There is a Slack channel at every eCommerce brand called #general, and it is the least general place in the building. It holds a pinned message from June 2023 that stopped being true in mid-August, a thread titled "quick sync re: AOV" that is now on its forty-first reply and has acquired its own weather system, and one specific person who opens with "quick question" the way a dentist opens with "you might feel a small pinch."
The quick question is never quick.
It is called the quick question the way the pre-checked $4.98 at checkout is called "shipping protection," despite protecting the package from nothing and the customer from a refund they would have received anyway.
The language has agreed to lie. Everyone has agreed to let it. This is the only thing in the company with full buy-in.
Above the quick question floats a founder who has just typed "thoughts?" beneath a screenshot of a competitor's homepage at 11:48pm, which is the most expensive single word in DTC. Eight people now have thoughts. Four have them out loud. One has them in a Notion doc, with a RACI chart, by Friday, that no human requested and the entire leadership team will be asked to "drop comments on by EOD." The doc will change nothing. It was never going to change anything. It exists so that the screenshot was not sent in vain.
None of this surfaces on a dashboard. There is no line item for the colleague who types "looping in" and proceeds to loop in a sales coordinator, two agencies, and a man named Greg whose function no one can confirm. There is no MER for the meeting that should have been an email, or the email that should have been a single Slack message, or the Slack message that should have been a moment of quiet private restraint. We would buy that tool instantly. We would integrate it, demo it, expense it, and abandon it by the rebrand, at which point it would continue billing us, faithfully, into the dark.
The news now follows, having met our modest standards for relevance and our considerably lower ones for joy.
Upcoming Events
The retention event is a stable genre: a hockey-stick keynote, a panel where four people agree that brand matters, a sponsored lunch eaten standing up, and a closing framework that worked beautifully for one brand under market conditions that expired in 2023.
The Retention Roadshow has declined to participate. One day, a room capped at 75 to 100 growth and scale-stage DTC operators, and an agenda on lifecycle marketing and LTV run by people with actual retention programs rather than a deck about one.
Four cities in June: New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Austin. Attend the nearest one, leave with something you can use before the feeling wears off.
A retention event about retaining things. The bar was on the floor, and someone stepped over it.
Tweet of the Week
He fired his $8,000 media buyer and replaced him with a chatbot
The most advanced creative strategy available to a direct-to-consumer brand in 2026 is, it turns out, a founder, an iPhone propped against a mug, and roughly four minutes of unscripted talking. We spent three years and sunk billions into AI teaching machines to generate humans, and the winning move is now a human, generated for free, by their parents.
Fraser Cottrell breaks down three formats currently converting while everyone else funds the render farm: founder ads that build trust faster than any other unit, UGC that feels like an unplanned FaceTime rather than something lit, graded, and approved by four people, and the faceless POV format quietly defecting from TikTok Shop to Meta.
Authentic still outsells polished. A small tragedy, given how much was spent on the polish.
Sponsored by Alia
If you’re treating your popup like an afterthought, you’re leaving revenue on the table.
Most brands spend heavily to drive traffic to their site, only to send visitors to the same generic popup. The result? Missed conversions, lower opt-in rates, and revenue left uncaptured.
Alia fixes that. Our AI-powered popup personalizes each experience in real time, testing and adapting to show each visitor the experience that’s most likely to convert.
Instead of relying on one generic popup, Alia continuously optimizes performance to help you turn more clicks into subscribers and revenue without spending more on traffic.
Brands using Alia have seen:
→ 2x signups in the first 30 days
→ 5x ROI in the first 90 days
→ 10%+ average submit rates
Don’t just take our word for it.
See how brands like Aviator Nation, Fishwife, and MASA Chips are using Alia to drive smarter list growth and more revenue.
Welcome Flow Revenue with Alia’s Smarter Popups How MASA Chips Achieved 127% Signup Growth & 64x ROI with Alia
Workspace6 members receive a 10% lifetime discount. Start your free trial today.
Quick Shots
@Seanfrank I do over $10,000,000 a year in luggage sales.
@codyplof Has anyone set up department or role specific agents in their business?
Peter Quadrel How to instantly BOOST your ROAS with one hidden Meta switch
@ron_ecomm i a/b tested "1 unit sold every X seconds in Y countries" fact on the collection page banner and made it the hero message
Sara Levinger 7 creative types I’m making all my consulting clients test:
Here for the Memes
Top Headlines this Week
Best from LinkedIn
ASC might be killing your growth
Here's what to do:
- Meta keeps pushing you to consolidate everything into one ASC.
- I've seen two ways that breaks an account.
PROBLEMS:
1. ASC latches onto one or two ads and starves new viable creatives before they can scale. These are 'false losers'. Essentially Ads that look bad inside ASC but would win in any other structure.
2, Legacy top performers hog budget. If you drop a validated new ad into the same ASC it'll often get ignored and not get spend
FIXES:
Recommended SAAS & Services
Still on Klaviyo? This one’s for the Omnisend-curious.
Omnisend’s new on-demand webinar goes live June 15, walking DTC brands through how it stacks up against Klaviyo… and what it actually takes to migrate. Deniz, Omnisend’s Senior Onboarding & Migrations Manager, covers feature differences, pricing, SMS, support, common pain points, and the step-by-step migration process, from lists and segments to automations, deliverability, and onboarding support. [Watch from June 15]Scaling paid media shouldn’t feel like gambling. Sum Digital helps 7–9-figure ecommerce brands turn ad spend into predictable, profitable growth across Meta, Google, and TikTok—without bloated teams or black-box reporting. Senior operators only, creative that actually converts, and a relentless focus on ROAS. If you’re done paying for spend instead of results, Sum Digital is your agency of record.
Stuck between an overpaid $80K/Year US hire and an inexperienced $5/Hour VA? Tidal helps you hire experienced, execution talent globally that outperforms US hires, at a fraction of the cost. Built by operators focused on hiring better talent, not just cheaper talent. Get started with a free payroll audit today --> www.hiretidal.com
Stat Attack
That is the week. None of it was urgent, exactly, but all of it will become a meeting eventually, so consider yourself properly ahead of the agenda.
Go gently. Loop in no one.
👆👆👆
They’re reaching 7, 8 and 9 figure merchants.
Talk to us about sponsoring this newsletter.
