When traffic goes up, conversions go down. At least, that’s the “law” in ecommerce.

But what if you could have both?

More visitors. More conversions.

Sound impossible? It’s not …

🌪️ Cherene Aubert shows you how tornadoes beat funnels

🤩 Stuart Chaney shares a last-call invitation for tomorrow

🏆 Top five headlines from this week in DTC consumer news

Stuart Chaney

Founder & CEO, Rivo

Tomorrow! June 17, 12pm–5pm (EST)

Myself and the Rivo team will be joining over 20 DTC leaders at the online event of the year, Operators Assemble.

4 keynotes. 3 breakout sessions: (1) leadership, (2) marketing, and (3) finance. 10 lightning panels. A live AMA podcast.

Plus, headliner Dan Martell — who quite literally has the #1 book on Amazon right now under both entrepreneurship and business development.

We’ve got an online Q&A booth.

So, feel free to swing by …

We’ll show you some of the retention tactics we’ve been implementing with HexClad, Ridge, True Classic, Dr. Squatch, Kitsch, Laura Geller, and tons more.

Reserve Your Spot

Cherene Aubert

SVP, ILIA Beauty

Cherene Aubert is the SVP of Digital & Ecommerce at ILIA Beauty (Twitter; LinkedIn). She’s appeared multiple times on the Operators Podcast. Cherene will be delivering the first of two growth keynotes at the Operators Online Event — along with Krista Dalton, CMO of Tecovas.

Tornadoes Over Funnels: Three Steps to Increase Traffic & Increase Conversions

I have news for you. We’re not building funnels anymore.

Funnels are done. Funnels are old.

We’re doing something new. Something hot.

We’re building tornadoes.

It’s the same shape as a funnel.

But a funnel is a passive tool. It sits there, waits to be filled, and you can only enter at the top.

A tornado is a force of nature. It sucks you in — no matter how high up or how low down you are.

I don’t like to brag about my brand’s performance. But over the last year, we increased traffic and conversions at the same time.

That’s a statistical anomaly.

Traffic and conversions are inversely proportional.

One month in particular (and it wasn’t even during Q4), we drove triple-digit YoY revenue growth from paid social without discounts.

We built a tornado that spread us wider and pulled people in faster. How? Through the one great unifier that can drive traffic and conversions up … intent.

We built intent at each stage of the tornado, pulling people in wherever they’re at in their buyers’ journey.

That’s why I’m going to give you …

Three steps on how we formed a tornado.

1️⃣ Content that builds desirability for each stage of the “funnel”

Last year, our paid content was pretty uniform. What changed is we began segmenting by funnel stage.

Building creative for awareness, consideration, and decision.

Awareness-driving content

About a year ago, we started running top-of-funnel campaign objectives with branded content.

I’m not saying this works for every brand, but mid-eight figures and above should pay attention.

We took big swings with macro-influencers and partners to do immeasurable things to drive more excitement for the brand.
Consideration-driving content

We shifted away from hacky direct-response ad formats and began fueling our ad content with videos that our consumers would actually watch.

Videos that sold on product performance and benefits. This builds consideration in our funnel.

We look to TikTok for content inspiration and bring it into Meta to scale.
Decision-driving content

A very small portion of our budget is dedicated to advertising offers — sparingly. We have moved away from discounting and leaned more heavily into sampling.

It’s a low-funnel entrance to first purchase and introduces customers to other products right away.

2️⃣ Ease of navigation and onsite relevancy (message matching)

You are paying dumb amounts of money to get people to your site. When they get there …

It has to be relevant to what they just saw.

Path of least resistance

We looked at heat map data and learned that the majority of users were taking the path of least resistance to our hero products.

So, we restructured our navigation and merchandising strategy to reduce the number of clicks to those heroes.
Merchandise for popularity

Multiple times a month, we remerchandise our top-trafficked pages (homepage and collections) to ensure the most popular products are displayed first.
Marketing message matching

We also consistently refresh our homepage hero + modules to match our marketing. The goal? Driving that one next click down the funnel.

This keeps desirability high and drives further intent down the funnel

3️⃣ Cart incentives that push shoppers from consideration to decision

We’re all guilty of window shopping on brand websites. Customers need a nudge to move from consideration to decision on your site.

Especially when they get close to buying.

In-cart sampling

Product is the number one driver of customer retention.

As a beauty brand, we sample products in-cart to get shoppers past purchase-commitment-phobia and to pull the trigger on checking out for the first time.
Trial offers (for CPG brands)

Sampling or trialing as a conversion lever works for most CPG brands. Our sampling carousel is a custom-built feature.
Premium gifts with purchase instead of discounts

For some brands, the economics of gifting products are much better than offering a discount. We run custom, limited gifts to unlock higher-than-average order value.

Funnels are out. Tornadoes are in.

Content that builds desirability at each stage
Ease of navigation and onsite relevancy
Cart incentives from consideration to decision

THE FEED

How Do You Really Define Brand?

Quick Hits on What’s Shifting on Meta, Shopify’s AI Update & Your DTC Questions Answered

The Trends

Curated by the editor of CPG Wire, this week’s five biggest headlines in consumer news.

1. O Positiv Hires Bankers to Explore Sale: Reuters

O Positiv, the fast-growing women’s wellness brand, has hired Jefferies as the company explores a sale. Siblings Bobby & Brianna Bitton launched the brand in 2018. O Positiv expects revenue to hit $275 million this year, up from $225 million in 2024. The omnichannel brand could be valued at $1 billion.

2. HighPost Capital Bets on Equip Foods: Business Wire

HighPost Capital made a significant investment in Equip Foods, a doctor-developed, real-food supplement brand. Founded in 2015 by Dr. Anthony Gustin — a former sports rehabilitation clinician — Equip is best known for its grass-fed beef protein powder line. Revenue is expected to hit high 8-figures this year. HighPost launched in 2019 and is also an investor in Magic Spoon.

3. CAVU Consumer Partners Backs Sauz: PR Newswire

Sauz, a next-generation pasta sauce brand, closed a $12 million funding round led by CAVU Consumer Partners. Coefficient Capital, Palm Tree Crew, and Strand Equity also participated in the round. Founded by childhood best friends Troy Bonde and Winston Alfieri in 2023, Sauz now sells its sauces at nearly 7,000 retailers across the U.S. For CAVU Consumer Partners, this is their first investment since exiting Poppi in March.

4. Uncrustables Hot Streak Continues: Twitter

J.M. Smucker’s share price might’ve hit a five-year low, but Uncrustables continues to deliver for the packaged foods company. In fiscal 2025, Uncrustables’ net sales grew by over $125 million to approximately $920 million.

This was the brand’s 11th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. The impressive net sales growth puts Uncrustables on pace to be a billion-dollar brand by the end of 2026.

5. L’Oreal Acquires Majority Stake in Medik8: Reuters

French beauty giant L’Oreal acquired a majority stake in Medik8 — a premium clinical skincare brand from the UK — at a reported enterprise valuation of €1 billion.

Medik8, founded by British cosmetic scientist Elliot Isaacs, manufactures high-quality, science-backed skincare products that retail at affordable prices. The Medik8 acquisition comes two weeks after Hailey Bieber sold her three-year-old skincare brand for $1 billion, so big beauty deals are back.

BONUS: Invitation

Alongside tomorrow’s Operators Assemble Event — later this same week — Sean Frank will be co-hosting …

Going Global With Ridge