Ask Us Anything: Revenue marketing expert Shelby Van Zwol on how to maximise your ROI
Shelby Van Zwol answers your questions on the underrated marketing strategy that gets missed and how you can maximise it to your advantage
This month we asked revenue marketing expert Shelby Van Zwol how to get the best ROI and which marketing channel to use when you have a limited budget.
We sent three questions to Van Zwol. We hope her answers help you get the most out of your marketing spends.
1. What’s an underrated marketing strategy you see businesses miss?
It’s hard to pinpoint just one, as each business has different needs and opportunities. However, if I was to speak broadly, I would say investing properly in their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and their email/SMS marketing.
Most businesses I audit are creating blanket lists and running a ‘send-to-all’ strategy. My recommendation is to always personalise and segment your database; the fastest, cost-effective way to nurture, re-engage and increase lifetime value in your business.
Every campaign email you send, and each flow that is automated, continues building on those trust-building touch points with your customer (or prospect customer).
2. I have a limited budget for marketing, what marketing channel do you suggest is the most effective and ROI for acquiring new customers? And do you have any low cost hacks that you can share?
I always encourage my small business community to invest in Lead Generation advertising on Meta as a starting point – to drive new leads (emails) into their email marketing lists and from there, nurture them.
This is an effective and low-cost strategy. It may cost the small business $1-2 to acquire the lead (email) on Meta, but from there, they can nurture this lead into a paying customer through a series of personalised campaign emails and automated flows.
Most of our clients see between 35-50x ROI via email, proving it to be the healthiest margin acquisition strategy in 2026.
Low cost, high output!
3. How do I measure ROI on my marketing spend?
It depends if you’re running multiple platforms, or just one. If you’re on multiple platforms, most businesses look at a blended return/marketing efficiency ratio (MER) as the platforms often overreport or take blended conversions.
For exmaple, if you spend $10,000 a month on all digital advertising channels and your store achieves $100,000 in revenue, you’d say you achieved a 10% MER (super healthy).
However, if you’re just running one platform (i.e Meta Ads), you can just use the Meta reporting dashboard and look at key metrics such as CPA (cost per acquisition) and ROAS (return on advertising spend).
Every business has different CPA and ROAS goals; but what constitutes a realistic set of ROI goals will come down to your industry, your past data/performance, your website conversion rate, your content mix, and more.
Below are some metrics that don’t measure ROI but directly affect your ability to achieve your goal ROI:
- Click through rate: the health of your creative, which directly affects your CPA and ROAS;
- Meta conversion rate: the rate at which your Meta audience is converting from your advertisements; and
- Frequency: how many times, on average, each person has seen your ad within a selected date rate. We recommend keeping this above three to ensure advertising efficiency and no wasted budget on underperforming creative.
