Marketing Operators

“We weren’t doing a good job showing the value.” 

Where does a new brand find trust when it can’t claim a bestseller like HexClad? 

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (Advisor & fmr. CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) compare a scaled HexClad funnel with one from the weeks-old Winks. Step by step, they trace how each one builds trust across ads, landers, offers, and upsells. 

Winks has a premium product, yet customers couldn’t see why it was worth the price. HexClad earns that trust before the click, with Japanese creators and a bestseller hook. The weeks-old brand has to build the same trust with a fraction of the proof. 

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Motion 

https://9ops.co/motion-runneth 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel-mops 

Proppel 

https://www.weareproppel.com/operators 

Operators Portal 

https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/ 

https://x.com/M__Operators 

https://www.instagram.com/marketingoperators/

“Two of our winners have entered for free. They never purchased anything from us.”

How did Ridge turn a 6-week Tony Hawk partnership into an 8-figure sweepstakes lift? 

Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) and Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) break down how sweepstakes campaigns became eight-figure growth engines for their brands. They cover celebrity deal structures, creative production, and revenue lift across every category. 

Tony Hawk’s deal doubled Ridge’s TV response rates and pushed partner-page ads to 40% of Meta spend. HexClad gets the same proof differently, running year-over-year holdouts and entry tiers that reward bigger purchases. Both track how sweepstakes shoppers scatter into unexpected categories, forcing a rethink of acquisition strategy. 

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Motion 

https://9ops.co/motion-runneth 

Proppel 

https://www.weareproppel.com/operators 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel-mops 

Operators Portal 

https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard 

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/ 

“There’s so much that I took for granted. It’s such a different playbook.”

What happens when two operators who’ve helped build nine-figure brands start again at zero? Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Cody Plofker (advisor and former CEO, Jones Road) compare notes on two new launches: Ridge’s Gut Culture and Cody’s Winks.

They get into six hard lessons from the early days.

(1) Building with a lean team. (2) Earning credibility when nobody knows the brand. (3) Finding a message that gets clicks. (4) Testing offers before the data is conclusive. (5) Making subscription economics work. (6) Dealing with high ad costs. Cody shares what’s happening at Winks just weeks after launch; Connor explains what Ridge learned from six months of building Gut Culture.

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Motion 

https://9ops.co/motion-runneth 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel-mops 

Proppel 

https://www.weareproppel.com/operators 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Operators Portal 

https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/ 

Why do experienced operators still overcorrect on average order value? 

Varun Kundra (Co-founder, Aftersell by Rokt) joins Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Cody Plofker (Advisor & fmr. CEO, Jones Road) to break down the pricing missteps that quietly cost real revenue and the metric worth watching instead. 

The hosts compare years of pricing tests at Ridge and Jones Road. They cover three ways to bundle for more revenue per order. Varun explains why image heavy upsells beat plain offers, plus a subscription upgrade converting at 20% to 30%. Connor and Varun wrap with a teardown of Winks, the brand behind Operators Build. 

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Motion 

https://9ops.co/motion-runneth 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel-mops 

Proppel 

https://www.weareproppel.com/operators 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

Operators Portal 

https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard 

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/ 

“We just had a hundred thousand people buy in the last 60 days.” 

What does the future of retention marketing actually look like by 2027? 

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) unpack what Postscript’s AI memories mean for retention marketing’s future. They map out a 2027 playbook built on personalized experiences, even as TikTok Shop’s creator economy hits a breaking point. 

Postscript is building unified profiles instead of fragmented SMS data. That shift promises holdout testing and customer lifetime value tracking. RCS already shows early lift in live tests. Meanwhile TikTok Shop’s incentive structure is pushing affiliates toward burnout. 

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Motion 

https://9ops.co/motion-runneth 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel-mops 

Proppel 

https://www.weareproppel.com/operators 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

Operators Portal 

https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard 

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/ 

“Don’t let perfect measurement get in the way of good marketing” 

How do Ridge, HexClad and Jones Road each structure Black Friday, Cyber offers differently? 

