Transcript for "Triple Whale's 2026 Trends for Confident Planning": Alright. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Triple Whales twenty twenty six trends for confident planning webinar. While we let everyone sort of trickle in, I'd love to know where everyone is tuning in from today. We got Toronto, Charleston. Wow. We have a global audience today. I love it. I am I'm actually in Vancouver, Canada. So if anyone's around, please let me know. I always love to meet with people who are in the vicinity in the area because there sure are not enough of us in the Vancouver area. Awesome. Alright. So I see we've already got a buzzing crowd joining from across the globe today. I'm Thamana Bawa. Once again, I'm one of the tech partner managers from Triple Whale, and I'm absolutely thrilled to be your host for today's exciting journey into the future of AI and ecommerce. Now today is all about unlocking the power of AI driven ecommerce. From cutting edge tech to customer centric strategies, you're gonna hear directly from the trailblazing founders, tech leaders, and performance marketers in our space. You're also gonna hear from top brands who are shaping the future of d two c. Now today's session is being recorded. So if for whatever reason you need to walk your dog, change a diaper, grab a coffee or a tea, there's no stress whatsoever, we're gonna make sure that the that the recording gets sent to you, and it should get sent to you within the next day or two. Now here is today's incredible lineup of speakers. We have an all star group that you are not going to want to miss. We're gonna have our very own Triple Whale's very own Erin Watt, then we're gonna have Rachel from Vibe. We're gonna have Alicia from Aftercell by Rocked. We're gonna have Marty from Omnisend, and then we're gonna wrap it up with Shirley Dang and and Matt Fay from Portland Leather Goods and Applovin. Alright. So let's bring Erin on stage. Hey, Erin. Alright. You are muted. Sorry. I always do. I have a dog that lives with me, so I always put myself muted because I know the dog's gonna be barking at some point. So Well, it's awesome to have you here. Awesome. Feel free to pull up your slides, and the stage is all yours. Just let me know that everyone can see my screen. It's looking good. Alright. Awesome. Okay. Well, thank you so much for the intro, Thamina. As Thamina mentioned, my name is Erin Watt, and I'm one of the tech partner managers here at Triple Whale. So today's session is all about building confidence in your ecommerce strategy for the year ahead. Because in a landscape that's changing as fast as this one, the brands that win in 2026 won't be the ones doing more. They will be the ones making clear, more informed decisions earlier. But before we actually talk about this decision, I think it's gonna be really helpful to understand who's powering those insights behind them. Okay. So who is Triple Whale? So many brands today are drowning in data, but they're starving for insights, and that's exactly where Triple Whale comes in. So Triple Whale is the complete intelligence platform that helps ecommerce brands confidently understand what's working, what's not, and, of course, what to do next. So we pull all of your data into one place, give you the measurement tools to actually trust that data, and then we use the smartest AI in the industry to translate that data into clear insights and recommendations. And this isn't just theoretical. It is actually happening at scale. So today, TripleL is proudly the source of truth for over 50,000 innovative brand. That is including Peloton, Culture Kings, Meschke, Buy Buy Baby, and more. And then we also partner with over 2,000 trusted agencies and integrate with over 65 deep tech platforms. That's everything from marketing to affiliates and affiliates and influencer platforms, inventory, customer support to ensure that our customers are getting the most out of their data. And if you are curious about what this actually looks like in practice, we do also have a full library of case studies on our site that I highly recommend checking out. Okay. So now that we know a little bit more about TripWell, let's talk about what the data is actually telling us. So today, we're gonna break down data back insights from real performance across channels, industries, and brand sizes all to help you move forward with more certainty. So this isn't just about knowing what's changing. It's about understanding where to focus, what to prioritize, and how to turn those insights into action. So I'll also I will be sharing the full our full 2025 data guide after the webinar, so you will be sent it in your email. But today, I do wanna start with highlighting three surprises that we've gathered from this data and what that actually tells us about 2026. Okay. So our first major surprise, Meta became more dominant instead of losing share to competitors. So its market share actually grew by 5.2% compared to last year, while all other major competitors actually lost share. Our second surprise is that tracking actually got worse, but customer demand stayed strong. So platform reported conversions rates, they actually fell by 6.2, while, actually, site conversion rates increased by 1.2%. And then for our third surprise from the data, AI driven orders grew extremely fast, but they're still a very small part of the business. So orders from AI search increased just over 1400% year over year yet make up less than 1% of total orders with ChatGPT responsible for over about 97% of that activity. So the obvious question is, what does this actually mean for 2026? So based on TripWell's data, here are gonna be our top three trends that we see shaping the year ahead. Okay. So trend number one, AI becomes a primary shopping channel. So AI is no longer just influencing discovery. In 2026, it starts driving transaction, and AI moves away from being more assistive to truly actionable. Okay. And the shift is already happening, by the way. In 2025 alone, AI driven search orders jumped from about 28,000 in q one to over 450,000 by q four. That's just over 1400% increase in a single year. And almost all that activity concentrated in one place, ChatGPT, which grew its market share from 91% to over 97%. Now it's really important to put this in context. I think this is kinda cool. So AI still accounts for less than 1% of total ecommerce orders today, but that's exactly what makes this moment really familiar. This is what mobile commerce looked like in 2020 in 2008. It's what social commerce looked like in 2015, small and absolute terms, but exploding introductory. So the difference this time is distribution. With Shopify's integration now live across more than a million stores, the infrastructure's already in place. So consumers don't need to change the behavior much. They just need to trust the flow. So while AI commerce may feel