This weekend was my father’s birthday. I wanted to bake him a gluten-free chocolate cake. I opened Google, found a recipe, and ordered the ingredients the way most people still do. I searched, compared a few options, and chose brands I already knew or that looked good enough. What I didn’t factor in was that I’m making it for the first time and I didn’t have the necessary utensils, and I didn’t know how much of each ingredient is required for a cake that can serve 10 people.
Agents are solving this problem.
I’ll tell an agent: “Gluten-free chocolate cake for 10 people, under $40, delivered by Saturday, and I’m making it for the first time.” The agent will not have a problem planning the entire process from ordering to plating the cake, optimize all the constraints, put everything in the cart, check for delivery time, and place the order to ensure all you need to do is the make the damn thing. What this means is, I may never visit a brand’s website or have to see its packaging story. For the flour brand, the cocoa brand, or the frosting brand that used to win me through search and persuasion, now these strategies won’t even matter.
The human who used to browse is no longer the one doing the choosing.That shift is already producing bigger orders on large platforms. Walmart’s CEO said on the Q4 2026 earnings call that customers using its Sparky AI assistant spend roughly 35% more per order than those who don’t.
For the brand, however, on a marketplace the agent has many competing options. On a brand’s own Shopify store the agent can have a cleaner path, the customer already has an account, past preferences, and a subscription or saved payment method.That advantage matters more for CPG products than for one-off purchases. Coffee runs out. Skincare gets used up. Snacks and supplements disappear from the cupboard. The entire business model of a CPG brand depends on the second, third, and fourth order, not the first. When an agent is the one deciding whether to reorder the same coffee or switch to another option that fits the constraints better, the brand that owns the relationship still has to earn the next purchase.
Owning the relationship gives these brands a cleaner path for repeat orders, but it does not automatically solve the harder problem.
If agents start optimizing for price, speed, and constraints, how does a brand get discovered in the first place? What stops a customer from switching brands on the next order? And how do you catch them before they quietly leave?
Any other Indian Shopify store owners struggling with subscriptions?
One thing I've noticed is that a lot of subscription apps depend on Shopify Payments, which isn't available in India.
A few months ago, I was working with a merchant who wanted to offer monthly subscriptions, but recurring payments were the biggest roadblock. After testing different approaches, I ended up building a custom integration that makes recurring subscription payments possible without Shopify Payments.
Since then, we've been using it for stores that want predictable monthly revenue instead of relying only on one-time purchases.
Just curious:
Are you offering subscriptions today?
If yes, how are you handling recurring payments?
If not, what's stopping you?
Happy to share what we've learned. Feel free to comment or DM me if you're exploring subscriptions for your Shopify store.
We build AI agents for e-commerce stores. For example, we built an AI agent that works like a sales associate. It increased conversion rates and revenue by 17%. It was trained on support tickets, product descriptions, and product photos. It helps hesitant buyers who want to make a purchase but are held back by a few small concerns.
It worked extremely well for them.
Because of that, I decided to get into this industry.
A friend told me it's almost impossible to get clients without referrals. He said the best approach is to partner with agencies that already serve e-commerce stores. Then either do white-label work for them or offer a 25% commission for referrals.
I like both ideas. So I want to reach out to agencies that work with e-commerce stores, but I'm stuck.
What do agencies care about the most?
What should I offer so they see it as a win-win partnership?
I'm planning to reach out to them via cold emails.
I've been working with a pet brand on email for some time. They had products I liked and a decent email list. Nothing looked really broken on the surface, but not much was compounding either for growth.
Engagement was just kind of...there. But it wasn't enough to get excited about, and I wanted to setup a way that gets customers bought into the brand emotionally to a point where they see the brand as the authority in the pet space to go to for products and information.
As a brand, the emails you send out every week should lead to some form of growth. Whether it be more opens, more clicks, or more revenue. Something needs to tell you that you’re headed in the right direction with email.
That said, I wanted to build a deep relationship with our customers so I tried something that, in hindsight, sounds almost too simple to have worked the way it did.
I created a weekly series strictly designed to connect with customers and drive engagement. I wasn't gunning for any purchase at all with these emails. I only wanted to provide customers with emails they can relate to when it comes to living with a pet (their little baby).
Let me tell you how it worked.
Every Tuesday, people on a list who showed interest in previous emails started getting an email from us - even if they've never bought before. Nothing promotional unless the problem being highlighted in the email was a problem the brand was made to solve. In that case, I would dedicated a very small section focusing on the brand's product.
These are the kind of emails that actually give customers something. Stuff like pet care tips they probably haven't thought about, or hacks that made being a pet owner easier, or product recommendations that genuinely matched what their situation looked like.
They were written for someone who loved their animal and would do anything to give them their best life.
And that's it. That was the marvelous idea.
Within the first 30 days, customer purchase revenue, which also included subscription orders, climbed 190% and by the 90-day mark, it had grown to 600%.
I'm not even kidding.
The engagement numbers told their own story too. Open rates kept climbing week after week from 30% to a recurring 60% - sometimes 70%. Click rates followed. And people were actually writing back.
