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Meta Ads: Test On Email Sign-Ups First | Marissa Rodriguez

Published on: 13th November, 2026

It's a lot easier for Meta to find people who'll give you their email than people who'll buy, Marissa Rodriguez says. So she tests new ads on email sign-ups first, and only the winners move to the purchase budget. 20% of her budget goes to that testing, 80% to purchase. "If it fails there, then it's probably going to fail with a purchase event."

Then we got specific. What a sign-up should cost. The offers that actually earn the email. How much of revenue she budgets for paid ads, the number that makes founders balk. And why she aims email at 15 to 25% of revenue, not the 40% a lot of email marketers promise.

Marissa runs Through Experience, where she mentors and coaches ecommerce founders, most of them first-time founders. She builds, launches and scales businesses for individual founders, not corporations, and she's worked on subscription businesses since 2016. So when Kate Assaraf told us on this show that subscriptions are overrated, I asked Marissa where Kate's right and where she's wrong. Her answer: it's an oversimplification.

In this episode:

- How she tests Meta ads on email sign-ups, and her 80/20 budget split

- What an email sign-up should cost: her bar is under $2, and $10 is terrible

- The sign-up offers that work, and why "join our VIP" doesn't

- When a founder's paid problem is really a retention problem

- The three numbers to map before you scale, and the brand that planned three years in the red

- How much of revenue she budgets for paid ads (the number is in the episode)

- Two discount codes and two dashboards: how she measures what email really drives

- Overrated or underrated: retargeting, welcome pop-ups, TikTok Shop, AI creative and organic social

CHAPTERS

00:00 Intro

00:40 Meta stopped working: check the whole business

03:22 Meta for email sign-ups first: the 80/20 split

06:55 Cost per sign-up: under $2 good, $10 terrible

09:07 Sign-up offers: 15 to 20% off or free shipping

11:18 Rebuilding an offer: acquisition and retention

15:03 Biggest gap: founders make it about the brand

18:31 When a paid problem is really a retention problem

21:55 The three numbers to map before you scale

24:36 Profitable now, or three years in the red

30:20 How much of revenue goes to paid ads

33:38 Email's share of revenue: 15 to 25%, not 40%

35:10 Two codes, two dashboards: measuring email

37:11 Kate Assaraf vs Marissa on subscriptions

38:57 Retargeting overrated: let email do that job

40:03 TikTok Shop: great, but never above Meta

42:44 2027: more confusion, so focus on the boring

MARISSA RODRIGUEZ

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marissa-rodriguez-6192b327/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marissa_throughexperience/

Email: info@throughexperience.com

Through Experience: https://throughexperience.com

ECOM GROWTH INSIDER

Every episode: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com

Our episode with Kate Assaraf: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com/episode/how-to-grow-a-brand-without-ads-kate-assaraf/

If you're between $100K and $1M a month and paid is no longer handing you cheaper customers, that's the constraint we work on at HoloGrowth: https://hologrowth.com

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Ecom Growth Insider
Real behind-the-scenes strategies from the trenches of scaling DTC brands. With founders, marketers, and growth experts.
If you're a DTC brand founder, CMO, growth marketer, or operator trying to scale your e-commerce business profitably, this podcast is for you.

Hosted by Andrej Tumachowitsch — founder of the growth agency HoloGrowth — this show goes deep on what actually works to grow online brands in today’s ultra-competitive landscape.

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About your host

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Andrej Tumachowitsch

I'm the founder of HoloGrowth, a performance-driven growth agency helping e-commerce brands scale profitably to 7- and 8-figures through paid ads.

With years of experience in the trenches of DTC growth, I have worked with over 30 brands worldwide – building, optimizing, and scaling their marketing systems.

As the host of the Ecom Growth Insider podcast, I dive deep with top founders, marketers, and growth experts to unpack what’s really working behind the scenes in the DTC space.

My mission? To bring raw, actionable insights that help brand owners scale smarter.