early, the path of crossing that 1% threshold is already laid. And, historically, once a channel crosses that line, adoption accelerates really fast. So that is going to actually lead us to the real question brands should be asking. What do you actually do with that shift? So if AI becomes a place where shopping decisions happen, brands need to think less about the traffic and more about the visibility inside the answer itself. So AI is effectively becoming the new shelf. If and if your products aren't structured or surfaced and understood by these systems, you don't exist in the moment that actually matters. And that's why we're seeing early winners focus on things like AI visibility optimization, ChatGeBT commerce intelligence, integrations, and also clean and structured product data. So this isn't about chasing a shiny new channel. It's really about making sure that AI can accurately represent your products, your pricing, and also your differentiators in a conversational environment. So the brands that invest now in schema and product data management and also a o AEO, which stands for answer engine optimization, those are gonna be the ones positioning themselves ahead of the curve. Because when AI becomes a primary shopping channel, the brands that win won't be the loudest. They will be the most legible. Okay. So I know that was a lot, but now we're on to trend two, which is really gonna be focusing on our platform diversification, which is gonna be become critical. So relying on a single platform has always carried risk, but in 2026, that risk becomes unavoidable. Rising costs are forcing brands to face reality the economics have been signaling for us for years. So the brands that win won't diversify react reactively. They'll do that in a more strategic way. So this is where I feel the story can get a little bit uncomfortable. So when we go into 2025, we predict that brands that are overly dependent on a single platform were taking on real risks. But the data actually told us a different story. So instead of diversifying spend consolidated, Meta's share of total ad spend grew from roughly about 65% over to 68% while Google, TikTok, and Amazon lost ground. So this shift wasn't driven by ignorance. It really was driven by fear. So rising costs and declining efficiencies had made experimentation even that that much harder. So despite being more expensive, Metascale still delivers the most predictable results. So for most teams, it really does feel safer to stick with what they know than depend on platforms that they can't confidently forecast. And, with that said, these early cracks, these are really just early cracks in the pattern. So visually heavy categories to think like health and beauty and apparel, allocate more of their spend to TikTok than the average, industry. During BFCM, TikTok actually their spend spiked about 23% at peak, but then it actually quickly snapped back to Meta once the moment passed. So while the economics clearly point to diversification with meta CPMs up at 16% and ROWA is down at about 5.7%, behavior hasn't caught up yet. The gap between the data, says what brands should be doing and what they're actually doing is is exactly what 2026 will force brands to confront. So the opportunity in 2026 isn't about spending more on platforms. It's just changing how diversification actually happens. So brands fail when diversification is reactive. So that panic testing, the chasing the dips, or spreading that it's really thin without infrastructure to support it, strategic diversification looks different. It's built on unified attribution, cross channel visibility, and systems that let teams expand without multiplying complexities. So remember, the winners are not going to actually abandon meta. They will derisk it. And in 2026, diversification won't be optional, but brands that prepare early will turn it into a growth lever instead of actually a liability. And then for our last trend for the day, we're really gonna focus on mid market DTC going physical. So we're seeing 8 figure DTC brands expand beyond the screen. So that's going into pop ups, wholesale, flagship stores, and in real life events. So as digital costs continue to rise, we expect to see even more at the 2026 with physical reach, retail emerging as a strategic growth lever. So why is this happening? Well, as you probably have noticed, digital acquisition is getting more and more expensive. And in 2025, CPAs rose 8.6%, CPMs jumped 16%, and AOB growth barely kept pace. So for mid market brands, this isn't just a temporary squeeze. It is structural. So when acquisition costs rise faster than revenue per order, digital loan can sustain growth. And that's why physical retail is reemerging, not as a burning exercise, but as performance levers. So pop ups and in real life experiences can really offset digital cost, increase LTV, and create demand that paid media can't alone. So how can brands expand physically? Well, the brands that thrive will treat physical as a strategic channel, not just a side project. And that means investing in the right infrastructure. So platforms to manage pops up pop ups effectively, tools to manage geo lift and real world impact, omnichannel attribution to connect online and offline behavior, and analytics that shows which locations and events actually drove true, ROI. So by combining digital and physical insights, mid market DTC brands can diversify growth, control cost, and reach customers in ways purely online strategies can't. So physical isn't just an option anymore. It really is becoming a necessary complement to scale profitability. Okay. I know that was a lot, so we do have a few takeaways to carry forward. AI commerce is emerging fast. Like I said, over 1400% of order growth signals, and also inevitable shift from discovery to direct transactions following early mobile and social patterns. AI is still small but scaling quickly. So with ChatGPT dominance with and Shopify's reach, crossing that 1% of ecommerce orders in 2026 is likely. Also, ad spend remains consolidated despite worsening economics, so Meta continues to gain share even as CPMs rise and ROAS declines. Diversification is delayed but not denied. So brands that diversify strategically, not reactive reactively will capture efficiency and resilience. And then lastly, rising digital costs push d to c offline, so physical retail is reemerging as a performance channel, not just a brand play. And I know I went over time, so I'll just be really quick because before I wrap up, I do want to leave everyone with a way to take actions. Before AI can drive results, it needs good data to work with, and that's why we're offering a free triple dashboard, no strings attached, to help you build a solid data foundation so you can optimize what you don't understand, and this is really gonna be the easiest way to start making more confident, accurate