🟣 Issue No. 18: Building Sustainable Growth: The PROFIT Framework for Profit-First eCommerce

Turn Shipping from Costly to Cost-Effective

If high carrier rates are cutting into your bottom line, there’s a way to turn the situation around without sacrificing quality. With seamless integration into Shopify and a dozen other major eCommerce platforms, this tool can help you reduce shipping costs by up to 90%, while also automating workflows for faster, more accurate deliveries.

Curious how it could work for you? Discover how this solution can take the stress out of fulfillment, freeing you up to focus on what really matters—growing your business.

Keep reading…

COMMERCE TIPS

Maximizing eCommerce Profitability: A Guide to the PROFIT Framework

Profitability in eCommerce isn’t just about driving more sales; it’s about squeezing the maximum profit from every customer interaction, campaign, and dollar spent. Enter the PROFIT Framework—a practical approach to ensure each part of your marketing engine works hard and smart to drive sustainable growth. Let’s explore how each piece of this framework builds toward the ultimate goal: profit.

1. P&L Impact on Marketing Efficiency: Beyond Revenue, Measure True Profitability

In eCommerce, it’s easy to get caught up in revenue and MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio), which compares total revenue to marketing spend. But here’s the thing: MER only tells part of the story. For a full view of profitability, you need to dig deeper, looking beyond revenue to understand your true contribution margin.

A true contribution margin accounts for every cost that eats into your revenue, including COGS, shipping, and even marketing expenses. Picture this: You generate $100 in sales, but by the time you cover product costs, shipping, and marketing, you’re left with far less. That’s why calculating contribution margin is crucial.

The insight? Start seeing MER as the beginning of your analysis, not the end. Profit-focused operators look at how much is left to reinvest into the business, support growth, and ultimately boost their bottom line. Understanding your P&L this way aligns every dollar of marketing to profitability, not just revenue growth.

2. Retargeting & Demand Capture: Converting Warm Leads into Loyal Customers

Retargeting is one of the most cost-effective ways to get more from your existing traffic. Think of retargeting as re-engaging high-intent visitors—those who browsed your site, added items to their cart, or signed up for emails but didn’t convert. These visitors are already familiar with your brand, so the cost to convert them is much lower than acquiring new ones.

Top-performing brands keep retargeting fresh by personalizing ads based on past interactions. For example, dynamic product ads show customers exactly what they previously viewed, making it easy for them to pick up where they left off. This approach works well, especially during peak seasons like Black Friday, when returning visitors are primed to purchase.

Cross-platform retargeting (on Google, Meta, even YouTube etc.) ensures that visitors see your brand across contexts, without feeling bombarded. Done right, retargeting turns high-intent visitors into loyal customers, amplifying every dollar you’ve already spent to attract them.

3. Optimization of Demand Generation: Fuel the Top of Your Funnel with Smart, Scalable Content

A healthy retargeting strategy depends on a steady flow of new visitors, which is where demand generation comes in. Here, the goal isn’t just to attract attention—it’s to bring in engaged, relevant audiences who are likely to become customers. Effective demand generation is about more than throwing money at ads; it’s about smart, scalable content that drives awareness and interest.

User-Generated Content (UGC), for instance, is gold for demand generation. It’s relatable, authentic, and aligns with the organic style that performs well on social media. Likewise, influencer-generated content (IGC), particularly from micro and nano influencers, brings trust and authenticity, introducing your brand to niche audiences without the high costs of larger influencer partnerships.

Building a reliable content system—where UGC, IGC, and branded content are regularly created, tested, and scaled—keeps the top of your funnel full without over-relying on a single ad type or platform. When demand generation aligns with retargeting, you create a seamless flow that fuels conversions across the customer journey.

4. Frequency & Relevance in Email/SMS Marketing: Keep Conversations Timely and Valuable

Email and SMS aren’t just add-ons; they’re vital communication channels that can make up a significant portion of your sales. The secret here is not frequency for the sake of frequency but maintaining a strategic cadence that keeps customers engaged and ready to act without overwhelming them.

High-performing brands find a balance, often landing on two to three emails per week, with a few well-timed SMS messages sprinkled in. Segmentation and personalization play huge roles here—after all, a first-time customer has different needs than a loyal VIP. SMS, with its 98% open rate, is perfect for urgent offers like limited-time discounts or early access, while email works well for more in-depth content or sales announcements.

Consistency, relevancy, and timing in email and SMS let you nurture relationships, encourage repeat purchases, and increase customer lifetime value—all without overwhelming your audience.

