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Welcome to the 2697 new operators who joined us this week! 🤯
Hey Fastlane Insiders! 👋
Quick question: If your checkout broke at 3am during a Black Friday traffic spike, would you even know about it until morning?
We're 3 weeks out, and I keep seeing the same pattern—brands stressing about ad creative and budget while completely overlooking the stuff that actually determines whether those clicks turn into profit. The winners this Q4 aren't the ones spending the most on Meta. They're the ones who won't lose a single sale because their ops are bulletproof.
Here's what I mean: Every merchant right now is running basically the same paid playbook. But the brands crushing it? They diversified beyond ads months ago and now have influencers posting organically every day. They cut support tickets by 40% so their team can focus on high-value conversations instead of dealing with "where's my order?" chaos. And they obsess over the unsexy stuff, like page speed, stock sync, and checkout flow, because they know traffic is easy to acquire, but throughput is what prints money.
I've been in hundreds of Shopify conversations, and here's the shift: the smartest operators treat operations like a growth lever, not a cost center. They're building channels they own instead of renting all their attention from Zuckerberg. And they're making moves right now that'll carry straight into 2026.
This week is packed with tactical moves you can make before BFCM.
Here's what's inside:
🎧 This Week's Podcasts – Casey Armstrong from ShipBob on the Q4 fulfillment playbook (FTZ warehousing, tariff navigation, multi-channel scaling), plus Yash Chavan from SARAL reveals how to turn influencer marketing from a slot machine into predictable revenue
💡 Knowledge Drops – Cut support tickets 40% with proactive 2-way SMS (borrowed from healthcare), and why operations beat marketing during BFCM (the 5 silent killers tanking conversions right now)
🔥 Tool of the Week – Trustoo Loyalty turns one-time buyers into repeat customers automatically with points, VIP tiers, and referral programs
📡 Industry Pulse – Shopify's record Q3 numbers, what 4 founders learned building million-dollar businesses with zero experience, and fresh BFCM shopper data you need to see
Let's dive in. 👇
🔥 Tool of the Week 🔥
Tired of watching customers buy once and ghost you forever? Here's the reality: Customer acquisition costs continue to climb, but the brands that are winning right now are the ones that turn first-time buyers into repeat customers on autopilot.
Trustoo Loyalty does exactly that. It's a complete loyalty system that rewards your customers for purchases, reviews, and shares with points and coupons they'll actually want to use. Think gamified engagement that keeps people coming back instead of shopping around.
What makes it different:
Launch VIP tiers that make your best customers feel special (and spend more). Build referral programs that turn happy buyers into brand advocates who do your marketing for you. Customize the entire widget to match your brand in literally five minutes—no developer, no coding headaches.
The setup is almost too easy:
Set your points and discount ratios in the Program settings. Style your widget to match your brand. Launch and start building loyalty today.
🎧 New Podcast Episode! 🎧
Fulfillment Chaos or Growth Engine? The Q4 Playbook Top Brands Are Using
Rising costs crushing your margins? Tariff changes forcing last-minute pivots? Here's the thing—while most brands are scrambling, the smart ones are treating fulfillment like a competitive advantage, not just a cost center.
This week I brought back Casey Armstrong, CMO at ShipBob, for his third appearance on the show—and trust me, he earned it. With ShipBob now shipping over 100 million orders annually across 60+ fulfillment centers worldwide, Casey's seen what actually works when brands hit that messy middle phase between DIY shipping and true scale.
We dove into some game-changing territory:
The magic revenue range — Why the $1–5M mark is when fulfillment either becomes your bottleneck or your unlock, plus the real story of how Dossier ships nearly 1 million orders yearly with just two people on their ops team
The cash flow hack nobody's talking about — Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ) warehouses that let you defer duties until products actually ship, keeping serious money in your account right when you need it most (one beauty brand avoided a six-figure surprise bill with this move)
De minimis fallout and what it means now — The August changes flipped the script on cross-border fulfillment, but there are strategic plays brands are making right now to navigate the new landscape
Multi-channel complexity solved — Real integration across Shopify, Amazon, TikTok Shop, Faire Wholesale, Walmart, and Target that doesn't require an army of ops people
When switching isn't crazy — Casey shared stories of brands that moved fulfillment providers literally weeks before Black Friday and actually rescued their peak season (yes, really)
Plus, we got into the nitty-gritty of handling complex products like lot tracking, expiration dates, GFSI/GMP certifications, hazmat handling, and cold storage for food, beauty, supplements, and electronics.
