If you’re using Google Ads, we’ve got some good news for you. Let us introduce you to Google Ads Transparency Center. Your new favorite tool to help you make more informed decisions about the ads you’re running.

In this article, we'll look closer at the Google Ads Transparency Center and explore how it works, its benefits, and how it can help you.

What is the Google Ads Transparency Center?

 is a tool that enables users to see the format of the ads, the advertisers behind them, and the exact ads customers see.

How does the Google Ads Transparency Center work?

The Google Ads Transparency Center works by collecting information about the ads that are served on Google Ads, YouTube, and partner websites. This information is then aggregated and made available to users through the Transparency Center website.

To access the Google Ads Transparency Center, simply go to the website and search for the advertiser, the keyword, or the product you're interested in. You can also filter the results by country, date range, and ad type.

What are the benefits of the Google Ads Transparency Center?

Advertisers can use the Ads Transparency Center to do two really important things.

, where advertisers and users can browse ads from brands in several fields, including politics, housing, employment, and credit. Ad details include the design and copy for all ad variations, the platforms where the ad is displayed, and when the ad was launched.

Aside from advertisers, consumers benefit too! Now they can also learn more about advertisers before deciding to make a purchase.

Who can benefit from the Google Ads Transparency Center?

This new tool is better for advertisers, consumers and regulators.

Marketers and advertisers: Marketers and advertisers can use the Google Ads Transparency Center to see what their competitors are doing and get insights into how to improve their own ad campaigns.

Consumers: Consumers can use the Google Ads Transparency Center to see who is behind the ads they see online and make more informed decisions about the products and services they choose to interact with.

Regulators and policymakers: Regulators and policymakers can use the Google Ads Transparency Center to monitor the advertising ecosystem and ensure that it is fair and transparent.

How can I use the Google Ads Transparency Center?

Google says that its Ads Transparency Center will be rolling out globally 'over the coming weeks’ - that message came on March 29, 2023. The Google Ads Transparency Center will be available direct from any ad, by tapping on the three dots menu, while you'll also be able to access the platform via 

 where consumers can customize their ad preferences.

, With new updates you’ll want to make sure your ad campaigns are not blocked, restricted, or removed. It also offers options for fixing problematic ads, checking the status of your Google Ads account, and reporting Google Ads that violate its policies.

Contact us and see how a 30-minute discovery session can mean growth for your business.

Discover the Google Ads Transparency Center and how it can help you as a marketer, advertiser, or consumer. Learn how it works and its benefits in this informative guide.


Understanding Google Ads Transparency Center

Let us just get this off of our chest real quick…. WE LOVE SHOPIFY!

This platform has made owning and operating an online business so much easier for businesses of all shapes and sizes. From side hustles to multi-million dollar e-commerce stores, Shopify has a plan that suits everyone who wants to sell online.

Today, we wanted to talk about something that's rarely covered. Using Shopify Plus for wholesale channels.

While not talked about often enough, key features like customer tags, tiered pricing, quick order forms, and streamlined wholesale signups make Shopify the perfect partner for stores with a wholesale channel. Read on to learn more about those features and how we support the wholesale sign-up process with email flows for onboarding new wholesale users using Klaviyo.

Shopify Plus Features for Wholesale Retailers

Don’t like reading?  Check out the video below for a virtual tour of a wholesale account we set up for our client Gravallese Co. and how those benefits can help your business grow.

One of the key features of Shopify Plus for wholesale is the ability to add customer tags. Customer tags give you the ability to segment your customer base and apply different pricing, discounts, and promotions to different groups of customers. For example, you can create a customer tag for your wholesale customers and offer them a discounted price on your products. With a proper vetting process, you can truly keep your DTC customers separate from your wholesale ones.

Another important feature of Shopify Plus for wholesale is tiered pricing. Tiered pricing lets you set different prices for different quantities of products. This is particularly useful for wholesale customers who are often buying large volumes of products at a time.

By setting tiered pricing, you can offer your wholesale customers a discount for buying in bulk, while still maintaining your profit margins on individual products.

Well, it will increase your overall sales volume and encourage wholesale customers to continue ordering from your store.

Another feature that can be useful for wholesale customers is quick order forms. Wholesale customers that are short on time will LOVE this feature.

Instead of navigating through multiple product pages your wholesale customers can pick quantities of all of your products from one screen and move on to payment. This is extremely useful for those customers who buy more and do it consistently.