decisions. I will drop that link in the chat along with my email and LinkedIn, and feel free to reach out with any questions. And if there are any questions in the chat, I'll also stick back and answer them in there. Amazing. Thank you so much, Erin. There were. a lot of good tips and tricks in there. lot. I I think there's a lot of things that people can do to just feel confident this year, and and that was a great, great start. So thank you. so much. Wonderful. Thanks. Awesome. Now we are going to invite Rachel onto our stage. So, Rachel, feel free to pull up your your slides, and the stage is all yours. Thank you so much. Wanna make sure everyone can see and hear me. It's all. good? Looking. good. Sound, you. sound good. Thank you. Erin, that was amazing. Those are really great insights. I'm excited to even how I can tie that into some of the things that I'll be talking about. First, mostly, thank you for having me today. I'm very excited to speak to you about the conversations we're having with our clients when it comes to confidently planning buys in 2026 within our platform. For those of you who don't know Vibe, we are a self serve streaming TV platform accessed by over 10,000 performance marketers in The United States. We turn TV into more of a performance channel, really combining the trust that you have on television, the notoriety, the brand recognition with the precision and hyper targeting and optimization that you see with digital advertising. We allow advertisers to access over 557 apps and channels with our Vibe certified inventory, which are premium streaming networks that we have PMP or direct deals with. And what really makes our platform unique is the integrations that we have with over 50 partners, whether that's Shopify, our measurement platform, CRMs and CDPs for targeting, and third party measurement, hence why we're talking and we work with Triple Whale today as well as incrementality measurement tools within our product. For Triple Whale, we work with them on a media mix modeling as well as starting on the multi touch attribution. So our platform is typically used for d to c brands and ecommerce brands to measure that incremental lift that comes and blended CAC with running TV campaigns. We help customers understand what are the marginal returns that they have and what is the as the ad spend scales, how much of it is driving new customers or incremental return on ad spend. To date, we've had about 2,400,000 purchases attributed in the buy product. And on average across all campaigns, we see a 350% return on ad spent. So what does that mean? And kind of a little bit more about TV is streaming TV should definitely be a part of the budget for planning in 2026 as a growth channel. We cover all facets of the sales funnel, whether it's top of the funnel, net new customers, middle of the funnel, or lower funnel, and reactivation of customers. As we've seen, the slide on the right is probably something similar we've seen across the years, but we're seeing the viewers migrate still from traditional TV to streaming. Streaming will become the TV of the future. And as movers or users move to streaming TV, the advertising dollars follow. So it's no surprise that streaming TV is no longer really just an awareness play. It's becoming measurable acquisition channel, with CTV spend projected to be about 38,000,000,000 in The US by the 2026. Brands are looking at this to help them grow beyond what's become a saturated search and social marketplace. So how does that play confidently into what you're planning for the year? You need validation that it's working and that there is measurement. That's where measurement comes into play. With third party measurement tools like we have with Triple Whale, it provides a reliable transparent way for us to attribute revenue growth in CTV. Our planning conversations this year have been less with clients about how much reach do I get, what's my frequency. It's more about how much of that reach is true, real, and attributable. And we look at that in kind of three different buckets. In all honesty, it's like understanding where that traffic is coming from and comparing that to search and social or other digital media that you may be running such as digital display or short form video. What works and what doesn't work, that's where partnerships come in with multi touch attribution channels. What was the halo effect the media played across conversions? How many net new customers came from each media type comparatively, what was the first touch, last touch, all of those things that are going to help you understand what is working. And then to the point that Erin had earlier, how do you take those insights and make confident buying decisions? That will come with media mix modeling. So with media mix modeling, you're looking in platforms like a Vybe and Triple Whale at the diminishing return on spends within different types of advertising products. Am I overspending in search and social? Do I need to spend more in TikTok? Should I spend more in TV? All of those reliable insights from a partnership like ours will drive that media mix modeling for you to be confident in the planning that you are doing for the year. We have also published our 2026 CTV playbook, and there's lots of case studies that are in there. And similar to what Erin was saying, we look at a lot of the CAC that comes from meta or even standard display ad units or even social. And what we're finding is that the average CAC on VIBE is about a $115 across all of our campaigns, and it's on average 55% lower than what we're seeing on paid social. So TV is becoming a more and more part of the playbook when it comes to finding average CACs and or growing net new customers. It's also a little less volatile to run streaming TV than what you see on paid social. Our volatility, usually week over week, is about 8% where we see it as high as 28% on social. Definitely within our playbook, there's lots of case studies that you can see about how CRM targeting, CDP targeting, and retargeting can grow return on ad spend up to 450% for those that are in the purchase funnel but not yet pull the trigger. And my favorite case study out of our CTV playbook is one that was all about incremental lift of net new customers where we actually brought in 81% of the customers from our platform from VIBE were net new customers. Again, all listed in our streaming, TV playbook. So I'm gonna end with, like, one specific customer case study and then some key insights as well. So this is a customer who's been running for with us for consistently over a year, increasing budgets around big holiday shopping seasons for them. It is a d to c home furnishing company. When they started working with us, they were looking for a streaming TV, but also trying to measure against other paid channels for growth. And attribution for them was