This is Part 4 — the final installment of our DTC Growth Intelligence series. Everything we’ve measured leads here: how fast and how efficiently your growth engine runs.
Parts 1-3 covered which customers to acquire, how to activate them, and how to retain them. Those metrics answer “what’s working.” These two answer “how well is it working?” — the speed at which customers move through your funnel and the margin efficiency of every dollar you invest in growth.
If the previous metrics are your growth engine’s instruments, these are the speedometer and fuel gauge.
Quick glossary: Monetization velocity = the speed at which customers reach key value milestones (second purchase, subscription, cross-sell). GER (Growth Efficiency Ratio) = new customer contribution margin divided by total growth investment. MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio) = total revenue divided by total ad spend — a simpler but less precise version of GER.
Metric 9: Monetization Velocity
What it measures: The speed at which acquired customers reach revenue milestones, tracked through three time-to-value metrics.
T2P — Time to Second Purchase: Median days from first order to second order. This is the single best measure of your post-purchase experience.
- Consumable brands (F&B, supplements): 30-45 days. Should align with product replenishment cycle. If T2P exceeds the replenishment window (e.g., 60-day supply runs out but T2P is 90 days), your post-purchase marketing is broken.
- Beauty/personal care: 45-75 days. Longer replenishment but higher margins offset the wait.
- Low-frequency categories (home, apparel): 60-120 days.
- Customers acquired through branded search show 30-50% faster T2P than cold prospecting. The intent gap shows up in velocity, not just conversion rate.
T2S — Time to Subscription: Median days from first purchase to subscription start. Relevant for brands with subscribe-and-save or membership models.
- Strong T2S: within 2 orders (60-90 days for consumables). If customers need 4+ orders before subscribing, the subscription value prop isn’t landing in post-purchase flows.
- Subscription converts are worth 3-5x the LTV of one-time buyers (Recharge, 2024), so even small improvements in T2S have outsized revenue impact.
T2X — Time to Cross-Sell: Median days from first purchase to first cross-category order. Measures how effectively your product discovery and recommendation engine works.
- Strong T2X: 90-180 days for brands with 3+ product categories. Above 180 days, your cross-sell merchandising and flows need attention.
- Cross-category buyers have 2-3x higher LTV than single-category buyers, making T2X a leading indicator of customer lifetime value.
What velocity tells you that conversion rate doesn’t: A 25% repeat purchase rate looks the same whether customers repurchase in 30 days or 180 days. But 30-day velocity means faster cash return, shorter CAC payback, and more cycles of reinvestment per year. Velocity is the compounding layer on top of conversion.
Where the data lives
All three velocity metrics come from Shopify order history: first order date, second order date, first subscription start date (from Recharge), first cross-category order date. The query is a simple date diff grouped by customer segment.
The challenge is segmenting it usefully. T2P by acquisition channel, by first product, by post-purchase email engagement level — that’s where a warehouse (BigQuery + dbt) adds clarity the native platforms can’t. This is Phase 2-3 work in the implementation roadmap.
Metric 10: Growth Efficiency Ratio
What it measures: How much contribution margin your growth investment produces. The efficiency metric that ties everything else together.
Formula:
GER = New Customer Contribution Margin / Total Growth Investment
Total growth investment includes everything you spend to acquire and activate: paid media (Meta, Google, TikTok), influencer fees, affiliate commissions, content production, email/SMS platform costs (Klaviyo), creative costs, and analytics tooling. Most brands only count paid media. That undercounts true investment by 30-50%.
The simplified version — MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio):
MER = Total Revenue / Total Ad Spend
MER is easier to calculate because it only requires revenue and ad spend, both readily available. The 2024 median blended ROAS across 30,000+ ecommerce brands was 2.04x (Triple Whale). That’s the industry-wide number, not a target.
Category-specific MER targets:
- Food & Beverage: 3.5-5x. Lower gross margins (40-55%) demand higher revenue efficiency.
- Beauty & Personal Care: 2.5-4x. Higher gross margins (65-80%) allow lower MER while maintaining positive GER.