You know what they say, “time is money” and the quicker you make the ordering process, the happier your customers will be.

One of the most important aspects of managing a wholesale business is ensuring that you have a steady stream of new customers. To do this, you need to make it easy for potential wholesale customers to sign up and create an account with your store.

Shopify Plus offers a number of features to help streamline the wholesale signup process, including customizable signup forms and integrations with third-party apps like Klaviyo. Customizing your form means you can set up automatic verification and With Klaviyo, you can easily onboard new customers with a welcome email that invites them to make their first purchase while connecting with your brand

Interested in learning more about Klaviyo? 

Email Flows for Onboarding New Wholesale Users

Finally, creating a streamlined onboarding process for new wholesale customers is important. Keep the positive experience from your website intact with automated emails that match your voice and brand.

With Shopify Plus and Klaviyo, you can create customized email flows that provide new wholesale customers with all the information they need to get started. This can include information on pricing, product catalogs, and other important details that will push them toward their first purchase and a sustainable relationship between your brands.

Another fantastic feature exclusive to Shopify Plus is the ability to customize the checkout experience for wholesale customers. You can add fields for purchase order numbers, order comments, or special delivery instructions.

For tax-exempt wholesale customers, Shopify Plus can automatically apply tax exemptions to their orders based on their account settings. This simplifies the ordering process and reduces the risk of errors.

Shopify Plus is excellent for businesses of all sizes. By utilizing features such as customer tags, tiered pricing, quick order forms, customizable checkout, and automated tax exemptions, you can create a seamless experience for your wholesale customers and increase overall sales volume.

With the integration of Klaviyo, you can supercharge the onboarding process and create targeted email flows to provide new wholesale customers with all the information they need to get started.

If you’re looking for an agency well-versed in 

Today, we wanted to talk about something that's rarely covered. Using Shopify Plus for wholesale channels. Features like customer tags, tiered pricing and quick order forms are can't-miss features you'll love.

Should you use Shopify Plus for Wholesale Accounts?

According to Digital Commerce 360, Ecommerce sales grew 7.7% in 2022 year over year reaching $1.03 trillion in 2022, passing $1 trillion for the first time ever. And as the barrier to entry for building an Ecommerce store has become easier, competition has also increased with innovative DTC brands.


As a result, existing merchants need to continue to optimize their website for conversions and experiment with new trends to stay ahead.

Leveraging video is an excellent way to accomplish this. It’s been a missing piece of the puzzle for years now, mostly due to the strain that videos can have on page speed.

But that is no longer an obstacle, as there are solutions that can help you work around this

This is how Ecommerce brands can use videos to improve customer experience, shopper engagement and revenues:

Pictures can often be deceiving as they can hide behind good lighting and angles. If a shopper doesn’t feel confident in their purchase, they drop off in their chances to complete their order.

However, video is a dynamic experience that allows viewers to grasp what a product can look and feel like, especially from having other people interact with it.


It can put those worries to rest, as they can gauge how the product looks and feels through video.

For Moriarty's Gem Art, this worked well. Jeff Moriarty, the company's marketing manager, explains,


Over the years, our business received so many questions regarding seeing different angles of our jewelry. In the past, we would send them multiple pictures via email. Realizing that there’s an issue, we began creating videos for each piece of jewelry we put on our website

Customers stopped asking these questions now that the videos addressed it, and saw increased orders for products that had videos on their product page.


Seeing these results, we took the initiative to get videos on all items, and now before we list any item on the website, we make sure to have a video on the product page as well

Shoppers often refer to previous buyers of the product to hear what their experience of their purchase was like, and if it lived up to their expectations.


And with the rise of social media, there are millions of shoppers who are creating reviews of products they buy and post it to their social accounts.


Asking your customers to create their own testimonials can allow you to take your reviews a step higher and inject social proof onto your products page, helping ease any concerns that on-the-fence shoppers may have about your product.


Social proof can improve conversions by 15%. It's one thing to tell others what you do and how amazing you are at it, but video testimonials that show clients how much they love your products are far more powerful. Have you thought about using testimonials in your 

Video content increases the amount of time visitors spend on your website and, as a result, improves your SEO. With SEO being a central foundation of your online presence, improving your page ranking and time-on-site is an additional advantage to beating out the competition and staying ahead of them.


