Common thread collective Reviews

Run as far away from CTC as you can. They don't care about your success no matter what they tell you. We were a client of them for 3 years. First year was great, second year performance dropped. Third year they offered a free photoshoot every quarter to renew, but it didn't help with performance. The free photoshoot never resulted in any quality creative and always took months longer than promised.

We were constantly not happy with any of the creatives they created. Most of the time they were off brand or looked like something purchased from Fiverr.

Their leadership has the mentality of sink or swim and don't provide any help when your growth team doesn't meet your agreed upon ROAS.

Most of their top talent has moved on from the company. Look at all of these 5 star reviews on here and you will notice they are from employees. Also take a look at their glassdoor reviews to get an inside look at how the company is run.

We saw an increase in their revenue via paid media efforts, thanks to Common Thread Collective s work. The team was communicative and had a smooth workflow. They were organized and worked as if they were an extension of our team.

Common Thread Collective helps us with search engine marketing and social media marketing. We first had some initial discovery calls before the team quickly started managing our paid marketing efforts.

We mainly work with two teammates: a Google Ads manager and a social media manager. We also have a primary contact and a business development specialist. I ve met a few more people at the company, but I only regularly interact with the paid marketing team.

We spend between $7,000 $10,000 each month. This doesn t include the ad spend, which has totaled over $100,000 in August 2021 alone.

The project started in May 2021, and it s ongoing. We just signed an annual contract with them.

We had reached a plateau when working with other vendors, and our partnership with Common Thread Collective has been critical to our continued growth. They re extremely good at what they do, and they ve knocked it out of the park. In the last month of our engagement, we actually sold out our merchandise. We re delighted with their work.

Their project management is excellent. The team gets things up and running fast and offers fantastic communication. We have weekly calls with our Google Ads manager and social media manager. Additionally, we have a Slack channel with everyone working on the project, and they re very responsive.

Common Thread Collective always makes sure we re happy, and they re very interested in how well they re doing. They actually perform surveys every so often to get feedback about their team s performance, and we ve only ever given positive feedback.

Other vendors we d worked with didn t have the capabilities that Common Thread Collective has. They re just a team of experts who are dedicated to their craft. They re dynamic and able to execute and launch new efforts to keep up with our growth, so it s been a seamless and quick process. Additionally, their prices are also fair and match the quality of their services.

Common Thread Collective will ramp your sales up, so make sure you have the inventory to respond to the demand.

CTC has been a our trusted partner since 2018. In the early part of our relationship, their team helped us scale one of our smaller brands from $10K/month to over $250K/month.

We initially hired them because they understood eCommerce like no agency that I've ever encountered. A "economic engine" formula that we had been using to drive growth for years was literally a giant sign on the walls of their HQ. Before we ever signed a contract, it was clear to me that they just "get it."

Throughout our partnership, I've had the opportunity to get to know several members of the CTC family. And, I've been really impressed at every turn. I've been in eCommerce for over 20 years (yes, I'm a eComm dinosaur) and CTC's CEO is easily one of the brightest eComm minds that I've encountered in that 20+ years of experience. This talent seems to extend to nearly everyone that we've had the pleasure to work with on our accounts. Their leadership and team members are genuinely interested in helping entrepreneurs achieve their dreams (their mission statement).

From interactions with team members, to my time in their offices in Orange County, it became clear to me that CTC has a special/unique culture. Their TMYD (tell me your dreams) program is like nothing I've ever seen.

CTC does, however, embrace change at a speed that I've never encountered before. As a client, this was initially unsettling. I quickly realized, however, that the rapid change was always in an effort to improve the relationship and the performance of our ad accounts.

In all, I feel truly blessed that we found CTC when we did. Our partnership has been massively impactful.

We are halfway into our ad creative contract and let me just say we are less than under whelmed. I would advise small businesses looking for ad creation to look elsewhere. Our experience so far has been full of slow deliveries, messups with formatting, spacing, editing, and an overall feeling of lower quality ads than what we imagined with the price of this service and the examples we were shown of other ads they have created. I will update this review in a few more weeks after our contract term is up.

Common Thread s deliverables revolve around achieving a specified return on ad spend (ROAS) that we find reasonable. Our goal is to grow our ad spend and audience while delivering better results in a responsible fashion that propels the business forward. At present, we re exploring their other offers, specifically email retention services.

