Week 6 - Amazon’s ecommerce reset: AI steals the funnel, store closures, and 2026 growth plays

Welcome to The Checkout Point. Your Quick dive into This week's Ecommerce buzz With me, Alex, powered by Blikket. These 20 minutes pack The latest trends, news And insights. Letss navigate The digital marketplace together. Ready? Letss Go. All Right. Welcome back to The Checkout Point, Where Your cart Is Full And Your margins hopefully aren't empty. Hopefully. Hey, Max, This week feels Like a shareholder letter And a therapy session rolled into One. Yeah, Because Amazon Just had a rough, rough week. SACs bouncing, Stores closing, 160000 people cut, And Itss a giant warning label For anyone over-dependent On marketplaces. Ivee seen This play out. A friend Of mine had a hero SKU suppressed by Amazon algorithm One day, And Their Revenue fell off a cliff. They thought They had a business, But It was really Just 70% Of sales From One gatekeeper. Exactly. If more than 40% Of Your Revenue Is tied up In One gatekeeper, You Do Not control Your own PLL. I learned That At scale. Whoever controls The plumbing controls The margins. So Weree treating Amazon as powerful But risky, while You actually harden Your own channels And Checkout. Translation? Stop building Your house On rented land And Then being shocked when The landlord raises The rent. Mm-hmm. And Then Weree getting into AI Basically nuking The traditional Funnel. No more awareness, consideration, retargeting flow. Just One intent-driven Buy It Or Dontt. Right. So Shopifyss betting Big On AI Product Intelligence And will break down What You actually need to Do Now. Train Your Product data, write For machines, And rethink CRO when The buyer Is an agent, Not a person doom-scrolling PDPs. Spent years optimizing For human eyeballs. This Is Totally Different. And Imm Going to Keep dragging It back to ROI, Because If Your AI stack doesn't move contribution margin, Itss Just expensive theater. Ivee seen enough optimization playgrounds to know better. Then Welll Hit The online First trend. Wallbirds, sacks And friends, closing Stores, And What That really does to CAC, returns, And Brand equity when Your Store associate Is Now a chatbot And a returns portal. Returns coordination, Fit guidance, The stuff I used to obsess over, Thatss Now Your tech stacks problem. And Welll close With a 2026 Growth Playbook. Email, Influencers, PPC, What to double down On, What to cut, And The handful Of KPIs You should obsess over So You grow without setting Your margins On fire. So grab Your dashboards, grab Your coffee, And maybe grab a pen Because This One hits close to home For anyone betting The farm On One channel. And maybe grab a resume If Youree over-indexed On One marketplace. Ivee watched That situation play out before, And The margin story never ends Well. Too real. Alright, Letss get into It, starting With Big Retail Moves And why Amazonss bad week should change How You think about distribution. We want to hear From You. Submit questions via The web form In The description Or Give us a call At 747-293-4612 And leave Your question. Dontt be shy, our AI assistant makes It Super Easy. Okay, So Amazon Just had a weirdly rough week, And If Youree over-leveraged On One marketplace, Youree sweating through It With them. Yeah, This Is Not business-as-usual cost-cutting. Amazon Is stress-testing Their own infrastructure. And any Brand over-leveraged On That platform, Theyree running The Same test On Your PLL Right Now. Exactly. Saks shuts down Their Ecommerce partnership, Amazon closes Fresh And Go Stores, And Then 160000 corporate layoffs On top. If Youree an Ecommerce manager, Youree listening to That? Youree Not thinking, Oh, sad For Amazon. Youree thinking cold. How exposed am I? Whatss My real margin If That platform changes The rules overnight? Because They will. Right. Youree opening Your channel mix report In a cold sweat, Which, trust me, Ivee watched happen. Letss Start With Saks. That breakup says a lot about marketplace versus owned channels. Yeah. Saks Basically said, Cool experiment. Weree out. To me, That screams, high-end Brand realizes Amazon doesn't Give them enough control over experience, data, Or margin. And On Amazon, You rent traffic. You Dontt own The relationship. You Dontt own The data. You Dontt own The customer. The algorithm Is Your real customer. Exactly. If The algorithm