The addition of video to Custom Neon's home page increased the company's search engine results and time spent on the site climbed by 40%, as well as reducing the number of bounces.

Use Influencer Marketing To Increase Sales

With the rise of influencers, brands can turn to expert content creators to help market their product at cost effective rates.


They can tap into the influencer’s targeted audience, market to them, as well as have the content the influencer made and re-use it for Facebook ads.


According to 89% of marketers, influencer marketing's return on investment (ROI) is equivalent to or greater than that of other channels.

But now, you can take it one step further by taking that content and placing it on your website and product detail pages (PDP), to further increase the social proof.

"20 to 30% of our sales originate from traffic sources redirected from these videos—almost that's a one-third boost in sales!" says Light, the CEO of Nolah Mattress.

By using a tool like VideoWise, you can easily add and manage videos anywhere on your website

? The answer is a resounding YES! Adding Video Wise to your shop is pain-free and integrates seamlessly with channels like YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, YotPo, Recharge and Klaviyo. As e-commerce grows and competition increases you’ll need a solution to stay ahead of your competitors. Integrating Video Wise is a great way to get a leg up on the competition.

According to Digital Commerce 360, Ecommerce sales grew 7.7% in 2022 year over year reaching $1.03 trillion in 2022, passing $1 trillion for the first time ever. 

Unleashing The Power of Video on Your Shopify Store 

Commonly found inside design teams and marketing departments, the benefits of a design system are plenty. Do you want to understand the benefits behind them and even create one for yourself?


You’re in the right place. As a creative agency with years of experience building scalable brands, we’re uniquely positioned to help.

So, without further adieu, what is a design system, and what are the advantages of having one? Read on to find out.

Simply put, a design system is a set of reusable components that can be put together for different purposes. Brand systems often go hand-in-hand with a style guide that shows how the assets can be used and why. The purpose is to give brands consistency in user experiences across their channels and to streamline the marketing process.

For example, a design system may include:

Functional elements – forms, menus, buttons, etc.

Design systems are important because they streamline your design process and improve user experiences. It also means that when you need to outsource design and marketing, you can simply send across your design system package to make the job quicker and easier.


, overhauling its logo, colors and mission statement.

First off, congratulations on the rebrand! Now comes the task of implementing that brand across social media, website, promotional materials and even internal documents. If you task your in-house graphic designer with creating all new materials with your new brand it could take them one year and a lot of stress.

With a design system, you have the ability to elicit outside help to implement the new brand across every channel a whole lot quicker.


Design systems can vary depending on the organization. For consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies you might find 

 in their design systems while a tech company might include when and how to use specific illustrations. Things like the industry and mediums a business uses can shift the components of a design system. That being said, here are some common things you might find across the board.

A style guide is the documentation of how you want your brand to show up in the world. It’s an end-to-end document that’s used internally and externally to help employees and partners know exactly how to represent your brand when sharing it in digital and print pieces.

A style guide has multiple elements, which can be divided into two sections:

Your brand story - This is the heart and soul of why your business was created and why your customers connect with you. It includes your mission, vision, core values, and brand voice.

Your visual identity - this can include a logo, color palette, typography, imagery, illustrations, buttons, print ads, and more.

A component library is a tool that’s often shared between designers and developers. It's a collaborative project where an in-house team can create reusable UI elements to be used and repurposed throughout the development process. As you can imagine, creating this library can take time but once completed, it is easier to maintain your brand when developing new web pages or components for other technologies, like a company app. Each component should have:

Attributes: can color, size, shape, copy, etc. eb changed on the component? Then it should be listed

State: recommended defaults and changes in appearance

Code snippets: the actual code excerpt for the element

Pattern libraries feature collections of UI-element groupings or layouts. Pattern libraries are often thought of as less robust compared to component libraries, but they can be as thorough or as high-level as needed. They typically feature content structures, layouts, and/or templates. Much like the components, the patterns are meant to be reused and adapted.

If you’re familiar with marketing terms, you might think it sounds like a design system is the same as a pattern library. This isn’t far from the truth, but there are some key differences:

A pattern library consists of groups or collections of UI elements, typically ones you’d use together regularly. For example, a pattern library might include a page layout with banners, buttons, dividers, and more that you can use whenever you need to generate a new page.

A design system, however, features these UI elements separately along with other assets. You’ll find a pattern library in a design system as one of these elements, though.