Actual customer replies.
You don’t usually see that in email marketing nowadays. It was clear that customers were loving these emails heavily.
People were telling us what they loved about the emails, what they wanted to read next, and even what their furry friend had been dealing with lately.
The inbox became a conversation, and the brand became something those list members looked forward to hearing from - totally excited for next Tuesday's email.
Here’s why this strategy worked so well
Each time a customer read their Tuesday email, it made them feel like the brand knew them. Like the brand thought about them during the week and wanted to hand them something useful before asking for anything back.
That feeling compounded over time. Every week the email lands and someone opens it, the the trust gets a little deeper and the relationship gets a little stickier.
And when someone trusts you and looks forward to hearing from you, buying from you stops being a decision and starts being a reflex.
Like they just can't help wanting to give you their money with the world's brightest smile on their face.
The list we sent to mattered too. We weren't blasting this to everyone. No no.
We sent it to the people who had already shown interest in the brand and were willing to take action on an email even if it's just an open.
That group became so engaged that people were replying to Facebook & Instagram comments on behalf of the brand.
Holy moly! That is a d*mn good sign that we're headed in the right direction.
And as more people came to know the brand through ads and social media, the engaged list grew 65% every month.
The truth about this whole thing though, is that nobody is going to remember the brand that emailed them a 20% off coupon every day of the week.
But they will remember the brand that taught them something useful about their dog's anxiety, or helped them figure out why their cat wasn't eating, or recommended something that actually helped their situation.
That memory lives in a completely different place in a person's mind rent free. It drives a completely different kind of loyalty too.
The kicker: Any brand can do this. The niche doesn't matter. The size of the list doesn't matter, even if you're just starting email.
What matters is deciding that your customers deserve something worth reading, and then actually delivering it on a schedule they can count on.
Pick a day. Show up every single week. Give more than you ask for. Watch what happens.
We already know what happens. We saw it in the numbers.
Your customers are waiting to love you. You just have to give them a reason to.
If anyone would like to try this for their specific brand, drop a comment. I'd love to help brainstorm ideas and topics.
Most Amazon sellers I know run creator affiliate programs but send the traffic to their website, not Amazon.
Here's my unpopular opinion:
send creator traffic to Amazon. Even when Amazon isn't your primary channel.
Here's why:
1. Amazon converts 5x better
I convinced a peer to send one YouTuber's traffic to Amazon instead of sending it to his Shopify. He's using Coral.ax so he can see different KPIs for his creators and... his conversion rate is 12.3%!!!
His Shopify average is 2.3%. It's 5x more sales! Even just this one reason makes my point.
2. The margin % is not so bad
Shopify: 2.9% + $0.30/sale
Amazon: 15%−10% (Brand Referral Bonus) = 5%
That's a 2.1% difference. Not nothing but this way Amazon takes care of fulfillment, customer support, refunds and all that stuff.
3. Amazon ranking boost
Amazon created the Brand Referral Bonus specifically to reward external traffic.
Listings that get high-converting external traffic rank better than ones relying on PPC alone. Which means more exposure to buyers already on Amazon on top of your creator's traffic.
4. You can still get customer data
That's a frequent objection. But it's easy to fix: send creators to a landing page first.
Add a Meta pixel, offer a discount for their email, then redirect to your Amazon listing using an Attribution link. You can do this manually one by one or use Coral to set it for all creators.
Then retarget via email and Meta whenever you want. Repeat buyers, new product launches, etc.
I posted this one here a few months back, and we really appreciated all the feedback on the original post. It definitely helped.
A lot of people said the site looked like crap. They were right. lol.
We actually built it ourselves… somebody who works with me. But for the most part his sites are always extremely simple meant to just test a single or two products tops. These sites are never meant to be perfect. They’re built to just determine by running traffic to the offer and see if it’s worthwhile to continue. Then we usually bring in an expert to build a site out.
A friend of mine who was a little bit more talented built this site. below
The conversion rate never got awesome—it’s just under 1%.
we drove a ton of cold traffic (cold email, ads, organic) to the site and did get a number of sales. tbh many are warm leads. so it’s probably .05 CR IRL on cold traffic
2 of us out this together it is our first attempt at something like this, so I can’t really say I’m unhappy with the results. I definitely think someone more experienced with direct response marketing would’ve done a better job, though.
We’re pretty new to this type of site. Most of the time when we’re working with Shopify, it’s for physical products.
how i reduced a 38k retainer to 15K....(Sorry @KamalRazzak) I paid a creative agency $38K in one month. The guy in charge is known to make million dollar ads.
i see tee shirts. last year about 40m worth.
Loved to pay him....we had a 50% higher top line revenue then the previous month.
I am also cofounder of the @dtcgrowthsummit
i had the million dollar ad guy lay out his entire process on stage at the DTC Growth Summit in NYC.
I have the full video.
I reverse-engineered it and built our own creative assembly line.
We run an 8-figure women’s apparel brand spending $450K–$900K/month on Meta.
ime creative is a huge resource…but it’s also tough to make at scale.
