Chris Rodgers

When I was COO at an 8-figure DTC agency, I eliminated 80% of our agency's QA process. Here's why: Most agencies have a dedicated QA person catching mistakes at the end of projects. You think this person is increasing quality, and lowering your costs... but the truth is the opposite. It's costing you money and lowering quality. Here's what actually happens: 1. QA breeds complacency When someone else checks everything, people get sloppy. They know mistakes will be caught. 2. QA wastes your best talent. Usually the QA person is the highest skilled person. Your top performers should be driving value, not finding errors. 3. QA slows everything down Extra steps = longer turnaround times. 4. QA prevents skill development People don't learn from mistakes they never see. And rarely do QA’s look to fix the root cause of the mistake… they just want to fix whatever issue they found. Here's how to fix it: 1. Make everyone responsible for their own work Each team member should ensure 100% accuracy before handing off tasks. 2. Focus on process improvement When errors occur, fix the root cause. Gradually reduce formal QA as processes improve. This creates ownership and pride in output. 3. Shift mindset from "QA will catch it" to "get it right the first time" This removes safety net mentality. It will increase overall quality and attention to detail. 4. Implement cross-functional QA Have the next person in the workflow do basic QA Designers check copy, implementers verify design, etc. You can also have the team lead QA a small percentage of projects as you transition. 4. Reallocate your top talent Your best people are often doing QA. Move them to high-value client work instead. Warning: Don't eliminate QA overnight. It takes TIME to transition to this model. But the Result: Higher quality work, faster turnaround, and more efficient use of top talent. What's your take? Is QA helping or hurting your business?

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"If your DTC business doesn’t work with Facebook ads, it likely won’t work at all." This was the start of a tweet from Sam Ross that floored me, why? Because I 10,000% agree with it. To borrow Sam's words, Facebook is the most proven TC growth channel: ➝ "I see lots of DTC owners and operators say you need to test a ton of different channels (Pinterest, Snapchat, referrals, etc) to see what works. I couldn’t disagree more." His reasoning: Facebook is a litmus test for your brand, and "diversification" is a cover-up for "distraction." Here's my take: Facebook is the proven place you can pour in as much creative as you want without burning your budget away on testing — we use cost controls and push as much "diversification" as we can through creatives. Dollar for dollar, it's the best investment of your resources because you're not going to waste them (with the right setup). Thoughts on diversification vs. locking in on Facebook/Meta?

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How to calculate the *real* ROI from your Q4 sales. (Meaning, whether you're "winning" or not.) It's always a good practice to analyze how customers behave after BFCM in previous years. What's the best way to do that on Shopify? The Customer Cohort Analysis. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁? It's a chart that shows how your customers have behaved over time since their first order. You can see: 💰 How much they spent on previous holiday seasons and in the following months 📈 Customer retention rate over time 👨‍👨‍👦 Number of customers over time 💲 Net and gross sales 💴 AOV 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗹𝗽 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀? Well, with the above-mentioned information, you can: 🔮 Predict how your customers will behave in this BFCM if you offer similar deals 🎯 You can filter the data by channel and product name, among other options 📈 Brainstorm ideas to improve last year's performance Understanding these metrics will help you make better decisions. Such as: ⏳ Working on decreasing the time between purchases 💲 Spending a certain % of your estimated revenue ➕ And many more. Btw, there are many insights Shopify doesn't give brands that could unlock the next level of growth for many of them. If you'd like to know how to get this info, comment "tool" and I'll send you the name + a mini-guide I've put together on how to use it. TL;DR: 👉 Look at Shopify's Customer Cohort Analysis report 👉 Check how your customers have behaved since the last BFCM 👉 Identify winning strategies & goals for this BFCM -- Nowadays, having a "paid ads agency" is not enough. Brands need a growth partner that helps them with things like the ones mentioned in this post and more. At BSR Digital, we have only 2 spots left for brands that want to crush it in 2025. Will that be you? Let's talk.

