Stop Funding Delusions
📉 Don’t Fall for the lie your attribution feeds you, How Gen Z Is Shaping Holiday Spend, and more!
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In this newsletter, you’ll find:
📉 Stop Funding Delusions
🎁 Gen Z Is Rewriting Holiday Marketing
🚀Tweet of the Day
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📉 Stop Funding Delusions
Most DTC teams don’t have an attribution problem. They have a distortion problem, and the distortion is so baked into Klaviyo that operators mistake fiction for improvement and panic for decline.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Email attribution doesn’t measure influence. It measures proximity. And proximity is easy to fake.
If an email appears anywhere near the buyer’s journey, Klaviyo will happily take credit, even if the sale came from Meta, Google, or the customer’s own intention.
This distortion doesn’t just mislead teams. It actively corrupts how brands make decisions about CAC, LTV, UX, and team performance.
🧠 The 3-Lens Attribution Truth Test
A proprietary framework for understanding what your email revenue actually means.
1. Behavioral Lens, “Did email change what the customer did?”
If the customer had bought anyway, email didn’t drive revenue; it documented it.
2. UX Lens, “Did we accidentally create an email bottleneck?”
Most brands inflate email revenue by:
• Forcing customers to check inboxes for codes
• Hiding discounts in emails
• Linking key steps only through email
Better UX always decreases attributed revenue even when real revenue rises.
3. System Lens, “Is the attribution window lying?”
Klaviyo’s default windows (5-day view, 5-day open) reward email for:
• Forgotten touches,
• Unrelated clicks,
• Cross-channel journeys,
• and purchases that happened long after email mattered.
This lens determines whether email caused the sale or simply touched the customer.
When all three lenses disagree with the dashboard, you’re looking at distortion, not performance.
🧩 The Attribution Distortion Ladder
Where teams misinterpret the truth, in order:
Level 1: True influence
Level 2: UX-induced engagement
Level 3: Window-based overclaim
Level 4: False attribution
Level 5: Manipulated attribution
Level 6: Organizational delusion
Most DTC brands operate at Levels 3–4 without knowing it, and Level 6 happens when retention teams get judged on inflated numbers.
💥 The Second-Order Consequences (This Is Where the Money Leaks)
1. CAC ceilings get set incorrectly.
Over-attributing revenue to email makes acquisition look more profitable than it is, causing underinvestment in channels that actually drive growth.
2. Retention looks healthier than it is.
Cohorts decay quietly while attribution paints a fake picture of “40% from email.”
3. UX gets worse because teams optimize for dashboards, not buyers.
Good UX always reduces attributed revenue.
Bad UX often inflates it.
4. BFCM forecasting becomes fiction.
Distorted email metrics → distorted revenue assumptions → distorted inventory and spend decisions.
📊 The Only Email Metrics You Can Trust
1. Prospect → Customer conversion: The closest thing to real influence.
2. Unique campaign clicks: Only behavior that proves interest.
3. Cohort repeat rate: The retention heartbeat of the business. Everything else is noise.
🔥 The Real Operator Takeaway
Email attribution isn’t the villain. Believing it blindly is.
The marketers who win in 2025 will not be the ones with the prettiest Klaviyo charts. They’ll be the ones who finally understand the difference between revenue that happened through email and revenue email actually caused.
One is reporting. The other is performance. Know the difference. Your P&L depends on it.
🎁 Gen Z Is Rewriting Holiday Marketing
Holiday 2025 opens with the steepest spending drop in years as overall budgets fall 10% and Gen Z cuts back by 34%. With 57% expecting the economy to worsen, shoppers want value without losing the emotional core of the season.
The Breakdown:
1. Economic Reality Hits Hard - Gen Z faces the sharpest shift with a projected 34% pullback, forcing brands to justify value clearly. Overall holiday spending is down 10%, and 57% believe the economy will worsen.
2. Emotional Value Outperforms Flash - Consumers want joy, but 70% are value-seeking, trading extras for meaningful moments. Brands shift toward relatable storytelling like Gap’s emotional “Give Your Gift” spot.
3. Gen Z’s Influence Reshapes Behavior - Gen Z is 95% deal-driven yet still wants personalization, community, and in-store experiences. Urban Outfitters used insights from 10k UO Insiders to launch wish list tools and creator-led events. Their strong in-store preference (75% weekly) positions them to drive Black Friday momentum.
4. Influence, Retail Media and AI Accelerate - Gen Z leans on influencers and social, with 74% using them for discovery and spending more as a result. Retail media grows 12% YoY as 61% of Gen Z welcome sponsored content. Meanwhile, 43% use AI for gift ideas and price comparison, pushing brands to embed smarter tools.
Gen Z’s caution, channel habits, and emotional expectations are rewriting the holiday playbook, demanding more strategic precision than past seasons. Brands that blend value with meaning while embracing creators, retail media, and AI-driven convenience will win disproportionate attention.
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