5. Integration of Channels & Tools: Data-Driven Marketing for a Cohesive Customer Experience

Data fuels your marketing strategy, but too often it’s kept in silos. For example, customer service data, reviews, and loyalty insights each hold pieces of the puzzle that could inform your campaigns. Integrating these insights allows for a holistic view of your customer, leading to more relevant and targeted marketing.

Consider feeding product reviews into social media ads. Customer-generated insights like these can resonate far more than traditional ad copy, building trust and driving conversions. Similarly, loyalty program data can tell you which customers are most likely to respond to certain offers, improving targeting accuracy for email and SMS campaigns.

Cross-channel insights ensure that feedback loops inform every part of your strategy, from ads to product development, providing customers with a seamless, personalized experience.

6. Testing & Continuous Improvement: Always Be Optimizing for Maximum ROI

Testing isn’t a one-time task; it’s an ongoing process that helps you refine and perfect every aspect of your marketing. For many operators, the highest ROI often comes from small, data-driven tweaks: testing ad creative, adjusting email subject lines, or experimenting with different landing page layouts.

The key to testing is staying agile. Quick iterations yield valuable insights that, when applied consistently, drive exponential improvements over time. Whether it’s creative formats (like videos vs. carousels) or timing adjustments, every successful test brings you closer to campaigns that not only perform but scale efficiently.

Remember, optimization is a continuous loop. The more you learn about what resonates with your audience, the better you can tailor your strategies. This iterative approach to testing and improvement is what keeps your campaigns fresh, relevant, and effective.

Bringing It All Together: The PROFIT Framework in Action

When each piece of the PROFIT Framework works together, it transforms your approach to growth. You’re not just aiming for more revenue—you’re building a profitable, sustainable business that maximizes every dollar spent, every customer touchpoint, and every insight you gather. By focusing on P&L, leveraging retargeting, fueling demand generation, engaging through email/SMS, integrating data, and testing continuously, you’re set to create a marketing engine that delivers results, month after month.

On the Pod 🎧

Lastest episodes:

• The Highest Impact Meta Ad Creatives Types That Are Driving Results Right Now → Lachezar Voynov
  

• How NIFT Offers Consumer Brands A New Way to Acquire Customers at SCALE → Elery Pfeffer

• Turning Your eCommerce Operations into a Profit Center → Kunle Campbell

• How to Win this Q4 → Kunle Campbell

• How to Maximize Your eCommerce Marketing Efficiency with the PROFIT Framework → Kunle Campbell

• S9 EP54: Product Innovation Deep Dive: How to Develop a Best-Selling SKU → Kunle Campbell

• S9 EP53: The New Playbook for Scaling Health & Wellness eCommerce Brands in 2024 → Kunle Campbell

• S9 E52: From $10M → $20M: How Tiege Hanley Doubled Revenue While Staying Profitable → Kelley Thornton, CEO

COMMERCE HEADLINES

Commerce headlines

🟣 Amazon imposes price caps on its Temu-rival store – Amazon’s new discount store sets strict price caps on 700 products, offering low-cost options for customers but challenging other sellers to compete on price.

🟣 Meta quietly implements automatic ad adjustments without advertiser consent – Meta’s shift towards autonomous ad management affects SMBs relying on tightly controlled ad spend and ROI.

🟣 Salesforce introduces free e-commerce storefronts on lower-tier plans – Affordable ecommerce storefronts integrated into Salesforce CRM open new doors for small to mid-sized businesses to leverage CRM tools.

🟣 Poshmark reverses its shift towards buyer fees – Responding to user feedback, Poshmark returned to its original fee model, showing the importance of fee alignment with consumer preferences for platform growth.

🟣 Walmart Pharmacy offers same-day prescription delivery – This expansion provides same-day delivery and bundling options that will attract customers, a trend other B2C operators could leverage for fulfillment enhancement.

🟣 FTC’s new rule banning fake reviews goes into effect – New guidelines impose penalties for deceptive reviews, requiring businesses to reassess user-generated content strategies.

🟣 Shein launches its first branded credit card – Shein's co-branded credit card in Latin America with Mexican fintech, Stori, highlighting how branded financial products can drive loyalty and brand affinity.

🟣 Amazon Prime membership now includes gas savings – Amazon introduces fuel discounts for Prime members, a unique perk that may inspire similar retention strategies among smaller ecommerce brands.

🟣 Etsy restricts third-party shipping apps to Shippo and ShipStation – Etsy’s shipping restrictions may impact fulfillment flexibility, indicating how other platforms could enforce similar policies affecting small businesses.