only cares about click-through And unit economics, Thatss fine. Until The unit economics flip And Your SKU gets buried. Then Youree renting traffic You can't control. I watched brands chase Amazon bump Revenue, Then freak out when 60-70% Of Their online sales Were From One marketplace. That dependency Is real, And finance teams miss It Until Itss Too late. Dependency. The operational risk That Most CFOs Completely miss Until The Revenue cliff. And by Then, Itss Too late to fix The DTC site Thatss been a brochure. I had a client killing It On Amazon. One policy change. Overnight, Their hero SKU Got suppressed. Revenue off a cliff. Their DTC site? Basically a brochure With 2% conversion while Amazon was At 18-20%. Thatss The trap. Whoever owns The plumbing owns The margin. Thatss Not philosophy. I learned That The hard way At Amazon And Walmart. If all Your pipes Run through One platform, They set The rules And The rates. And Saks Is Basically saying, Wedd rather own our pipes. At least own The premium customer journey. Their shopper wants curation And service. Amazon Is Price And speed. Completely Different unit economics. Completely Different margin profiles. Right. Amazon Is get It tomorrow. Saks Is This should feel Like a champagne cart, Not a cardboard box. Exactly. If a luxury Brand can't justify The trade-off, extra reach vs losing margin control And positioning, Thatss a bright signal. Mid-market brands should be paying very close attention. If Saks can Walk away From Amazon demand, You can At least diversify. And honestly, If They won't, You should. So Letss connect That to The other shoe-dropping. Fresh And Go Closures Plus 160000 layoffs. What does That tell You? Amazon Is pruning experiments That Dontt Hit scale economics fast enough. Theyree consolidating around What throws off cash Or has huge strategic leverage. Thatss ruthless, But Thatss also The Right question to Ask about Your own channels. This isn't, Weree dying. This Is, Weree ruthless. Theyree asking every unit, Is This a moat Or Is This draining cash? Thatss The Right operational question. Most brands never Ask It about Their own channels. And If Youree a Brand, That should be scary. The experiment Youree betting Your PLL On can vanish when The spreadsheet says No. If Amazon will Shut Its own Stores, Stores They own, They will absolutely kill Your pilot The moment The KPIs Dontt justify The infrastructure. Thatss Not personal. Thatss ops. And Those 160000 corporate roles? Thatss Less human support, more automation, more self-serve dashboard. Good luck. Until something breaks And suddenly Your entire PLL Is tied to One platform That Just decided Your unit economics Dontt matter anymore. So If Youree running Ecommerce For a Mid-market Brand, Where Do You double down? Where Do You Pull back? Dontt double down On Amazon as a sales channel, But Pull back On Amazon as Your strategy. Those Are Two Totally Different ROI profiles. Say more. Treat Amazon as paid distribution. Aggressively optimize Content, ads, reviews, But invest hard In assets You own. Email, SMS, first-party data. Idd also diversify Checkout, Not Just channels. So Your DT Checkout, Your payment options, Your wallet integration, They all need to compete With Amazonss one-click. Thatss The infrastructure investment. So many brands have One functional Checkout And Then Amazon as The Easy button. If Amazon sneezes, They catch pneumonia. Yeah. Idd invest In multiple payment options, one-click wallets, regional methods, maybe social Checkout. Reduce friction outside Amazon. Because If Your DT conversion Is limping At 2% And Amazonss running 18-20%, The CFO will always push You back to Amazon. Then Youree locked In. Exactly. I kept seeing sites Where Amazon was At 18-20% conversion And The Brand site was limping At 2%. Of course finance wants You On Amazon, But Thatss a fixable gap If You actually invest In It. But Thatss fixable. Ivee done This work. Itss Not glamorous. Better Product pages. Faster Checkout. Clearer shipping. But It Moves The needle On KPIs That actually matter. Totally. Better Product pages. Faster Checkout. Clearer shipping. Itss boring work, But Itss What Lets You shift 10 points Of mix off Amazon without killing Revenue. If I Were In The seat, My 90-day play would be 1. Map Your dependency cold. Channel mix. Margin by channel. Risk scenarios. 