. From there, we expanded paid social activity considerably — turning it into a primary growth lever rather than a complement to search.
The pandemic then moved the ground under everyone running a subscription business. Lockdown told one story; the post-pandemic picture told another. Subscription LTV softened as people unwound the habits they’d taken on during lockdown. One-time purchase LTV — counter to a decade of D2C orthodoxy — actually rose, as customers reasserted choice over commitment.
That made the work less about defending a single acquisition model and more about reading customer behaviour as it changed, then reweighting acquisition and creative against the version of the customer who actually existed that quarter.
The result
Pact spends 24% less to acquire each new customer. Leads attributed to paid media are up 29% — and the quality of those leads shows in the conversion rate, which rose 90%. The audience work didn’t just bring more people in; it brought the right people in.
Beyond the numbers, the partnership has become a reference point for how we approach D2C subscription work — particularly when the rules of the category are mid-shift.
