Hey {{first_name|mate}},

It was a busy week in eCom Collab Club® land last week… Bank Holidays stop no fun and games round these parts!

Last Tuesday, Rich Evans hosted an opulent brand dinner at the brilliant Yaatra, while I was simultaneously busy feeding agencies pasta at Café Murano Marylebone…

Then came last Wednesday’s eCom Collab Club® London, where the cinema screen fully gave up on life – but, thankfully, the eCom community didn’t.

Turns out if you get hundreds of operators, founders and marketers in a room together and give them coffee, vending machines and super cool pop-ups in a makeshift marketplace, they’ll still happily spend three hours debating retention, loyalty and delivery tracking links like there’s a World Record up for grabs... Which is a delight for all concerned!

We’re not done yet either. This week we’re officially welcoming back the eCC Podcast after a 3-week hiatus caused by bank holidays and general diary chaos. More on that below.

But first…here’s the DL on what went down at eCC London last week 👇

Caitlin

Last week’s eCom Collab Club® London proved two things:

The theme? Beyond the last click: What Really Needs to Happen?
i.e. “Congrats on the sale. Now don’t cock up everything that happens next.”

Darcy Laceby (Co-Founder of Absolute Collagen) hosted a brilliant first panel on keeping customers engaged after the sale, while Rich Evans took the reins on the wonderfully glamorous world of last-mile delivery. Nathan was on-hand to keep everything running as Master of Ceremonies.

A few things became abundantly clear throughout…

Your first delivery matters more than most brands think.
If the unboxing experience feels like a hostage negotiation with cardboard and cellotape, customers remember. Fast. As several speakers pointed out, all the expensive acquisition work in the world can be undone by one dodgy delivery or poor post-purchase experience.

Packaging also isn’t “just ops stuff.”
It’s part of the product, part of the brand, and part of whether customers feel like they bought from a premium business or received a mystery parcel from a bloke named Gary.

Slapping points onto a checkout and hoping customers suddenly feel emotionally connected to your brand?
Apparently not the masterstroke some businesses think it is. There was a recurring theme around loyalty programmes being… a bit dead. Customers want relevance, personality and a reason to actually care — not another “collect 12 beans for 5% off” situation.

The best brands aren’t immediately screaming BUY AGAIN 14 seconds after checkout.
They’re helping customers actually use the thing they just bought. Whether it’s matcha, grooming products or subscriptions, brands investing in education and long-term engagement are seeing stronger retention than those carpet-bombing inboxes with discount codes.

International shipping also got its fair share of public shaming. Surprise duties and taxes remain one of the fastest ways to obliterate customer trust. Nothing says “premium shopping experience” quite like an unexpected £47 customs bill landing after checkout.

One of the strongest points of the day was (once again): community beats marketing. Every time. Brands building genuine missions, conversations and user participation are creating far stronger loyalty than brands endlessly yelling “LIMITED TIME ONLY 🚨” into the void.

And finally: don’t promise a “personal touch” if scale means you’ll quietly kill it six months later. Customers notice when brands stop caring. They also notice when customer service disappears into the Bermuda Triangle the second something goes wrong.

In summary: the sale is not the finish line. It’s the start of the part most brands massively underinvest in.

Also…next time we’ll check in with the ODEON the day before to make sure the screen’s working….FFS.

Next month, Adam Pearce is back in the driver’s seat, alongside Rich Evans, diving into what actually makes customers stick with subscriptions – and not treat them like a free trial they forgot to cancel after one oat milk delivery and an identity crisis.

From creating a killer subscription offer to and churn, loyalty and the brutal reality that “10% off your next order” is not a draw anymore... Expect honest conversations and the usual amount of caffeine-fuelled networking chaos before 9am.

With speakers lined up from:

Huel ▸ Clothes Doctor ▸ Natures Menu ▸ Craft Gin Club ▸ FILDI ▸ NAYDAYA
▸ Zap Post ▸ Outra

➕ More brand founders and leaders to be announced!

If you’re building a subscription brand, thinking about launching one or currently watching your churn rate and clutching a cushion like it’s a horror film, you’ll probably want to be in the room for this one.

This afternoon, Adam’s joined by Simon Green from Sprintr to talk about where AI is actually creating value for eCommerce brands.

Not “write me 5 captions” AI...

Real workflow stuff: the repetitive nonsense your team absolutely shouldn’t still be doing manually.

If your current AI strategy is mostly vibes and ChatGPT chats…this one’s probably going to rewrite your whole approach to operations management.

🗓️ Monday 11 May | 3.30pm (UK)

🎧 Join live on LinkedIn

Yes, another AI buzzword… But this one actually matters.

Mollie are running this one on Wednesday 20 May, covering:

Can’t make it live? No dramas. Everyone who registers will get the recording afterwards, so you can watch it later while ignoring Slack notifications and pretending you’re “in deep work”…

You can also submit questions in advance, so if there’s something specific you want covered, chuck your topics in ahead of time and Mollie will do their best to squeeze them into the session.

The legends over at Salesfire are bringing back the on Tuesday 8 September at The Belfry Hotel. If previous years are anything to go by, it’ll be a day packed with talks, panels and conversations around what’s actually happening in eCommerce right now.

We’ll be hosting a live podcast episode from the summit, which feels like a terrible idea for everyone involved, but excellent content for the rest of us! Let’s hope we have more luck with screens at a golf club than at a cinema…

Our newsletter readers can grab a complimentary ticket using the code:
SUMMIT-ECC26.

So if you fancy a day of learning, networking and pretending you’re “just quickly checking emails” while secretly hiding from LinkedIn connection requests, get yourself registered before tickets disappear.