The benefits of a design system can be broken down into 2 main elements:

Having a toolkit of assets means (in theory) anyone can design for your brand while keeping the look and feel the same no matter the medium. Consistency is vital in brand identity, and having a design system library makes the design process quicker and easier. That being said, when launching a new campaign design like 

 from Patagonia we’d recommend reaching out to

2. Improves User Experience and Interface

From a designer’s perspective, having pre-made user interface elements makes their job much easier. It becomes a case of selecting what they need from the pattern library and assembling them into the end product. Scalable design systems mean you can grow your digital products when needed with much less effort.

But this also helps user experiences. Ideally, a client shouldn’t notice your company’s design system assets because this means you’re using them correctly. Style guides help here – they allow you to create consistent elements that lead to positive user experiences.

To create a design system that can be scaled, you’ll need to round up all of your brand assets and create a document that encompasses it all.

First, review your company’s visual elements and build a catalog of UI components and design elements to form the foundation of your design system. You can also identify inconsistencies that have emerged like colors outside of your palette or even improper use of your logo. *gasp*

Second, set up clear principles on how you think about your product and create a set of guidelines for how you'll bring them to life. Design principles lay out the branding vision for your product, including how you want customers to feel while using it. Do you want customers to feel calm? Excited? Curious? Do you want your brand to feel friendly? Quirky? Cerebral? Your design system should outline how you can make customers feel the way you want with your design.

Third, take the catalog of visual elements from step one and the principles from step two and compile them into one handy resource and distribute it to your team.


Be sure to document what to do if someone finds an inconsistency in your design system and the process to follow to update your design library.

In theory, once you’ve gathered all this information, you’ll have the basic elements of a design system. From there, it’s simply a case of collecting and organizing the assets so they’re helpful for future designers.

Scalable design systems are the backbone of a company’s 

 and user experience. While you can build your own from existing elements, it makes sense to get a dedicated design team on board.

So, if you’d like to create a design system for your business and need some help, 

. We help purpose-driven brands get ahead of the competition, and an effective design system is the first step on this journey.

It’s no secret that branding is the cornerstone of a business’s identity. But how to seismic brands keep a consistent image across all marketing mediums? The answer to that is two words - “Design Systems”. 

Design Systems: How, What, and Why? 

These days, many Shopify themes are built on the new Shopify 2.0 framework, but what does that mean for business owners like you? In today's article, we'll walk you through what makes Online Store 2.0 that much different from 1.0 and how you can take advantage of the upgrade to the fullest extent.

Shopify 2.0 is a significant update to the Shopify platform. In its earliest iteration, Shopify was created to make it easy to start selling things online. Built for entrepreneurs with a product to sell, Shopify 1.0 made it easy to grab a template, alter some design and make it yours. Its ability to accept payments right out of the box enticed many online retailers to choose this platform.

For those readers who built their own website using Shopify 1.0, you'll probably agree that the original framework was "rigid." And as a Shopify development agency, we'd second that opinion.

Themes that were built before the upgrade had limited customizations. You'd need to be happy with the base features of your theme and integrate third-party apps to get additional features. Themes on Shopify 2.0 still require third-party apps for some features, but what comes standard is what truly makes the difference.


Let's take a look at what those standard features are.

The Benefits of Shopify Online Store 2.0 for Store Owners

Here at Commence Studio, we're in love with Shopify. We recommend it for all of our 

 and have built semi-custom and fully-custom websites based on our partner's specifications. With the upgrade from 1.0 to 2.0, we found that some stores' themes weren't compatible with the new system and couldn't take advantage of the additional benefits 2.0 brought about. Some projects required an upgrade to their theme while others were a completely new build - one thing is for sure, they wanted to take advantage of the latest features. Here are some of the benefits that they've noticed about 2.0 v.s 1.0

With the update, building out pages on your store is much easier. Adding sections to enhance product pages with additional benefits, tables and photos are now as easy pie. Before, store owners couldn't add, remove or rearrange sections outside the homepage. With the changes that 2.0 brought to the table, you can now add rich flexible content to most pages, including your about, contact, and product pages.

Our partners have noticed that stores on 2.0 have gotten a speed upgrade. The reason for that? Some features that required 3rd party apps have now been included in the base-level theme of Shopify. Less 3rd party integrations mean less code and faster loading times for prospective customers.

The interface is designed to make it easier for you to fulfill orders faster by reducing clicks when adding products or editing your store settings.