2. Selflessly fix DT conversion And retention. Thatss The ROI work That sticks. And 3. And 3. Stress test At least One meaningful New channel. TikTok Shop. Retail partners. Wholesale With real data sharing. Just Dontt Let One monolith own Your fate again. And Keep an eye On Discovery shifting. Because The next Big risk Is That Your channel isn't Amazon anymore. Itss someone's AI assistant deciding What You Buy. Yeah. Itss about to Go From Amazon owns The plumbing to AI owns The recommendation. Which Is Exactly Where Weree headed. How AI Is rewriting Product Discovery. And What That means For Your CRO. If Youree wondering How to actually show up when The buyer Is an algorithm instead Of a person, stick around. Weree breaking down Shopifyss AI push. What actually Moves ROI. And Whatss Just shiny software bloat? And Thatss coming up next On The Checkout Point. If Amazonss plumbing Is shifting, AI Is Basically rewriting The entire blueprint. The Funnel We all grew up With, top, mid, bottom, Itss kind Of gone. And honestly, Ivee been waiting years to See something This fundamentally Different. So What does No Funnel actually mean For a Brand operator? Or more directly, Where Do You lose control? Imagine Imm cooking, hands covered In flour, And I Say, Order olive oil. My AI doesn't Go to a homepage, search, filter. It hits Product databases, reviews, Price, delivery time, My past orders, Then Just buys. No friction. No thinking. So Theress No ad, No Product page, No cart session In The classic sense. Exactly. So Discovery, comparison, And conversion all collapse into One intent. The Funnel Is Basically a single API call. So For brands, Heress The problem. When That API call happens, whose Product does The AI pick? Because That determines visibility And margin. Yep. And Thatss Where Product Intelligence kicks In. The AI Is ranking. Your title, Good attributes, ingredients, size, sustainability tags, warranty. Welll arm merchants With This Intelligence So Youree Not fully At The mercy Of Amazon-style algorithms. Smart move. Letss Talk about That. Shopifyss GMV Is still climbing. And Theyree Not owning demand Like a marketplace. Theyree arming The rebels. Youvee Got Shopify Magic For Content, AI search, recommendations, soon agent integrations. Theyree turning every small Brand into a mini-data company, without needing a data science team. Thatss The play. But From a PLL view, Is This actually moving Revenue Or Is It Just another SaaS tax? Because Ivee seen plenty Of AI Tools That look Great In The demo And Do nothing to Your KPIs. Fair question. The lifts That matter. Better On-site search, better recommendations, And cleaner catalogs That play nicely With AIs. Google, assistants, comparison engines. Give me real numbers. What actually Moves On The PLL? Thatss The only metric I trust. On-site AI search, when implemented Well, Ivee seen 10-20% higher conversion From searchers. That group Is already high-intent And Clean data Just gets out Of The way. Thatss real. Thatss The conversion I care about. Then Product feeds, properly enriched, attributes, tags, descriptions, tuned For machines. You See more impressions And better match quality In shopping ads And AI surfaces. So The ROI Is Less, wow, Magic AI. Or We finally stopped poisoning every channel With garbage data. Illl take That trade. Exactly. Alright. Concrete scenario. Imm running a 20 million DTC Brand On Shopify. Whatss My 90-day Playbook? Three Things. 1. Product metadata. 2. Content For machines. 3. Rethink CRO For non-human buyers. That Third One Is Where My whole career finally pays off. Letss Go. Whatss First? 1. Metadata. Pull Your catalog into a spreadsheet. For every SKU, You need size, material, Use cases, problem solved, who Itss For, care instructions, guarantees. Structured, Not buried In a paragraph. I spent years hunting down This exact garbage data situation. So Nice summer dress becomes linen, machine washable, petite-friendly, under 2 pounds, ships In 2 days. Thatss machine-readable data The algorithm actually understands. Yes, Thatss What The AI can actually rank. Step 2. Content For machines. Keep Your titles, Bullets, And descriptions Clear And factual. Less poetry, more clarity. Use The Same language Your customers Use In reviews And queries. Itss conversion copy That doubles as training data. Feed The algorithm Your best stuff. Got It. Third was CRO For non-human buyers, Which Is Where