Marketing for online shops

Typical bottlenecks and solutions

1. Rising CPMs, falling measurability

Why: Meta and Google allocate budget based on the signals your shop sends back. Because of consent banners, ad blockers and iOS restrictions, many purchases no longer reach them. The algorithms then learn from a small, skewed sample, the ROAS in the ad account drifts away from Shopify revenue and every budget increase becomes guesswork, especially in the expensive fourth quarter.

Solution (Performance Marketing): We set up server-side tracking with Tracyn, which passes orders from Shopify straight to Meta and Google. We then structure campaigns by product margin and share of new customers, test creatives in fixed cycles and judge each platform on actual shop revenue. Budget moves to wherever contribution margin after ad spend is highest.

2. Customers buy once and never again

Why: Many shops put almost their entire budget into new customers and treat the customer list as a newsletter mailing list. Welcome series, abandoned basket and browse abandonment, post-purchase and win-back are missing. Anyone who only gets discount emails after their first purchase waits for the next code. Repeat purchase rates stay low, and every euro of acquisition has to pay for itself on the first order.

Solution (Email Marketing): We build the core flows in Klaviyo, segment by purchase history, product category and repurchase cycle, and plan campaigns with a revenue target for every send. Product recommendations, refill reminders and editorial content replace the permanent voucher. We measure every email by attributed revenue per recipient and go through it with you every month.

3. Promotions that cost margin

Why: Black Week, sale codes, influencer vouchers: in everyday D2C one promotion follows the next. Revenue in the Shopify dashboard looks good, but after returns, shipping, payment fees and ad spend little is left. Because marketing and finance work with different numbers, this often only becomes apparent when cash gets tight.

Solution (Consulting & Interim): With our partner Atmos, we calculate the contribution margin per product and channel after returns and ad spend. From this we work out which products to advertise, how deep a discount can go at most and which segments need none at all. Every promotion gets a margin target before launch, and we report against it afterwards.

Reference: van Laack and apo-discounter.de

• > 1,000% ROAS for apo-discounter.de
• > €250,000 ad budget managed
• > 1m users reached

At van Laack, Sascha Blum served as interim CDO from 2024 to 2026, introducing a CRM and building automated campaigns. For the online pharmacy apo-discounter.de we managed performance campaigns with more than €250,000 in ad budget. Other retail and D2C brands we have worked for include Ardell and Aevor.

Service mix

• Email Marketing: Klaviyo flows and campaigns with a revenue target per send, segmented by your customers' purchase history, basket value and repurchase cycle.
• Performance Marketing: Meta, Google Shopping, TikTok and Pinterest campaigns, steered by product margin and the share of genuinely new customers.
• Tracking with Tracyn (partner Atmos): Tracyn passes Shopify orders server-side to Meta and Google, so the algorithms learn from complete purchase data again.
• Consulting & Interim: An interim CDO or CMO when the shop's CRM, data structure or marketing team still needs to be built.

What we steer by (KPIs)

• Contribution margin after ad spend: Shows whether growth makes money or just pushes revenue up.
• New-customer CAC: What a first-time buyer really costs, measured on actual orders in Shopify.
• 90-day repeat purchase rate: Shows whether flows and product range bring customers back for a second purchase.
• Email revenue per recipient: Comparable across all sends, regardless of list size and distorted open rates.

Timing: Many shops make a large share of their annual revenue between Black Week and Christmas, so list growth, flows and tracking should be in place by September. We use January and the summer lull for creative tests and win-back campaigns.

FAQ

Which shops is Minotaurus the right partner for? For Shopify shops and D2C brands with roughly €1m to €50m in annual revenue that are already selling and want to grow more profitably. Below €1m in online revenue, the customer list and data are usually not enough to calculate reliably. If that is the case, we will tell you openly in the intro call.

What is the free campaign? We run one email campaign for your shop free of charge and agree a revenue target with you beforehand. That way you see how we work on real numbers before you decide to work with us. You need an existing email list and at least €1m in online revenue; the details are in the terms of participation.

How much does e-commerce marketing with Minotaurus cost? Email marketing starts at €3,000 per month, Performance Marketing at €1,500 per platform, and each additional platform costs €900 more. All prices are net, plus ad budget, which for shops usually makes sense from €5,000 per month. The contract term is one month.

Do we need Klaviyo for this? For email flows we recommend Klaviyo, because it uses Shopify data such as orders, product views and basket values directly and builds segments from them. If you work with a different tool, we check in the intro call whether switching pays off or whether we continue in your existing system.