really great. They were looking at things in specific silos, such as here is my search bucket, here is my social bucket, and here is my display bucket, as well as here is my last bucket, which is when they added on streaming TV. So all of them were kind of overlapping in one way or another, and it was, as I mentioned earlier, a great area for them. With our partnerships in MTA and we were able to achieve with them a single source of truth and kinda remove those blurred lines and understand what is coming in from Meta, what is coming in from TV, what is coming in from TikTok, etcetera. And some of the key points that we saw within our platform was a 288% return on ad spend with VIBE. That is actually higher than what they were seeing with Meta. We saw a 259 average order value, which was right aligned within the same dollar amount as Meta. And since their target was they looked at the full funnel, but really heavily wanting to look at growth from net new customers, 75% of the visitors we sent to them were net new by the different ways we're able to incorporate CDP, CRMs, and target net new customers for them. So for me, when I look at these results, thinking of streaming TV right along as search and social, which are click based channels, and we are definitely competitive in that area as well. The best takeaway I could say from this is that when you're looking at full funnel attribution, make sure you're working with a partner that will allow you to take that third party measurement and validate results. Like, it is fine if you're looking at things in your own silo or your own solo reporting. Like, we definitely use our own reporting for optimization strategies within what we're delivering. But taking the results or working with a third party that will validate those results to truly show you and confidently plan what more can I spend before I start losing money, what areas and medias can I grow in, or where can I find the best attribution and halo effect? So that's the key takeaways I have from our presentation. Sorry about that. Sorry about the delay. me. So much, Rachel. I really appreciate it. problem. If you don't mind, can you put your contact info in the chat in case anyone. has questions or wants to reach out to you? Thank you so much. Awesome. Alright. Next up, we have Alicia from from after show from after cell. Alicia, you wanna join us on stage? You can pull up your slides. Perfect. Here I am. Give me a second. Hello. Are you guys good? Can you see everything up here? You're all good? Yeah. You're. good to go. Yay. It's all yours. you so much. Thanks, Tamanna. Hi, everyone. I am Alicia. We're from the after sale here, and, I am actually a recent joiner of, like, the new role. My new role is actually a senior partner marketing lead now. I used to lead partnerships, and I'm glad to see everybody here who either have heard about us or if you have not, welcome, welcome. And if you can tell Aftercell by Rocked, what that means is that we were acquired two years ago by the company Rocked. And if you guys don't already know, maybe you should check it out a little bit more. We do have an integration with Triple Wells, so that's an exciting time. But let's get into AfterSell a little bit. Our bread and butter, it's all about post purchase upsell and cross selling throughout the journey from your, cart all the way to your thank you page. All these are consumer journey that could and could not be something where you may be missing out here. So because today's topic is very interesting, I would love to really get into, what 2026 looked like for all of us here. So across hundreds of d to c brands in, you know, 2025 alone, we have actually noticed one theme that becomes really clear to us. And the biggest profit unlock weren't happening in ads or maybe a new channel. They were actually happening in a high intent moments of the customer journey that most teams still treat it as an afterthought. And this is going to kinda carry on into, like, 2026 where we talk a little bit about the cart, the check out, the take you pages, or even the order status pages, which I was just mentioning. These are the kind of, like, the highest intent surveys, in the entire funnel. Now the biggest issue is you're kinda optimizing it for conversion rate and also feeling good about the 3% while quietly kind of bleeding margin. Right? The mindset shift here we have is that we wanna coach it very simply, where we have conversion rate, which equals vanity. We have the revenue per visit, which also means reality, profit per visit, survival, and also post purchase is where you kinda move the numbers in your favor today. Alright. Now in 2026, the top performers aren't really thinking about checkout or post purchase as the end of transaction. They're adding monetization in a way where it doesn't hurt conversion. Now what that means is that high margin add on is irrelevant partner offers, category spending across, for cross selling, things that are actually kinda improving the AOV and payback window. So when you kinda track the RPV and also the PPV, not just the conversion rate actually will be the take rate. They also are kinda quitting running a Band Aid upsell. So no more random product with random discount, which I know a lot of time people think that's, like, the way to go. That's a big no no. If you got actually chat with our team a little bit more, you'll understand that if the right funnel is really by creating the best offering out there, and that does not require discounts. Instead, actually, when you're building an actual funnel, you can actually be more logical in your sequences with high margin offers that kind of built the original order, and you kinda feel like the obvious next steps where people will actually add the additional card product into the cart. So the importantly here of the learning is to make sure that the data are surfacings and things are what people actually would buy with a combination at what margin and how deep they would go into the funnel, which SKUs, and etcetera. So because purchase behavior, what customer actually would buy in the combination, at what discount on which timelines, it kinda significantly more accurate than anything coming out of the ad platform. So the smartest operate operators are actually using these insights, to kind of shape the forecasting retention strategy or even their, kinda like media allocation. Right? So let's get into some numbers, which I very much love. So you will kinda get the full suite after this, but I do really wanna show you what Aftercell kinda look like in the real world pressure. And especially BFCM is one of the most intense weekend of the year, which we all know by now. It kinda tend to expose the weakness in any part of the stack. So across the brand using Aftercell, we saw about 16,700,000 orders flow through our tools and which gave us a really