Ecommerce Playbook: Numbers, Struggles & Growth

On this episode of the podcast, Richard chats with Luke Austin, Directory of Growth Strategy at CTC about part 2 of our growth methodology: how to build a forecasting model that ladders up to your business goals and provides clear marching orders for your creative and paid media efforts.

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The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have about the world of ecomm.

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In this first episode of our brand-new bonus series, Taylor and Richard sit down to talk everything Cost Caps — why you should be using them, when to use cost caps vs min ROAS bidding, and how to set up your cost cap campaigns in Meta Ads manager. Then, they discuss the biggest barrier to Cost Caps success — creative volume — and how to make sure you have the creative you need to support your desired spend.

On this episode of the podcast, Taylor and Richard embark on part 1 of a 5-part series on CTC’s new growth methodology: the Prophit System.

They kick the series off by discussing the crucial beginning of the journey: defining a business objective that will lead to the outcome that you want.

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On this episode of the podcast, Taylor is joined by Connor Rolain, Head of Growth at Hexclad, and Connor MacDonald, CMO at Ridge.com, to talk their BFCM strategy — from pacing your sale strategy to the tradeoff between offer simplicity and inventory constraints.

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The past few episodes of the Ecommerce Playbook focused on the profitability struggles that will define 2024. But this week, Taylor and Richard demonstrate how you reach profitability: a clear forecast that sets daily expectations across dozens of key metrics.

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New customer revenue is plummeting as brands run earlier, more frequent discounts, and returning customer revenue may not be far behind.

Looking at the state of ecommerce this month, CTC Director of Growth Strategy Luke Austin sits down with Richard to discuss why he’s worried about Q4 2023, and the one thing that clearly distinguishes winning brands from the field as we move into 2024.

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The feeling among ecommerce brand leaders right now is pretty uniform: September was a bad month. And we have the data to substantiate that feeling.

In this episode, Taylor and Richard dive into this week’s DTC Index newsletter and break down why last month’s “sponge squeeze” could have a major impact on performance moving forward.

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On this episode, Taylor and Richard dive into the 2023 BFCM Offer Database, a massive spreadsheet that documents Black Friday and Cyber Monday offers from 700+ ecommerce brands. 

Discussion includes why you definitely should run an offer on Black Friday, a surprising truth about Buy One, Get One offers, and the role of novelty in “breaking the noise” on the biggest weekend of the year.

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On this episode, Taylor and Richard break down the most important trends in ecommerce, and discuss what the future holds for margin innovation, AI, and the connection between marketing and finance.

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The Ecommerce Playbook mailbag is open — email us at [email protected] to ask us any questions you might have about the world of ecomm.

On this episode, CTC’s Director of Creative Strategy & Performance Aileen McKenna joins Taylor & Richard to discuss the urgency of building great evergreen ad creative in September and October, how to systemically brainstorm new ad ideas, and the right place to expend effort and resources when Black Friday comes.

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