Wow. Last week, Sean Frank took over the newsletter to unleash Ridge’s +$100M partner stack.
In it, he wrote:
If you like the format, I will do a stack graveyard of every shitty partner ever.
10 replies, we’ll do it.
The responses poured in. The people have spoken. And Mr. Frank has agreed to release the graveyard.
But before the s*** list …
Today’s newsletter is the single most-detailed, most-helpful, most-culinary, most-“donkey”-free list so far!
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Connor Rolain
HexClad, Head of Growth
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Editor’s Note: This is the fifth and final tech + vendor stack we’ll release — one for each of the Operators’ brands.
Soon, we’ll compile them all into a single database via Sheets or Notion. Let us know which format would be better.
No recommendation has paid for placement. Sponsors of the podcasts, however, have been marked with a 🤝
HexClad’s 20 Best-of-the-Best Tools
Instead of starting with a list of our apps, I asked myself: “What are the most useful tools my team and I use?”
Then, I just started writing about the ones I thought of first.
Our growth team’s work ranges from building funnels to projecting revenue, producing creative to measuring campaigns.
While the technologies below have a wide range of uses, they all have one thing in common. A reason for being!
This reason for being falls under two buckets.
First, the technology allows us to do something we wouldn’t otherwise be able to — like Rivo powering Hexclad’s sweepstakes web components and entry accounting.
Second, the technology makes something essential easier to execute by orders of magnitude — like Replo, Pagedeck, and FERMÀT do with landing pages.
These are some (not all!) of my favorite ecommerce technology companies.
5-Star ☆☆☆☆☆ Partners
Point of Sale: Shopify
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M
I mean, come on, most of us wouldn’t be here without Shopify. I don’t have much bad to say about the technology that’s democratized entrepreneurship.
The front end and back end are easy to use. They integrate well with thousands of applications yet offer the ability to build custom. TL;DR — Shopify is for brands that have done $100 in revenue, $1B in revenue, and anywhere between.
Landing Pages: Replo
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M
Replo is where we build most of our pages at HexClad. It’s easy to use (especially for people who don’t know code) and super easy to duplicate a template + iterate.
I love that it integrates so well with Shopify and that Relpo pages are Shopify pages, so it carries over all the code you have on your main domain (e.g., tracking pixels).
You can do more than build entire landing pages. You can create web page components and then pump those into your core Shopify pages. Think: Building a new below-the-cart section to add to your product page.
Price Testing: Intelligems
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M
Generally, marketers in 2024 spend too much time optimizing too far away from the point of conversion too early. You could have the most optimized ad creative and destinations in the world. If your price point isn’t optimized, it’s all for naught.
Enter Intelligems.
Intelligems is the easiest way I’ve come across to price test for an ecommerce brand. They also have a killer analytics dashboard to easily understand the data you’re getting.
SMS Marketing: Postscript 🤝
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M
Postscript is great at SMS.
First off, they’re wonderful to work with. Their entire team helps customers leverage the full product effectively.
Second, the price was much better than what Attentive offered when we negotiated over a year ago. Not saying that’s the case across the board for brands of various sizes because IDK what IDK. But that’s how it played out for us — a mid-nine-figure brand at the time.
Most importantly, Postscript continues to innovate. They’re producing effective new features and are committed to the analytical rigor brands require to scale a tactic confidently.
We use their SMS Sales product as well. When A/B testing it against static abandonment lifecycle messages, revenue per user (RPU) was 5% higher. They integrate well with other SMS technologies, leading to my next recommendation …
SMS Marketing: Para
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Para uses AI to turn sound bites into custom audio messages delivered through texts. BAD. ASS.
We were waiting for the right moment to start with a bang. Our first test was an audio message from Gordon Ramsay — a reminder to continue gaining entries into our sweepstakes by shopping about two weeks into the event.
Like we did with SMS Sales, we tested this against a static reminder message and saw another lift in RPU: 117% more efficient with audio vs without.
Attribution: Northbeam 🤝
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Northbeam will always have a special place in my heart as the first attribution tool I fell in love with. Nothing makes it easier to look at channels on an apples-to-apples basis.
Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest, etc. all have their own ways of modeling attribution, which means it’s hard to compare Facebook’s reported revenue to TikTok’s.
Northbeam solves this problem by allowing you to toggle through different views independent of how each channel attributes. It’s the backbone of our media buying decisions.
Customer Points: Rivo
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Rivo technologically powers all things customer accounts and points — referral, loyalty, sweepstakes, and gamification … anything that attaches points to individual customers.
It has a great back end and out-of-the-box front end so that brands can market these programs effectively.
About half of HexClad’s sweepstakes web components were Rivo, most net-new design/development. We’ve used them to power our referral program for over two years, and they’ll power our eventual loyalty program.
