Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing

PPC, Email & SEO for eCommerce Brands | Clients Include HydroPops, Momentum Carnivore, Mixoloshe, BMP Tuning, Precision Raceworks, Holbrook Pickleball & More

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

Ecom Brands, Stop Making This Mistake 👇

I see it all the time—brands offering gift cards or cash in giveaways and promos.

Here's the problem: you're encouraging your audience to spend money elsewhere. Why direct or drive a potential customers away from your store when you could be driving them toward it? Instead, focus on keeping that spending in-house.

Here are 5 ways to do it

1] Offer Store Credit 👉 Reward participants with store credit that can be redeemed only at your store. This encourages them to explore your products and make a purchase. Pro tip: Give a time limit on usage.

2] Exclusive Gift Cards 👉 Create gift cards specifically for your store. These not only incentivize spending but also introduce new customers to your brand. Those who already purchased, to come back and purchase again.

3] Bundle Discounts 👉 Offer discount codes or coupons that can be used on specific product bundles, ensuring they buy more than just one item. You're moving product together.

4] Loyalty Points 👉 Integrate a loyalty program where participants earn points that can be redeemed for future purchases. This builds long-term customer relationships and loyalty you'll love.

Bigger Pro Tip 👉 Create a sense of urgency with time limit on these promotions.

Remember, the goal of any giveaway or promotion is to bring customers closer to your brand—not to send them shopping somewhere else. By keeping the incentives within your ecosystem, you create more opportunities to build brand loyalty, increase customer lifetime value, and boost overall sales.

Think of it this way 👉 Every time you push store credit, gift cards, or exclusive discounts, you're not just giving away a prize—you’re inviting customers to experience more of what your brand has to offer.

So, next time you plan a giveaway or promotion, make sure the reward leads back to your store. This way, you're not just running a promotion, you're driving growth and fostering a deeper connection with your customers. After all, the best customers are repeat customers, and these strategies will help keep them coming back for more. 💡

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

SOS: @Meta flagged me and said I was not a real person/I violated community standards. Then suspended my account, I did the video recording to recover the account. But was ultimately denied.

I spent more than $100m in Meta ads and now this…

Looking for someone who has a connection at Meta to help me.

Note: I have never connected my FB account to any AI systems nor do i use my FB account for any community behaviors including commenting, liking or sharing.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

As someone who’s spent close to $100 million in Meta ads it’s incredible that a stupid video recording of my face was not enough to verify I was a legit person.

How is Meta this poor of a tech company? Does anyone here have a connection to get back in?

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

Looking for content creators for a few brands.

Must be in the US. Must sign contract.

- sunglasses brand
- no gi BJJ/combat sport brand
- toy company
- caviar brand
- VW/AUDI car part brand

#ContentCreatorsNeeded

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

Most marketing funnels look like this:

Ad

Landing page

Add to cart

Checkout

We flipped that.

Here’s a funnel we built that outperformed a traditional DTC flow by 38%:

TikTok/Meta UGC ad → long-form blog post
Email capture mid-scroll
Soft CTA for bundles
Retargeting ad → cart → checkou

Why it worked:
→ We gave value before asking for action
→ We caught middle-of-funnel interest earlier
→ We retargeted people based on scroll depth, not just pixel events

We call it an education-first funnel.

You can’t always sell straight away. But you can build the “yes” before you ask.

🌀 Sometimes the long road closes faster.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for funnel structures that turn browsers into believers.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

Everyone tracks ROAS, CAC, and AOV. But here’s one we never overlook:

Landing Page Scroll Depth.

Why?

Because scroll = interest.

And interest leads to action.

Here’s what we’ve learned:
→ Most converting users scroll at least 55% of the page
→ CTAs placed at 30–40% depth often outperform top-fold buttons
→ A drop-off at 20% tells us your first 5 seconds of copy need rewriting

We've used scroll maps to:

✔ Redesign PDPs for muscle car brands (lifted CVR 26%)
✔ Reorder hotel booking pages around actual user behavior
✔ Kill landing pages that looked good but didn’t guide the eye

If users don’t scroll, they’re not sold.

🧭 Scroll isn’t vanity — it’s direction.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for strategy insights that make every pixel perform.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

Open rate is getting less useful by the day.

So here’s what we track instead:
→ Flow survival rate — how many people make it to the last email
→ Product click diversity — how many unique products get clicked
→ Secondary action rate — did someone view another page (not just the CTA)?
Why does this matter?
Because inbox engagement now tells us more about:
Retention potential

Relevance of dynamic blocks

Product fatigue

It’s not about who opened.
It’s about what they do after they click.

