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In today’s newsletter,
How this tool flags at-risk accounts before renewal calls
The hidden cost of Amazon's ShopDirect program
Shopify themes are designed to sell you, not your customers
HubSpot AEO
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Your CS team knew about the churn risk before the renewal call.
Tuesday morning, #cs-team. Viktor posted account health updates for the 12 accounts up for renewal this quarter: ticket volume, NPS shift, product adoption delta, QBR action items still open.
For one account, a note: "Three CSAT scores below 6 in 14 days, all from the same admin. Their power user moved teams in March. Recommend reaching out before Friday's renewal call."
Your CSM didn't pull a report. The AE got the same intel in #sales. Your VP CS reviewed the full renewal pipeline over coffee.
20,000+ teams. Viktor lives in Slack and Microsoft Teams. Connects to Gainsight, Zendesk, HubSpot, Salesforce, Intercom, and 3,000+ other tools.
"It was almost instantly adopted by the bulk of my team." Boris, CEO, Space Dinosaurs.
Amazon
The hidden cost of Amazon's ShopDirect program
ShopDirect is an Amazon program that redirects shoppers from your Amazon listing to your own website to complete the purchase.
But you have to buy sponsored ads to get any placement in Amazon search. No ads, no traffic. So you're paying upfront for clicks whether or not anyone buys.
So if your website has no email capture, no reason for the customer to come back, and no experience that's meaningfully different from your Amazon listing, you're paying for sponsored ads to send people to a checkout that's going to lose them.
The program only works if three things are already true.
You have a real brand — meaning a product with a story that Amazon's listing format can't fully tell.
You have an email list, so when a customer buys on your site, you can bring them back without paying Amazon again.
And you have something on your site the customer can't get on Amazon — an exclusive variant, a bundle, a custom experience, a better price because you're not carrying FBA fees.
If those things exist, ShopDirect gives you a legitimate on-ramp to move customers off Amazon and into a relationship you own. If they don't, it's just a more expensive version of the same problem you already have.
Action Summary:
Check if your site has email capture set up before running any ShopDirect traffic to it
Identify one concrete reason a customer would complete a purchase on your site instead of going back to Amazon
If you can't name that reason, build it before you run the program
Credit: Steve Chou
CRO
Shopify themes are designed to sell you, not your customers
Shopify themes aren't optimized for conversion — they're designed to look good in the theme store.
Once you install one, you're on your own.
Sean Brandt, co-founder of Audit, a UX design firm that has completed over 10,000 Shopify store audits, has been on calls with Shopify's own team about this.
His conclusion: Shopify has spent zero dollars optimizing their themes for conversion.
Most brands don't realize this. They see Shopify as the best in the world at ecommerce, so they assume whatever comes built in must be right. It isn't.
The defaults — navigation structure, image galleries, buttons, quick add — are there because they make the demo look functional, not because they work for your store.
Don't take the theme at face value.
Look at your site the way a first-time visitor would.
Can they tell what you sell within two seconds?
Can they find what they're looking for without hunting through your navigation?
Does your product page give them everything they need to feel confident enough to buy?
Those are the questions the theme was never designed to answer for you.
Action Summary:
Install your theme, then walk through your store as a first-time visitor — not as someone who built it
Ask three people who don't know your brand to find a product and buy it, then watch where they get stuck
Fix navigation first — keep only shopping-related links in the header and cut everything else
Credit: Ethercycle
HubSpot AEO
Picture this. A buyer opens ChatGPT and asks for a recommendation in your category. Your competitor's name comes up. Yours doesn't. And that buyer never makes it to your website.
That's happening right now in markets everywhere. And most teams don't know it's happening because it never shows up in their analytics.
HubSpot AEO shows you exactly where your brand stands in AI search, where competitors are getting recommended instead of you, and tells you specifically what to fix. No expertise needed.
Try it free for 28 days. Just $50 a month after.
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