Server Side Tracking: Elevar
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Being unable to match customer data with website actions sucks. If someone has given you their email and then they add to cart but don’t purchase, you should be able to email them!
Unfortunately, pixel degradation has made event match rates in scenarios like this lower than it’s ever been.
Elevar is a server-side tracking tool with way better event match rates than anything requiring a pixel to load (i.e., client-side tracking). This means your remarketing and lifecycle-owned media marketing audiences are larger, so you can message to more high-intent folks + drive more revenue from them.
The enhanced match rates send more signals to your ad accounts for stronger machine learning and, thus, targeting. We even went as far as to set up a duplicate version of our pre-purchase automations to see how much revenue we’re getting from the Elevar matches.
Creative Analytics: Motion 🤝
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Ad account naming conventions and creative data visualization are everything for a paid media team. Gone are the days of exporting data and pivoting it to glean creative insights.
Motion makes visualizing creative analytics incredibly easy.
As long as your naming conventions are dialed in, you can see any insight you want — food hook versus product hook, Gordon whitelisted versus Gordon brand, etc.
This is probably one of the only tools that is incredibly useful for a brand doing $500k a year or $500M.
Post Purchase Survey: Kno
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
Attribution, customer insights, product development — all of these can be understood using a tool like Knocommerce.
Kno powers our post-purchase survey, where we ask people where they heard about us, how long they knew about us before buying, which of our competitors they use, and more.
These insights contribute to our day-to-day decision-making.
We also use Kno for one-off surveys.
If we want to know how often our customers engage in a certain activity to inform product development, we can craft the survey in Kno, create the segment in Klaviyo, send out the survey, review the data, craft insights, and start to take action … all in under a week.
To top it off, it’s quite affordable. Plus, they have a fantastic customer success team!
Server Side Tracking: Edgemesh
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M
Edgemesh initially rolled out as a site speed tool powered by server-side tracking, and let me tell you ... site speed matters.
We recently A/B tested Edgemesh’s site speed tool versus no Edgemesh on some international markets and saw serious improvements in CVR.
Edgemesh realized attribution reliant on pixel loads is becoming less and less reliable, so they’re now innovating and using their server-side tracking technology to create an analytics tool.
Server-side tracking outputs click data that’s way more accurate than attribution reliant on a pixel load. This means that a lot of data we used to get from MTAs or GA can now be pulled from Edgemesh, which is a lot more trustworthy.
MMM: Prescient 🤝
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M
One of my favorite new tools. Prescient is an MMM tool that gives you insights down to the campaign level.
It also tells you attributed revenue to Amazon (and soon to retail), which was a huge pain point for HexClad because we have a significant Amazon business.
We knew our website funnels were spilling into Amazon, but how much? We now get that information with Prescient.
Because Prescient drills down to the campaign level, we can use the tool somewhat similarly to an MTA. Except it’s better because Prescient is showing us the whole picture.
The screenshot below is of a single Facebook ad campaign — broken out by direct Shopify revenue, halo Shopify revenue, and halo Amazon revenue.
Incrementality Attribution: Haus
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M
There is no way to test channel efficiency in a more scientific way than through geo-based holdout testing. Haus makes it incredibly easy to run these tests.
Set up the test design in-platform; platform spits out inclusion demographics in the form of a CSV file; inclusion audiences are added to ad platform campaigns by your media buyer; test is launched; results are pulled into Haus.
Quick, easy, actionable for something that takes a lot of work to set up manually. They also have an amazing customer success team to help brands get the most value possible.
CTV: NeonPixel
Score ★★★★★ (5/5)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M
There’s no other way to put it … NeonPixel has been game-changing for CTV advertising.
We used a different partner prior, and after switching to Neon Pixel, all of our data points improved — more PPS responses, better PPS efficiency, and a stronger correlation coefficient in our MMM model.
Why? Neon Pixel partners with data partners to target users based on intent, not based on the network.
It has way better (and more conservative) attribution that pulls directly into GA4, household device matching, and an incredible customer success team.
4-Star ☆☆☆☆ Partners
Upsell + Cross Sell: Rebuy
Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M
Rebuy offers an out-of-the-box solution to get more revenue by boosting AOV through upselling + cross-selling. We utilize it across PDPs, carts, checkout, and post-purchase.
There’s a good bit of design + development resources required to build something like this custom, so it’s nice to have an out-of-the-box solution. The downside? It can get pricey quickly.
Rebuy has one of the best customer success teams I have ever worked with. Utilize them well; you’ll get your value.
Pop-Ups: Amped
Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M
We migrated from Attentive to Amped. Nothing changed in the offer or messaging. The only thing that changed was the UX of Amped’s pop-up.
The result? Our opt-in rate doubled.
