Marketing Operators

“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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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 

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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 

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Proppel 

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Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel 

Operators Portal 

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Operators Newsletter 

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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 

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“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 

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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 

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“It was the most fun role I think I’ll ever do”. 

How do visionary founders build teams to protect their time for big ideas? 

Katie Cirulli (Chief Emerging Brands Officer & fmr. President, Grüns) joins Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) and Cody Plofker (Advisor & fmr. CEO, Jones Road). She joined Grüns as employee four and rose from Chief of Staff to her current role. Before that, she spent years at McKinsey and Meta. She explains why founders need integrators, and how AI powers Grüns. 

She walks through the chief of staff role she built with Chad Janis. The CPM arbitrage test was an early swing that never scaled, unlike the LTO strategy that followed. Grüns now runs five emerging brands through dedicated marketing pods. Paid media, creative, and CRO, all guided by the same paper wall mindset. 

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Motion 

https://9ops.co/motion-runneth 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

NeonPixel 

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Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel-mops 

Proppel 

https://9ops.co/weareproppel 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/ 

“Borrow cultural equity executed with real partnership compounds faster than anything built in-house.” 

What happens when a legacy brand like Lexus stops buying reach and starts buying culture? 

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) trace how Lexus is using Colin and Samir to reach an audience Lexus already has.

One idea drives the partnership: reach your audience better. Cody argues AI generated UGC misses the point entirely. Connor Rolain reveals the four and a half percent lift from a recent cart upsell holdout test. Retention marketing gets the final word on why so few brands measure it properly. 

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Aftersell 

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Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel-mops 

Proppel 

https://9ops.co/weareproppel 

Operators Newsletter 

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“The new infomercial is TikTok shop.” 

Why did Ridge see 88% of its GMV Max lift happen outside of TikTok? 

Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad), and Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) sit down to unpack how their brands are building profitable TikTok shop affiliate programs. The conversation opens with Cody’s decision to step down as CEO of Jones Road. 

Connor MacDonald breaks down how Ridge structures affiliate incentives, generating 7,000 videos in a single month. He also shares a geolift study showing 88% of GMV Max lift landed off TikTok on Amazon and Ridge.com. The trio close by reverse engineering a TikTok shop brand, from price point to visual appeal. 

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 

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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-mops 

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/ 

“I don’t think our ads are any better.” 

Why are Meta click-through rates rising while conversion rates keep falling? 

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) unpack why Meta ad performance has quietly shifted across ecommerce accounts. They break down Ridge’s new chains launch and the merchandising lessons behind it, and debate whether TikTok Shop’s affiliate program matters more than its storefront. 

Meta CPMs and click-through rates keep climbing across DTC accounts, even as conversion rates fall. The hosts respond with the exclusion settings and bid multipliers they are testing to fight back. From there, the conversation turns to Ridge’s chains launch and the pricing lessons behind it. 

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 

https://9ops.co/motionapp-creativebenchmarks2026 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel-mops 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

NeonPixel 

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Operators Newsletter 

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“She has built an amazing system and an amazing flywheel.”

What separates a performance creative director worth hiring from one who just manages a content calendar? 

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge) and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) dig into what it takes to hire a director of performance creative today, why the creative strategist role has split into two distinct skill sets, and how AI agents are emerging as a serious ecommerce conversion rate optimization play. 

They debate whether a great creative strategist should be an operator or an ideator. The answer is neither alone. Both hosts unpack why less prescriptive creator briefs are now producing better-performing ads than heavily scripted ones. The hosts close with a quick over-under on the retention tools most brands either overinvest in or ignore entirely. 

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 

https://9ops.co/motionapp-creativebenchmarks2026 

NeonPixel 

https://9ops.co/neonpixel 

Richpanel 

https://9ops.co/richpanel 

Aftersell 

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Haus 

https://www.haus.io/operators 

Operators Newsletter 

https://9operators.com/ 

“All bad tests turn good and all good tests turn bad.” 

How do you run ecommerce A/B testing faster without sacrificing statistical confidence?

Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty), and Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad) debate when to burn the current site down and rebuild versus grinding out incremental wins one test at a time. The answer depends on what you can afford to get wrong. 

They cover Ridge’s live theme rebuild, HexClad’s 27% RPU lift from a single collection-page interstitial in Japan, and the case for running four variants instead of two. Cody also breaks down the qualitative research stack that helped Jones Road Beauty string together six consecutive winning tests. 

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Motion Creative Benchmarks 2026 

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Haus

https://www.haus.io/operators 

Richpanel

https://9ops.co/richpanel 

Aftersell

https://9ops.co/aftersell-mops 

Operators Newsletter

https://9operators.com/