💌 Email is your most powerful signal — but only if you’re listening right.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for modern email KPIs that go way beyond vanity metrics.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

Everyone wants viral.

We want velocity.

Our best-performing creative of Q2?

→ A founder holding a product, standing still
→ Text overlay, 3-second cut, black bar at top

No motion graphics.
No influencers.
No dancing.
Just... clarity.

Why?
→ Fast load speed
→ Relatable visual
→ 100% focused on problem/solution

Viral is a gamble. Direct is a strategy.

📦 Don’t overthink what already works.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for creative that sells — not just stuns.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

We ran a test across 14 brands in the same vertical.

Same content. Same audience. Different timing.

Result? 11am and 8pm both crushed. But for different reasons.

→ AM sends = mobile opens, higher CTR, lower AOV
→ PM sends = desktop opens, lower clicks, higher AOV
So what did we do?

We split the flow based on past open time + device type. Automatically.

It took 2 hours to set up in Klaviyo.
It increased email revenue 18% across the board.

Sometimes the “best send time” isn’t universal — it’s personal.
🕰 Time-based logic wins when behavior drives the trigger.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for smart segmentation that works while you sleep.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

Before we ever touch your ad budget, we look at your landing pages.

Why?

Because 90% of underperforming ad accounts aren’t suffering from bad ads.

They’re suffering from leaky landers.

What we check before we launch:
→ Load speed (<2.5s)
→ Scroll map (where do people bounce?)
→ First 150 words of copy (value prop in or nah?)
→ CTA visibility above the fold
→ Social proof that actually matters

Your ad could be a 10/10.

But if the page is a 4/10, the ROAS will be a 3.

💡 Don’t optimize spend. Optimize experience.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie if you care about the full conversion path — not just pretty ads.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

You finally get great UGC — and what do most agencies do?

Slap a logo on it and send it live.

Here’s what we do:
→ Re-script real UGC into 3 angles (problem-solution, testimonial-style, shock-value)
→ Caption 3 ways: question-led, benefit-stacking, offer-first
→ Build raw + polished versions (yes, sometimes the iPhone crop wins)

We’ve taken a single UGC video and stretched it into 14 high-converting variants.

Not AI-generated.
Not templated.
Not guesswork.

Just real storytelling, cut 14 different ways.

🎥 One great shoot can fuel a month of growth — if you cut it right.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for creative strategy that respects your content and your cost.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

Smart Shopping (or Performance Max) isn’t smart if you treat it like autopilot.

We’ve found success using a “feeder campaign” approach:

Use standard shopping with exact-match keywords to warm the algorithm.

Run Performance Max only after a 45-day seasoning window.

Inject first-party audience segments from Klaviyo and Meta to jumpstart data.

The result? Cleaner performance. Lower CPA. Better control.

Treat PMax like a black box, and it’ll treat your ROAS like a slot machine.

🎰 Performance Max works best when it knows what winning looks like.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for Google Ads setups that combine machine learning with real-life logic.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

Want to know if your creative actually works?

Don’t just track ROAS. Track first-touch engagement lift.

We built a system internally to measure:
→ Scroll depth from ad to page
→ Time on page from each creative variant
→ Add-to-cart rate by first-viewed creative

What we learned:

One creative variant that didn’t close the sale had the highest assist rate.

Most agencies kill that ad. We kept it — and scaled the creative it fed.

If you're not attributing influence, you're missing your best assets.

⚡ Ads don’t always convert directly. Some just open the door.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for the kind of ad testing logic no one else is showing you.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

Most Klaviyo flows are overbuilt and under-optimized.

What do we mean?
→ Too many steps
→ Too many emails saying the same thing
→ No dynamic product logic
→ No audience segmentation in flows

Here’s how we fixed that:
✅ We now build flows that remove users mid-flow if they take action
✅ We inject “breakers” like product logic or profile tags to stop repetitive touchpoints
✅ We optimize flow length by revenue per email, not “best practices”

In one case, reducing a 9-email post-purchase flow to 4 increased revenue by 27%.

Fewer emails.
More intentionality.
Less fatigue.
Higher conversion.

🧬 It’s not about sending more. It’s about sending smarter.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for advanced email and flow logic that treats customers like humans, not IDs.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

Everyone talks about hooks. But here’s the truth:

The thumbnail IS the hook.