Giving them a four because they sold to Mailchimp, which will make things a bit harder for Shopify brands.
Landing Pages: Pagedeck
Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M
Pagedeck is a landing page builder that makes it super easy to iterate, even for someone with no code or design skills.
Once you find a format that works, you can easily duplicate it and swap out copy/media to make it congruent with your ad creative. Think, you sell wool socks ... to hunters, skiers, hikers.
HexClad has literally put millions of dollars through Pagedeck.
They offer an amazing library to find landing pages from other brands to use as inspiration. The only reason it doesn’t get five stars is because you need to use a subdomain.
This lander, for example, was built in Pagedeck but moved to Replo to put it on our core Shopify site.
Landing Pages: FERMÀT
Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: <$1M
FERMÀT is a lower lift option compared to Pagedeck and Replo. It allows you to build custom “microsites” that are super congruent to your ad creative. This means you can build destinations quickly that make sense for the product, angle, or offer you’re promoting in your ads.
Again, this is a powerful option for brands that may not have the UX + dev resources to build custom landers from scratch.
CRO Testing: Convert
Score ★★★★☆ (4/5)
Annual GMV: $1M–$10M
We do all of our on-site A/B testing via Convert. It’s way better than Google Optimize, mainly because there’s no limit to the number of tests you can run at any given time.
Four stars (not five) because we’ve seen some discrepancy in our Convert data versus GA, MTA, and Edgemesh.
But I do like the analytics dashboard. It’s easy to see the different KPIs you care about, and it’s easy to add filters — like new versus returning traffic.
ERP: Fulfil 🤝
Score (None)
Annual GMV: $10M-$50M
I’m not scoring Fulfil because — as the growth leader — I don’t have any direct experience with it. Our ops team does all the ERP stuff, and there’s no real “marketing” component.
I don’t have to think about it. So I don’t think about it.
Honestly, that’s probably the best thing anyone responsible for growth can say about an ERP. Hex sells across a ton of retail and online channels in multiple international markets. I’ve heard plenty of horror stories from my friends at other brands with our level of complexity.
I assume Fulfil works and does what it’s supposed to because I don’t notice it. And that’s how it should be.
Business Debt & Ada Pally, VP of Marketing at Northbeam
How to Balance Brand Memorability & ROI in Your Creative Ad Strategy With David Herrmann
This week’s top-five trending news stories, curated by the editor of CPG Wire
1. The Hershey Company Buys Sour Strips: Twitter
After a very quiet three years, Hershey is back in acquisition mode and purchased Sour Stripes, a fast-growing sour candy brand, for an undisclosed sum. Internet personality Maxx Chewning launched Sour Strips in 2019.
Hershey posted dismal results in Q2 — net sales dipped 16%, and confectionery sales were down 20%. Clearly, it’s eager to right the ship and reinvigorate its brand portfolio.
2. Vuori’s Valuation Hits $5.5B After Tender Offer: Fitt Insider
Fast-growing activewear brand Vuori raised $825M from General Atlantic and Stripes, and their valuation surged to $5.5B, up from $4B in 2021 when SoftBank invested $400M.
The deal was structured as a secondary tender offer so early investors and employees could sell shares.
3. Molson Coors Doubles Down on ZOA Energy: Food Dive
Molson Coors is shelling out $53M in cash to increase its ownership stake in ZOA Energy to 51%. Founded in 2021 by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, ZOA Energy is a purveyor of energy drinks and supplements.
Molson Coors has been ZOA’s distributor since launch and as of last September, they owned 40% of the company.
4. e.l.f. Beauty Delivers Another Massive Quarter: CNBC
e.l.f. Beauty’s net sales jumped 40% to $301M in Q2, while adjusted EBITDA increased 15% YoY to just over $69M. The affordable cosmetics brand has delivered 23 consecutive quarters of net sales and market share growth.
International has also become a key growth driver for e.l.f. Beauty with sales up 91% in the quarter.
5. One Trick Pony Secures Seed Funding: PR Web
Better-for-you peanut butter, One Trick Pony, secured seed support from Collaborative Fund + angel investors. One Tricky Pony uses elevated ingredients like Argentinian peanuts and Patagonian sea salt while eschewing hydrogenated oils and added sugar. Previously, Collaborative Fund invested in Blue Bottle Coffee, OLIPOP, and Sweetgreen.
On top of last week’s “graveyard” requests, you lovely people also flooded my inbox with questions for Sean.
Please do the same for Connor Rolain.
I’ve been cataloging them for the next MOperators Hotline episode. Should be a ringer!
Until then …
What’s the most useful format we can compile all five of the tech + vendor stacks into?
Hit reply and let me know.
With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff (Executive Editor)
PS 😘 David Herrmann is an operator.
