Ecom with Jon

I write stuff here: www.jonivanco.com/newsletter

I talk about ecommerce, call out the bullshit, and use data to back up my opinions.

Founder

Formtoro

We're building out a new category of signups that allow for live data collection that are aligned with the modern customer journey. We're huge fans of building experiences that benefit both the customer and the company to reduce guessing.

More at formtoro.com

Co-Founder

Boon Road

boon
/bo͞on/ (noun)
1. a thing that is helpful or beneficial
road
/rōd/ (noun)
 1. a wide way leading from one place to another
 2. a series of events or a course of action that will lead to a particular outcome

Parent Company to Formtoro.

LatticeWork

Direct support to the CMO and CEO. Tasked with working internally with various teams to streamline communication, product road map, and go to market strategy.

Latticework is envisioning the future of data privacy.

CX Advisor

Cryptopal

Advertising is changing, blockchain is taking over and adblockers now rule the internet.

It's time to make the experience a bit more personal without sacrificing consumer privacy.

Strategic Advisor

LIFX

Redefined efficiency across our support team.

Developed end-to-end self help flows that resulted in greater than 70% reduction in tickets.

Aggregated data from all tickets to understand trends and provide feedback to design and engineering team to integrate into the product and apps.

Introduced non-standard KPIs to track progress across the Support Team, Engineering Team, Sales, and other teams correlating Support with value add.

Consistently use best in practice information delivery to create customer experiences that get results and better help internal teams to process the information as it comes in and react and inform customers in a more timely manner.

Achieved a 0 new ticket balance at a rate of 100% outside of holiday periods and greater than 92% overall including holiday periods.

Director of Customer Experience

Successfully launched 10+ products over 2.5 years across 80 countries.

Partnerships with Apple, Google, and Amazon through co-marketing efforts and branded integrations lead to continued growth into new regions and across the whole of the Smart Home Market.

Experience working with strategy, roll-out, and other positioning to fuel continued growth in an increasingly competitive industry.

Played a key role in increasing revenue by double digit multipliers, consistently.

Director of Product Marketing, Partnerships, and PR

AffinityLive

- Second sales hire at emerging startup in workplace automation space
- Demoed and engaged with customers of all sizes sub 5 to more than 2000 employees
- Cross functional role, account executive, solutions consultant, and sales engineer from trial request to close with some implementation throughout
- Proficient and expert level in our complex and expansive platform encompassing four areas: Sales, Project Management, Service Desk, and Retainers
- Operationally, worked to refine sales process, build tools, and video library to connect with customers at all hours including implementing extensive automation via triggers
- Closed in excess of 20 account multiple months with average sales cycle of 45 days
- Received more than 6000 page views on video library where I recorded more than 140 videos
- Consistently went above and beyond for clients on six continents and multiple time zones
- Worked with marketing on content development and outreach
- Assisted customer service with escalated calls

Solutions Consultant/Account Executive

RGI Consultants

•	Small business consultant to numerous startup and technology companies as well as non-profits
•	Integrated within organizations to learn product, company culture, and goals
•	Prioritized goal structure and built out roadmaps for accomplishment
•	Evaluated the strengths of team members, worked with management to better delegate and direct their workflow to promote improved organization through lean process methodology
•	Introduced collaboration tools to improve communication between employees
•	Created surveys and outreach to understand customer and client needs
•	Designed sales plans and evaluated effectiveness of current materials
•	A/B testing of sales and marketing materials to increase effectiveness
•	Advised on the implementation of new technologies to improve efficiency
•	Trained, supervised, and taught new staff through presentations and on the job learning
•	Analyzed market trends and created a plans recommending adjustment
•	Tracked financial modeling to ensure that targets were met and productivity was improving
•	Created and facilitated proposed expansion into new markets through presentations and lectures to business owners on behalf of clients
•	Advised on social media creation and content to assist clients in gaining web presence and connecting with their customers
•	Evaluated existing procedure and wrote protocol for better information management
•	Familiar with process, activities and tools (DMAIC) utilized in lean process efforts

Small Business Consultant

UCSF Medical Center

•	Experience in high volume, fast paced, team oriented healthcare environment with staff that exceeded twenty people in one unit.
•	Handled in excess of two hundred and fifty phone calls daily while multitasking in other departmental duties including assisting Neurologists and Neurosurgeons with transcription of medical orders and prescribed therapy.
•	Proficient in medical terminology and medical procedure terminology with knowledge in scheduling hospital procedures and tests.
•	Experience working with automated purchasing and materials management system and other computer based programs and office hardware.