I mainly interact with their Facebook, Instagram, and Google media buyers.

I was a listener of a podcast by Andrew (Former VP of Growth), and I researched who he was and where he worked. Then, I started watching some of the webinars that Taylor (Managing Partner) put out. After that, I became a subscriber of the admissions program by Common Thread. I thought they provided real value, so I hired them.

We ve invested around $150,000 $200,000 in this partnership.

We started working together in July 2021, and the engagement is ongoing. I started talking to them long before that; I circled around them until it made more sense to take the leap as our business grew.

We ve seen a dramatic improvement in our ROAS and revenue. August 2021, which is typically a slow month, has been more profitable than December 2020. Common Thread s work in those aspects is driving the increase in large part.

Common Thread has done a great job at project management. They send out a biweekly questionnaire to check out how we feel about their experience. To communicate, we mainly use Slack and emails. We also have a weekly Zoom call.

Common Thread takes a holistic brand approach to their clients businesses; they understand the balance between paid media, organic traffic, and owned resources. Overall, I ve learned a lot from Taylor about running an e-commerce business as I have about marketing.

Moreover, their team is great at marketing; their holistic perspective on a company makes their marketing management powerful and impactful. E-commerce is a unique beast. Those of us who are thrusted unwittingly but happily into this space see a void in the marketplace that void needs the holistic knowledge that Common Thread shares on a regular basis.

It would be nice to occasionally touch bases with their senior management to give some feedback or thoughts on the engagement. For context, Common Thread welcomes customers using a series of inspiring materials. However, it s better if we can see the faces behind those materials looking into the specifics of our account. That way, the experience will be authentic and personal.

That being said, the team is doing a great job, and I give them consistently high marks because of that. In other words, this isn t a criticism; it s just a way to gild the lily.

Bring an open mind and do your homework so you can hit the ground running. That way, you ll understand what Common Thread is talking about, and you ll make informed decisions. We re a small company, and doing our homework has been to our great benefit. We understand what we re asking them to do on our behalf, so we can evaluate the suggestions they make. Simply put, Common Thread is sophisticated and smart. As a client, you must be as well-prepared as they are.

At Igloo Products Corp, Common Thread Collective s creativity, speed, and performance-driven results helped us increase sales through our DTC channel massively. During the challenging times of COVID-19 and now into iOS updates, the trends say we shouldn t be successful, but we re continuing to grow above plan. We've had to pivot strategies like everyone else, but input from CTC and their expertise in execution has been a fantastic help.

We ve been partners with CTC for over three years and plan to keep the relationship for many more to come. - Brian Garofalow, CMO, Igloo Coolers

Common Thread is our paid acquisition and customer retention agency, and we are working with them on three separate channels: email, Google, and Facebook. They are providing us with various services, and most of them involve content creation. They create and execute email and Facebook advertisements, and they also help us evaluate our campaigns.

The content they produce for us has written and visual elements. Occasionally, they rework video content, but they also make their own 10 15-second videos. They create original content every quarter to date, those have been exclusively live-action videos, and they have a lot of user-generated focused content, which is of higher quality than an iPhone video. However, since we re doing social advertisement, they try to retain a natural feel on their shots.

Additionally, they have continuously built and refined our website s pop-ups using JustUno.

We have worked with around 8 12 people. We have an account manager who s present in every conversation. They re aware of every meeting, and they handle reporting. Additionally, they resolve high-level, niche tasks. We also communicate directly with project leads whenever we need to go into detail about something.

Common Thread s email campaigns have resulted in a few hundred additional website subscribers a month, amounting to a 10% 20% uptick.

Their ability to produce content has been incredible. We ve doubled the email we sent and maintained a consistent performance the whole time. They have certainly overproduced, but without jeopardizing our output.

Previously, we had 8 10 email campaigns per month. With Common Thread s help, we ve jumped to 18 20 campaigns while maintaining our higher-than-industry-average metrics. Overall, they ve done an excellent job of upping our content production.

Common Thread is a very collaborative company their key officers are even present during our Zoom meetings. They give a small team vibe, and we feel they are very focused on our account they make us feel like we re their only client.

Common Thread is, by far, the most digitally-focused agency I ve worked with. They have their own app, which helps us report on several metrics and bring everything together. We don t have to jump into 40 different resources and cherry-pick information; we just use their platform, and we can see how our campaigns are performing.

