SimplePractice is a leading platform that empowers health and wellness professionals to manage their businesses more effectively. As the company scaled, marketing became a key growth driver, with over $25 million in annual ad spend across search, Performance Max, paid social and partnerships.
However, with growth came complexity. Efficiency gains became harder to sustain, and the team faced increasing pressure to prove every marketing dollar drove incremental value.
The Challenge: Rising CAC and Conflicting Signals
Like many fast-growing brands, SimplePractice invested in multiple channels to capture demand while expanding into top-of-funnel strategies. But as spend rose, so did blended customer acquisition cost (CAC).
To diagnose performance, the team relied on channel-level testing and in-platform metrics. Yet, these methods often gave conflicting or incomplete answers. Search might appear to be the hero channel in one test, while paid social showed stronger results in another. Partnerships were even more difficult to measure, given their longer conversion cycles and indirect impact.
“We couldn’t confidently answer the biggest question: Where is our next opportunity to invest that gives us the biggest upside with the most efficient use of spend?”
– Taj Anderson, Sr. Marketing Analyst, Business Analytics, SimplePractice
The marketing team needed more than incremental testing — they needed a comprehensive, data-driven model that could identify which channels were truly incremental and where diminishing returns were setting in.
The Solution: DV Rockerbox’s Marketing Mix Modeling
SimplePractice turned to DV Rockerbox™’s marketing mix modeling (MMM) to gain a holistic, cross-channel view of performance. Unlike channel-specific attribution or siloed testing, MMM accounts for the full set of marketing touchpoints, external factors and historical performance data to uncover incremental lift and optimal spend allocation.
With DV Rockerbox MMM, the team was able to:
- Scale Social With Confidence: Historically, social media was difficult to measure and optimize because of signal loss and attribution gaps. MMM revealed social's untapped potential, allowing the team to scale investment with confidence.
- Make Smarter Cross-Channel Tradeoffs: By modeling diminishing returns, MMM helped weigh the impact of Performance Max against other channels, ensuring incremental growth rather than oversaturation.
- Gain Guidance on Hard-to-Track Channels: Partnerships and referral programs often require sustained investment before their impact shows up in performance data. MMM provided the insight needed to justify ongoing support for these channels.
This shift moved SimplePractice away from fragmented decision-making and toward a unified measurement strategy anchored in incremental value.
The Results: Efficiency and Growth, Together
Armed with DV Rockerbox MMM insights, SimplePractice reallocated spend strategically and saw measurable improvements in both cost efficiency and top-line growth.
- 30% reduction in CAC for social media and performance sub-channels within the paid media portfolio while increasing total spend by 10–20%
- 5–10% lift in overall conversions
- Greater executive alignment on channel impact and ROI
“We were able to increase spend while reducing CAC overall. That’s the kind of outcome we love… costs less and generates more revenue.” – Taj Anderson
The ability to both reduce costs and accelerate growth proved that MMM was not just an analytics exercise, but a growth driver.
Why It Matters: From Fragmented Testing to Next-Gen Marketing
For SimplePractice, DV Rockerbox MMM wasn’t just about improving today’s numbers. It laid the foundation for a more resilient and forward-looking marketing strategy.
- Confident Budget Allocation: The team can now answer definitively where the next marketing dollar should go.
- Executive Alignment: With a single source of truth, internal stakeholders better understand channel impact.
- Future-Proof Growth: MMM enables investments in top-of-funnel strategies — without fear of wasted spend — positioning the brand for long-term growth.
“MMM is a foundational step. Once you move from single-channel to cross-channel marketing, MMM becomes essential. It not only improves today’s decisions, but it also sets you up for next-gen marketing.” – Taj Anderson
Key Takeaways
- MMM unlocks incremental growth by showing which channels deliver true lift.
- Efficiency and scale are not mutually exclusive. SimplePractice achieved both.
- Holistic measurement empowers marketers to move beyond fragmented testing and invest confidently in growth.