My whole career comes In handy, Right? Because The optimization rules Just changed. This Is Where… They cares about being Right every single time. No margin For error. Exactly. Is inventory accurate? Are shipping times reliable? Is return policy Clear? Are There hidden fees? Your conversion rate With AI buyers Is really a reliability score. No room For surprises. So If Your data's inconsistent, weights off, missing variants, weird pricing, The AI downranks Or skips You. And nobody ever sees That On a dashboard. Thatss The operational risk. Right. Feed New KPIs, catalog error rate, feed rejection rate, percentage Of SKUs With complete attributes, percentage Of orders meeting promised ship times. Now Those Are metrics I can obsess over. Ivee seen plenty Of That movie. Last question. Whatss The red flag That an AI tool Is Just expensive theater? If The pitch Is, Welll automate everything, But They can't map to a specific metric – conversion rate From search, support handle time, catalog completeness – Thatss when I Run. Thatss The pattern I caught over And over In My CRO days. Or If onboarding takes 3 months Of consultants And You still Dontt have a Clear metric, Thatss when I check out. Yeah, For Most brands, If You can't See impact In 60 days, Itss probably Not The Right tool Right Now. Lifess Too short For vaporware. So AI collapse The Funnel, Shopifyss arming merchants instead Of hoarding demand, And brands need to Clean Their data house before chasing shiny agents. Thatss The operational hierarchy. Exactly. And Once Your digital shelves Are In Order, The next Big question Is, What happens when You double down On Ecommerce And Pull back From Stores? After The break, Welll Talk about brands Like Allbirds And Saks closing Stores, What That does to Your CAC, returns, And margins. So We Just spent a whole SEGMENT On AI collapsing The Funnel into One Big API call. And meanwhile, In The real world, people Are literally turning off The lights In Their Stores. Allbirds, Saks Global, This whole, Cool, Weree Ecommerce Now move. Imm asking, show me The math. Yeah, Exactly. From My CRO days, I saw This math all The time. Rent feels painful Until You See What It was actually buying You. And I mean actually buying. Brand signal, Discovery, friction-free returns. It all added up. Exactly. And From a PLL view, I get The seduction. Those leases Are brutal. But when Allbirds shuts Most Stores, Or Saks closes under performers, Itss Not Just cost-cutting. Youree ripping out entire margin drivers. Thatss The part Most CFOs miss. Right. Those Stores Were doing a ton Of invisible work. Totally. Stores aren't Just for-wall profit. Theyree customer acquisition, fitting room, returns hub, VIP service. And when You close them, On paper, unprofitable, What You actually Do Is externalize Those costs. Tack online spikes, return spike, logistics blow up. I watch This play out At scale. Because Now every single New customer has to come through Meta, Google, Or Some AI surface instead Of strolling past Your window. Yeah, And You lose The try-it-on, ask-a-human moment. Thatss a margin killer. With Allbirds, people went barefoot, tested sizes, walked. Online only? Youree shipping Three pairs And getting Two back. That spread kills Your unit economics fast. So Your we-saved-on-rent quickly becomes Weree bleeding-on-return-shipping-and-warehouse-labor. Which real Talk, I caught happening At Like Three Different clients In a row. Same pattern. Store close, CAC spikes, Then They panic spend On media. Exactly. Plus, Brand signal. Those flagship Stores In New York, LA, They scream, Weree a real Brand. Shut them down, And suddenly Youree competing On data Like every other Shopify Shop. Different game, lower positioning power. And In The AI world, Where The buyer Is Some assistant scraping Product data, Those real-world touchpoints Were literally One Of The few moats You had left. Once You kill The Store, That moat's gone. So when leadership says, Weree Going online First, My First question isn't why, Itss show me The channel mix And CAC model. How does acquisition Cost shift? Whatss The conversion without try-on? How does That affect Your unit economics by channel? And The answer Is usually, Welll figure It out After We close The Store. Yeah, Welll throw more money At performance marketing. Thatss Not strategy. Thatss hoping math works differently For You than