Now, installing and using apps is easier than ever. You'll no longer need to touch your theme's code when you install it, and as a bonus, you'll be able to use those features virtually anywhere using "app blocks."

Let's say you sell a CBD lotion in a few different sizes. You want to list how many uses your customers can expect from each of the different sizes. By using dynamic meta fields, you'll be able to populate that data in the blink of an eye, creating a better experience for your customer without too much manual labor. 

With these additional features, both customers and business owners can agree that Shopify just got a whole lot better.


The Benefits of Shopify 2.0 for Developers

Shopify 2.0 has been built from scratch with merchants in mind, focusing on making selling easier and more efficient than ever before.


How you ask? One of the most important aspects of Shopify 2.0 is how it changes the way templates are built. With its new architecture, themes will need to be coded to support the new features and functionality that come with it. Any theme you develop now will need to be upgraded for compatibility with Shopify 2.0. If you have a theme in the pipeline that was coded for Online Store 1.0, the bad news is that you'll have to restructure it for the updated architecture. The good news is that building themes has become even easier.


Forget about toggling between multiple screens to edit a theme. Today, developers can make these changes and implement custom features effortlessly within the same window. They’ve also added new development tools, features, and APIs to enhance your eCommerce experience even more!

How do I Upgrade from Shopify 1.0 to 2.0?

, we have great news! You might already have access to these incredible features. The update from 1.0 to 2.0 was automatically done a while back. However, some themes didn't get updates to the new framework meaning they can't take advantage of all of the benefits we've listed above.

To find out if your current theme offers an upgraded 2.0 theme option, reach out to theme support for instructions on utilizing the upgraded version.

In the rare circumstance that you've got a fully custom-coded theme or an altered theme, you'll have to alter it by making changes to your code.

We wouldn't recommend this option if you don't have experience coding websites. Instead, we'd suggest 

 to upgrade your current theme to Online Store 2.0. By migrating your existing theme templates to the new theme architecture, you can upgrade your existing theme to Online Store 2.0.


We recommend you upgrade to Online Store 2.0 only if you have previously edited HTML, CSS, or Liquid code to create a theme that is uniquely yours. If you're rocking a custom theme that was made just for you, then upgrading it yourself might be difficult. You may want to contact the developer or agency that built the theme to help facilitate the transfer.

Once the structure has been built on Online Store 2.0, you'll need to follow it up by transferring the copy (or text) from the old site to the new one. When you do, think about optimizing your content to capture additional organic search traffic.

If the above solution isn't something that you're interested in, it might be time to choose a brand-new theme for your store. Not all themes on the 

 are compatible with Online Store 2.0. If you need help choosing the right theme for your business - Contact Us. We'll be happy to help you create the store of your dreams that looks and feels like your purpose-driven business.

If you want to know more about Shopify 2.0 and its benefits, check out their 

. If your store is currently running on older versions of Shopify (that's any version prior to 2), then we’d recommend upgrading as soon as possible so that you can take advantage of these new features.

Online Store 2.0 was a huge step forward in the eCommerce space. Developers and online business owners agree - the new features and improvements have changed how they run their businesses.

Why Shopify Online Store 2.0 is a Significant Upgrade v.s 1.0

It’s time to get to work on your ecommerce holiday marketing strategy. With so much competition in the marketplace, it’s important to make sure your campaigns stand out and grab the attention of shoppers. If you didn’t have a chance to review our post last month about 

 now's your chance to get the leg up on your competition. Here are four tips that can help you build an effective holiday marketing plan that will drive results.

Let’s face it - humans are visual animals. There’s a reason that as soon as the Turkey is out of the oven, Christmas lights and a tree are already out of the storage bin. It makes people happy to see decorations. So much so that 

 in this study said their lights are going up before December 1. What can that tell us about how we market your business? Don’t be a scrooge, do a little decorating.


 with some holiday cheer, change out your slider image on your homepage and incorporate the holiday language in your email campaigns too. You don’t have to go completely off the deep end and sacrifice your entire brand identity, there’s a subtle way to bring holiday cheer into your current design systems.

Check out the holiday images we put together for our client Gravallese Co. We took a bold, Italian- influenced grooming product for men and spruced it up with some props that stuck to the masculine brand.

If you’re not sure how to make it work for yourselves, 

and we’ll set up a consultation call with you.

