Hot takes for a hot summer
01
Just in time for the summer heat, check out these 25 ‘hot takes’ on ecommerce from Taylor Holiday, CEO of agency Common Thread Collective and Cody Plofker, CMO of Jones Road Beauty.
Here are some of my favorites:
You should make 10x more ads.
Most ad variant testing is a waste of time.
YouTube is the most underutilized channel for DTC brands.
Stop offering welcome discounts without testing the incrementality.
Your CX teams should be outsourced (and will be replaced by AI soon).
Your company would make more money if your highest paid marketing team member was a video editor.
Our kids will laugh at the idea of buying things from a brand’s website.
Almost every brand running their own warehouse has massive inefficiencies and extra costs in fulfillment.
Go Deeper: 1) Taylor’s full list of 25 and 2) Cody’s full list of 25.
Beware of Amazon DSP ads
02
According to Amazon’s documentation, “Amazon DSP is a demand-side platform that allows you to programmatically buy ads to reach new and existing audiences anywhere they spend their time.”
Sounds pretty good, but Bill D’Alessandro of Natural Dog Co. shared a cautionary tale of his second big failure with DSP ads:
Go Deeper: Read Bill’s full post on X.
You probably don’t need as many warehouses as you think
03
More isn’t always better when it comes to warehouse locations. Chad Carlton sums it up nicely:
In the comments of this post, someone points out that this assumes all your packages are 1lb and speed doesn’t matter. True, but it’s probably worth you running your own numbers on warehouse locations.
Thanks for reading, and see you in 2 weeks.
-Paul
