Issue 225: Why “more flows” is killing retention

Love, care, and all the good things we could muster have been jam-packed into this issue. Like a little digital e-comy bundle of joy 👶 we deliver it to you like that monkey in Lion King, thrusting it up into the air perched atop a little-too-high-for-comfort cliff in the savanna so the other e-com animal folk can gaze in wonder and walk away inspired and informed.

So…. without much further ado, we give you… your newsletter.

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@maxwellfinn I’ve 10xd the quality of the landing pages, advertorials, listicles, sales pages, etc. I’m making with Claude code by including a variation of the following in the initial prompt:

@BallinFil One of the most painful things about ecom is having dozens of micro tasks that you can never delegate until your biz is 10, 20, 30mil+

Rok Hladnik One of the biggest growth challenges I see with DTC brands right now is simple. They fall asleep.

@oliverbrocato Before u hire, ask urself:

Pauline T. Has anyone else been dropped by their Meta Rep recently? 👀 

If you're looking to get more profitable, navigating the diminishing performance of your "performance" marketing, or if you know that investing in building brand is essential, but the "how" is less clear, this post is for you. Here are my mistakes and biggest learnings around finding a balance of Brand building and DR in hopes you can skip the pain and get to the balance that works for you.

A) Why I got overly-reliant on bottom-funnel, short-term revenue-maximizing strategies and tactics:

The early days of Chubbies coincided with good ol' days of Facebook ads. They did work at driving revenue, which was my definition of success at that time.

The dopamine hit from putting a dollar in the Meta Machine and getting 6-10 out was ridiculously addictive

However, as with any addiction, the need for more dollars in to get the same dollars out kept gradually increasing

But it was hard to feel that pain since the change was so gradual, peppered with times where performance would improve, which roped me back in and kept me convinced that if I just wrote a better tagline or found the perfect static asset CTA position, we'd unlock the ROAS we saw in the early days.

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