Don’t take this as advice to plaster the same few sentences across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter - that’s not what we’re saying.


What we ARE saying is think about how customers might interact with your brand. Depending on the price of your product, potential customers will need to be reminded of your company a few times before they even register the message that you’re conveying. If you’ve got a high-priced product, chances are customers will need time to mull the idea over before making the final decision. Don’t give up if you aren’t getting traction after one post. Stay steady and utilize all your tools in the tool-belt creating a story that's woven between social media, email, SMS, website and whatever other channels are available to you.

3. Make Sure Your Website Is Optimized For Mobile

With more shoppers using mobile devices than ever before, it’s essential that your website is optimized for mobile viewing. If it isn’t, you could be missing out on a huge pool of potential customers who won’t take the time to navigate a slow-loading or difficult-to-navigate site on their phone or tablet. Make sure your site works well across all devices by testing it on multiple platforms and even browsers before launching any campaigns. Tools like 

 can give you a snapshot of where your website is currently. It even gives you some tips to speed things up. Do what you can now and if you’re looking for assistance - 

, email and SMS are so much easier. Other products like MailChimp and SendInBlue work great for some people but if you’re asking us, an ecommerce focus agency who works with online companies like 

Most ecommerce companies like to save time. Scratch that, everyone does. Klaviyo is the ultimate time-saver. Built-in automations like “New customer welcome” and “Abandoned cart” are easy to set up and puts time back in your brand’s pocket. Klaviyo gives you templates to start from but as you learn more about your customers the automations and customizations are endless.


Staying connected to customers means more than sending one monthly newsletter. With the tracking set-up inside of your Shopify you can learn more about how your customers shop and tailor messaging from your learnings. Hot leads get one message and cold ones get another.

You should be well-equipped to craft an effective ecommerce holiday marketing strategy that drives results this season! From creating a sense of urgency with countdown timers and limited time offers, leveraging social media platforms creatively and optimizing your website for mobile viewers - there's no reason why you shouldn't be able maximize sales this holiday season with thoughtful campaigns crafted specifically for your target audience! Good luck!


BONUS: The Best Website Stack for Holiday Marketing Campaigns

We believe that the answer to this question is Shopify and Klaviyo. As we mentioned above, we love the tools that these platforms offer for 

Let’s put it this way - we think  the connection between Shopify and Klaviyo is like Milk and Cookies.


Small shops will love Shopify’s standard plan that comes fully loaded with the ability to take payments built in. Plus, their POS system that can be used in-store and is perfect for brick-and-mortar shops.


For bigger stores, Shopify Plus gives you the option to edit code and with the help of a 

 you can pretty much get it to do whatever you want.

And Klaviyo is no slouch. Pricing grows as your company grows and integrates other apps like Facebook and Google to help you with advertising. In a world that’s going cookie-less (uh-oh Santa won’t like that) gathering emails and phone numbers becomes even more valuable. Forms are easy to create and launch on your site so you can gather data with ease. And, like we mentioned before, automating processes is a breeze.


So, if you ask us, running a holiday marketing campaign gets a whole lot easier when you have tools like Shopify and Klaviyo. 

Christmas is almost here! If you had a bumpy Black Friday/Cyber Monday and results that were less than ideal, you’ll want to pay extra close attention. 

Four Ways to Crush Ecommerce Holiday Marketing

Like seeing Christmas decorations during Halloween in Walmart its the time of year that marketers love to talk about Black Friday. It’s become a staple in online shopping and ecommerce companies like you know that you need to do something - but is there a way to compete without trimming your margins beyond belief? We know there is and wanted to share some of our thoughts on the subject.

Black Friday is November 25, 2022 and as we get into November you’re going to see even more promotional-centric messaging in the weeks leading up to the holiday. Chances are, you’ve already seen some messaging hitting your inbox already. While you don’t need to offer 50% off your products for the entire month of November, you can tell your fans exactly what they’re getting when you open the flood gates. Spreading the message earlier gives customers the change to plan ahead for your product.

Not every brand can afford to offer steep discounts on their products for Black Friday & Cyber Monday. If you’re in a position to discount, then by all means, go for it. If you aren’t, another great strategy is to focus on the release of a new product or service. New releases are an exciting moment for every company - leveraging that buzz can help your new product release cut through the noise that comes with this holiday. Organic interactions on social media are oftentimes more effective than paid ones because you’re engaging with a captive audience. And people that are already following your story could be even more interested in a new product release even if it’s not discounted.

