Consumer Goods (F&B)
We loved working with D1 - they set up our marketing reporting & gave us solid insights that actually improved our marketing efficiency!
Ivo Devereux
Sapling Spirits, Co-Founder
Sapling Spirits is a British sustainable spirits brand known for its award-winning vodka and gin, made with local ingredients and a strong focus on carbon-conscious practices. With a mission-led identity, standout design, and loyal customer base, Sapling has expanded across D2C and retail channels in the UK - planting a tree for every bottle sold.
Despite strong product-market fit and growing brand recognition, Sapling faced a familiar early-stage challenge: media spend was scaling faster than their ability to measure it. The team needed to allocate budget more effectively, avoid overspending where returns were diminishing, and establish clear benchmarks to support fundraising, forecasting, and expansion. At the same time, there was no centralised view of marketing performance. Key metrics like ROAS, customer acquisition cost, and channel effectiveness were tracked manually, without consistency or scalability. This lack of insight created risks: overspending, inefficient creative testing, and an increasing reliance on gut instinct rather than data.
Day1Data partnered with Sapling Spirits to build a modern marketing intelligence setup - delivering quick wins while laying the groundwork for long-term media maturity and scale. Phase 1: Data Foundations A lean data architecture was implemented, including a cloud warehouse, automated pipelines, and dbt models. Real-time Looker Studio dashboards gave Sapling visibility into CAC, ROAS, and campaign performance. Phase 2: Budget Optimisation Media mix modelling revealed the impact of spend across platforms and highlighted diminishing returns. The result: a 50% reduction in paid media spend with no drop in performance, plus insights to guide product launches and seasonal planning. Phase 3: Incrementality Testing Controlled experiments showed clear lift from top-performing channels, helping sharpen creative testing and audience targeting moving forward.
Reduced paid media spend by 50% with no drop in sales, while significantly improving ROI across all channels.
