ESN
About
ESN is Germany's leading sports nutrition brand, offering a Tull portfolio of protein supplements, functional foods, and titness accessories - sold orimarilv throuch their own D2C channel across DACH.
Industry
Sport Nutrition
Market
Europe
Headquarters
Elmshorn, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany
Channels
Meta Ads, Google
Challenge
As one of Germany's most recognized sports nutrition brands, ESN faces a structural challenge in paid acquisition: high brand awareness means a large share of ad-driven conversions would have happened organically anyway. Broad campaigns perform well on revenue - but revenue doesn't distinguish between incremental growth on new customers and non-incremental ad spend. The goal was to scale new customer acquisition beyond what Broad targeting could deliver - reaching new segments without relying on existing brand demand.
Solution
ESN implemented Innkeepr to generate incrementality-optimized audience signals across three product lines. Rather than replacing Broad, Innkeepr-powered lookalike audience signals ran alongside it - targeting segments identified by Innkeepr's prediction model as high-lift prospects: users whose purchase is genuinely influenced by ad exposure.
Results
3-month test • Innkeepr audiences vs. Broad • Jan - Mar 2026
2.3x more new customers
72% of category revenue from Innkeepr signals
+15.3% higher average order value
ESN's journey
ESN has built one of the strongest brands in German sports nutrition. With a loyal customer base, a broad product portfolio spanning protein, creatine, and functional foods, and a high-performing D2C channel, they operate at a scale where most brands would be satisfied to optimize what already works. But the team had a different question: how much of their paid acquisition was genuinely incremental? When a well-known brand runs Broad campaigns, the audience naturally includes people already searching for the brand - users who would have found ESN regardless of the ad. The ROAS looks strong. The question is whether spend is creating demand or just capturing it. To find out - and to quantify the headroom for genuine new customer growth - ESN ran a structured 3-month test with Innkeepr across three product lines: Bundles, Isoclear, and Designer Whey.
Implementation Approach
ESN integrated Innkeepr to analyze behavioral data from their shop and score each visitor's predicted incremental lift - the probability that an ad exposure would genuinely influence their purchase decision, rather than simply coincide with it. From these predictions, Innkeepr automatically generated lookalike audience seeds for each product line. These segments were synced directly to Meta as custom audience signals, enabling the platform's algorithm to optimize toward users with the highest predicted incremental value. Broad campaigns continued running without changes. Innkeepr audiences operated in parallel - expanding reach into segments that Broad, by design, cannot efficiently access.
The Innkeepr Moment
The 3-month test made the incremental opportunity visible. Across three product lines, Innkeepr-powered audience signals delivered 2.3x more new customers than Broad in the same period - generating 72% of total revenue while accounting for 78% of spend. The 15.3% higher average order value reinforced that the new audience signals weren't just reaching more people, but better-matched ones. With 72% of total revenue and 2.3x more new customers coming from Innkeepr audiences the test showed clearly where the incremental growth was coming from. For ESN, this wasn't a signal to abandon Broad - it was a signal to build alongside it. The test showed that a substantial pool of high-value new customers exists beyond the reach of traditional Broad acquisition, and that Innkeepr's incremental signals are the mechanism to get there.
"We knew Broad was efficient, but we suspected a lot of it was organic demand we'd have captured anyway. Innkeepr gave us a way to test that hypothesis - and to go after segments we weren't reaching. 2.3x more new customers in three months made the case."
Paul Keil, Team Lead Paid Social
ESN
How ESN Uses Innkeepr
Innkeepr's signal optimization engine sits at the core of ESN's new customer acquisition strategy. Behavioral data from the ESN shop flows continuously into the platform, where it is scored for incremental lift and transformed into fresh audience segments for Meta.
Product-line specific audience seeds
Rather than running one generic lookalike across the full catalog, ESN uses Innkeepr to generate tailored audience seeds per product line - Bundles, Isoclear, Designer Whey, and others. Each seed reflects the behavioral patterns of incremental buyers for that specific product, not the brand overall.
Additive to Broad, not competitive
Innkeepr audiences are structured to expand reach, not cannibalize existing campaigns. Broad continues to capture high-intent organic demand efficiently. Innkeepr audiences access the segments that fall outside that pool - users who need more than brand recognition to convert
Continuous signal refresh
Audience segments update automatically as new behavioral data flows in. ESN's team doesn't maintain static lists or manually refresh segments - the platform keeps signals current without operational overhead.