clean read on the performance, which you can also tell here that, the impact what really stood out was the revenue merger we're able to capture without having to increase spend or complicate their workflow. So it was 11,900,000.0 in incremental revenue and nearly half 1,000,000 in pure profit through our ROC integration, which I'll walk you through what that also means. And the most encouraging signal for us is the 290,000 post purchase offer that would accept it. Now that actually means that shoppers, weren't actually annoyed or, in fact, they were engaging. So it actually translate your AOV lift across the board. I'm showing you this now because everything else in this stack is really about how we can help, merchants like you guys to create these outcomes on a normal day, not just on the peak days. The FCM just gives us a clearer lens into what's possible. Now, so what this means for 2026, here's a really kinda quick overview of the Aftersales flow. Right? You kinda know you're familiar, you've seen the cart, you've seen the checkout, the post purchase, the thank you page, and then the rock things as well. And these upsell suite actually helps you to monetize high intent surface, and it's not spammy, promotional, or any of that sort. It's actually more like a smart margin positive moment. And this is not about slapping a desperate 40% off, which I also mentioned no discount needed. It's really what something a customer doesn't want at the end of the day. So what is a good thing is to start with your top five best selling high margin SKUs from the last ninety days, or you can think about building offers that kinda clear your 50% net margin. So every yes improves your profit per visitor. Extending your best performing angle is also your your go to for post purchase so that if the winning ad is about pain relief and the funnel is about pain relief, it's also kinda confident that you can keep selling confidently. So that is, like, kinda like the bread and butter that I kinda was walking you guys through as well. And now with checkout. So checkout is actually one of the most valuable touchpoint and often underutilized. And I noticed that, you know, anytime when I go for shopping as well, I do notice that people don't really tend to put any other upsell offerings. And there's just so much opportunity for you to actually add additional bumps where you can kinda have limited time offer. You can put directly in the cart or checkout to kinda increase your AOV before the order is placed. And then you could kinda showcase relevant products as well as an upsell at the checkout brand or kind of boosting their AOV and revenue through there with con conditional context. Of course, every shopper actually sees, personalized experience driving stronger conversion. Now your question is probably, can we actually personalize based on what is in the cart and or the checkout per se? Yes. You can. So you can create as many funnels, we call them, and you can create as many, either a lookalike, can use our AI, you can use all these, like, machine learnings that we have to really study what is already in the cart, what is the most relevant thing to add it for them. Now the solution, here we have an example for Goat Foods, which is one of our client, which kinda they did made a switch from Aftersell, to simplify the scale of their upsell strategy. So from day one, they noticed the key improvements. They want a simple building. They want a fast one two three setup meant, and they kinda launched the way it is. And the cross brand upsell was the customer wanted to buy licorice, and we're offering caramel pretzels. Buyers discovered chocolate sticks. So all these, like, little things that they wanted was exactly what they wanted to mix and match make sure that people would actually engage to it. And we've seen, like, 50% of the increase in revenue per order. And, of course, as you could tell, 30% of the order came from an upsell. Post purchase upsell is actually where after checkout journey is, and that is before they actually get the order confirmation page. And, essentially, we show any upsell immediately to checkout based on what customer just bought. So the item was actually being added into a one click with no payment reentry. This actually drives up to 30% higher AOV while intent in, is highest. I've been with Aftercell for two and a half years now. We've seen, like, the growth of people actually taking this, upsell as a great add on feature, and they've seen some success out of it. And I do not see why you shouldn't be adding this as an add on, especially in 2026 right now. So this is a really fast growing feature that I would say go for it, and we have a ton of ways for you. And our features are just all there for you to, like, figure out the logic for you to kinda display the funnels as is. Now we've got Hex HexClad as a incremental revenue per order without impacting their conversion. They have seen about 2,400,000.0 post purchase revenue generated and also a 2.5 incremental revenue per transaction. We actually work with Venn Group on this project, and they have seen some significant numbers being unlocked there. Now Rock Things, this is where Rocks with the whole acquisition. This is essentially a thank you page where people overlook the opportunity in ecommerce. We have been around for only two years, fairly new with the Shopify ecosystem in the world. People do really see this as a great add on With Rock Dang's brands actually get to get a reward, to their customer with hyper relevant third party offers. So think about Hulu, Netflix, anyone else that are big out there that are a new competitor, and they actually show the best offer. And a lot of time, consumers would end up clicking on it to get their great discount code or anything that is enticing. And this is the most relevant thing that will only offer to your consumers and not you wouldn't be shown. And every click is money to our brands. So, consumer clicks on it, the brand will actually be generating money. So for every 10,000 orders, brands generate about 3 to 5 k in incremental revenue. So partners like I was mentioning, you have ESPN, Hulu, Apple, Venmo. These are some of the popular ones. There's a ton more. We have about 400, and they're all trusted advertisers that really shows the most relevant thing to our consumers. And here's an example with Jonesboro Beauty, Fern post checkout into a profit. You can see how the display looks like. It's very subtle. It's in your tank thank you page already where a lot of consumer just wanna make sure that the orders are being processed. But what you can see is that they have made about 11000% of monthly ROI and 40% profit per transaction. That is a lot if you have huge amount of orders. So Aftercell is pretty much trusted by 40,000 ecommerce brands. We have, you know, people like BlendJet. We have Good Protein, Dev, Jones