Hospital Unit Service Coordinator III

Formtoro.com - Zero Party Data Ecommerce Strategy

Helping ecommerce companies understand the difference between a Customer Journey and Company Journey.

We're changing the future of eCommerce one company at a time through quantitative and qualitative data.

Always up for a chat about the industry: calendly.com/jonivanco

You should sign up for my newsletter at www.jonivanco.com/newsletter that's where I drop all my hot takes.

I love zero party data and data analytics and a good debate around them.

🏌🏼‍♂️Jon Ivanco

YOCTO

Founder & CEO of YOCTO — a full-service retention marketing agency trusted by Heights, BetterMe, Kilo Health, Healf, and others. We build full-funnel CRM programs that increase LTV, reduce churn, and scale subscription revenue. Invited to Klaviyo’s Partner Advisory Council and Yotpo’s Advisory Board in our first year

CEO AFTER DARK

Host of CEO AFTER DARK — a candid podcast where high-performing founders share the real stories behind their biggest wins, toughest moments, and what no one talks about in DTC and online business, full of raw lessons from the operators building what's next.

Founder & Host

Reforge

Member of Reforge’s Retention + Engagement and Growth Series programs, with a focus on scaling LTV-first brands through behavioral triggers, segmentation strategy, and monetization loops.

Member

Kilo Health

Led conversion content strategy at one of Europe’s fastest-growing healthtech companies. Owned retention messaging, monetization flows, and content-driven acquisition across multiple brands. Also built the internal onboarding and training system for Kilo’s next generation of conversion copywriters.

Conversion Content Lead

George Kapernaros

I consulted small, mid-sized, and large companies on how to improve customer life value and user monetization. Projects ranged from user onboarding and lifecycle optimization to acquisition funnels, pricing, upsells, and product-market fit clarity.

The Atomic Garden Vilnius

Delivered guest lectures on advanced conversion messaging and user behavior at Lithuania’s top advertising school, The Atomic Garden Vilnius — focused on helping young creatives learn how turn messaging into measurable performance.

Guest Lecturer

divbrands

When the company broke the 100+ employee mark (in less than 3 years), I was promoted to marketing director. During that time my responsibilities grew to include the brand strategy for every new product or store, a new CRM and email marketing department, and an ever-growing marketing team, which now also included a fully fleshed CRO arm and a market research team. 

In parallel, I was also responsible for liaising with the company's agency and other creative partners, including performance agencies and content producers, spread in 3 continents.

When I decided to leave to pursue my entrepreneurial journey, the company was at a record high financial performance and expanding aggressively.

Marketing Director

As the company started growing, I was promoted to lead copywriter and almost immediately to general marketing manager. During that time, I led the entire creative content production team, including 3 copywriters, 3 video editors, and 1 photographer. 

I also established the foundations of CRO (conversion rate optimization) in the company and developed an advertising creative framework that would become the basis of new product and store launches. 

Overall, I was involved in or directly led 200+ e-commerce product launches in European markets (often launching multiple stores per week).

Marketing Manager / Head Copywriter

Got offered a full-time position after an advertising campaign I produced as a freelancer scaled to high 6-figures in Facebook ads revenue. 

During my role, I brainstormed marketing campaign angles and produced a variety of conversion assets (sales pages, advertorials, email sequences, Facebook ads, and more) which helped generate massive growth in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and Japan.

As the company's third full-time employee, I was there since the beginning and helped build the processes and systems that would later support 100+ employees and contractors.

Copywriter

Independent Consultant

I've been living and breathing direct response for many years. Here are some nice things people said about me, when I was starting:

"George is more than capable of turning even the most abstract idea into solid, highly compelling copy. Very professional, extraordinarily talented - he is definitely an asset to your team."