Most online advertisers like Google, Meta, TikTok, etc run their ads on an auction. There are only so many eyeballs to go around so as more and more businesses put dollars into these platforms it increases the price each impression can be sold for. That means your ad dollars might not go as far during a crowded holiday like BFCM.


If we could offer an alternative, which we’ve done for our partners already, we’d tell you to maximize your email list. In early November, try implementing strategies to get more people onto your email list. Social Media giveaways to collect emails can be an effective strategy where you can leverage your products as the prize for potential customers. Once you’re fortified your list, you can send engaged subscribers special offers instead of trying to blast that message using Google or Facebook. Subscribers' familiarity with your company gives you a better chance to offer messaging that suits their desires.

Looking for even more tips on how to manage your email marketing effectively? Check out our blog post on 

How to Get the Best ROI From Your Email Marketing Campaign

You may have some customers that only interact with your business when you have a sale and others that wholeheartedly support your message and products. Understanding who those customers are and how to talk to them is a great way to take your Cyber Monday strategy to the next level. To segment your messaging, you’ll need to understand which customer is which. 

, makes it easy to understand how people interact with your emails. You have the option to set up customer segments but what’s even better is that this software automatically sets up segments of “potential customers” and “churn risks”. You can further segment your list by engaged (opened email or clicked email in the last 90 days) or unengaged (received at least 5 emails, hasn’t opened or clicked in 90 days).


Once you know who is who, you have the opportunity to talk to them differently. One option this Black Friday is to send your best offer to your most engaged subscribers. You know that they’re receptive to your messaging, and it’ll take less convincing to get them to make a purchase. Then, if you don’t want to offer a discount to everyone, try sending a smaller discount to the unengaged list. Depending on how they interact with it, you may be able to consider them an engaged user in the future or someone who’s no longer interested in what you have to offer. That isn’t a bad thing, either. If you’ve determined that a portion of your list isn’t interested in you offers anymore, you can focus on talking to the ones who want to listen.

Strengthen your website with Product Reviews

Ecommerce brands have a special weapon up their sleeve that other websites don’t - Product Reviews. On the technical side, product reviews are a way to keep your website updated with new content. In July, Google rolled out an 

 that emphasized the importance of in-depth product reviews. As Google’s ultimate goal is to provide people with the best answer to their search query, oftentimes, a review is going to have highly relevant information. This is great for your brand because it gives you another way to boost your SEO and to try and capitalize on additional organic search traffic.


From a UX perspective, new customers that aren’t familiar with your brand can use your reviews as a tiebreaker when considering one of your competitors. If you’re a t-shirt company that’s similarly priced to other retailers online, a review that talks about how soft the material is what would easily sway a purchase decision away from someone without that review. For our partner, 

, happy customers love to share which flavor they like the best. A customer in the road cycling niche boasts that the chocolate chunk flavor is, “The best-tasting energy I’ve ever eaten.” For Tahoe Trail Bar, cyclists are one of their target audiences who would thrive from eating their product. Not only will this review persuade customers to choose them over a competitor, it also helps them choose from their wide product line.

A successful holiday strategy is one that takes planning and creativity. Shoppers may expect discounts this Black Friday and Cyber Monday but if you aren’t in a position to do that, use the above strategies to leverage your messaging, your email list, and think outside the box.

Want to knock your holiday sales out of the park? We’d love to help! First, check out our 

 and then contact us to schedule a consultation to see how we can help.

Like seeing Christmas decorations during Halloween in Walmart you know that marketers love to talk about Black Friday. 

Five Tips to Make Black Friday / Cyber Monday 2022 Successful

 Commence Studio is announcing its acceptance into the exclusive, invite-only Shopify Theme Accelerator. Commence is a design and technology studio for crafting branding that reflects a company’s values. 

Commence Studio has been operating with the goal of offering customers more convenient and affordable options for building their online stores. The Shopify Theme Accelerator offers guidance and incentives for the Commence Studio team to plan, execute, test and eventually launch diverse themes in the Shopify Theme Marketplace. This Shopify program has a 12-week duration and:

Brings together creative professionals in the eCommerce industry

Creative agency, Commence Studio, is taking part in a global accelerator through their new partnership with Shopify, the world’s leading eCommerce platform.