The brands getting this right aren't just surviving Q4—they're building operational leverage that scales revenue way faster than headcount.
[ LISTEN NOW ] → Discover the fulfillment strategies top Shopify brands are using to turn logistics into a growth engine
Stop Renting Your Audience: How to Build a Marketing Channel You Actually Own
Ad costs climbing again? Algorithm changes keeping you up at night? Here's the uncomfortable truth—most brands are one platform update away from watching their revenue crater.
For this episode, I sat down with Yash Chavan, Founder and CEO of SARAL, for what turned into a masterclass on transforming influencer marketing from a random spray-and-pray approach into something far more predictable. With over 250 brands served and $40 million in incremental revenue generated, Yash has cracked something most marketers are still fumbling with.
We unpacked some game-changing territory:
Why your influencer campaigns feel like slot machines — The mindset shift that changes everything when you realize you're playing a completely different game than paid ads (and why seven-day attribution windows are killing your best campaigns)
The Predictable Pyramid that actually works — SARAL's three-layer system that starts with high-volume seeding, graduates top performers into ambassadors, and reserves paid deals for proven winners (eliminating risk at every single stage)
The skincare brand that learned the hard way — What happened when one brand cut their influencer program because "it wasn't driving sales," only to watch their Google Ads CPC more than double in just two months (this story will change how you think about attribution forever)
Posts Per Day: Your real North Star — Why optimizing for ROAS is completely the wrong scorecard, and how tracking daily organic posts predicts performance across every other channel you're running
The content ownership playbook — How to structure usage rights at each pyramid level, plus the two ways top brands are actually paying for whitelisting high-performing UGC without getting gouged
AI that handles operations without killing authenticity — The human-first approach to automation that eliminates busywork while keeping relationship-building where it belongs (in human hands)
Plus, Yash drops some timely advice for where we are right now in November—if you've got a few weeks before BFCM, there's still time to spin up a program. But if it's already late in the game, don't get distracted. Use December to build momentum for a New Year launch when you're not competing with every other brand's holiday budget.
[ LISTEN NOW ]→ Learn how top brands are building owned marketing channels that scale without depending on ad algorithms
Find your customers on Roku this Black Friday
As with any digital ad campaign, the important thing is to reach streaming audiences who will convert. To that end, Roku’s self-service Ads Manager stands ready with powerful segmentation and targeting options. After all, you know your customers, and we know our streaming audience.
Worried it’s too late to spin up new Black Friday creative? With Roku Ads Manager, you can easily import and augment existing creative assets from your social channels. We also have AI-assisted upscaling, so every ad is primed for CTV.
Once you’ve done this, then you can easily set up A/B tests to flight different creative variants and Black Friday offers. If you’re a Shopify brand, you can even run shoppable ads directly on-screen so viewers can purchase with just a click of their Roku remote.
Bonus: we’re gifting you $5K in ad credits when you spend your first $5K on Roku Ads Manager. Just sign up and use code GET5K. Terms apply.
💡 Knowledge Drops of the Week 💡
💎 Cut Support Tickets 40% With Proactive 2-Way Texting (Borrowed From Healthcare)
Email feels too slow. Phone calls feel intrusive. Live chat requires someone glued to a screen waiting for the ping. And in Q4, that gap between what customers expect and what support teams can deliver? It's killing conversions.
Here's what's fascinating—healthcare providers cracked this years ago. When they switched from one-way appointment reminders to texts patients could actually reply to, no-shows dropped dramatically. Now the same pattern is showing up in ecommerce, and the results are pretty wild.
Brands implementing proactive 2-way SMS are seeing something interesting:
The "Where's My Order?" volume plummets — Proactive tracking texts cut WISMO tickets by 30 to 50 percent within the first month, simply because you're answering the anxiety before it builds
Cart recovery that actually works — SMS recovery rates are hitting 15 to 20 percent compared to email's 8 to 10 percent average, and there's a reason why (hint: customers can ask quick questions without leaving the text thread)
One rep handling 50 conversations — Unlike phone support (one at a time) or live chat (requires constant attention), SMS lets your team manage 20 to 50 concurrent conversations asynchronously
The three texts that prevent chaos — There's a specific sequence working right now: order confirmed, shipped with tracking, and out for delivery. These three messages alone prevent the majority of peak season support volume.
