E103: The Incrementality Playbook Every Ecommerce Marketer Needs

Are you making decisions based on data that proves causality or just correlation?

Connor Rolain (Head of Growth, HexClad), Connor MacDonald (CMO, Ridge), and Cody Plofker (CEO, Jones Road Beauty) dig into what it means to build a truly incrementality-first marketing organization.

They break down how to string together consecutive channel tests — using each result to build the next hypothesis rather than testing in isolation. They share real examples from their own accounts, including how a 20% budget shift to brand video drove a 40% lift in incremental results, why TikTok Shop is proving to reach a new audience for HexClad, and how Jones Road diagnosed and rebuilt a struggling Meta account from first principles.

The conversation also tackles the nuance of measuring upper-funnel channels like CTV and YouTube, when directional reads are enough, and how to build a culture where your team learns to think incrementally without being told to.

Chapters
00:00:00 Your Holdouts Crash Course
00:05:04 What Incremental First Means
00:07:15 Metrics Hierarchy & Testing
00:09:44 TikTok Shop & Retention
00:15:33 How to Educate Tech Partners
00:17:34 Holdouts vs Directional Tests
00:20:50 Stringing Tests Together
00:24:00 Diagnosing Meta Struggles
00:29:30 Channel Level vs Optimization
00:34:40 Consecutive & Seasonality
00:36:13 Spending Your Next Dollar Best
00:40:17 Leveraging Directional Results
00:42:26 CTV Efficiency + Search Lift
00:45:00 Do Paid Channels Compound?
00:49:25 Ridge Ran 58 Tests Last Year
00:53:15 How Brand Video Drives 40% Lift
00:57:17 Signal Engineering & Brand
00:59:34 3 Steps of Incrementality

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