Common Thread Collective is an ecommerce growth agency, helping DTC brands that are doing 7-9 figures in annual online revenue.
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Joined April 2015
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Before you tell your team to make more ads, ask what each attempt costs.
At Commerce Roundtable, @TaylorHoliday explains how changing the way a brand paid for creative helped it double spend while holding incremental ROAS.
Tune in here: youtu.be/bqJElruBvjE
A ROAS target based on a Black Friday lift test may not fit January, when your offer and customers’ buying behavior can change.
Keep the test dates and promotional context attached to the result so a seasonal finding doesn’t become a permanent budget assumption.
The questions shoppers ask during a livestream can become your next round of creative.
If people keep asking about fit, setup, or product differences, have the creator demonstrate the answer, then carry that explanation into your ads and product page.
When creators earn a fixed percentage of the sale price, a deeper discount lowers their payout per order.
So review commissions alongside holiday pricing to leave room for your margin and keep the offer worthwhile for creators.
Before coordinating 50 creators around Black Friday offers, test the process with one or two.
Check how quickly a stock change reaches them and whether they can adjust the offer without waiting for another approval.
If you’re worried about losing sales by testing your Black Friday ads, compare the test designs.
A user-based lift test withholds ads from selected shoppers rather than a whole region, helping estimate how many purchases would happen without the ads.
A 10-page creator brief can narrow the range of content you get back.
On The Ecommerce Playbook, Luke Austin and Richard Gaffin discuss which boundaries to keep and where to give creators room to experiment.
Watch the full episode here:
youtube.com/watch?v=niwccU1_…
ALT Luke Austin and Richard Gaffin on The Ecommerce Playbook
Revenue is 10% ahead of plan, but contribution is 15% behind.
When your media buyer asks to scale for Black Friday, which number drives the call?
Agree on that in October so a strong sales day doesn’t become the entire argument for spending more.
Common Thread Collective retweeted
Everyone asks me about live selling on TikTok Shop and if there brand should be doing lives...the short answer is yes but most brands are doing lives the wrong way!
Most brands are working with an agency or building an in house polished setup where everything is super brand focused and aligned
The only problem with that is it's extremely expensive, Hard to scale because of costs of talent, materials, etc..and most importantly it almost never brings an ROI!
As we know it Tiktok Shop is a volume game of getting as many affiliates and videos on the affiliate side so wouldn't the same principal apply to Lives as well since it's still an algorithm?
I've seen a problem happen over and over again with brands getting frustrated with live performance as it rarely ever brings an ROI they just do it because it's what Tiktok and their agency is telling them to do
That's why at TBAR Partners powered by Common Thread Collective we have created a live offering that nobody else in the space has done to focus purely on performance not some polished set that is expensive to produce!
Our entire focus is volume of live hours and having real affiliate with real live experience all over the country go live on the brands page with their own setup. It's real, authentic and brings an ROI as we can produce lives at a much cheaper rate than anyone else in the space.
I'm very bullish that we will see lives head this direction and we are the 1st agency to have the systems in place to offer this at scale
so if you're a brand upset about your live agencies performance or if you've been on the fence about lives because it's too expensive, send me a DM let's chat!
Higher ad spend during Black Friday can be the right call if the volume justifies it.
The decision gets harder when you’re looking at 47 lines on a P&L.
@TaylorHoliday breaks it into four buckets so you can see where the money goes and what to do next.
Common Thread Collective retweeted
Yesterday’s BFCM BOOTCAMP Hosted by @iamshackelford @TaylorHoliday @CommnThreadCo
Highlight: Meeting Taylor’s Doggo Jackie
Highlight #2: Getting some hands on support finalizing BFCM offers with @itslukeaustin
Highlight #2.0: Catching up with @iamshackelford and getting an inside look on what brands are running and winning at.
The TBAR crew has been keeping busy since joining CTC, and we're loving the extra firepower for TikTok Shop.
We're not the only ones celebrating, either.
A few familiar faces from HexClad, Grüns, Ridge, and Realsy sent some love to @TylerBrechbiel, @alexrudolphh, and the team. 👇
Common Thread Collective retweeted
Welp, the plan wasn't to announce this early, but here we go...
SHOPPS, collectible cards, celebrating some of the most impactful business leaders in ecom.
Only 1,000 packs available. None will be sold.
Coming soon...
Common Thread Collective retweeted
Marketing is gonna hate me for this leak…
But I’m too excited.
#SHOPPS Season 1 dropping so soon.
Before adding a free gift to your holiday offer, work out how much a customer needs to spend for the order to stay profitable.
@itslukeaustin breaks it down on today’s The Ecommerce Playbook.
ALT Luke Austin and Richard Gaffin on The Ecommerce Playbook talking about holiday strategy in 2026.
Marketing here. For someone who loves a forecast, this was not in ours...
You can make hundreds of Black Friday ads and still run short on creative in November.
If evergreen accounts for 70% of your spend, focusing production on BFCM promotions leaves most of your budget dependent on existing ads.
Your creative pipeline should reflect where the money is going, so evergreen testing needs to keep moving even as holiday production ramps up.
3 TikTok Shop mistakes you might be making 👇
There's a ton of brands that fail at Tiktok Shop every single day, and here's the 3 most common mistakes I see them making:
1. Not Enough Volume
Tiktok Shop is a volume game! You're dealing with an algorithm and nobody knows what works in that algorithm so it's a probability game... the more times you spin the free slot machine (Post a video) the higher chance you have at hitting the jackpot (going viral)
I tell all of our brands our goal should be to get to 1,000 videos per month as fast as possible and if you're not hitting that volume goal then you're probably going to fail!
2. No Affiliate Management System
Brands will send 1000s of samples without any touch points to creators after that sample is sent so creators aren't getting briefed, they aren't being coached inside a community, no relationship building
If everyone says Tiktok shop is all about relationships then why aren't you inviting these creators to a centralized communication place and building that relationship. You should be getting them inside a discord giving them coaching, competitions to incentivize them, and overloading them with so much free value
3. Not Maximizing the value of the channel
A lot of brands in the $10-$100k/m in Tiktok Shop GMV range are losing a ton of money each month on TikTok Shop after samples, ad spend, commissions, etc...
And a lot of them are leaving millions of dollars on the table but not getting these creators videos and using them on meta and other ad platforms.
I would argue this is the most valuable thing about TikTok shop is getting this affiliate flywheel going where creators are making 1000s of videos that you can get usage rights of to use on meta.
Meta is a hungry beast and every brand at every level of scale has a creative problem that's keeping them from scaling meta budget so if Tiktok can solve this issue it's 100% a win!
A lot of this is easier said than done but that's why sometimes it's better to have an agency partner who already has the team and systems built for scale, if you're a brand on Tiktok Shop and trying to figure out why you're stuck I'd love to give you a free audit so DM me!