wrote Raycon, and Higgs Cloud. They've seen some of the greatest thing. I do wanna say that having a RockThings add on into your brand actually gives you the full suite of Aftercell for free. And if you wanna test it out yourself, you can run the numbers in our site. I'll drop down the link as well for you, and it's our rock revenue. It tells you how much you'll be generating. You get the idea of the profit and the monthly profit as well. And that is it. Amazing. Alicia, that was so valuable. There was a lot of good information in there. Now if anyone wants to get in touch with you, would you mind just your email address or your LinkedIn and at? There. was a lot of there was a lot of good communication in the chat as well. So thank you so much for. that. Alright, guys. Well, next up, we have Marty Bauer from Omnisend. Awesome. Hey, Marty. Welcome to the stage. Great to see you again. Alright. Nice to see Alright. We'll go ahead and get started. So we'll shift gears a little bit, still sit staying on the same theme of how to convert more and more customers and retain them over time. So there's been some really interesting takeaways, which is great from everybody so far. So I'm Marty from Omnisend. We do email and SMS marketing and automation for over a 150,000 ecommerce brands, primarily in Shopify marketplace, but we work with all platforms. We have an open API as well for those custom sites as well. Excited to work with Triple Whale. I've been Omnisend over six years. And last year, Triple Whale became the number one requested integration. We didn't have it. We had a hacked together integration for some of our customers, but it was the number one requested integration. So it's been fun to see the the growth of Triple Whale, especially the needs in in reporting and analytics from brands that are using it and having that impact on our customers as well has been great. So I was excited to see our our native integration launch last year. Kudos to the Triple Whale team for leading that. So what does Omnisend do as email and SMS marketing provider? Yes. We send emails. We send SMS. We send push notifications. But the core of what we do for brands is help them sell more. We do that by helping grow audiences for brands, and we'll show why that matters over time and the compound effect of that, especially with data last year and coming into this year. We automate as much of that as possible. The big takeaway from this is gonna be automations are king. That is where the the biggest impact is felt as well as automations are driving the most profit and most profitable sends and focus areas for email and SMS retention marketing. We send those personalized campaigns, especially in the the age of AI. Those personalized campaigns matter more and more. And then we deliver clear business insights. So we have advanced analytics that are centered around the the life cycle of ecommerce businesses and the brands and the that use Omnisend and their customers. So the entire life cycle from a potential customer lead coming in to a champion who's rebuying every so often as well. So Omnisend is is a company. On Shopify, we have a great rating from customers. We work with over a 150,000 ecommerce businesses every month who use us, and have award winning support that's around that's 247365 for all customers and users of Omnisend. So what are the big takeaways coming into this year? Looking at the data, we looked at data from over 27,000,000,000 emails sent from our platform, over 300,000,000 text messages, and almost a half a billion push notifications sent from our platform. And couple key takeaways. Number one is orders are up, almost double. So number of orders is up. However, just 5% of brands are generating that. We're seeing more and more of the brands who have are seeing that success at the top. And what that we attribute that back to is brands who have really been investing for a while, several years, many years on building their audience, building the dataset on their customers who are buying from them are seeing the best results from email SMS sends and marketing automation over the past year. So those brands that have started early and they've just let those those the size of their list and the engagement data of their list compound over time are seeing the best results because they can target them with the most personalized content and at the most proper and opportune times in that life cycle of the customer journey. Then the last thing is automated messages are king. As I mentioned before, that's the most profitable path for retention marketing right now. For example, on Omnisend, out of those 27,000,000,000 emails, about 2% of them are automated. But those 2% of emails that are automated are driving over 30% of total sales and revenue. So huge out outsized gains just from automations when you think of email SMS. It's not just about campaigns. Campaigns are good, but automations is really where the sale and profit lives. So opens, clicks, and conversions, what changed last year? More people opened messages than ever before, but fewer people are clicking. So shoppers are definitely much more selective and they're becoming more discerning in what they buy. But also, that shows why the automations at the right time to the right person with the right message matters even more to help brands sell and convert even more buys and more more sales in that process. Those buyers who are getting to buy are getting to the getting through the pipeline are ready to buy and making sure that you're sending the right message at the right time versus with the right channel is even more important than ever. So things we noticed in that data. Again, analyzing 27,000,000,000 emails, about 300 plus million text messages, and half a billion push notifications are conversion rates are improving even as those clicks decline. So more opens, more sends, fewer clicks, but a higher conversion rate to sell, meaning that people are coming into the funnel and making that buying decision and clicking and converting quickly. So making sure we, again, have that personalized content at the right time, the right place, and through the right channel is super important. Automated messages continue to outperform campaigns across all channels. Email, SMS, and push notification. Again, as Scott mentioned before, it's 2% of the emails we send are automated, but they drive 30% of sales. So automations definitely outperform. If you think about being put yourself as the consumer, if you're ever on a website and you leave, lots of different things can happen. But those messages that you can send immediately or in a timely fashion are the ones that end up converting and bringing your buyer, bringing your audience back to make that purchase eventually. So automations are definitely outperforming scheduled campaigns. And then SMS and push became stronger