Case Studies — Black Swan Strategic Consulting

01Motor Vehicle AccidentJun 2026 · National

National MVA Campaign

A hard-criteria lead engine, deliberately tested on a lean budget until the data revealed the exact bottleneck.

$1,750

Effective CPA achieved

680

Unique visitors (deduped)

82%

Of DQs from one criterion

49 + 11

State builds tested in parallel

Challenge

Run a national MVA lead engine against strict, hard qualification criteria — and prove the model on a deliberately small test budget without burning it while Meta was still learning.

Approach

We ran two builds in parallel: a broad 49-state campaign and a tight 11-state filter stack. We deduped traffic to true unique visitors and instrumented every disqualification reason, so the bottleneck could be found rather than guessed at.

Results

The funnel proved out end to end, producing TSG-accepted leads at an effective $1,750 CPA within the hard criteria. The data pinpointed that 82% of rejections traced to a single rule, accident older than six months, turning an open question into a clean two-lever decision: widen the recency window, or raise spend.

Why qualified leads were rejected

82%one cause

Accident > 6 months (31) Other criteria (7)

02Event Demand Gen & BrandMay 2026 · Orlando, FL

TESSERA — SAP Sapphire 2026

Owning the conversation at SAP's flagship event, against the giants, on a fraction of their budget.

10.6M+

Paid impressions

1.05M

Unique users reached

#2

Search share, behind only SAP.com

27.3%

Email open rate

Challenge

TesseraLabs, an enterprise AI platform for ERP modernization, needed to reach a hard enterprise audience and win share of voice at SAP Sapphire while competing against SAP, Capgemini, and HCL Tech on a lean budget.

Approach

We geo-fenced the convention center at ZIP 32819 plus hotel corridors and airport approaches, ran coordinated Google and Meta paid media, and layered three segmented email sequences across nine dedicated sender mailboxes.

Results

10.6M+ impressions and 1.05M unique users on just $16.7K in media. We captured roughly 30% of local search impression share, ranking #2 overall and #1 on several peak days behind only SAP.com. Meta delivered at a $0.11 CPM against a $10–25 norm, while three email segments returned 24 direct replies with zero mailbox disconnects.

CPM vs. the B2B benchmark

Typical B2B

$10–25

TESSERA (Meta)

$0.11

TESSERA (Google)

$1.06

Roughly 99% below the typical B2B display benchmark.

03Healthcare AcquisitionJul 2026 · Denver + Alaska

Smith Direct Care — Multi-Market Patient Acquisition

Scaling patient acquisition across an established core market and a brand-new one, while driving cost per acquisition down.

$17.90

Denver CPA, down 44%

$17.35

Alaska CPA on market entry

21.3%

Alaska impression share, week 2

$6.83

Best Performance Max CPA

Challenge

Grow patient acquisition for a direct specialty care provider across two very different markets at once: an established Denver core account and a brand-new Alaska market entry, all while pushing acquisition costs lower.

Approach

We made Performance Max the efficiency engine, rebalanced budget toward the best-converting placements, and ran disciplined search hygiene, negative keywords, placement exclusions, and bot-blocking, as the new market threw off noisy traffic.

Results

Denver's cost per conversion fell 44% to $17.90 on 53% less spend, with Performance Max carrying the whole account. Alaska hit $17.35 per conversion on 34 conversions and grabbed 21.3% impression share against AdventHealth and ZocDoc in only its second week. A parallel email program to the same audience returned a 77.8% click-to-open rate.

Denver cost per acquisition

$31.96Before

$17.90After

$17.35Alaska

44% lower CPA in Denver on 53% less spend.

04Cold Outbound & EmailJul 2026

XPFlow — Alfie Cold Outbound Engine

A cold-email engine built to reach tens of thousands of prospects without torching sender reputation.

52.1%

Open rate, opening batch

2×+

Above cold-outbound benchmark

58.7K

Prospects in the pipeline

6 / 2

Warmed mailboxes across domains

Challenge

Stand up a cold-outbound engine for XPFlow's Alfie affiliate product that could reach roughly 58,000 prospects at scale without burning sender reputation or landing in spam.

Approach

We built six mailboxes across two dedicated domains, warmed every sender, and launched a sequenced campaign with deliverability monitored from the very first batch so we could catch drift before it compounded.

Results

The opening 630 contacts returned a 52.06% open rate, more than double the 15–25% cold benchmark, holding a consistent 46–64% across every mailbox. At that rate, full deployment projects to roughly 10,200 opens and 390 replies.

Open rate vs. benchmark

52.1%open rate

Cold-outbound benchmark sits at 15–25%.

05Cold Outbound & EmailJul 2026

Direct Pay Designs — ESOP Employer Outreach

Reaching ESOP decision-makers at scale, and proving the targeting before pouring on volume.

35.5%

Overall open rate

66.7%

Open rate by the fourth touch

28.7K+

ESOP-employer leads

9 / 3

Warmed mailboxes across domains

Challenge

Reach ESOP-employer decision-makers across a planned 100K+ sends, and validate that the targeting and messaging actually landed before scaling spend and volume.

Approach

We ran a four-step sequence with A/B/C subject-line testing across nine warmed mailboxes on three domains, watching open-rate progression touch by touch to confirm product-market fit with the audience.

Results

A 35.5% overall open rate cleared the 15–25% benchmark comfortably, and engagement climbed with every touch, rising to 66.7% by the later emails. That progression validated both the audience and the message, clearing the path to scale toward 2,000–3,000 sends a day.

Open rate climbs with each touch

30.6%Email 1

50.7%Email 2

66.7%Later touches

Recipients who ignored the first angle opened a later one.

Results we've driven.

National MVA Campaign

Challenge

Approach

Results

TESSERA — SAP Sapphire 2026

Challenge

Approach

Results

Smith Direct Care — Multi-Market Patient Acquisition

Challenge

Approach

Results

XPFlow — Alfie Cold Outbound Engine

Challenge

Approach

Results

Direct Pay Designs — ESOP Employer Outreach

Challenge

Approach

Results

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