The maths
You're paying Meta to reach
people you already own.
Meta's automated campaigns decide how much of your budget goes to existing customers, and you can no longer cap it. Three sliders show what that costs you, and what a fraction of it does in the inbox instead.
Step 1
Your numbers
Rough is fine. The point is the ratio, not the decimals.
Ads Manager reports this split. If you've never looked, 50% is a fair guess: left to itself Meta typically spends 60% to 80% on existing customers, which is why the cap used to exist.
Step 2
What Meta costs you to reach your own customers
£1.0m
a year, paid to Meta to reach people already on your list
£83k
every month, for the same people
£2.00
per customer, per year, before anyone buys anything
These are people who gave you their email address. You already have a free way to reach them. You're renting a second one, and the rent went up about 20% this year.
Step 3
Now imagine you moved a slice of it to the customers you already have
Pick how much. Not new money, just a different home for money you're already spending on the same people. Most brands could move far more than they think.
£40k
a year invested in your existing customers. Meta keeps the other 98%.
7 days
of Meta spend. That's all it is.
£0.08
per customer, per year, spent on the people who already chose you
What investing in your own customers looks like
- ■Campaigns and flows built for each customer, not one version for everyone
- ■Personalised, animated heroes that use the data you already hold
- ■A channel with no auction, no algorithm and no location fee
- ■Every send measured against a control, so you know it worked
Same £40k. Where does it earn more?
Left as it is on Meta, or redeployed to your existing customers with Inlights.
Stays on Meta
£120k
back, at 3x ROAS. Mostly from people who'd have bought anyway, at a price that rose 20% this year.
Redeployed with Inlights
£1.8m to £2.5m
back. The DMA's £38 per £1 for email, plus the 18% to 65% lift our clients have measured on top. Every send against a control.
15x
more from the same money, at the conservative end, by putting it in front of customers you've already won instead of paying Meta to find them again.
Same people. Two prices.
Assumes 20% Meta CPM inflation this year (industry benchmark) and the DMA's £38:1 email ROI. Retention currently gets under 15% of media spend across the industry (Gartner). The slider goes to 10%. The argument doesn't stop there.
Why this happens
Your ROAS looks great.
Your growth doesn't.
Meta removed the cap
The 'existing customer budget cap' let you limit how much of an automated campaign went to past buyers. It's gone. The algorithm now decides, and it likes existing customers because they convert.
Existing customers flatter the numbers
People who were going to buy anyway convert cheaply. Your ROAS goes up. Your new-customer count doesn't. The report that shows the split is in Ads Manager, and most brands have never opened it.
Meanwhile, the email goes out identical
A third of UK marketing email is still one version for everyone. The same customer you paid Meta to reach gets an email that looks like every other brand in their inbox.
Meta is for people you don't have yet. This page is about the ones you do.