everyone else. So Letss Talk about doing online First, Well. Because I Dontt think Going heavier On Ecommerce Is wrong. Itss Just, And I can't stress This enough, You can't cut Stores And Keep The Same crappy tech stack. Right. You need tooling That replaces Some Of What The Store did. Fit help. Guided selling. Better post-purchase. Exactly. So Two Things I Like From The latest batch Of Tools That dropped This week. One Is all The AI Fit And sizing layers That Are finally usable. And Ivee been waiting For these, honestly. Theress a couple Of January 28 releases That plug into Your PDP, read Your reviews And returns data, And Basically Say, Most people Like You kept size 955, Not 9. Thatss huge For shoes, apparel, all The stuff That used to rely On fitting rooms. Yeah. And It speaks both to humans And AI buyers. The widget helps The shopper, But The Structured size Fit data It generates becomes part Of That Product metadata, fuel For The algorithms. Youree feeding them Your best stuff. So Youree essentially rebuilding The fitting room In data form. Exactly. And Then The second bucket Is returns And logistics automation. There Were a couple Of New returns orchestration Tools announced end Of month. Self-service portals That push exchanges, Store credit, smart routing to The Right warehouse Or 3pl. I Like Those Because From a margin view, Theyree doing Three critical Things, lowering support tickets, nudging exchanges over refunds, Which Is a huge unit economics win And cutting inbound shipping waste. Thatss ROI You can actually measure. And If Youvee Just Shut Stores, That portal Is The New customer service desk. Yeah. And It better Not feel Like a DMV form. Totally. This Is Where My CRO brain kicks In. And I mean, really kicks In. I spent years obsessing over Checkout flows, But If Youree online only, Your real optimize me pages Are Product detail, size And guidance, And That returns flow. Thatss Where The conversion actually lives Now. Let me push You On That though. Tools aren't free. If You Just freed up a million In rent savings, How much Is actually Going into This stack versus The CFO pocketing The win as a PLL One time? Because Ivee seen That movie At scale And The math doesn't age Well. Good question. Idd literally earmark a percentage Of The rent savings. Like If You freed up a million bucks, commit, And I mean commit, Say 20-30% directly into better PDP, AI Fit And returns automation, Non-negotiable line item. Dontt Let The CFO negotiate This One away. So Youree saying Dontt Let CFO math Treat Store Closures as pure Cost savings. You have to rebuild Those experiences, Which costs money. Yeah. Sorry, CFOs. I Say This From experience. If You Dontt rebuild Those experiences digitally, The savings come back to bite You as higher CAC And churn. Imm With You. And Idd add One operator thing I learned At Walmart running This At scale. Gale. Model The phantom Store halo effect. Pull Your geodata. Markets Where You kept a Store versus Where You Shut It. If organic traffic And branded search cratered In The closed markets, Your Ecommerce win Is actually a loss You haven't measured yet. Thatss such a Good call. You can literally See It In The geodata. And Thatss The kind Of analysis That actually matters when everyone else Is Just chasing The headline savings number. Exactly. If Youree closing Stores, Treat It Like a controlled test With proper rigor, Not a mandate. Stagger Closures by market, Track CAC, returns, NPS, Even Influencer lift In Your no-store zones. Thatss How You See What Youree actually trading away, And Most brands skip That entirely. Because If You cut offline And Dontt adjust Your online Growth Playbook, you'll Just end up paying Influencers In Meta to Do The awareness The mall used to Do For free. Which Is The Perfect setup For Where Weree Going next. Yeah, Letss get into It. In The next SEGMENT, Welll Talk about How You actually grow profitably In 2026, Email, Influencers, PPC, when The Funnel Is AI-shaped, And maybe Your Stores Are gone. And Welll Give You Some hard rules Of thumb, So You can sanity check Your CAC, LTV ratios, And Where Those Ecommerce dollars should actually Go This quarter, especially when Your Store halo's gone. Alright, Quick break, Then Welll jump into The Growth Playbook. Okay, So If The world Is Going more online And more AI-driven, How Do You actually grow without torching Your margins? Because Ivee seen That movie over And over. Yeah, Because Those we-closed-stores-and-saved-money decks, Ivee seen This movie So many times. On The PLL, It doesn't disappear. It Just moved into CAC And returns. And nobody budgeted For It. Exactly. So Letss Hit The Playbook. Three levers. Email, Influencers, And Smarter PPC. Super tactical. Cool. Start With Email. Because Thatss still The cheapest Revenue you'll ever print. And Most brands Are still treating It Like a broadcast channel. Totally. 