- Supplements & Wellness: 3-4.5x. Margins between F&B and beauty, but subscription economics improve long-term efficiency.
The margin translation that most brands miss: MER without gross margin context is a vanity metric. Here’s why:
- A food brand at 50% gross margin with MER 2.0 produces GER of roughly 1.0 — breakeven. Every dollar of growth investment returns one dollar of margin.
- A beauty brand at 75% gross margin with the same MER 2.0 produces GER of roughly 1.5 — profitable growth. Same efficiency ratio, very different economics.
This is why category benchmarks exist. A beauty brand can tolerate MER 2.5x and still grow profitably. A food brand at MER 2.5x is likely losing money after you account for non-media growth costs.
The organic ratio: Healthy DTC brands generate 50-60%+ of revenue from organic and owned channels (email, SMS, direct, organic search). If paid media accounts for more than 50% of revenue, efficiency will always be fragile. Every dollar of organic growth has near-zero marginal cost, pulling blended GER up. The brands with the best efficiency metrics aren’t just good at paid — they’ve built organic flywheels (referral programs, strong email, SEO content) that carry the base.
Where the data lives
MER is a spreadsheet metric: total revenue from Shopify, total ad spend from platform dashboards. You can calculate it today.
GER requires more: total growth investment (including non-media costs) and contribution margin per customer (revenue minus COGS, shipping, discounts, processing). That’s warehouse work. A dbt model that joins orders with cost data and spend across all channels gives you true GER by segment, by channel, by product line.
This is Phase 4 — the capstone metric. But MER gives you 80% of the signal while you build toward GER.
Implementation Roadmap
These 10 metrics don’t all require a data warehouse on Day 1. Here’s the build sequence:
Phase 1 (Weeks 1-4) — Blended Baselines: Blended CAC/MER from ad dashboards and Shopify. Klaviyo segments for repeat vs. one-time. Repeat purchase rate baseline from Shopify reports. Cost: existing tools only.
Phase 2 (Weeks 5-10) — Retention Infrastructure: Automated retention flows in Klaviyo (win-back, post-purchase, browse abandonment). Basic customer state tracking (Active/Lapsed/Churned) using Klaviyo engagement data. T2P measurement from Shopify order exports. Cost: Klaviyo (existing) + setup time.
Phase 3 (Weeks 11-16) — Segmented Analytics: Cohort analysis by acquisition channel and first product. CAC payback by segment. First-product-to-LTV analysis. Requires: BigQuery + dbt initial build. Cost: warehouse setup + modeling.
Phase 4 (Weeks 17-24) — Full Framework: BigQuery warehouse with automated ingestion from Shopify, ad platforms, Klaviyo, Recharge. dbt models for all 10 metrics. Automated dashboard (Looker/Hex). Reverse ETL to Klaviyo for score-based segmentation and flow triggers. Customer quality scoring. Full GER calculation. Cost: warehouse + BI tool + reverse ETL.
Each phase delivers standalone value. You don’t need Phase 4 to benefit from Phase 1. But the compounding effect of the full stack — where every metric informs every other — is where the framework generates returns that individual metrics can’t.
What These Two Metrics Give You
Monetization velocity tells you how fast your growth engine converts investment into revenue. Growth efficiency tells you how much margin each dollar of investment produces. Together, they answer the question every DTC operator needs to answer at board meetings and budget reviews: is this growth engine getting better or worse?
Rising velocity with stable efficiency means the flywheel is accelerating. Stable velocity with declining efficiency means you’re spending more to maintain the same pace. The combination reveals what neither metric shows alone.
This completes the DTC Growth Intelligence series. These are the 10 metrics we build during every DTC engagement — from blended baselines you can measure this week to the full warehouse-powered framework that compounds over quarters. Book a Sprint to see which ones your data can already support.
The full series:
- Part 1: Acquisition Economics — revenue cohorts and CAC payback
- Part 2: Activation Economics — activation rate, quality scoring, touchpoint attribution
- Part 3: Expansion & Retention — expansion signals and customer state machine
- Part 4: Efficiency Metrics — monetization velocity and growth efficiency (you are here)