If you’re running Meta video ads without a custom thumbnail strategy, you’re bleeding CTR.

Here’s what we do at Blade:
→ Build 3 thumbnails per ad — even for UGC
→ Test thumbnails before testing full video swaps
→ Use thumbnails as versioned copy tests (same ad, new frame, new angle)

We’ve seen CTRs jump 20–35% just by optimizing thumbnails before touching the creative.

If the scroll-stopper sucks, it doesn’t matter how good your copy is.

🖼 Your first frame is your first impression. Don’t leave it to chance.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for paid media angles that don’t come from Twitter threads.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

One of the things I’m proudest of?

Most of our clients at Blade become friends.

Not surface-level “let’s do a QBR” kind of friends.

→ I’ve been to their weddings.
→ Held their babies.
→ Traded texts during Celtics games and product launches.
That’s not because we’re trying to be “cool” or overly casual.
It’s because we care.

Care creates trust.
Trust creates longevity.
And longevity creates results.

Some people say “keep it professional.”
I say: professionalism includes respect, honesty, and humanness.

👥 Great work comes from real relationships.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for an agency POV rooted in people-first growth.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

Working with hotels has taught us this: most local SEO is stuck in 2014.

“Just add keywords” doesn’t cut it anymore.

Here’s how we’ve helped hospitality brands rank, book, and stay full:
→ Event-based keyword targeting (concerts, festivals, sports)
→ Schema markup for better rich results
→ Google My Business cleanup
→ Mobile-first page design that actually loads fast

Local search = intent goldmine.

But you can’t win if:
❌ You don’t have internal links
❌ You ignore technical SEO
❌ Your content reads like a brochure

Want to rank for “hotels near [event]”? You need to start 2–3 months in advance — and be consistent.

📍 Local SEO isn’t magic. It’s math + momentum.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for real SEO that drives bookings, not just impressions.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

If your agency never says “no,” you’re not working with a partner — you’re working with a vendor.

Great agencies protect your brand from yourself sometimes.

We’ve told clients:
→ “That creative won’t convert.”
→ “This offer will crush margin.”
→ “You’re better off waiting 3 weeks.”

Saying yes to everything isn’t service — it’s silence.

We’ve saved clients tens of thousands by slowing down, fixing upstream issues, and challenging what didn’t make sense.

It’s not always easy.

It’s not always what people want to hear.

But it’s what they need.

✅ Good partners push back.

🛑 Yes-men cost you money.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for marketing advice that’s honest — not just agreeable.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

We’ve worked with performance auto brands for years.

Here’s the sad reality: most of them are stuck in 2009.

→ Product pages with no value prop.
→ No email flows after purchase.
→ Ads that say “sale ends soon” 365 days a year.
These brands have real communities. Passionate customers. Products that actually matter.
They just need better marketing.

When we overhauled one auto brand’s email flows, their repeat purchase rate doubled in 90 days. No discounts. No gimmicks.

They just needed someone to treat their buyer like a human — not just a wrench in a funnel.

The auto world doesn’t need louder marketing.
It needs smarter marketing.

🚗 Performance shouldn’t stop at the engine.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for high-ROI growth strategy across aftermarket, DTC, and beyond.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

We’ve worked with brands spending $2K/month and $150K/month.

Want to know what the best ones always have?

Clarity.

→ Clarity on who they serve.
→ Clarity on what they sell.
→ Clarity on their offer.
→ Clarity on what success looks like.
Not the most creative.
Not the loudest.
Not the trendiest.
The most focused.
Confused brands bleed ad spend.
Clear brands print results.

If your brand strategy fits in a sentence — you’re on the right track.

🧠 Confusion kills conversions. Clarity scales.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie for advice on how to simplify what you sell — and multiply your growth.

[Oliver Allen | Paid & Email Marketing @EcomOllie]

“Let’s try everything and see what sticks.”

That phrase has probably burned more ad dollars than anything in marketing.

If you don’t have a hypothesis…
If you’re not testing one variable at a time…
If you’re changing everything every week…

You’re not iterating — you’re just thrashing.

We’ve helped dozens of brands improve performance by doing less:
→ One audience at a time
→ One message at a time
→ One change at a time

It’s slower.
It’s boring.
And it works.

Growth comes from systems, not stunts.

🎯 Stick to the test. Trust the data. Don’t guess.

✚ Follow @EcomOllie if you want fewer spray-and-pray strategies and more smart, simple execution.