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) share how holiday marketing campaigns pull their ecommerce brands in completely different directions. 

Shark Ninja becomes the opening case study, spending big on creator activations without measuring returns. The hosts counter with their own tactics, mixing steep weekend deal drops with full brand rebuilds between sales. The riskiest move this season turns out to be a discount that costs a brand its most loyal customers. Cody dives into Winks, a fresh sleep brand he and four other 9-figure executives are building from the ground up, and introduces Operators Build, the show capturing the entire journey from scratch.

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Motion 

https://9ops.co/motion-runneth 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel-mops 

Proppel 

https://www.weareproppel.com/operators 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Operators Portal 

https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard 

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/ 

Operators Build 

https://9ops.co/ops-build-ytplaylist

Winks 

https://getwinks.com/ 

“It is so incredibly easy to not drive incremental results the week of Black Friday.”

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (Advisor & fmr. CEO, Jones Road), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) share how they are approaching Q4 planning.

Before scaling Black Friday, Cyber Monday spend, both HexClad and Ridge test incrementality with real control groups. That same discipline shapes their AMER vs CAC debate, since neither wants to scale spend that isn’t truly incremental. Also, AG1’s new gummy launch steps up, and so does its cannibalization risk. 

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Motion 

https://9ops.co/motion-runneth 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel-mops 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Proppel 

https://9ops.co/weareproppel 

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/ 

What changes when a single marketer creates as much value as an entire department? 

Reza Khadjavi (Founder & CEO, Motion) joins Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Cody Plofker (Advisor & fmr. CEO, Jones Road) to explain why he built Runneth, an AI agent meant to eventually replace Motion’s own product. He walks through the context engineering behind that shift and what it means for marketers. 

Motion scrapped its own revenue targets right after a record quarter, betting the whole company on AI agents. Reza explains how markdown files and organized repositories turn those agents into something closer to a new hire. His advice: skip the Mac Mini, move to the cloud, and put close to 10% of payroll behind AI. 

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Motion 

https://9ops.co/motion-runneth 

Proppel 

https://9ops.co/weareproppel 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel 

Operators Portal 

https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/

How much can filtering a collection page actually lift average order value? What about cart, checkout, and post-purchase?

Varun Kundra (Co-founder, Aftersell) joins Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) to unpack how ecommerce brands raise AOV. Four levers make that possible: collection page tests, product bundles, post purchase upsells, and cross brand advertising. 

HexClad’s new collection page lifted revenue per user by 7% and AOV by $10. Single silhouette bundles need no extra education, but new pairings like Japanese cookware still do. Varun ties it back to Aftersell and Rokt Thanks. Together they’ve generated over $1B in upsell revenue at a take rate under 1%. 

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Motion 

https://9ops.co/motion-runneth 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel-mops 

Proppel 

https://www.weareproppel.com/operators 

More from Operators 

Operators Portal 

https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard 

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/ 

“I just don’t hear a lot of good reasons why this can’t be automated”. 

Can an algorithm allocate ad budget better than a human media buyer? 

Olivia Kory (CMO & Strategy Officer, Haus) joins Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) to unpack incrementality testing, marketing mix modeling, and early agentic media buying. Geo lift holdouts and attribution debiasing point toward a future of automated budget decisions. 

Olivia shows how A/B testing replaced ROAS benchmarks at Haus. Control groups and treatment cells now anchor every incrementality read. Connor Rolain also shares how one conversion campaign test reshaped HexClad’s Meta strategy. The team ties it all back to multi-touch attribution for faster decisions. 

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Motion 

https://9ops.co/motion-runneth 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel 

Proppel 

https://9ops.co/weareproppel 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

More from Operators

Operators Portal 

https://portal.9operators.com/dashboard 

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/