Case Study: How SimplePractice Cut Social and Performance CAC by 30% with Rockerbox MMM

About SimplePractice

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 driver of growth, with $25M+ in annual ad spend spread 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 that every marketing dollar was driving incremental value.

The Challenge: Rising CAC and Conflicting Signals

Like many fast-growing brands, SimplePractice was investing across multiple channels with the goal of capturing 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: Rockerbox Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM)

SimplePractice turned to Rockerbox’s Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) to gain a holistic, cross-channel view of performance. Unlike channel-specific attribution or siloed testing, MMM takes into account the full set of marketing touchpoints, external factors, and historical performance data to uncover incremental lift and optimal spend allocation.

With Rockerbox MMM, the team was able to:

• Scale social with confidence: Historically, social media had been difficult to measure and optimize due to signal loss and attribution gaps. MMM revealed that social had 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 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-channel 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, 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 have a clearer understanding of 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, it 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.