They also give us industry benchmarks so we can see how we're performing against their other clients. It s been helpful for us to know that we ve been doing well in certain metrics.

Common Thread s other strength is communication they're the best communicators I've worked with so far. They set up a system where we feel very comfortable reaching out to their team at any point during the workweek. Their communication skills and ability to foster a healthy team environment are impressive.

Common Thread s team is very personable. I know they have many clients, and I understand that they work in a fast-paced industry. It ll be easier for them not to pay attention to so many clients. Despite that, they do an excellent job of developing a community when you work with them.

Anything that s performance-based is completely volatile. I wouldn t fault them if our Facebook campaign doesn't perform well in one month.

The only area of improvement I can think of is their documentation. They do a really good job with PowerPoint, but it's not always overly detailed. If we create an email or Facebook campaign, they don t document it in their report. Having screenshots would be helpful, so I can easily share their reports with my supervisor.

Common Thread does an outstanding job of explaining details. They re very data-focused, but sometimes, their data requires prerequisite knowledge. You should have a general understanding about email, Facebook, Google, and their associated metrics. You don t want to go in there cold.

Common Thread is a step up from an entry-level agency, but they ll put you in a position where you can be very successful.

I'm glad to see other 1 star reviews coming in. It confirms that other clients were also less than satisfied.

We hired CTC in September of 2020. The experience was pleasant for the first month, going through the onboarding and strategy sessions. I was starting to get excited as were coming into Q4, the busiest time of the year for us.

After that first month, as other reviews pointed out, things quickly went downhill FAST.

We were paying them $15,000 per month. Our brand had just crossed 8 figures in revenue at the time, so we needed some heavy hitters when it came to marketing.

Our "Growth Team" was comprised of 5 people, each of which was skilled in a specific area (like writing copy or designing creative). On the outside, it sounds like the Dream Team but it couldn't be more far from.

Our "Growth Team" proved quickly to be very incompetent, even with the most basic of tasks. I could tell right away that none of these had real world experience with owning a business or running ads, and were just talking heads with Bachelors degrees.

No matter how many meetings and strategy sessions we had we the Growth Team, it seemed they just couldn't understand our business. The ad creative and copy was always off brand and resembled something you could buy for $5 on Fiverr.

We raised issues and concerns with the team many times, things never improved.

When it came to FB Ad ROAS, it was horrible. We weren't even breaking even, let alone making enough to pay their monthly fee.

I tried many times to tell them how we've done things in the past, highlighting the fact that: THIS IS WHAT WORKS, DO THIS. It's almost like they were following a rulebook that doesn't allow them to be personable with clients and actually develop a working relationship.

Working with our Growth Team was... weird. It was almost like all the members of team never communicated with each other, and the only time they did was on our weekly Zoom calls.

After a few months of working with CTC, the tension was high. Things weren't improving. I even opted to run the ads myself for the rest of the holiday season because I knew I'd get better results and wouldn't be losing money hand over first like they were.

When I opted for a "break" from them, I was met with senior executives and managers, explaining why that's a bad decision and so on. So I gave them another chance. And I'm sorry I did.

Start of 2021, I told them that I won't be requiring their services anymore. Unfortunately since I signed their monthly services contract, I had to foot the remaining $45,000 or so or get sent to collections. It was incredibly frustrating, but I just wanted it to be over.

In my experience with ad agencies, hiring the small guys vs the large agencies like CTC is always best.

Our last agency, we were paying them just $4,000 per month. Just 2 people worked for the agency (the founders). Hiring them was the best decision and took the business to the next level. My biggest regret is ending our services with them to hire CTC.

Don't let all the social proof, case studies and elaborate website fool you. CTC is clearly not what it used to be.

I had really high hopes for CTC. They sell themselves as one of the elite agencies in the industry and from the outside, it's easy to buy that.

Unfortunately, our experience was very very different. In working with Common Thread to run our paid social ads + create all the content for them, they were never able to even get us to a break even. Instead, we consistently lost money a significant amount of money each month. As a small business, this hits hard. Important to note as well, this was all before the iOS changes, so the data we had was clear.

The quality of the work produced on the creative side was not good, as many have said here. You really end up feeling tricked as the creative shown during their pitch all looks great.

As I've seen more reviews here, I felt compelled to share my view to hopefully help other business owners make a better decision than we did. If CTC didn't have 15+ employee reviews on here, the overall rating would be a lot different.