2026 Email trend number One. Segmentation Is Now behavior Plus identity Plus AI intent. Not Just engaged list. And honestly, This Is The stuff Ivee been wanting to See become mainstream For years. So Like, Not Just women's list, But bought denim twice, Just viewed outerwear, high return risk, That level? Yes. And Heress The thing. Your AI stack actually helps. Use On-site behavior And Product data to auto-build segments. Then automate flows around That. Youree feeding The algorithm Your best stuff. Give me a Simple Rule. If I only fix One thing In Email This quarter, What Is It? Thinking. Replace blast campaigns With 5-7 core automations. Welcome, Browse Abandon, Cart, Post Purchase, Winback, VIP, And Product Education. Right. Because Those 5 Or 6 flows usually drive 40-60% Of Revenue From Like 10-20% Of Your sends. Itss Where The real ROI lives. And honestly, Most people ignore It. Yup. And tie It into AI. Your emails should feed Clean Product data to agents. Clear titles, specs, Use cases. Basically Content That works For machines, Not Just cute copy only humans understand. So, subject line For humans, body Content Structured For machines. Exactly. Bullets, comparison tables, Clear benefits mapped to attributes. Itss Basically conversion copy That doubles as training data. Okay, Quick KPI check. For 2026 Email, Imm watching Revenue per recipient And flow coverage. Not Open rate. Open rate doesn't pay rent. 100%. And flow coverage, What percent Of Your orders touched At least One automation In The journey. Thatss The metric That actually matters. Nice. Letss Talk Influencers. Because Imm watching brands light serious money On fire There. Oh Yeah? Influencer pricing In 2026 Is wild. But The framework Is Simple. CPM, CAC, And LTV. Walk It. First, ignore follower count. Ask, Whatss The realistic reach And click through? Then back into an implied CAC. So If an Influencer wants 10,000, Youree running The math backward. I need 200 customers At 500 CAC to break Even. Simple. But Most people skip That math entirely. Exactly. Then sanity check. Can This person actually drive 200 New customers? Based On past case studies, Not vibes. I spent years catching This exact pattern. Budget That looked Good On a deck But went nowhere. And I want That In writing. Heress What We did For Brand X. Code used. Unit sold. Payback window. If They can't show That, Price drops. Thatss The conversation. I spent years catching Exactly This. Deals That looked Good On The deck. Zero margin math underneath. Or You structure It hybrid. Small flat fee, Plus rev Share Or CPA. Share risk. Heress My hard Rule. If You Dontt have proper attribution On Influencer, unique codes, trackable links, post-purchase survey, Youree Not allowed to call It profitable. Full Stop. Thatss a pattern I caught constantly In My Ecommerce days. Wins That Were Just noise masking us success. Yes. How did You hear about us? With Influencer as an explicit option. Cheap But powerful. And revisit Those cohorts quarterly. Do customers acquired via Influencers actually repeat? If LTV Is trash, Cheap CAC Is fiction, Youree telling yourself. Great Point. Some creators drive Super loyal repeat buyers. Others Just coupon hunters who never come back. LTV tells The whole story. Okay, PPC. Give me The 2026 headline. Rising CPCs, fuzzier attribution, But still Non-negotiable. You Just have to Treat It Like a lab. Structured hypothesis, Not a slot machine. Simple rules Of thumb? Rule 1. Know Your blended guardrail. If Your gross margin Is 60%, Your all-in CAC probably can't be over 30-35% Of AOV long term. Thatss Unit Economics 101, And Ivee seen Too many people skip It. So If AOV Is 100, I Start getting nervous above 30-35 CAC. Thatss Where The margin math gets tight real fast. Yup. Rule 2. Separate learning budget From scaling budget. At least 10-20% Of spend goes to Structured tests. This Is Where