intent channels. That's where people are opting in more. They're showing clearer intent, and then they're actually going through the click and the sale. So while email is absolutely important and remains very important in the life cycle marketing of any ecommerce business, continuing to go into other channels like SMS and push notifications continue to show outsized gains. And we'll show an example of that here in just a second. Yeah. So going into this year, the key takeaways of all, again, 27,000,000,000 emails, 300 SMS, and half a billion push notifications is automations, automations, automations. Every channel is up higher on automations converting to sales and campaigns, whether that's emails, text messages, or push. Push notifications, those automations convert at a 22%, a little over 22%. Sending those notifications out, those are high intent customers who want to come back, want to repurchase, wanna make that first purchase or a repurchase down the line. Very, very important. SMS in particular, sees a five x conversion rate when it's an automated message versus a campaign or a one off. So sending those flows, sending those automations, sending those life cycle marketing messages on an automated basis based on buyer intent converts at a five x rate than a scheduled campaign or a flash sale type of message that goes out. Growth is definitely concentrated towards the top. This goes back to brands that build and grow their audience and get that that buyer data over time continue to outperform because they have a much better and deeper picture of that buyer and their customer journey and what's likely to make them come back, and make them come back profitably. So, growth continues to grow with the to go with those who have been in the game the longest and continue to build that retention marketing database as well. And then heard before, I think it was Aaron at TripleL mentioned, was it 1481%? I wrote that down. Increase of AI orders in 2025 from January to December. AI is shaping every part of the journey, whether it's search and discovery or surfacing in the inbox. Right? Every one of us is seeing different inboxes now. SMS is changing. Every channel is changing, and making sure that your message is AI relevant is absolutely important because not only are brands searching you on certain places to make your make your brand relevant there, but, whether it's the email inbox, text message inbox, anything like that, more and more AI is impacting how people are being seen, your how your messages are being seen, and how you're showing up in a positive way there as well. So core actions to take this year. Number one is definitely if there's one area to invest in, it's automation. Automation is the profit multiplier, whether it's, higher conversions across every channel, email, SMS, and web push notifications, or just simply with SMS. If brands are sending SMS five x more likely to buy and convert to a sale with an automation versus a campaign. So if anybody is looking for that one area to really double down and invest in, it's the automation, of that life cycle for your buyer. Number two is AI proof your content. Making sure that whether it's discovery or whether that's visibility in inboxes and text messages, making sure that your content that you're sending is AI proof and AI ready. Again, 1400% increase in orders tracked through triple l last year alone is massive. The data doesn't lie. There's more and more intent there, and there's more and more ways for our brands to win there. Yes. It's a new frontier, but also there's plenty of opportunity there to win. And then last is channels. SMS capturing additional wallet share from those high intent customers. The brands that are performing the best at that high end, that 5% those 5% brands are really driving the best results. They're making sure that they're showing up not just in the inbox, not just with automations, but also different channels like SMS. Because those brands are definitely much further along in that buying journey as well as have a much higher intent and the opportunity to keep coming back, and you can retain them longer with SMS messages in that channel as well. So that's it from Omnisend. Again, we help great online stores and marketers sell more. We do have a discount. If anybody's interested, we do free migrations. We we have a triple l discount here. And then since you have been asking for everybody's email address, my email is just marty at omnisent. I'll make sure it's in the comments as well. Amazing. Thank you so much, Marty. There are a few questions for you in the chat. So if you have. a moment, if. you can go through those, that would be awesome. You, got, it. if you wanna put that discount and your contact info in the chat, I think that would be appreciated by some of the people here today. go now. Thank you so much. Awesome. Thank you so much. Alright, guys. Before we move on to our next presenter, I I I think this is a great opportunity for everyone, you know, to connect with the people who are actually in the chat. We can all learn from each other here. So if you guys are interested, for our attendees today, please feel free to put your LinkedIn in the chat, connect with a few of the other people in the space who are also here on this webinar because I think there is a lot of value to that too. I will put mine as well. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. Alright. Now without further ado, we have Shirley Dang from Accent by Applovin. Shirley, it was so nice to see you last month, though it wasn't long enough. And she is here with one of our amazing brand speakers, Matt Fay, who's from Portland Leather Goods. Welcome. Welcome to both of you. Now I will let both of you take it away. Hi. Hi, everyone. I'm Shirley from Axon by Applovin, where I work on our ecommerce growth platform on helping brands to drive increment in your customer acquisitions beyond the usual channels. I'm really excited to have Matt from partner Netagoods who's been an amazing, incredible partner and have seen strong results from using Axon. Hi, Matt. Hey, Shirley. Thanks for having me. Yep. Like Shirley said, I'm Maffei. I run growth acquisition and, retention here at Portland Leather Goods. Big emphasis on efficiency and profitability. So super excited to be here. Thank you. 2025 was a year when a lot of ecommerce brands, they were cautious with spend. Can you share what was happening for Portland other goods that gave you the confidence to start investing in Exxon? Yeah. For sure. So in '24, we were one of the first DTC brands on app originally AppLovin. Right? And small budgets, few credits to really test. But then as 2025 start rolling around, we started pushing more dollars there. We started seeing a lot a lot less overlap within triple whale between orders from, like, Axon and obviously, like, Meta. And so that gave us more