When Every Channel Worked and Growth Still Stalled — A Full-Funnel Growth Retainer for a Health-Tech Startup
Service:
Full-Funnel Growth (Integrated Growth Retainer)
Industry:
Health-Tech — Digital Health Platform
Engagement Duration:
12 Months
Scope:
Acquisition · Activation · Retention · Revenue · Cross-Channel Integration
The Context
Carewise, a health-tech startup, had assembled the parts of a growth function and gotten none of the compounding. They had an SEO effort, a paid-ads effort, a content effort, an email effort, a social effort — each run separately, often by different people or vendors, each reporting its own metrics, each “working” by its own measure. And growth was stalled. The founders were baffled: every individual channel showed activity and decent channel-level numbers, yet the *business* wasn’t growing the way the sum of those efforts suggested it should. They assumed they needed to push harder on the channels, or add new ones.
The problem wasn’t any single channel; it was that nobody owned the *funnel*. Growth is not a collection of channels — it’s an integrated system spanning acquisition, activation, retention, and revenue, where the stages compound or leak as a whole. Carewise’s siloed setup meant each channel optimised for its own narrow metric (SEO for traffic, ads for clicks, email for opens) with no one responsible for how it all connected into actual business growth. Traffic arrived and didn’t activate; users activated and didn’t retain; the channels weren’t reinforcing each other; and the leaks *between* the stages — invisible to any single-channel view — were where the growth was draining away. Every channel could be “working” while the funnel as a whole was broken, because a funnel is only as strong as its weakest stage and its connections, and no one was looking at the whole.
Health-tech sharpened the stakes: it’s a category where trust, retention, and genuine engagement matter enormously (a health product users abandon helps no one and earns nothing), and where regulatory and sensitivity constraints shape what’s possible. Carewise didn’t need more channel activity. They needed someone to own the *whole funnel* as an integrated system — to find and fix the leaks between the stages, make the channels reinforce each other, and optimise for business growth rather than for a scoreboard of disconnected channel metrics.
What They Asked For
The founders’ ask was channel-shaped: “Our growth has stalled — we need to improve our channels / add more of them.” They located the problem in the channels’ performance or quantity.
We reframed it around the funnel. Channels weren’t the problem; the *absence of funnel ownership* was. The real brief was a **full-funnel growth retainer**: taking ownership of the entire growth system — acquisition, activation, retention, and revenue — as one integrated whole, finding and fixing the leaks between stages, making the channels reinforce each other, and optimising relentlessly for *business growth* rather than disconnected channel metrics. Own the funnel, not the channels — because a collection of individually-“working” channels with no one owning the whole is exactly how growth stalls while every dashboard looks fine.
The engagement was a 12-month integrated growth retainer (figures withheld under NDA), covering full-funnel strategy and ownership, cross-channel integration, activation and retention work, experimentation, and business-level growth measurement.
Success was defined as:
– Business growth — the funnel optimised as a whole for actual growth, not a scoreboard of channel metrics.
– Fixed inter-stage leaks — activation and retention gaps closed, not just acquisition pushed.
– Channels reinforcing each other — an integrated system rather than disconnected silos.
– A coherent, owned growth function with clear full-funnel measurement, within health-tech’s constraints.
What We Were Up Against –
No one owned the funnel — only the channels.
Because each channel “worked” by its own measure, the founders couldn’t see where growth was actually draining away (between the stages). Shifting the focus and measurement from channel-level scoreboards to full-funnel business outcomes was essential and counter to how the team was used to seeing things.
The leaks were between the stages, where no one looked.
Traffic that didn’t activate, users who didn’t retain — these inter-stage leaks were invisible to any single-channel view and were where the growth was lost. Finding and fixing them required looking at the funnel as a connected whole, which the siloed structure had never done.
Health-tech constraints shaped everything.
Trust, genuine engagement, and retention matter enormously in a health product, and regulatory and sensitivity constraints bound what’s possible. The full-funnel work — especially activation and retention — had to be built for genuine engagement and within those constraints, not generic growth-hacking.
Our Approach — Own the Funnel, Not the Channels
We treat growth as one integrated system — acquisition, activation, retention, revenue — and take ownership of the whole, fixing the inter-stage leaks and making channels reinforce each other, optimised for business growth. The retainer ran in three phases over twelve months.
Phase One — Full-Funnel Diagnosis & Ownership (Months 1–3)
structure incentives and targeting to attract and keep genuine participants and deter mercenaries, and measure the users who stay, not the launch-day peak. The engagement ran in three phases.
Before pushing any channel, we took ownership of the whole funnel and found where growth was actually leaking.
We mapped Carewise’s **entire funnel** — acquisition, activation, retention, revenue — as one connected system, and measured each stage *and the connections between them*, exposing the inter-stage leaks (traffic not activating, users not retaining) that the siloed channel views had hidden. We established **full-funnel ownership and measurement** — shifting the focus from disconnected channel scoreboards to business growth, and making the whole funnel someone’s actual job for the first time. And we reframed the engagement for the founders: their problem was never the channels (which were individually “working”) but the absence of anyone owning the funnel, and the leaks between stages where growth was draining away. This diagnosis redirected everything from “push the channels” to “fix the funnel.”
Phase Two — Fixing the Leaks & Integrating the Channels (Months 3–9)
Before designing the airdrop, we changed the goal from spike to retention and designed against the farmers.
