Commerce Roundtable

AI is making marketers lazy.... Meanwhile I just spent 2 hours making AI rewrite the same subject line 14 different ways because version 13 still wasn't right. Here's what people don't get about AI in email marketing: The lazy marketers were already lazy. They were lazy before ChatGPT. They were lazy with templates. They were lazy with "best practices." They were lazy copying their competitors' welcome series. AI didn't make them lazy. It just made their laziness faster. The marketers actually getting results with AI are doing the opposite of lazy: - Iterating on copy 20 times until it hits - Stress-testing segmentation logic against real data - Running it against past winners to spot patterns - Asking it to poke holes in their own strategy - Using it to do the work they used to skip The tool didn't change the operator. It just amplified whoever was already holding it. If your AI workflow is one prompt and a copy-paste, that's not AI making you lazy. That's just you. And if you want to learn more on how to apply AI in your email marketing, you should join us this week and next in a city near you for our Commerce Roundtable Retention Roadshow. NYC, Miami, LA and Austin Shoot me a dm if you want in.

You know your retention could be better... But you don't know WHERE to start. Is it your email frequency? Your timing? Your segmentation? Your messaging? You have a dozen things that could be optimized. So you optimize nothing. Meanwhile, you're bleeding 2-5% of potential LTV every year. Here's the thing: Most retention problems aren't complicated to fix. They're just hard to identify without looking at your actual data. You need to sit down, map your flows, analyze what's working, and see the gaps. But most teams don't do this because it's time consuming and it's not a "quick fix". That's exactly what the Commerce Roundtable Retention Roadshow is for. You spend 6 hours with your data and operators who've done this 100+ times. You map where the leaks are. You build the fix. You leave with a plan. Not just theory or inspiration. A real plan you execute Monday. We're coming to a city near you. NYC June 5 | Miami June 8 | LA June 10 | Austin June 12 Get a seat: https://lnkd.in/dpxAUX28

Everyone obsesses over LTV. But LTV is a lagging indicator. By the time you can measure it cleanly, the decisions that created it are 12 months old. The leading indicator nobody talks about? Days between order 1 and order 2. I've looked at hundreds of brand dashboards. The healthiest ones aren't the ones with the biggest repeat rate. They're the ones with the shortest gap. A customer who comes back in 25 days is worth 3-4x a customer who comes back in 75 days. Same product. Same AOV. Different velocity. Because velocity compounds. Buy every 30 days = 12 orders a year. Buy every 60 days = 6 orders a year. Buy every 90 days = 4 orders a year. Same customer. Same loyalty. Wildly different business. So the real question isn't "how do I get more repeat customers." It's "how do I shorten the gap." Here's what's working right now: Step 1: Pull your actual median days-between-orders. Not your gut. The number. Step 2: Identify the customers sitting at 1.5x that number. They're the leak. Step 3: Build one flow. Trigger it 7-10 days before their expected reorder date. Two CTAs: → "Reorder in one click" → "See what's new" That's it. No 14-email nurture sequence. No win-back campaign with three discount tiers. The brands with the best retention aren't the ones with the most sophisticated email program. They're the ones easiest to buy from a second time. I learned this the hard way at Brez. We had the data. We had the customers. We just weren't making it stupid simple to come back. This is exactly what we dig into at the Commerce Roundtable Retention Roadshow. A half-day workshop where operators walk through their actual numbers, identify the gap that's costing them the most, and leave with a plan they can ship that week. NYC (June 5) | Miami (June 8) | LA (June 10) | Austin (June 12) 75-100 operators. Bring your dashboard. https://lnkd.in/gss4PK5r

One week until we kick off the Retention Roadshow in New York. 🗽 We could not be more excited to have Filip Pejic on stage for this one. Fil is the founder of Bedford, a retention agency that partners with 8 and 9-figure ecom brands. He brings over a decade of experience in ecom and email marketing, including building and operating two of his own brands. A half day built around tactical takeaways with 75-100 of the best retention marketers in one room. You'll leave with things you can apply the same day. New York 6/5 · Miami 6/8 · Los Angeles 6/10 · Austin 6/12 Only a handful of seats left for each city. Grab yours today: https://lnkd.in/edWNQjDG

