Growth Agencies
Prove the work moved revenue and keep the lesson when the client leaves.
Apex runs inside each client account, so every campaign, page, and message you change becomes a test with a control group and a number attached. The client owns the account and the data. Your agency owns the method, and it gets sharper with every engagement instead of walking out with whoever ran it.
No credit card to start.Northline Growth is an invented agency. The companies named below are familiar examples, not Apex customers, and every figure is made up for this page.
See every client
Find the account in trouble before the renewal call finds you.
Revenue, retention, acquisition cost, payback, and product use land on one screen for every client, computed from each client's own events on the same definitions. The account manager who is about to have a difficult conversation knows it a month early, which is usually the whole difference between saving the retainer and hearing about it.
StripeSpaceXPerplexityAdded up across 4 companies that are reporting
Across every workspace you were given
Weighted by revenue, not an average of rates
Added up across workspaces
Answer the hard question
Clicks and impressions do not survive contact with a finance team.
Every change your team ships runs as a test, and every result is read against four things: the old version, the rate the client was already achieving, a group left alone on purpose, and the other accounts you run. When the client's finance lead asks what would have happened anyway, that question already has an answer attached to it rather than a defensive email.
Reference points
Renewed at full seat count across each arm and the baseline before this experiment. Workspace holdout and industry benchmark live in the portfolio view.
Previous baseline
Before this experiment
Renewal reminder
control
Offer the review
variant
Keep the method
Your senior strategist knows which plays work. Right now that knowledge leaves when they do.
Apex keeps every result with the conditions that produced it, across all of your accounts, without moving one client's data into another client's view. A new hire reads what has already been tested, where it worked, and where it did not, and starts the week with the pattern library instead of with a shadowing rota.
Reference points
Renewed at full seat count across each arm and the baseline before this experiment. Workspace holdout and industry benchmark live in the portfolio view.
Previous baseline
Before this experiment
Renewal reminder
control
Offer the review
variant
73 out of every 100 accounts renewed with every seat, against 58 on the plain reminder, and 56 before the test existed. Both comparisons point the same way, on 178 accounts.
Reference points
Renewed at full seat count across each arm and the baseline before this experiment. Workspace holdout and industry benchmark live in the portfolio view.
Previous baseline
Before this experiment
Renewal reminder
control
Offer the review
variant
64 against 65, on a starting rate of 64. The two groups can't be told apart, and Apex says so instead of dressing a rounding error up as a small win.
One client, end to end
Follow one engagement from the monthly report to a number the client can take to their board.
Northline Growth is an invented agency running 5 accounts. The client names are familiar, but none of them is an Apex customer and every number is made up. Every product screen below is real Apex. In six steps, follow one account from where the budget is going to a result your agency can defend and reuse.
Every number on this page is made up for this walkthrough. These are familiar companies used as examples, not Apex customers, and none of these figures are their real results.
01 · Whose account is this
The client owns the account. Your agency is granted a view of it.
Start here, because it is the beat most agency tooling gets backwards. The client creates the Apex account on its own plan, and separately grants your agency a read-only view. Nothing is provisioned under your name.
That sounds like giving something up and it is the opposite. An agency that holds the keys is an agency whose renewal conversation is partly a hostage negotiation, and every sophisticated client now knows to ask about it during procurement. Handing ownership over up front removes the objection, and it changes what you are selling from access to judgement.
Those figures are invented, and so is every other number on this page. The client names are familiar because you already know what each one sells. None of them is an Apex customer.
The client chooses what the agency can see and can revoke it at any point, including the day the engagement ends.
Read only, scoped, and ended by the client02 · Every account, overnight
One screen for the whole book, added up the same way
Most agencies assemble this by hand on the last Friday of the month, from five analytics accounts that each define a customer differently, and by then it describes a situation that has already changed.
Here it builds itself. The account with the warning on it is losing revenue at renewal faster than it is winning it, and that showed up four weeks before anyone would have noticed in a reporting cycle. Four weeks is enough time to change something. The last Friday of the quarter is not.
StripeSpaceXPerplexityAdded up across 4 companies that are reporting
Across every workspace you were given
Weighted by revenue, not an average of rates
Added up across workspaces
Every figure is computed from that client's own events, on the same definition, refreshed overnight.
No status spreadsheet03 · Where the budget goes
One channel pays for itself in eight months. One takes thirty-one.
This is the table that makes an agency look like a partner rather than a vendor. Acquisition cost is what the client spent to win one customer through that channel. Lifetime value is what that customer has paid so far plus what they are expected to pay. Payback is how many months it takes for one customer to cover what they cost.
Google costs $7,053 a customer, returns $25,600, and earns the money back in eight months. Meta costs $12,000, returns $13,600, and takes thirty-one months. Last-click reporting can show Meta winning while every customer it brings loses money, which is how an agency ends up defending a channel it should have recommended cutting.
Organic has no cost per customer, so that cell stays empty rather than borrowing a plausible number. Saying nothing where you know nothing is worth more to a client relationship than any chart on the page.
Each row follows the customers who arrived in the same month and stays with them, so a channel that looks good here brought customers who are still paying a year later.
