There’s a moment in nearly every growth meeting where someone throws out a number like it’s gospel:
“CAC is $48.”
“LTV is $900.”
“Blended ROAS is 2.3x.”
And I always ask one thing:
“How do you know?”
Because most brands I walk into are flying blind with dashboards they don’t trust, metrics no one owns, and data that lives in a spreadsheet graveyard.
Here’s What We See All the Time:
- LTV is calculated on gross revenue, not net margin
- CAC is platform-only (Meta) instead of blended across org spend
- Email and affiliate revenue are double-counted
- ROAS is celebrated—but no one’s tracking MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio)
- And the board report has different numbers than your ad team’s dashboard
This isn’t just a data problem.
It’s a decision problem.
The Metrics Stack You Actually Need
Here’s what we install in nearly every $10M+ brand we work with:
1. One Source of Truth
Not 12. Not whatever’s “in Shopify.”
Use Looker, Domo, PowerBI, or just Google Sheets—but everyone must agree on the data source.
2. The 6 Metric Must-Haves:
- CAC (Blended and Channel)
- LTV (By segment, not just overall)
- AOV (and how it’s trending)
- MER (Total marketing spend ÷ total revenue)
- Conversion Rate (by traffic source)
- Repurchase Rate / Retention
3. One Owner Per Metric
Assign a name. Make them responsible. This alone will tighten up chaos across teams.
Metrics Are a Mirror
Metrics won’t fix your business.
But they’ll show you the truth about how it’s performing.
And that’s the first step in building a real growth strategy—one rooted in reality.
Your Weekly Chaos Challenge
Audit your top 5 growth metrics. Ask:
- Who owns this?
- Where does the data live?
- How do we use it to make decisions?
If you don’t like the answers, the growth engine isn’t running—it’s guessing.
Want My Metrics Clarity Template?
I’ve built a doc that simplifies reporting into a weekly dashboard for eCom, affiliate, paid, CRM, and ops leaders.
Comment “Metrics Map” or DM me, and I’ll share it.
Until next time—
Clarity beats chaos. Numbers beat opinions. Build the machine.
—Matt Frary
Chief of Chaos