You know your retention could be better... But you don't know WHERE to start. Is it your email frequency? Your timing? Your segmentation? Your messaging? You have a dozen things that could be optimized. So you optimize nothing. Meanwhile, you're bleeding 2-5% of potential LTV every year. Here's the thing: Most retention problems aren't complicated to fix. They're just hard to identify without looking at your actual data. You need to sit down, map your flows, analyze what's working, and see the gaps. But most teams don't do this because it's time consuming and it's not a "quick fix". That's exactly what the Commerce Roundtable Retention Roadshow is for. You spend 6 hours with your data and operators who've done this 100+ times. You map where the leaks are. You build the fix. You leave with a plan. Not just theory or inspiration. A real plan you execute Monday. We're coming to a city near you. NYC June 5 | Miami June 8 | LA June 10 | Austin June 12 Get a seat: https://lnkd.in/dpxAUX28

This changes how you think about your Meta ads. 🚨 Molly Pittman broke it down at Commerce Roundtable Austin. It's not about finding a winning ad. It's about giving Meta enough context to actually work for you. The Retention Roadshow is coming to 4 cities near you! Tactical workshops and sessions built for brand and agency marketers that you can actually apply immediately. New York June 5 · Miami June 8 · LA June 10 · Austin June 12 Seats are limited. Grab yours today: https://lnkd.in/edWNQjDG

You can read about retention strategy anywhere. What you can't read is the operational context behind why something works. Why did this strategy work for Brand A but not Brand B? What was different about their customer base, their category, their setup? When the speaker is someone who actually ran the test and lives with the results, you get that context. You get the real story. "Here's what we tested, here's what we expected, here's what actually happened, and here's why we think it worked." That operational storytelling is worth 10x a generic framework. The Retention Roadshow speakers are operators who've run retention programs at scale for real brands. NYC June 5 | Miami June 8 | LA June 10 | Austin June 12 https://lnkd.in/dpxAUX28

10 days until The Retention Roadshow hits the road ⏰ The rooms are filling fast. All 4 cities are over 60% sold out! Most events leave you with a notebook full of half-thoughts you'll never look at again. The Retention Roadshow is built different. Tactical sessions, hands-on workshops, and small-room conversations that actually change how you think about retention. 🗽 NYC, June 5 🌴 Miami, June 8 ☀️ LA, June 10 🤠 Austin, June 12 75-100 seats per city. Lock yours in before your city sells out! 🎟️ https://lnkd.in/edWNQjDG

The "78% open rate" flex needs to die in 2026 Every week someone slides into my DMs or posts a screenshot bragging about open rates like it's 2015 Let's be real. Apple MPP has been inflating open rates for almost 4 years now. Your "78% open rate" probably means: - Apple Mail pre-loaded your email on a device that never opened it - Your list is small enough that bots and pixel fires skew everything - You're only sending to your most engaged 5% and calling it a win Or you genuinely don't know how email tracking works in 2026 Open rates are a vanity metric. Here's what actually matters: - Click rate - Revenue per recipient - Conversion rate from email - Unsubscribe and spam complaint rate - List growth vs. churn If you can't tell me what your email program generated in revenue last month, your open rate doesn't matter. I don't care if it's 78%. I don't care if it's 98%. And if this made you reconsider your entire thought process... then You should join us at Commerce Roundtable Retention Roadshow... We're gonna talk a lot on modern metrics, AI, strategy and finding actions behind all of it.. NYC June 5 | Miami June 8 | LA June 10 | Austin June 12 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/dpxAUX28

The Commerce Roundtable is going on the road and I have the hook up on tixs if interested. June 5th - NYC June 8th - Miami June 10th - Austin June 12th - LA The lineup is stacked, and we have some thought leaders from CTC sharing the good word as well. Brian Sakansky Anmar Abdul Jawad Ben Liebman Ryan Ferguson Garrett Hord Comment and I'll drop the code in a DM. https://lnkd.in/gy4EJG_c