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Today …
📱 Matthew Bertulli & Pela Case’s Dir. of Marketing unveils its tech + agency stack
🎁 Connor MacDonald unloads 20+ Black Friday tips and a last-minute checklist
5️⃣ Top-five stories from this week’s trending news with executive summaries
* Source in conclusion
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Matthew Bertulli
CEO, Lomi & Pela Case
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Editor’s Note: This is the third of five technology + vendor stacks — one for each of the Operators’ brands. Once complete, we’ll compile them into a single database.
No recommendation has paid for placement.
However, sponsors of the podcasts have been marked with a 🤝
At Pela, we’re hyper-focused on making sure apps deliver tremendous value — whether they help generate incremental revenue, support marketing efforts, create new opportunities, improve workflows, or simply save us time.
Our ratings + recommendations are based on if the app or agency provides the value we’re looking for, gets used by the team regularly, and does what it is supposed to.
Andrei Petrik, Pela’s Dir. of Marketing, and I have ranked them in groups of 5 stars to 2 stars + the amount of Annual GMV (online sales) for when we recommend them.
5-Star ☆☆☆☆☆ Partners
Creative Analytics: Motion 🤝
Annual GMV: <$1M
Very useful. It provides great insights into creative performance in one interface. Everyone at Pela who works on the ad creative or with the creative uses it.
The Motion team makes an effort to release advanced features regularly, but they should also release some basic features like adding tags in bulk.
Creative: Marpipe
Annual GMV: <$1M
Started with them recently. Allows you to create beautiful and dynamic catalog ads. A bit of an advanced tool, but it has a lot of potential to help catalog ads cut through the clutter. Sadly, it’s only available for the ads serving US audiences.
Landing Page: Replo
Annual GMV: <$1M
One of the better page builders on the market. Easily integrates with Shopify. Tons of templates, design tools, and elements available to make all your landing page dreams come true. They consistently release new features.
Product Feed: DataFeedWatch
Annual GMV: <$1M
Used to connect + send product listings to various ad channels. Basic interface but has advanced features that allow for a great deal of feed customization.
We rarely have to think about it. It just works. In most cases, you can just set it and forget it — unless you need to add another feed or a channel or do some customization.
Paid Search (Agency): Brogan Digital
Annual GMV: <$1M
Very proactive and strategic. Helped us scale search significantly. Provides forecasts and tracks them against actuals. Brogan’s performance updates are packed with detailed insights, opportunities, testing ideas, and actionable next steps.
Reviews and Surveys: Okendo
Annual GMV: <$1M
One of those rare tools that is fairly priced and provides everything you need to get the job done. We started using it for customer reviews, but when they rolled out new features like surveys, we consolidated and got rid of other tools like HotJar and Knocommerce.
Bundles: Shopify Bundles (Native)
Annual GMV: <$1M
Finding a good bundle builder app has been a struggle. Because our catalog and products are set up at different price points and in different markets, almost every bundle app was useless.
Although lite on features and doesn’t allow for advanced bundling logic or highly customizable discounts, it’s easy to use and solves many of our pain points that other more complex apps couldn’t.
Discounts: Bulk Discount Code Bot
Annual GMV: <$1M
Crazy useful tool. If you generate as many codes as we do (we’re talking tens of thousands) for a variety of use cases and campaigns, then this is a must-have. Simple and easy to use to generate thousands of codes in bulk in a minute or two.
Upsells: Rebuy
Annual GMV: <$1M
Upsells and generates personalized shopping experiences. Has boosted AOV by approx 4%. Collection merchandising feature coming soon. Great support. Its team is willing to configure and help you customize widgets, especially if the app isn’t playing nicely with your store.
Our team loves the variety of logic options available.
The only downside is if you’re on Shopify markets and sell in different currencies, your post-checkout upsells will only work with default currency + store.
Checkout: Qikify
Annual GMV: <$1M
We evaluated a few checkout customization apps when we moved over to Checkout Extensibility. It was a clear winner. But only available for Shopify Plus merchants. If you have Rebuy, some of the extensions in this app will be redundant.
Subscriptions: Recharge
Annual GMV: <$1M
Simple and effective for our legacy membership program. Allows a lot of customization, but can get expensive quickly as you grow. What Klaviyo is for email, Recharge is for subscriptions.
Email: Klaviyo
Annual GMV: <$1M
Improved significantly over the last couple of years. Even though it’s rolled out more features and has more integrations, Klaviyo is still easy to use. If the SMS offering worked as well — and was priced the same or better — it might be worthwhile switching over from Postscript.
