Digital marketers are navigating a broken compass. Between Apple’s tracking restrictions and broader privacy shifts, the signals teams once relied on have all but disappeared. With no quick fixes, teams are being forced to rethink what success even looks like.

Natasha Saviuk, Director of Growth at Wealthsimple with a PhD in Neuroscience, is testing, tweaking, and tossing what no longer works in the search to find what still does.

A tougher terrain: "Paid digital marketing is difficult in this environment," Saviuk says. "There’s no silver bullet, and it doesn’t seem like any one team has it all figured out. We're all struggling with the same challenge of optimizing for real value." Saviuk’s sentiment echoes a frustration we're hearing from growth leaders across the tech sector, where the search for sustainable ROI has taken priority in a post-zero-interest-rate world.

Empty-calorie metrics: The first casualty of this new era is the industry's reliance on superficial, top-of-funnel metrics. "Historically we've thought a lot about the cost-per-install, but that seems to be very outdated," Saviuk explains. This principle takes shape as a core strategy at Wealthsimple where success isn't just about acquiring users, but getting them to consolidate outside investment accounts and use multiple products. "The more products you have, the better the retention and the more value the client is getting," Saviuk notes.

Time to look inward: "Counterintuitively, our traditional paid channels are less effective at getting clients to consolidate their assets or try new products," Saviuk says. "We see a lot more success from our lifecycle and incentive campaigns that are run through our own channels." This pivot isn't unique to fintech; leaders in both SaaS and e-commerce are increasingly finding that their most valuable customers are cultivated through internal channels, not bought at the top of the funnel.