The Dose Playbook: Fueling Paid Acquisition and Product Development with Data-First Tooling

Founded in 2020, Dose offers wellness shots targeting specific health functions. Each product is uniquely formulated by world-renowned scientists. Plus, they actually taste great. 

We sat down with Dose founder Vasu Goyal to understand how his team leverages data to drive subscription growth, inform product development, and set boundaries with paid media partners.

“Everyone looks at CAC, AOV, and LTV. They’re standard. But, the real beauty of data lies even deeper. With Tydo, I can finally get to that level.”

Outgrowing Spreadsheets & Unlocking Data

Before onboarding with Tydo, Vasu was patching data together in Excel. It was a slow, tedious process. He relied on Shopify and surface-level dashboard data, but that was just about it. 

Critically, he didn’t even know what metrics to look at and what cohorts to prioritize. So, Vasu began searching for a data tool that could help him uncover growth opportunities at Dose.

To get started, he connected the brand’s Shopify and the other platforms they use, and then Tydo started populating that data. In his words, Dose went from 0 to 100 in an afternoon.

“Before Tydo, if someone would’ve asked me ‘Have you done a cohort analysis?’ I wouldn’t have even known how to get started on building one.”

The Dose Use Case: Daily, Weekly, Monthly

On a daily basis, the Dose team first evaluates profit margins and unit costs on a rolling schedule. Since there are so many moving pieces and logistics involved with shipping carriers, Dose uses Tydo to keep their operational spend in check and spot any discrepancies in pricing. 

Without Tydo, they would’ve had to do all that manually. Then, on a weekly basis, Vasu and his team spend their time tracking detailed cohort analysis and studying evolving user behavior. 

They look at the customer journey from month zero to month five and if there’s a drop in repeat customers why that might be. For example, they sometimes add information packets to each shipment. When they don’t offer the add-on, they tend to see higher customer drop-offs. Small tweaks may seem unnecessary at the time, but stacked up against each other, data-driven adjustments can yield enormous dividends to a company’s underlying growth trajectory.

Finally, on a monthly basis, Dose focuses on analyzing their overall profit margin and 90-day repurchase rate, both of which inform how much Dose can spend on paid marketing. 

“The key metrics we track are 90-day repurchase rate, profit margin, and AOV. Without analytics on those data points using Tydo, we’re lost.”

A Path Towards Growth: Cohort Optimization

Cohort analysis allows Dose to hone in on audience demographics, start building relationships, and develop direct lines of communication with specific segments driving outsized growth. 

Critically, those in-depth relationships built via customer conversations inform Dose’s marketing. Right now, they’re using those convos to dictate the copy and campaigns pushed out via email. 

In addition, the most valuable cohorts will also guide future product development. 

According to Vasu, DTC operators still underestimate the power of cohort analysis. For example, when Dose raised money, investors always wanted to understand the customer journey. With Tydo, he had all the cohort data right at his fingertips.

Aligning Paid Partners Using Data

Since Dose is a relatively young brand, Tydo has helped the team understand their LTVs and set boundaries around correlating paid marketing campaigns. 

Before using Tydo, Vasu would increase their paid marketing budget by about 10-15% month over month. Now, he can make a much more educated decision based on real-time data. 

Using Tydo, the team distills how much room they have to work with so they can feel confident in the spend boundaries they set around paid. Then, they turn to blended ROAS and profitability margins to determine spend flexibility, instead of just leaving it to their agency to figure out.

“How much spend can you consistently push without slowly losing your arbitrage opportunity? That’s the key metric that Tydo helped us find.”