CRO: Convert.com
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
One of the more robust testing tools that is relatively reasonably priced. You don’t need a PhD to use it, but you must have some coding, CRO, and knowledge about how to interpret data. The WYSIWYG editor is easy enough to deploy basic tests. For more complex implementations, it’s best to use a dev or agency.
Direct Mail: PostPilot
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Our go-to for personalized, triggered postcard campaigns to customers and prospects via direct mail (snail mail). Now integrates directly into Klaviyo workflows.
Attribution: Northbeam 🤝
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M
Multi-touch attribution (MTA) with a rich feature set. To get the most out of the platform, you definitely need to have a rep. Beyond just showing you how to use it, the reps can provide tactical and strategic advice on media buying and media mix.
Product Gifting: BM Digital
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M
Content creator sourcing and product seeding. They also do perfromance-based paid campaigns for whitelisting. Great partner. Able to generate hundreds of creators a month.
Customer Signal: Blotout
Annual GMV: <$10M-$50M
Capture better data about your customers and send clearer signals back to ad platforms. Allowed us to reach more new customers by optimizing for custom events.
Design: Figma
Annual GMV: <$1M
Emails and ad design.
Copy: ChatGPT
Annual GMV: <$1M
Copy and campaign idea generation + SEO.
4-Star ☆☆☆☆ Partners
CRO: Microsoft Clarity
Annual GMV: <$1M
Heatmaps and session recordings. Can feel a bit clunky; decent tool for being free.
Ideation: Milanote
Annual GMV: <$1M
Creative and product ideation platform. Helps you organize your ideas and projects into visual boards.
In-App Discounts: Checked
Annual GMV: <$1M
App and browser extension that generates personalized deals + discount codes.
SMS: Postscript 🤝
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Reasonably priced. Reps are pushy to send more messages and try “acquired” apps like Fondue. Besides that, it is an exceptional tool. Just released a new pop-up builder — a bit limited and requires more work.
We’re still testing it on a couple of flows. Outperforms regular messages, though you have to stay on top of it and keep refining.
Email (Agency): CrucialPoint
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
We’re huge fans of Brian Campbell (founder) and his team. They helped us clean up + maintain a good sender reputation and rebuild our flows.
As with any email agency, it’s ideal to plan weeks ahead and provide assets days in advance for flawless execution. When we do short-notice sends, they’re able to accommodate by utilizing our internal designers to cut lead times.
3-Star ☆☆☆ Partners
Pop-Ups: Alia
Annual GMV: <$1M
Currently testing it as a replacement for Amped; performance is the same. However, it needs a better builder and design tools. If it had stronger A/B test reporting + UI, it’d get a full 5 stars.
Project Management: Monday
Annual GMV: <$1M
Glorified spreadsheet. There are better tools out there. Would consider them, but our team is tied to this tool.
Customer Service: Gorgias
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
It’s user-friendly and very easy to navigate. Some views need to be improved. Too expensive for the features.
We heard great things about Richpanel 🤝 and our team just got started with a trial. You get the same feature set and save thousands on your monthly fees.
2-Star ☆☆ Partners
Affliate: ShareASale
Annual GMV: <$1M
Management and commission payout platform. Gets the job done. UI hasn’t been updated in years. Hard to navigate. Terrible reporting tools. Constantly have to monitor as there are tons of fraudsters on there.
Questions about any of the tools or agencies?
Hit reply … we’ll do a Q&A newsletter or throw it into our next MOperators Hotline episode.
And special thanks to Andrei Petrik — Pela’s Dir. of Marketing — who quite honestly did most of the work on this!
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Connor MacDonald
CMO, Ridge
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20 (Or Something) Black Friday Tips
Early next month, I’ll be on a panel about how to create your own “last-minute, not-too-late” Black Friday checklist.
A bunch of other brands will be there — like HexClad, ILIA, True Classic, Portland Leather, our friends at Motion, and more. We only get 5 min. each with no slides.
This isn’t the first time I’ve spoken at one of these panels. My buddy Aaron Orendorff plays host. They’re really fun.
While I figure out what single holiday tactic I want to present on Nov. 4th, here’s what I shared last time …
20 (Or Something) Black Friday, Cyber Monday Tips
On Planning
☐ It’s really important to create a plan.
☐ It’s more important to be willing to change that plan.
