import type { IndustryContent } from "@/content/types"; export const ecommerceIndustry: IndustryContent = { slug: "ecommerce-marketing", model: "ecommerce", name: "E-commerce", seo: { title: "E-commerce Marketing Agency for MER and Margin", description: "E-commerce growth marketing measured at the margin line. Shopping, Meta, CRO, and retention, run against MER, new-customer CAC, and contribution margin.", }, hero: { eyebrow: "Margin-led growth for e-commerce", title: "E-commerce growth marketing built on contribution margin.", intro: "Orders happen fast and at volume, and every product carries its own economics. We connect acquisition, conversion, and retention, so growth still makes money after COGS, shipping, returns, and ad spend.", focus: ["Profitable acquisition", "Blended MER", "New-customer CAC", "Average order value", "Repeat purchase"], imageAlt: "At a studio table, one person packs an order with indigo tissue paper while another works on a laptop showing a product grid.", }, challenges: { heading: "Where e-commerce growth stops making money.", intro: "Revenue can rise while the business gets weaker. These are the patterns that hide it, and what we do about each one.", items: [ { title: "ROAS that never reaches the bank", symptom: "Every platform reports a strong return, but blended revenue and margin barely move.", response: "We manage to MER and contribution margin, and use platform ROAS only to allocate budget inside each channel.", }, { title: "Budget pulled toward low-margin products", symptom: "Shopping and Performance Max push spend toward products that sell well but earn little after COGS and shipping.", response: "We add margin tiers to the feed as custom labels and split campaigns, so bids reflect what each product earns.", }, { title: "Paying again for existing customers", symptom: "Retargeting and brand campaigns take credit for returning buyers who would have ordered anyway.", response: "We separate new and returning customers in reporting and bidding, and test brand and retargeting spend with holdouts.", }, { title: "Creative that wears out", symptom: "Meta results slide as audiences see the same ads, and new concepts arrive too slowly to replace them.", response: "We keep a steady testing rhythm across angles, formats, and offers, with a written hypothesis for every test.", }, { title: "Traffic that stalls before checkout", symptom: "Sessions grow, but shoppers drop off on product pages, in the cart, or when they see shipping costs.", response: "We locate the drop-off by device and page type, then test product page, cart, and offer changes against revenue per session.", }, { title: "Customers who order once", symptom: "Acquisition keeps getting more expensive while too few first-time buyers come back.", response: "We build post-purchase and replenishment flows in Klaviyo and track repeat purchase by acquisition cohort.", }, ], }, system: { heading: "Every order has to clear the margin stack.", intro: "Revenue is where the math starts, not where it ends. Each layer below takes its share before an order earns anything, and each one is something we can work on.", steps: [ { title: "Revenue", description: "What customers pay, split by new and returning buyers, product line, and channel.", }, { title: "Product costs (COGS)", description: "The landed cost of what you sell. It varies by SKU, which is why margin tiers shape how Shopping campaigns are built.", }, { title: "Fulfillment and payment fees", description: "Picking, packing, shipping, and payment processing. Order size and free-shipping thresholds decide how much of each order these costs absorb.", }, { title: "Returns and discounts", description: "Refunds, exchanges, and promo codes. High-return products and discount-led acquisition can erase margin that looked healthy at checkout.", }, { title: "Marketing spend", description: "Paid media and creative production, read across the business as MER and against first-time buyers as new-customer CAC.", }, { title: "Contribution margin", description: "What's left to cover overheads and fund the next round of growth. This is the line growth is measured against.", }, ], note: "Growth only counts if the last step holds, so budget, feed, offer, and retention decisions are checked against contribution margin, not top-line revenue.", }, capabilities: [ { id: "acquisition-channels", label: "Acquisition channels", heading: "Acquisition run against new-customer CAC.", intro: "We run Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Meta against new-customer CAC and blended MER. Each channel gets a job, a target, and a budget it has to earn.", points: [ { title: "New vs returning customer splits", description: "Campaigns and reports separate first-time buyers from returning ones, so acquisition isn't credited with demand you already had.", }, { title: "Search and social planned together", description: "Meta creates demand and search captures it, with budgets set against blended results rather than each platform's own report.", }, { title: "Brand search checked for incrementality", description: "Brand campaigns are tested against the orders your organic listings would capture anyway.", }, { title: "Budget by marginal return", description: "Spend moves toward the next profitable order, with guardrails on MER and new-customer CAC.", }, ], links: [ { label: "Paid media management", href: "/paid-media" }, { label: "Paid social", href: "/paid-social" }, ], }, { id: "shopping-feeds", label: "Shopping + feeds", heading: "Shopping and Performance Max structured by margin.", intro: "The product feed decides what Google can show and which searches a product matches. We manage it as part of the growth plan, not as a technical file.", points: [ { title: "Custom labels by margin", description: "Margin tier, price band, and product role added as custom labels, so campaigns can bid on what each product earns.", }, { title: "Titles and attributes", description: "Product titles, categories, and attributes written to match how shoppers actually search.", }, { title: "Performance Max with guardrails", description: "Asset groups split by product role, brand exclusions where appropriate, and regular checks that spend reaches new customers.", }, { title: "Feed health", description: "Disapprovals, missing attributes, and price or stock mismatches caught and fixed before they cost impressions.", }, ], links: [{ label: "Paid media management", href: "/paid-media" }], }, { id: "creative-testing", label: "Creative testing", heading: "Creative testing that keeps paid social from fading.", intro: "On Meta, results usually depend more on creative than on targeting. We keep a steady testing rhythm, so new ads are ready before tired ones stop working.", points: [ { title: "Angles before variations", description: "Concepts are tested by angle, such as the problem, the product in use, a comparison, or the offer, before format and copy variations.", }, { title: "One variable per test", description: "Each test changes one thing, with a written hypothesis and a success metric agreed before launch.", }, { title: "Fatigue watched by ad", description: "Frequency, click-through rate, and cost trends tracked for each ad, so refreshes happen before results slide.", }, { title: "Winners judged on new customers", description: "Creative is scored on new-customer CAC and first-order margin, not on clicks or platform ROAS alone.", }, ], links: [ { label: "Paid social", href: "/paid-social" }, { label: "Landing pages", href: "/landing-pages" }, ], }, { id: "cro", label: "CRO", heading: "Conversion work where shoppers decide.", intro: "Conversion gains compound across every channel you pay for. We find where shoppers drop off and test changes against revenue per session, not clicks.", points: [ { title: "Drop-off research", description: "Funnel data, heatmaps, and session recordings, read by device and page type, show where shoppers leave.", }, { title: "Product page tests", description: "Imagery, product detail, review placement, and delivery information tested on the pages where buying decisions happen.", }, { title: "Order value tests", description: "Bundles, free-shipping thresholds, and cross-sells tested for AOV and margin, not conversion rate alone.", }, { title: "Cart and checkout friction", description: "Shipping costs, payment options, and form steps tested at the points where orders are abandoned.", }, ], links: [ { label: "Conversion rate optimization", href: "/cro" }, { label: "Landing pages", href: "/landing-pages" }, ], }, { id: "retention", label: "Retention", heading: "Retention that earns the second order.", intro: "Repeat purchases raise lifetime value, and lifetime value sets what you can afford to pay for a new customer. We build the Klaviyo programs that turn first orders into repeat customers.", points: [ { title: "Post-purchase flows", description: "Confirmation, delivery, and how-to-use emails that set up the next order instead of reaching for a discount.", }, { title: "Replenishment timing", description: "Reminders timed to how long a product actually lasts, based on observed reorder intervals.", }, { title: "Segments by value", description: "Customers grouped by order count, product, and margin, so offers go where they change behavior.", }, { title: "Win-back without discount habits", description: "Lapsed-customer flows that test incentives carefully, so buyers don't learn to wait for a code.", }, ], links: [{ label: "Lifecycle + retention", href: "/lifecycle-retention" }], }, { id: "measurement", label: "Measurement", heading: "Measurement anchored in store data.", intro: "Each ad platform claims its share of the same order. We connect Shopify, GA4, and ad platform data, so budget decisions rest on blended revenue and margin.", points: [ { title: "Clean purchase tracking", description: "Purchase events, order values, and deduplication checked across GA4, Google Ads, and Meta, with server-side tracking where the browser falls short.", }, { title: "Blended performance reporting", description: "MER, new-customer CAC, and contribution margin reported alongside platform numbers, with store data as the source of truth.", }, { title: "Cohort analysis", description: "Customers grouped by first-order month and acquisition channel, to show which sources bring buyers who come back.", }, { title: "Holdout tests", description: "Geographic or audience holdouts that check whether retargeting, brand, and prospecting spend create orders that wouldn't happen anyway.", }, ], links: [{ label: "Analytics + attribution", href: "/analytics-attribution" }], }, ], metrics: { heading: "The metrics that decide whether growth is profitable.", intro: "Platform dashboards report what they can attribute. These metrics read the store, the margin, and the customer, and we agree on each definition with finance before any target is set.", items: [ { code: "MER", name: "Marketing efficiency ratio", definition: "Total store revenue divided by total marketing spend across