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I’m an agency operations expert who’s scaled an agency to 8-figures. 95% of DTC agencies have 50-100% hidden profit if they fix one thing… their Revision Rates. This is the % of tasks a client sends back to you during an approval process. I’ve seen agencies with revision rates as high as 50% when they started tracking it… and 20-30% is common. This means your team is redoing up to half of their work… eating at their capacity… and frustrating clients. Why do Revisions happen? 1. Unclear Client Expectations: This is the biggest offender. Misalignment during onboarding or brief creation leads to back-and-forth corrections. Your team doesn’t really understand what your clients want… both from a brand (business) perspective… and a client (the person who is approving) perspective. 2. Insufficient Internal QA: This is controversial… I believe the best QA is no QA. What I mean by that is… each team member should be responsible for checking their own work… so they don’t pass any bad work to the next person. You can still have a Team Lead that QA’s a small % of work, especially for new hires… but you should not need a dedicated position that QA’s 100% of a team's work. This just means your delivery process sucks. 3. Reactive Communication: A lack of structured client feedback processes results in ambiguous or late-stage changes. Clients should know when they are expected to approve your projects… and how to talk with your team to get their desired results. --How to Fix Your Revision Rates-- 1. Track Them: Start measuring what percentage of tasks require revisions. If you delivered 100 projects last week, what % of them required 1 or more revision? 2. Root Cause Analysis: Don't just fix revisions... Dig into the "why" behind revisions. Is it onboarding? Miscommunication? QA issues? And then solve them at the root cause. 3. Improve Onboarding: Get 100% of the information you need from clients, and other team members, upfront. An hour invested in a thorough onboarding saves days of rework later. 4. Client Training: Teach your clients how to give clear, actionable feedback. 5. Update Your QA Processes: Implement “No QA, QA” Do this one last. Make sure your team understands what each client expects… that they get 100% of the info they need to complete a task up front… that they are properly trained on Playbooks for their area… and have checklists to deliver on it. --- PS: If you want personal help with decreasing your revision rates... so you can add $25k in monthly profit to your agency... DM me "Revision" I am closing enrollment for Agency Operators: Level Up tonight... so join today or lose your spot until some time next year.

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E-commerce partnerships are broken. As an agency owner, I am bombarded with partnership requests from all sorts of technology vendors: some are established players that want to add another logo to their website, others are newcomers looking for leads and credibility. The angle is always the same: sign here and get rev share on any leads you bring us. It takes five minutes to sign, so why wouldn’t you? The unfortunate result is that the vendors end up with a million agency partners, most of which have no idea how their product works; the agencies end up with a million technology partners, most of which they don’t even know when to recommend. The truth is, for most agencies, 20% revenue share on a few thousand bucks is immaterial. What agencies really want is (1) an excellent product that they can get behind and (2) for their clients to feel like they’re getting the VIP treatment. (Admittedly, deal flow would also be nice, but there’s only so many brands and a million agencies competing for them, so that’s not a reasonable expectation.) As a result, we’ve lately been approaching partnerships a bit differently at Nebulab: we want to see a shared client go live before, not after, signing a partnership agreement. This means that your product needs to solve an actual problem, and it needs to be so good that we go out of our way to use it. You’d be surprised how many vendors fail to meet this bar.* A natural consequence is that we also have fewer partners than you’d expect—a trend that’s becoming increasingly common, from my conversations with other agencies. However, the quality and depth of those partnerships that we do still have are more than worth it. (*) If I see another “conversational commerce” platform, I swear to god I’m going to lose it. #ecommerce #agency #partnerships #saas #dtc

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Concerned your DTC email list is too small to generate any meaningful revenue? We recently made our client $5,539.60 from 48 subscribers on their short list. This proves you don’t need a massive list to succeed. Excellent deliverability is key. Don’t get me wrong, a larger list is ideal. You can acquire thousands of subscribers each week with a healthy amount of traffic to your website + optimized popups. However, you don’t need a large audience base before you actually start marketing them. In fact, that’s a terrible idea. By the time you think your list is “ready” (whatever that means) – you’ll be sending emails to an unresponsive list. Your audience will be semi-cold at best, or dead at worst. Instead, start immediately, learn the ropes, keep your list engaged & when your list isn’t even that large, it’ll start bringing in cash. Once you start seeing a respectable revenue per recipient, you’ll be even more motivated to acquire more subscribers. Did you find this content helpful? Repost it so your audience can appreciate it!

