A client (and personal friend) who has generated multi-million dollars in lifetime revenue called me last month.

Not about email. About money.

"Anthony, where is my money going?? We're hitting Meta ROAS targets, email is performing, but I'm not seeing anything left over at the end of the month."

I asked what I always ask: what's your CM1?

Silence.

CM3? LTV:CAC?

A more silent silence.

This is an issue I see a lot.

Founders under $5M/year are so in the weeds that they aren’t able to spend the time to understand their business-level financial metrics.

Today we’re going to go into the weeds on numbers that tell you if you’re TRULY profitable, and at the end I’m going to give away the dashboard I created that you can use find your brands profit numbers in under 30 minutes

Here's what happens when you optimize email for revenue instead of profit.

You look at your campaign performance. 1.5% click rate, $8,200 in attributed revenue, 15% conversion rate. Great numbers. You send more emails like that one.

But you never asked about your contribution margin numbers to understand where the leak is in your profit funnel at the business level.

Here are the key calculations:

CM1 answers "After product costs, how much margin do we have left, before fulfillment and marketing costs?" to help you understand your product-level profitability.

CM2 answers "After product costs + getting it to the customer, how much margin do we have left, before marketing costs?" to help you understand your total cost of delivering your product, and what's left after.

Variable fulfillment costs include things like pick-and-pack fees, shipping fees, payment processor fees, etc. All costs that grow with each order.

CM3 answers "After COGS + variable fulfillment costs + costs of platforms (ex: Klaviyo platform costs + flat agency retainers), how much is left before paying for customer acquisition?" to help you understand landed costs + what it costs to just maintain your marketing infrastructure (platforms, agencies, tools).

CM3 does NOT include performance fees like % of ad spend. That goes in CM4 where you calculate in ad spend, performance fees, etc to tell you how much is left before operating expenses.

You'd be surprised at how many DTC brands are overpaying for Klaviyo, have an underperforming email agency, and are sending 50% off or Buy One Get One Free promotions, not realizing they only have a 52% CM3 margin, and only driving 2% margin from email.

Running through inventory without the bank account reflecting the sell-through, for this exact reason.

They push the product with the highest average order value in their welcome series. They build win-back flows around their best seller. They run weekend campaigns on their hero SKU.

And they have no idea if any of it is profitable at the unit level.

We found his agency fees were enormously inflated (especially performance fees), and they weren’t seeing incrementality when the team scaled ad spend.

I built this tool after that conversation:

It's a simple profit calculator that shows you exactly where your money is going and where the lowest-hanging profit improvements are hiding.

You plug in:

It shows you:

⏰ Takes less than 20 minutes.
🚫 No costs or gating (Totally free, no email required)
🧭 Insights as to where you need to improve your funnel

Most brands find at least one place they're wasting or could save $5-$15k+ per month.

Experts understand more than surface-level revenue metrics, while the bloated bodies of DTC brands that didn’t make it rise to the surface and float downriver.

Run your numbers through the calculator this week.

Look at contribution margin numbers, and see where your brand is falling short. Do COGS make up 62% of your revenue? You're bleeding margin before you even think about acquiring a customer.

If you're randomly sending HUGE promotions without understanding your TRUE costs, you're flying blind and may be discounting yourself into unprofitability.

If the gap is bigger than you thought and you want a second set of eyes on where to move the levers, book a call with me here: choose.transparentdigital.agency

We'll go through your numbers together and find the lowest-hanging profit improvement in your email program.

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