We reframed the campaign’s objective from maximising the launch spike to maximising retained users and TVL — establishing retention-based success metrics (users and liquidity still present weeks and months later) over the vanity peak, and confronting the team with the reality that a big spike of mercenary capital would leave them worse off.
We designed the airdrop and incentive structure for retention: targeting genuine protocol participants over broad mercenary reach, and structuring incentives to reward *sticking and real participation* rather than farm-and-dump extraction — an adversarial design problem aimed at attracting the right users and deterring the professional farmers.
The principle from day one: an airdrop is acquisition, and acquisition only counts if it retains.
Phase Two — Running the Campaign & Retention Mechanics (Months 2–5)
With the leaks located, we fixed the funnel as a whole and made the channels reinforce each other.
We prioritised the **highest-impact leaks** — frequently in activation and retention rather than acquisition, because pushing more traffic into a funnel that doesn’t activate or retain just wastes it — and fixed them as part of the integrated system. We made the **channels reinforce each other** (acquisition feeding activation, content supporting retention, email and lifecycle compounding rather than operating in isolation) instead of running as disconnected silos. And because this was health-tech, we built the activation and retention work for *genuine engagement* and within the category’s trust and regulatory constraints — because a health product that users abandon helps no one. We ran continuous experimentation across the whole funnel, optimising for business growth rather than channel vanity metrics. The parts began, for the first time, to compound into a system.
Phase Three — Compounding Growth & Capability (Months 9–12)
An integrated funnel compounds. Phase Three consolidated the system and built durable growth.
With the leaks fixed and the channels reinforcing each other, growth shifted from stalled-despite-activity to genuinely compounding — the funnel working as a system rather than a collection of parts. We measured the engagement on **business growth** (not channel scoreboards), confirming that fixing the inter-stage leaks and integrating the channels had unlocked the growth the disconnected setup had been suppressing. We consolidated the integrated growth function — the full-funnel measurement, the cross-channel coordination, the activation and retention systems — and worked with Carewise’s team so the *ownership of the funnel as a whole* could persist, rather than reverting to siloed channels. The deliverable was a coherent, owned growth system optimised for the business, built within health-tech’s constraints.
The Results
Twelve months in, Carewise’s growth stopped stalling-despite-activity and started compounding — because someone finally owned the funnel as a whole instead of the channels as parts.
Funnel Ownership — The Shift That Mattered
The **whole funnel owned as one integrated system** — acquisition, activation, retention, revenue — for the first time, replacing the siloed channels that each “worked” while growth stalled
– Focus and measurement shifted from **disconnected channel scoreboards to business growth**, exposing and addressing where growth actually drained
Inter-Stage Leaks Fixed
The **leaks between stages** — traffic not activating, users not retaining — found and fixed, where the growth had been draining away invisibly to any single-channel view
– Prioritising **activation and retention** over simply pushing acquisition, because more traffic into a leaky funnel just wastes it
Channels Reinforcing Each Other
–The channels made to **reinforce each other** as an integrated system rather than disconnected silos — the compounding the siloed setup had never produced
– Activation and retention built for **genuine engagement** within health-tech’s trust and regulatory constraints
Compounding Growth & an Owned System
–Growth shifted from stalled-despite-activity to genuinely compounding — the funnel working as a system
– A consolidated, owned full-funnel growth function with coherent measurement, built to persist rather than revert to silos
How We Work — Full-Funnel Growth Engagements at Mtrench
Every full-funnel engagement we take on starts by looking at the thing your channel dashboards can’t show you: the funnel as a whole, and the leaks between the stages where growth actually drains. If every channel “works” and your business is still stalled, your problem isn’t the channels — it’s that nobody owns the funnel.
From there we take ownership of the entire system — acquisition, activation, retention, revenue — establish measurement that exposes the inter-stage leaks, fix them (usually starting with the activation and retention you’ve been under-attending while chasing traffic), and make your channels reinforce each other instead of running as silos. We optimise for business growth, not channel scoreboards, and build the work for genuine engagement within your category’s constraints — then leave you owning a coherent growth system.
If every channel looks fine and growth is stalled, the leaks are hiding between your dashboards — and we’d like to map your whole funnel before proposing anything.
Proof Over Promises.
Arjun Mehta , Founder
Nexa Protocol — Web3
“The team helped us turn a technically strong Web3 product into a brand people could actually understand. The positioning, website, and launch system made a noticeable difference in how investors and users perceived us.”
Arjun Mehta , Founder
Nexa Protocol — Web3
“The team helped us turn a technically strong Web3 product into a brand people could actually understand. The positioning, website, and launch system made a noticeable difference in how investors and users perceived us.”
Arjun Mehta , Founder
Nexa Protocol — Web3
“The team helped us turn a technically strong Web3 product into a brand people could actually understand. The positioning, website, and launch system made a noticeable difference in how investors and users perceived us.”
Arjun Mehta , Founder
Nexa Protocol — Web3
“The team helped us turn a technically strong Web3 product into a brand people could actually understand. The positioning, website, and launch system made a noticeable difference in how investors and users perceived us.”
Ready to Own Your Funnel, Not Just Your Channels?
Growth as one integrated system. The leaks between stages, found and fixed. Channels that finally compound.