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"What should I test first?" is one of the most common questions I get from DTC brand owners. Here's how I always attack the highest impact tests first:

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SEO Growth Loops: How Leafly and Weedmaps scaled their traffic on autopilot and how to apply them to your Dispensary. UGC signals have become more important than ever with forums like Reddit and Quora seeing massive traffic gains in the last algorithm updates. #Cannabis #CannabisMarketing #SEO #GrowthLoops

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Here's a playbook we're running to generate leads for a hemp based company that focuses on B2B: 1) Google ads for high intent keywords to capture existing demand. This is usually the quickest path to leads. We use Google Search Console + AlsoAsked to build a bank of keywords. We use a clean domain to build a landing page that's devoid of much specific language, avoids using trigger keywords etc. We setup conversion tracking using GTM & GA4; and then setup a webhook in their CRM to ensure tracked correctly at the contact level Once we start to see which keywords are bringing the clicks/conversions; we'll invest more time into building out custom landing pages for those keywords to more closely align with search intent. We also setup a few retargeting campaigns 2) We used Google and a 3rd party data provider (that uses SIC codes) to identify & build a targeted account list For a more niche business (with nuance b/t states & their regulatory components) doing some of this manually is really only way Once we have the target companies; we use Apollo.io to enrich the data. From there we will be doing a few things: - Outbound email campaigns to share helpful content; we'll run this through Instantly.ai - Adding accounts into LinkedIn to build lookalike audiences & run a few campaigns to distribute content & share some brand awareness ads + sprinkle in a few silly meme ads for attention. This will be a small budget of $1-2K per month given the small TAM - Setting up 2 direct mail campaign tests. 1 will be a letter style mailing & the other will be a postcard. Both will have diff offers; with some tangible / no-cost value prop to the target account - Working w/ internal sales team to tee up cold calls using enriched data; CTA will be checking on the mailer & offering free value adds 3) Setup new website visitor ID from Instantly.ai on their main URL; and then will be building a funnel of ID > outbound using their tool to ideally send more targeted / personalized outreach based on intent. Looking for some support on your B2B playbook; let us know! We bring the whole team to the project

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Quick story... Meet John and Michael. They are founders of DTC brands. Both use agencies to manage email & SMS channels. Both with the same goal: to skyrocket channel growth. John’s agency focuses all on tactics. They’ve mastered every email trick, tactic, and technique you can think of. Yet, they lack a cohesive strategy. It's like having a toolkit without the manual. On the other hand, Michael’s agency takes a different approach. They avoid short-term tactics. Focus entirely on strategy. They understand that the real success in growing a brand's email and SMS channels lies in the long view to build sustainable growth. John and Michael decide to have a little competition. See who's email/SMS performs better. John's agency's tactics against Michael's agency's strategy. So, who wins in this showdown between tactic-heavy and strategy-driven approaches? Michael's agency wins. Hands down. Michael's strategic approach not only won, it dominated. Why? Because strategy trumps tactics. Tactics can be learned and added anytime. But without a strategic backbone, they fall short. Michael's agency may not use immediate tricks. Their strategic depth integrates new tactics effectively. But John's agency? They use the best tricks and tactics. Yet without strategy, they are lost. Like sheep without a shepherd. Like a boat without a rudder. John’s emails struggle with weak engagement. And poor conversion rates Ultimately, disappointing revenue figures. A clear sign of tactical overload without strategic direction. The secret they’re missing? I can sum it up with 4 words … If you're looking to not just compete but dominate in your market, remember these four words that could change everything: HYPER PERSONALIZED CUSTOMER JOURNEYS This strategy enhances engagement and conversions. It drives substantial revenue growth. And delivers messages that resonate deeply. If you’re aiming to elevate your brand's email and SMS revenue... Don’t just use an agency that collects tactics. Invest in an agency who's strategy scales your brands growth sustainably.

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70% of DTC brands will never reach profitability. Nothing will save you... except this: Lie about revenue, become a DTC influencer, scale your newsletter & pod. Build a founder community. Then? Shill SaaS to those founders. Who cares if it works or not—you’re cashing in. Forget other SaaS—build your own. Shill with no remorse. 💸 Profitability, unlocked.

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3 common mistakes holding your eCom brand back from making $$$ with email: 1. Flows too short: You're sending only 1 email per automation. You should be sending (at least) 3. Adding more emails to your flows will boost revenue. 2. Not Resending Winners If you had a killer ad, would you stop running it after one day? So, why do that with email? If you have a winning email, resend it. I recommend doing a few re-sends every month. 3. Analysis paralysis: Overthinking: - A/B tests - Segmentation - Fancy graphic design This leads to overwhelm and a lot of brands end up doing nothing. Instead, focus on: - Building your email list - Sending emails consistently - Learning from the data & iterating What other common sins do you think eCom brands make?