Groups of customers, not last click04 · The monthly call
Three decisions with the arithmetic printed on them, and one repair
A client meeting that opens with a dashboard puts the client in the position of finding the insight, which is the work they hired you to do. These three cards say what to do this month, and each one shows the arithmetic behind it. Put more behind Google. Cut Meta back. Repair the LinkedIn connection before quoting another number from it.
The client can disagree in ten seconds because the reason is on the card, and a client who can argue with your reasoning trusts it far more than one who has to take it on faith.
Next moves
Plan more budgetPut more behind Google
Google brings the teams that renew. A customer costs $7,053 to win and pays $25,600 over their life, and the spend earns itself back in eight months.
- Review campaigns
Cut Meta back
Meta's customers cost $12,000 each and are worth $13,600. It takes 31 months to earn that money back, which is longer than the average team stays.
Fix connectionLinkedIn has stopped hearing back
Nothing has gone back to LinkedIn in nine days. Its bidding is running on stale data, so the cost per customer above is drifting.
The third card is not a recommendation. Nothing has gone back to LinkedIn in nine days, so that channel is bidding on stale data.
A move, not a chart05 · Did the work actually do anything
Beating the old version is not the question. The question is what would have happened anyway.
Your team changed the renewal message. It performed better than the old one. Every agency report in the world stops there, and every client who has been burned once knows to keep asking.
So the result is read against four things. The old version. The rate the client was already achieving before you arrived, which is the reference that separates your work from a recovery that was under way. A group left alone on purpose. And the other accounts you run. The holdout is the one that protects the relationship: a gain that shows up against the control and disappears against the holdout means the message moved customers who were renewing regardless.
The honest claim is $71,400, not the $320,000 the account grew that quarter. The other $248,600 came from new customers and expansion your work did not cause, and it stays labelled that way. Handing a client a smaller number they can verify is how an engagement reaches its third year.
Reference points
Renewed at full seat count across each arm and the baseline before this experiment. Workspace holdout and industry benchmark live in the portfolio view.
Previous baseline
Before this experiment
Renewal reminder
control
Offer the review
variant
The control answers the question about the old version. The holdout answers the question about doing nothing at all.
Each one answers a different objection06 · What your agency keeps
It worked for one client and did nothing for the other, and that pair is your method
Your team ran the same change for Databricks, where customers pay for usage and there are no seats to keep. Nothing moved. Apex reports that the two groups cannot be told apart rather than presenting a rounding error as a win you can put in a case study.
That second result is the more valuable one, and it is the one that normally exists only in the head of the strategist who ran it. Kept, it stops being a tip and becomes a claim with a condition on it: offer a review before renewal when the customer pays per seat. A new hire can read that in their first week. Pitching the fourth client in the same category, you already know whether it will apply to them, and you can say why.
Reference points
Renewed at full seat count across each arm and the baseline before this experiment. Workspace holdout and industry benchmark live in the portfolio view.
Previous baseline
Before this experiment
Renewal reminder
control
Offer the review
variant
73 out of every 100 accounts renewed with every seat, against 58 on the plain reminder, and 56 before the test existed. Both comparisons point the same way, on 178 accounts.
Reference points
Renewed at full seat count across each arm and the baseline before this experiment. Workspace holdout and industry benchmark live in the portfolio view.
Previous baseline
Before this experiment
Renewal reminder
control
Offer the review
variant
64 against 65, on a starting rate of 64. The two groups can't be told apart, and Apex says so instead of dressing a rounding error up as a small win.
When a team pays per seat, a drop in weekly use predicts lost seats at renewal better than support tickets do.
last moved by the first renewal test
Offering a quiet account a review keeps seats, when the customer pays per seat.
last moved by the second renewal test
The same offer does nothing when the customer pays for what they use instead of per seat.
last moved by the second renewal test
Paid social brings in teams that don't stay long enough to pay back what they cost.
last moved by the channel review
The agency reads results across its book. No client's data enters another client's view.
Across accounts, without mixing themWhat stays with whom
The engagement ended. The client kept the account, and you kept the method.
Nothing is held hostage in either direction, which is the only arrangement that survives a procurement review. The list below is also what Apex will not do, because an agency that oversells its own measurement has a harder second year than one that never measured anything.
What the product reportsApex measures this
Revenue, retention, first value, use, and what each channel costs and returns. All of it computed from the events each company's own code sends.
Whether a change workedApex measures this
Because the change runs as a test with a control group, the rate before it started, and a holdout. It isn't claimed after the fact.
The company's booksApex does not
Bookings, deferred revenue, cost of goods, headcount, cash. Apex never sees the accounting system and never checks its numbers against it.
DiligenceApex does not
Contracts, cap table, customer references, quality of earnings. Nothing here replaces the work you do before you wire money.
- definition of a metric, shared across your whole book
- 1definition of a metric, shared across your whole book
- steps in the example below
- 6steps in the example below
- reference points behind every result you report
- 4reference points behind every result you report
- client records that cross into another client's view
- 0client records that cross into another client's view
Your move
Sell judgement, not access.
Let the client own the account. Ship every change as a test. Report the number that survives the follow-up question. Keep the condition, not just the win, and put it in front of the next client in that category.