On Paid Media
☐ Last year’s best-performing ads might also be this year’s best performers!
☐ Look at the delta between 1DC vs 30DC and how that changes by channel leading up to BFCM. The typical difference between 1–30 days is 40% — but it more than doubles in the weeks leading up to BFCM. Adjust channel targets down.
☐ Understand your MER targets throughout the month of Nov. to account for these more aggressive targets.
☐ Be weary of falling too far behind efficiency targets leading into BFCM.
☐ Also look at how much 1-30 day delta changes during and after BFCM, then adjust ROAS goals — i.e., your ROAS target probably needs to be higher than usual.
☐ Drink water and stay hydrated.
☐ Check your spend caps on your Meta account. We had a year where we spent to the cap and things just stopped. Our rep needed to do an emergency increase.
☐ Get a budget pacing sheet from your Google reps; it’s the one helpful thing they ever send you.
☐ Make sure you don’t cap Google spend on key brand and non-brand terms.
☐ Don’t bid on stupid searches like “black friday sale.” I once saw a brand spend ~$30k with essentially $0 return.
☐ Make sure to spend time with your friends and family — at least on Thanksgiving.
☐ Set up seasonal bid adjustments in Google to auto-account for the increase — even that is probably not enough if things are performing well. Be ready to increase more!
☐ For large budget increases, have clear expectations.
☐ Remember to retighten your targets during the weekend between BFCM. It’s really, really easy to overspend.
On Reporting
☐ Make sure to export hourly pacing from Shopify.
☐ Set up a form of reporting to see how you’re pacing hourly YoY for both spend and revenue.
☐ Northbeam often reports ROAS a few hours quicker than Google or Meta; we prefer that for intraday reporting.
☐ We usually meet as a team early on Black Friday (6am PST) and then every 2-3 hours after to adjust budgets.
☐ Having people overseas is helpful for this.
On Email & SMS
☐ Send more emails.
☐ Reactivate your unengaged subscribers before Black Friday with plain-text emails and offers.
☐ Send more plain-text emails.
☐ Send more SMS.
☐ Don’t send SMS on the hour.
☐ Choose some weird time, like 11:19am.
On Content
☐ Ben from True Classic on Limited Supply last year is a great episode and worth listening to prep’ing for this year.
☐ Jared from Nectar Mattress did a great job describing how to prep for large promotions on Marketing Operators.
☐ Last but not least … everyone should visit Ridge.com to take advantage of the great holiday deals!
Going Global
How We’re Planning for 2025: Our Approaches, Strategies vs. Tactics & Knowing When to Pivot
This week’s top-five trending news stories, curated by the editor of CPG Wire
1. Spindrift Stays Hot: Bloomberg
Despite an increasingly crowded seltzer market, Spindrift continues to post impressive growth and expects to surpass $350M in revenue this year.
So, who buys Spindrift? The most obvious answer is Coca-Cola, and Spindrift would be a strong complement to Topo Chico which Coca-Cola acquired in 2017.
2. Blue Stripes Grabs $20M: PR Newswire
Blue Stripes, a New York-based startup that upcycles whole cacao fruit into nutritious food and beverage products, raised $20M in funding from Zintinus, The Hershey Company, Whole Foods Market, and others.
The chocolate industry typically wastes up to 70% of the cacao, but Blue Stripes uses the shell, fruit, and beans.
3. Willow Growth Partners Backs YSE Beauty: Business of Fashion
Willow Growth Partners made an undisclosed investment in YSE Beauty, the clean (Gen-X) skincare brand founded by actress Molly Simms. Willow’s previous investments include Bubble, Coterie, Kosas, Goodles, and Lalo.
4. Best Day Brewing Secures $12.5M: Twitter
Best Day Brewing — one of the fastest-growing non-alcoholic beer brands in the US — raised $12.5M in equity funding from new and existing investors. The Bay Area-based company has raised a total of $22.5M in 2024. Quite the tear!
5. Tom Holland Launches BERO: Food & Wine
Speaking of non-alcoholic beer … actor Tom Holland launched BERO, a premium entry into the category. Holland developed BERO alongside Imaginary Ventures, WME, and beverage vet John Herman. The question is, “Will it stick?”
Oh, and about that “source” on the 9 million readers.
Sean Frank’s bombastic wit aside …
We cannot thank you enough for your feedback + continued support!
Until next time,
Aaron Orendorff (Executive Editor)
PS: Thanks to Motion for backing us as a sponsor even before day one.
