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In this newsletter, you’ll find:
🧪 An experiment brief for your black friday offer
🛍️ TikTok wants to turn discovery into a full shopping journey
🥳 Tweet of the day
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🧪 An experiment brief for your black friday offer
On October 2, Shopify added discounts to Rollouts, its tool for scheduling and testing store changes. Merchants can now “test discounts with a share of buyers” before committing a whole store to one offer.
There’s a catch buried in the documentation. Partial-traffic tests apply only to the Online Store. At 100%, a discount reaches every sales channel.
Here’s a brief you can copy.
Question
Which Black Friday structure earns more profit per visitor: 20% off sitewide, or $25 off orders over $100?
Hypothesis
The threshold offer lifts average order value enough to beat 20% off on profit, while conversion drops no more than 10%. That tolerance is my judgment, so set your own before launch.
Setup
Control: 20% off sitewide, shown to 80% of Online Store visitors.
Variant: $25 off $100, shown to 20%.
Run for 10 to 14 days in October, so the winner is known before November.
Change nothing else in the store during the test, including theme, prices and shipping thresholds.
Guardrails
Channel leaks. POS, marketplaces and any other channel won’t see the split. Analyze Online Store orders only.
Code leaks. Use automatic discounts instead of codes. Codes get shared on coupon sites and picked up by browser extensions, which pulls control shoppers into the variant.
Traffic mix. Email and SMS clicks often arrive carrying codes from past campaigns. Tag them and report them separately, or the result reflects your list instead of your offer.
Primary metric
Gross profit per visitor: revenue, minus product cost, discount and shipping, divided by visitors in each group.
Secondary metrics
Conversion rate
Average order value
Share of orders landing just over $100, which shows whether the threshold is pulling baskets up
If the variant wins on profit per visitor and conversion stays within tolerance, roll it out at 100% for Black Friday.
If it wins on order value but loses on profit, raise the threshold to $120 and test again.
If it loses on both, keep the sitewide offer and test the percentage instead, such as 15% against 20%.
Agree in advance that if the variant’s conversion falls more than 25% below control after 48 hours, you end it early.
Two weeks of clean data in October beats guessing in November. Set up the Rollout, write the decision rule in the ticket and press start.
Together with Insense
Your BFCM Creator Calendar is Already Mapped
Still sourcing creators when your Black Friday ads should be running? Every delay leaves less time to test what actually sells before your biggest spending weeks.
Insense’s free BFCM + Q5 Creator Marketing Playbook gives marketers a week-by-week plan from September through January, so every creator campaign starts with a clear deadline and purpose.
Inside, you’ll find:
A week-by-week August-to-January calendar showing when to secure permissions, test content, scale winning creators, and move into Q5.
A practical creator scorecard using conversions, engagement quality, and reliability, so November budgets back proven performers over follower counts.
Q5 action plan covering licence extensions, January creative, and the recommended 10–15% budget reserve for the lower-cost post-holiday window.
You’ll also get benchmarks for creator-handle ads, modular UGC testing, live shopping, hook rates, and creative volume, helping your team set measurable targets before spending rises.
🛍️ TikTok wants to turn discovery into a full shopping journey
TikTok unveiled a wave of advertising updates spanning AI shopping agents, lead generation, search ads, off-platform reach, and campaign automation, pushing advertisers from discovery through purchase in fewer steps.
The Breakdown:
Shopping Happens Inside TikTok - Buy Direct lets users purchase from brands without leaving the For You feed, while Shopping Assistant answers questions about sizing, shipping, availability, and products conversationally.
AI Starts Qualifying Leads - Agentic Leads talks with potential customers, captures information, and qualifies high-intent prospects through TikTok DMs or lead forms on advertisers’ websites.
Ads Move Beyond TikTok - The new TikTok Ad Network lets U.S. advertisers extend campaigns to nearly 400,000 apps, directly through TikTok Ads Manager with placement and brand-safety controls.
Campaigns Get More Automated - Smart+ automates search keywords and creative selection, while GMV Max will account for costs like affiliate commissions, coupons and referral fees when optimizing for ROI.
TikTok is building beyond an advertising feed. Shopping agents, one-click checkout, automated campaigns, and off-platform distribution could give marketers a more connected path from someone discovering a product to actually buying it.
🗝️ Tweet of the Day
🥳 Events
🔥 Why Google May Be Getting Credit for Customers AI Helped Win
October 15 | Virtual Event
A buyer can discover your brand in AI, convert through Google, and leave your attribution report telling the wrong story. Matt Hammel and Bain’s Zak Prauer show how to evaluate recommendation influence, spot what paid-channel metrics miss, and make a stronger case for AI search investment.
Can’t attend the session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.
🔥 What Changes When Creator Programs Scale From 5 to 5,000
October 21 | Online | Free Festival
Return on Influence Festival ’26 opens up the systems behind large creator programs, including how teams track ROI, improve partnerships, and avoid operational chaos as volume grows. Hear directly from leaders at Adobe, ŌURA, Edelman, Ogilvy, and more.
Can’t attend every session live? Register anyway, and you’ll get the recordings in 24 hours.
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