Welcome to Frankly eCommerce, a weekly DTC newsletter from Austin, TX. Martech, culture, & economy for brand builders by Patrick Scott Pitman.
Building upon the 15 year tradition of the Austin Shopify Meetups and supporting the first season of Frankly Workshops and Podcast.
In this issue:
📊 “The New Economics of Ecommerce” by David Stickland
🛒 Preview of Oct 30 Operations Workshop with Steve Simonson
🏷️ The hardest part of a CPG startup by Steven Rofrano, ex Meta.
📆 Events and links worth sharing, and more…
Reply to let me know what you find valuable — and whether this message is delivered to your inbox? Also reply and ask if you want Dan Hansfield’s profitability planner spreadsheet for BFCM offers from our Oct 9 workshop.
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~ Patrick
P.S. Friday Oct. 30 in Austin: Operations after BFCM Workshop
Make hypotheses guided by experience, advised Brian Massey in the Conversion workshop Oct 16.
Forget about ‘Best Practices’
Hypotheses and experience guide your BFCM prep, not ‘playbooks’
Wearing his trademark white lab coat, veteran CRO specialist Brian Massey led the Oct 16 workshop audience through his process of optimization. It doesn’t rely on a fixed playbook. No best practices.
With over 2 decades making websites better, you might expect a formulaic approach. But he’s learned that A/B test results yield different outcomes than the ‘best practice’ would predict.
Lesson: trust in your experience to make a hypothesis of what you expect as an outcome. Then test in ways that align with your brand’s values — which means the test aligns with what promises you make to the customer.
Keep your promises! Then refine based on the results.
One upside to new AI powered analyses is that you don’t need rigorous A/B test data collection to make meaningful improvements. Make changes and use AI to analyze / interpret / forecast results as if there were a control version…
Workshops every Friday in October were made possible in part by Tie, with an offer for Frankly readers.
Shoppers send signals. Is your website listening?
Every store has shoppers who find something they love, then leave without buying. Most dashboards never show you who they were or what they wanted.
That matters for BFCM, because shoppers take a median of 41 days to decide. Before buying more traffic, it pays to know how much intent your traffic is already leaking.
Your Intent Yield score, a free shopper intent diagnostic, measures how your store captures, engages, and converts intent.
It reads your storefront like a shopper, then compares it with over one billion Swym network intent actions. Your score arrives in 30 seconds, with no install.
Events near Austin
Mostly business things to do. Send us your event!
📆 OCT 23: BFCM Retention Workshop: when they buy at a discount, you’ll want to make it back later. Gabrielle Pitman leads.
📆 OCT 26-30: Austin Tech Week: Rooted in entrepreneurship, famous for its startup crawl. Heather Brunner delivers keynote.
📆 OCT 28: Principled Business Texas Night: capitalists take to the stage to speak to the political moment: want free markets or not?
📆 OCT 29: WakeUP! CPG: Marc Nathan’s matchmaking is in higher gear with founders, investors, and service pros. Find a job there!
📆 OCT 30: Operations after BFCM Workshop: as orders scale, get organized with AI-upgraded systems. Led by Steve Simonson.
📆 NOV 3-4: Wizard of Words: How to inpire with your Story: Your socials and speaking on stage might improve with Christopher Kai.
Operations after BFCM with Steve Simonson: Oct 30
This is the workshop for owners, founders, COO’s, and for the people who have to pack and ship the product -- after all the marketing has done its job. Operations. Customer Service. Systems.
Steve Simonson has sold maybe a billion $’s online. But that’s only possible because of the efficient teams he’s organized. It takes a team! And a system!
At the Oct 30 Operations Workshop, we'll dig into how AI and orchestrated agents are transforming DTC teams.
Listen to a conversation with Steve recorded as a LinkedIn Live for a sampling.
Share the workshop opportunity with people who want:
To learn how Steve prepped his team to fulfill $1M sold in 1 day.
Demonstrate AI systems powering fulfillment, sourcing, and service.
Answers to operatoinal challenges with situational coaching.
Ideas worth sharing
Structural challenges for Ecom today: brands & agencies both! Dave Stickland of PopSmith gave a presentation “The New Economics of Ecommerce” that’s worth a look. (Reply to [email protected] for the link.)
Dave challenges the ‘Start an ecom brand now!’ optimism expressed by our first podcast guest Chris Lang:
1) Margins have collapsed for PopSmith: For PopSmith’s next $100 of revenue, total cost to sell rose from $63.16 to $98.29. Contribution margin dropped from $36.84 to just $1.71
2) Every major cost line has gotten more expensive since 2019.
3) Ad efficiency has fallen.
4) Consumer purchasing power is less, tighter.
(Hat tip to Jon Derkits for the recap.)
How to respond? For starters, Dave advises:
“Repeat purchases are everything. You must do this!”
(Wish Dave was at the Retention workshop with ebusiness pros’ Gabrielle Pitman!
Thinking about the different takes, I wonder if Chris Lang’s strength at customer retention, his ability to hold audience attention beyond ads might be a reason for his optimism?
Dave’s conclusion: “I must find growth in other places besides Meta, outside the funnel.” Agreed.UPDATE on Shopify app-ocalypse: Edward Upton gives context to the hacking incidents that shut down many SaaS aps on the Shopify ecosystem, including our sponsor Swym.
“The Shopify checkout hijack wasn't one attack. It was several, running for months, that got caught this week when Shopify investigated,” wrote Upton. “Credit to the app developers. Six public statements show the openness this ecosystem expects.”
Swym responded, posting their own update here.The product is not the hardest part: Ancient Grains’ founder Steven Rofrano explains the challenge with starting a CPG brand is not what he expected:
“Looking back, I don’t think we understood how many things could go wrong,” he wrote. “You solve one problem and it creates another. You make the best call you can with what you know, and sometimes you’re wrong.”
I met Steven at Polyface Farms in August, where we commiserated over raw milk chocolate ice cream and Vandy crisps. He’ll be on the podcast soon!
Resources & tools (sponsored)
This season of Frankly eCommerce is made possible by support from:
Alia for AI powered popups to boost your optin rate.
Wunderkind to maximize revenue with AI decisioning
Swym to engage shoppers, improve conversions.
Klaviyo for customer relationships built autonomously.
Tie to reach every shopper at the right moment.
Before you go…
Join the Austin Shopify Meetup on Meetup.com
Follow our event calendar on Luma.com
Follow Frankly eCommerce or Patrick on Linkedin.com
Curious to be a guest on the podcast? Apply here
That’s all for this week!
Your feedback is welcome! Got an event to share? Email me here.
Onward,
~ Patrick Scott Pitman