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"We turned $5k into $1M in ad revenue in just 30 days!" ...said no legitimate agency, ever. We've fielded several conversations lately from DTC startups with massive growth expectations and disproportionately low budgets. We've had to have "the talk" about why that's a recipe for disappointment. First, paid media shouldn't be the initial focus for new brands. It's a powerful growth lever, but it's most effective when you've already laid the appropriate foundation with email, automations, etc., and have some organic momentum. Second, building brand awareness and driving immediate ROAS are not the same thing. These are different goals with distinct campaign strategies, creative executions... and budgets. In many categories like apparel, you can't skip the first step and race to the bottom. Third, you need to budget for sustained ad spend to get the flywheel spinning. You can't realistically expect this month's sales to fuel next month's campaigns. It takes time and budget to build up data for both humans and machines to optimize. If you're trying to bootstrap with just a few thousand dollars a month, PPC might not be the best use of your resources. Instead, explore digital PR, content marketing, social media, or affiliate programs. Here's the hard truth: building a brand takes time and sustained investment. There's no magic bullet that will guarantee you'll go viral or 10x your revenue in 30 days. Anyone promising that is selling snake oil. If you're a newer brand considering initial paid media investment and need a realistic conversation about what it really takes, reach out to me and I can help. #MediaStrategy #DigitalMarketing #DigitalAdvertising #MediaBuying

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Not understanding your unit economics will kill you. Your DTC brand will die if you don't understand your financials. This will forever be the most basic foundation of business. You may have the best product on the market. You may have even won some awards. It all means nothing if you're not profitable.

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Ever heard, "Our PPC is fine"🚀 We don't need an audit'? I hear it all the time. But the truth is, most PPC accounts are far from optimal. Here's what I've found in my audits: •  78% have incorrect conversion tracking •  66% aren't using Ad customiser attributes •  61% are wasting budget on poor-performing keywords •  43% aren't using ad extensions effectively PPC is a dynamic field. What worked yesterday might be costing you money today. Regular audits aren't a luxury; they're a necessity. If you suspect your PPC might be underperforming, let's take a look. Send me a DM to schedule a free audit. #GoogleAds #PPC #SearchAds

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Want to turn one-time buyers into lifelong customers? Most DTC brands overlook the power of post-purchase emails to drive real results. Stop missing out on an easy way to … - Boost loyalty - Get reviews - Repeat purchases Here’s how we improve post-purchase email performance at E/X: 1. Personalized Product Care Guides - Include care tips and product maintenance advice - Add video tutorials for better product use - Highlight common mistakes to avoid 2. Gamified Loyalty Programs - Implement point systems and tiered rewards - Offer challenges that unlock discounts - Use progress bars to show reward milestones 3. User-Generated Content Campaigns - Encourage sharing with incentives - Feature customer photos or videos - Create themed social media campaigns 4. Personalized Product Recommendations - Complementary products based on purchase history - Bundle deals or special discounts - Create "complete the look" themed emails 5. Interactive Feedback Loops - Use one-click surveys or emoji ratings - Collect feedback with fun quizzes - Show appreciation for customer insights 6. Milestone Celebration Emails - Send offers on purchase anniversaries - Reward customers for reaching spending goals - Highlight their journey with your brand 7. Educational Content Series - Provide expert tips related to your products - Link to blogs, webinars, or podcasts - Position your brand as a thought leader 8. Community-Building Initiatives - Invite customers to exclusive groups - Share customer stories and creative product uses - Organize virtual events or meetups Stop sending generic “Thank you” emails that go unnoticed. Start using post-purchase to drive loyalty, spark reviews, and encourage repeat purchases.

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Want to double your DTC business in 6 months? Here’s the playbook: 1. Increase product profitability: Raise prices or reduce discounts to increase gross margins. Focus on bundles and cross-sells to lower marketing cost percentage per order. 2. Get more revenue from already acquired customers (active or lapsed) each month. Build a loyalty or subscription program to keep customers coming back. Use email and SMS marketing to stay top of mind. 3. Acquire new customers efficiently Focus on low-cost acquisitions through paid ads or organic. Only spend on acquisition if it stays profitable—never chase volume over margins. Forget the distractions. This is how you scale fast. Am I missing anything?

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📣 Hey eComm/DTC businesses 📣 The best performance agencies are KILLING with Pmax If your agency is pointing you in another direction, telling you Pmax doesn't work... 🏃‍♂️ R U N 🏃‍♂️ A quick Google will amplify the loudest voices (which are often the most ignorant) Ask around for businesses, marketers, consultants who ARE drawing great results They are out there, I promise (we're one of them) #ecommerce #dtc #performancemax #pmax

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