The implementation is simpler than most brands think, but there's a specific sequence that matters—and a few mistakes that tank results before you even get started.
[ FULL BREAKDOWN HERE ]→ The Healthcare-to-Ecommerce Playbook For Shopify Brands
⚠️ The Silent BFCM Killer: Why Operations Beat Marketing In 2025
Everyone's running the same Meta playbook. Same creatives, same audiences, same budget spikes. The difference between the brands that crush it and the ones that crumble? What happens at 3am when the traffic spike hits.
Here's the uncomfortable reality—Shopify's infrastructure will hold. It always does. The weak links are almost always your theme, your app stack, your payment flow, and your fulfillment. Traffic is easy to buy. Throughput is hard to scale. And profit only shows up when your operations don't blink under pressure.
There are five silent killers tanking BFCM profit right now, and most brands won't realize which one hit them until it's too late:
Checkout friction that kills intent in seconds — There's a specific combination of express wallets and form field optimization that's lifting checkout completion by 10% to 18% within two weeks, but most stores have it configured wrong
Inventory uncertainty pushing customers to competitors — Real-time stock sync sounds obvious, but there's a nuanced approach to safety stock and delivery windows on your PDP that prevents the cancellations destroying repeat rate
Slow pages eroding engagement before you know it — There are exact speed targets that matter (and ones that don't), especially on mobile where 64% of BFCM traffic is landing
Tax and fee surprises killing trust at the worst moment — The timing of when you reveal total cost changes everything, and there's a cross-border play most brands are missing entirely
Support overwhelm tanking response times — There's a volume forecasting method and a specific AI implementation that keeps first response under 15 minutes even when ticket volume triples overnight
The Operations Advantage Framework is actually quite straightforward: marketing gets you the click, operations get you the conversion, and customer success gets you the repeat business.
The math? A 1% to 2% lift in conversion or repeat rate often yields more profit than doubling your ad spend—but only if your operations can handle it.
[ READ THE FULL PLAYBOOK ]→ Get the 14-day war room plan used by top Shopify brands
📡 Industry Pulse 📡
Every week, I come across strategies and insights that are just too good not to share. Here's what caught my attention this week.
Shopify's Q3 2025 posted 32% revenue growth and 18% free cash flow margin—marking nine consecutive quarters of double-digit free cash flow margins. This is Shopify's strongest quarterly performance yet, demonstrating the platform's ability to simultaneously serve first-time entrepreneurs (one new merchant every 26 seconds) and Fortune 500 enterprises like Estée Lauder.
Four founders with zero industry experience share exactly how they built million-dollar businesses by thinking like customers instead of corporations. From olive oil to sweatproof undershirts, these entrepreneurs explain why their lack of "traditional" knowledge became their competitive advantage—and the specific mistakes they avoided because they weren't stuck in "how it's always been done."
600 US consumers were surveyed about their BFCM shopping plans, and their responses paint a fascinating picture of where shoppers are actually planning to spend this year (spoiler: it's not where most brands think).
🤘 Until Next Thursday
Here's the pattern I see, and it showed up all over this week's content:
The brands about to dominate the next three weeks (and set up 2026 the right way) aren't the ones throwing more money at Meta. They're the ones building operational leverage that turns traffic into actual profit. They're diversifying into channels they own—not rent. And they're automating the repetitive stuff so their teams can focus on what actually moves the needle.
Look, we're three weeks out from Black Friday. That's still enough runway to make moves on the things that compound over time. Turn on proactive SMS before support gets slammed. Audit your mobile checkout while you can still fix what's broken. Spin up an influencer seeding program that pays off for months. Lock in FTZ warehousing before tariff costs get uglier.
The window's closing fast, but here's what's wild—the opportunities are bigger than ever for brands that move with intention instead of panic.
If something in today's edition hit different, or you're already testing one of these plays and want to share what's working, just hit reply. I read every single response, and honestly, these conversations shape what we dig into next week.
Here's to finishing Q4 strong and building momentum that doesn't stop when the calendar flips to January.
Let's go!
— Steve
P.S. Missed a previous edition? Check out the archive for more growth strategies and insights.