The data actually lives. Structured meaning One variable At a time. New audience, New creative, Or New landing page. Not all Three At Once In chaos. I learned That The hard way And It Cost a lot Of money before I understood why clarity In testing actually drives margins. Exactly. And Rule 3. Optimize landing pages hard. Most people try to fix PPC problems With more targeting. They should fix conversion. Itss CRO 101, And It still catches people off guard. Give One CRO move. Easy One. For AI-driven traffic, push clarity over persuasion. Clean spec tables, shipping And returns above The fold, trust indicators, And One primary CTA. The hero image doesn't matter If an AI Is doing The buying. And measure The Funnel. Click to Product view. Product view to add to cart. Add to cart to purchase. If One Step craters, Thatss Your actual problem. Most people Keep throwing creative At conversion issues That Are actually Checkout friction. Right. If add to cart Is strong But Checkout Is weak, Thatss a payments Or friction issue, Not a creative problem. I spent years optimizing Checkout flows. This Is Where The money actually hides. Quick attribution sanity Rule In 2026. Stop obsessing over Last click. Track MER. Total Revenue divided by total marketing spend. Thatss The only number That matters For real. Yeah. If MER Is improving while channel level looks messy, Dontt panic. The system Is working. Okay. Letss land This With a checklist. Growth In an AI, online-heavy world. Alright. Rapid fire. Things to measure. Go. Email. Revenue per recipient And percent Of orders touching a flow. Influencer. CAC by creator And 90-day LTV by creator. PPC. Blended CAC vs AOV, MER, And conversion rate by landing page. Where to invest This quarter. 1. Build Or fix Your automation flows. Thatss Non-negotiable. 2. Work With 3-5 Influencers And Treat them Like partners, Not one-offs. 3. Dedicate At least 10% Of ad spend to Structured tests. Idd add invest In Product data cleanliness. Itss Not glamorous, But It helps Email, PPC, And AI agents all At Once. Thatss infrastructure ROI. Love That. And One thing to Stop doing. Stop chasing vanity metrics. No more we-got-2-million-views-without-payback math. Thatss Just expensive theater. And Itss The fastest way to blow through a quarterly budget With nothing to show On The PNL. Yeah. If It doesn't move Revenue, margin, Or learning, Itss a distraction. So The takeaway? In 2026, Growth isn't about louder, Itss about Smarter. Every channel tied back to CAC, LTV, And Clean data. Couldntt Say It better. Thatss Your Playbook. Run The tests, watch The KPIs, And Keep The margins intact. Simple as That. And If Youree closing Stores, remember, Those rent dollars better be funding This Playbook, Not disappearing into The ad black hole. Dontt Let The CFO escape That math. Amen. Alright, Welll leave It There. Talk soon, everyone. Alright, I think Thatss our Checkout line For today. Yeah, If You take One thing away, Itss This. Treat Amazon as a powerful channel, Not Your entire business model. Ivee watched enough brands get blindsided when The channel changes Its mind. Right. That Sachs, Cool experiment, Weree out moment. I watched That exact pattern repeat With Three Different clients back In My CRO days. Thatss Your warning label On marketplace dependency. Exactly. If Amazon will Shut Its own Stores, it'll Shut Your pilot. Guardrails, people. Revenue caps. DTC Checkout. Owned data. Whoever controls The plumbing, controls The margins. Frame It Like, How Do I get Amazon-level conversion On My own site without giving Jeff My margins? Seriously, That was The homework I used to Give every client obsessing over Their Funnel. And while Youree obsessing over Your JSON For AI buyers, optimize Your podcast queue, Too. Hit subscribe. Same principle. Quality inputs, better outputs. Yeah, follow The Checkout Point, drop a Quick review, And Share This With That friend who still thinks The Funnel hasn't collapsed. Seriously, thank You For hanging out With us. Your time And attention, Those Are The real KPIs. Couldntt resist The KPI line, huh, Rachel? I mean, You know me. Never miss a chance to get nerdy On The data. Alright, Welll be back next week With more ways to grow without nuking Your margins. Until Then, Keep Your data Clean, Your margins healthy, And Your Checkout fast. Thatss The Playbook. See You next time On The Checkout Point.