every channel.", }, { code: "nCAC", name: "New-customer CAC", definition: "Marketing spend divided by the number of first-time customers acquired in the same period.", }, { code: "ROAS", name: "Return on ad spend", definition: "Revenue a platform attributes to its ads, divided by the spend on those ads.", }, { code: "AOV", name: "Average order value", definition: "Total revenue divided by the number of orders in the same period.", }, { code: "CVR", name: "Conversion rate", definition: "Orders divided by sessions, read by device, traffic source, and landing page.", }, { code: "RPR", name: "Repeat purchase rate", definition: "The share of customers who place another order within a set window after their first.", }, { code: "LTV", name: "Cohort lifetime value", definition: "Cumulative gross margin per customer for a group acquired in the same month, tracked over time.", }, { code: "CM", name: "Contribution margin", definition: "Revenue left after COGS, fulfillment, payment fees, returns, discounts, and marketing spend.", }, { code: "Returns", name: "Return rate", definition: "Refunded revenue as a share of gross revenue, tracked by product and acquisition channel.", }, { code: "FOP", name: "First-order profitability", definition: "First-order margin after product, fulfillment, and return costs, minus the cost to acquire that customer.", }, ], }, process: { heading: "How an e-commerce engagement runs.", intro: "Each phase ends in a decision, and each decision is checked against contribution margin, not platform ROAS.", steps: [ { title: "Diagnose", description: "We review ad accounts, the product feed, store analytics, and order data to find where margin leaks between the first click and the repeat order.", }, { title: "Model", description: "We model contribution margin by product and channel, then set MER and new-customer CAC targets the business can afford.", }, { title: "Prioritize", description: "We rank opportunities by expected margin impact, confidence, and effort, across feeds, creative, site, and retention.", }, { title: "Build", description: "We fix purchase tracking, restructure Shopping and Performance Max by margin, and build the creative, pages, and Klaviyo flows the roadmap calls for.", }, { title: "Experiment", description: "We test creative angles, offers, product pages, and flows, and judge each test on new-customer CAC and contribution margin.", }, { title: "Scale", description: "We raise spend where MER and first-order profitability hold, and pull back where growth starts to cost margin.", }, ], }, faqs: [ { question: "Why manage to MER instead of platform ROAS?", answer: "Because each platform claims credit for the same orders, so platform ROAS figures overlap and can add up to more revenue than the store took. MER compares total revenue with total marketing spend, which no platform can inflate. We still use ROAS to allocate budget within a channel. Our [MER vs ROAS guide](/resources/mer-vs-roas-guide) explains how to use both.", }, { question: "Is it a problem if first orders lose money?", answer: "Not always. Losing money on a first order can work if repeat purchases earn it back within a window your cash flow can carry. We model first-order profitability alongside cohort LTV by product and channel, then set CAC limits from that. If repeat rates can't support the loss, we change which products and offers lead acquisition, not just how much you spend.", }, { question: "How do you structure Shopping and Performance Max?", answer: "We start with the feed. Margin tiers, price bands, and product roles go into custom labels, so campaigns can be split by what each product earns. Performance Max gets clean conversion values, brand exclusions where appropriate, and regular checks that it's reaching new customers rather than claiming returning ones. See [paid media management](/paid-media).", }, { question: "How do you know which channels bring new customers?", answer: "We separate new and returning customers in reporting and, where the platforms allow, in bidding. Cohort analysis shows which channels bring buyers who order again. For spend that's hard to judge, such as retargeting or brand search, we use holdout tests to check whether it creates orders that wouldn't have happened anyway. See [analytics and attribution](/analytics-attribution).", }, { question: "Do you handle creative for Meta ads?", answer: "Yes. We develop creative strategy, messaging, and offers, and plan the tests: which angles and formats to try, and in what order. If you have in-house designers or a brand team, we brief them directly and work to your guidelines. Every test has a written hypothesis, and winners are judged on new-customer CAC, not clicks. See [paid social](/paid-social).", }, { question: "How does retention change what we can spend on acquisition?", answer: "Directly. Repeat purchases raise lifetime value, and lifetime value sets how much you can pay to win a first order. We build Klaviyo flows for post-purchase, replenishment, and win-back, and track repeat purchase by acquisition cohort. As retention improves, CAC targets for paid channels can be revisited with evidence. See [lifecycle and retention](/lifecycle-retention).", }, ], cta: { heading: "Check the margin before you scale the spend.", body: "A Growth Audit reviews your acquisition channels, product feed, site conversion, and retention against MER and contribution margin. The aim is a clear view of where growth is leaking before more budget goes in.", }, };