confidence to continue to scale and put more dollars there. And then as q three rolled around q four, we we're very intentional about testing into it. So we knew and our team our growth team knew, hey. In November, December, let's go hard into Axon. How much can we truly spend and still see those that incremental reach? So we were super excited to see that in 2025 across, you know, pretty much just a couple campaigns within Axon. So test you. testing proved to be a critical feature of confidence for for us in 2025. What you just described is exactly what our brand saw in the data. So can you tell us a little bit more about what you're seeing? I know that you're also using to track our performance. sure. For sure. So, like, Axon for PLG is usually a the third highest spend out of all the platforms, you know, Meta, Google, Axon. Although, I think in November, it might have been number two ahead of Google. But when you compare, you know, against we're gonna compare it against Meta. And when you compare Axon against Meta, we saw, albeit, smaller volume of orders, but the LTV of those customers, you know, if you ran it from, like, a twenty twenty five cohort of customers, their LTVs were higher than Meta's. New customer, ROAS, actually was higher too during the, you know, the forty five days of, like, holiday, basically. So seeing that with Axon and then similar new customer CPAs, was really exciting for us and and, again, allowed us to be very confident that these are high quality, high intent customers who are gonna be around for twelve or twenty four months with the brand. So it was great. You touch on a lot of interesting things. You mentioned that, like, you started running Axon in 2024. What surprised you most? Like, was there anything that challenged you and challenged your original assumptions? Well okay. So, yeah, 2024. And I I feel like in 2024, the end cards weren't as big as a proponent of success on Axon. So as those months went by and you got into 2025 and, you know, working with the Axon reps because, you know, they're great to work within. Yeah. Yes. At Portland Leather, we are lucky to work with the team there versus kinda going it on our own. But, you know, finding that they what surprised me was those end cards became such a key part of, like, driving success and being able to mix and match the end cards, like, at scale with the video ads was was really surprising. A lot of fun to play with and build new ideas and really lean into, like app loving is games And having end cards that kind of relate to what the platform is proved to be, like, extremely beneficial. And it's exciting to see, and we're trying to scale that idea even further into '26. I'm glad you mentioned that. I'm going to do a quick slide sharing. Love it. Let's do it. Can you all see? K. Yeah. Because what you just mentioned is exactly what we are seeing a lot. So for people who don't know, Axon by Applovin is actually a massive channel that drives a lot of scale for our advertisers' need. Under the hood, we reach over a billion daily active users globally through mobile apps. And unlike traditional social feed, our ads are not quickly scroll past with little lasting impact. Quite a contrary, each impression on Axon last at least ten seconds with an average of thirty to thirty five seconds, combining video, interactive experience that is the end card that Matt mentioned a lot just now and even catalog style format in a single placement. So this really makes Axon a great way to educate your core audience on your product. Seems each brand can tell a really comprehensive story from the whole three key elements. That combination is why the channel drives such strong new customer quality. So now, Matt, let's talk about 2026. As we are now in 2026, look ahead. What do you think that ecommerce brands should still like, they are still underinvesting or they are missing opportunities when it comes to growth medium strategy. Yeah. And, you know, this is coming from the perspective of a brand that has the benefit of spending having really good return customer lifetime value. So, like, we can lean into new customer acquisition very heavily, and Axon has obviously done an incredible job of, like, flipping the switch in late q four to really look at prospecting with, like, a very hard lens. And so I think for 2026, when you think about diversifying your channels, your paid channels, it's it's very possible to to find demand even at, like, small budgets on App 11 because I think, again, those customers are so high intent that they're worth, like, even a slightly higher cost to acquire, and and we saw that. And so I think if you if you get the opportunity as well, test into it, you know, spend forty five, sixty days testing into it, and especially, like, in q one, q two. And then when you get to those tempo moments, you're gonna have the opportunity to to be extremely confident like we were and actually say, yeah. The the net new reach here is incredible, and these aren't just, like, one off customers. So I think diversity diversifying your channels is is a big play for 2026, and I think we saw that in the last half of 2025 with a lot of brands. So Any key lessons or learnings that you wanna share with the audience here? every single video you have on your meta ads, just put them in the old Axon campaign. Right? I I know it's not a lot of those videos aren't made for AppLoving, but but the the algorithm within AppLoving, I think, does a fantastic job of engagement and holding the customers to to the point where those videos end up working really well. So from Portland Leather standpoint, we actually haven't yet in the year and a half on AppLovin made AppLovin specific videos. We've made AppLovin specific end cards. So, again, we've seen a lot of success just recycling Medi Creative. So I think anybody can do it, basically. Thank you. What matters share really reflects what we are seeing across brands and the ones winning in 2026 who believe are the brands that they are testing constantly. They test early, they diversify intentionally and invest in channels that drive incremental growth, not just short term efficiency. Thank you, Matt, so much, and thanks everyone for joining us. Thanks, Shirley. Thanks, triple l. Thank you both so much. Really appreciate that. Awesome. Well, I wanna just thank everyone for joining today, for being here part of our webinar. As a reminder, we're gonna be sending out the recording shortly. So if you missed bits and pieces or if you just wanna rewatch some of the parts, you will get that sent to your email inbox soon. And, of course, as a huge thank you to all of our speakers, we are so grateful for your time and insights today. We hope everyone walked away with something valuable that helps you make confident decisions for the year ahead. And thanks again for being here, and we will see you guys next time.