"I am amazed by George’s ability to turn any of our e-commerce projects into an exciting, unique and profitable story. He is highly knowledgeable in the field of marketing and sales, and besides copywriting, he is always curious, helpful and available to think together about performance, tactics, strategy, leadership or any of the creative steps of our projects in order to reach our common goals as a team."

"Amazing experience would highly recommend George anytime! He's a talented copywriter and has a great sense for persuasion and marketing."

"Thank you, George, for your professionalism and excellent writing skill. You helped rescue our project when it was needed the most. A++++ would love to work with him again!"

"George is an excellent copywriter and all-around great person. He went above and beyond the call of duty for my project to make sure it was what I was looking for. His communication was excellent and he even delivered ahead of an already tight deadline. I will certainly be working with him again soon."

"George has had a key role in the growth of our international e-commerce business. He's extremely competent, full of positive energy and a true self-starter. My team and I really enjoy working with him, because he always brings excellent knowledge about marketing and sales to the table and a great attitude! His sales copywriting helped us generate multiple six figures in sales over the past months. I highly recommend George for any leadership role involving an in-depth understanding of sales, marketing, and copywriting in your organization."

Direct-Response Copywriter & Strategist

Smarterchains

I helped refine and develop SmarterChains' communication and content marketing strategy, collaborated with the design and development team, and executed the day-to-day content production and content promotion.

I discussed marketing strategy and content tactics directly with the CEO & Co-Founders (top-ranked senior executives & P&G alumni).

Content Marketing

ReGeneration | Global Shapers Athens Hub

Out of 6000 candidates, finished as a top 100 finalist. Scored at the top percentile for both abstract reasoning and numerical reasoning. Received 56+ hours of business and softs skills training by industry experts and a placement in a Greek tech startup.

Finalist

Owner @ YOCTO | 传奇 | CXL Instructor | Reforge Member

I run YOCTO, a retention marketing agency trusted by brands like Healf, Heights, BetterMe, and Kilo Health. We help DTC teams solve complex CRM problems and break through their acquisition ceiling.

Quick Bio:
- CEO & Founder of YOCTO, the #1 retention marketing agency for health & wellness brands
- Powered CRM for 100+ clients incl. Heights, BetterMe, Kilo Health, Elo, Miracare, Healf and others
- Advisor to Klaviyo (Partner Council) & Yotpo (Email Advisory Board)
- Host of CEO AFTER DARK, a candid podcast for high-performing founders
- MBA, Reforge member, CXL instructor, guest lecturer @ The Atomic Garden

WE DO NOT PROVIDE 'AUDITS' FOR A VERY GOOD REASON

Transparently, you don’t need another teardown that says,

- “Your welcome flow is missing a text.”
- “You should A/B test your popup.”
- “Send more segments.”

You already know that. What you need is a plan. A real, outcome-driven plan that gets you closer to your retention goal - whether that’s increasing LTV, fixing drop-off between orders one and two, reducing churn, or improving CAC payback.

That’s why YOCTO doesn’t do audits. We do Strategy Activations.™

A STRATEGY ACTIVATION™ IS A GAMEPLAN

This isn’t a templated teardown or a list of flaws in your lifecycle setup. It’s a fully mapped, high-leverage strategy designed to help you hit your retention targets *this quarter.* Specific moves. Clear priorities.

You’ll walk away with:

- A diagnosis of what’s actually hurting retention (backed by cancel behavior and flow data)
-  A focused roadmap to increase LTV, improve AOV, or hit any retention KPI that matters right now
- LTV:CAC modeling that shows how the plan could pay off
- Built by people who live and breathe CRM, not best-practice blogs

If you’re serious about scaling through retention... find a time here:
https://calendly.com/george-kapernaros/socratic-interview

I didn’t plan to share this publicly, but since competitors are asking their agency coaches behind the scenes... YOCTO is closing 2025 at around €1M EBITDA. That alone tells me 2026 is going to be a knife fight. 

In the last few months: 

1. One of our top U.S. competitors just pivoted into subscriptions.

2. Friends in the UK are suddenly repositioning directly into our lane.

3. And quietly, behind the curtain, we're increasingly becoming the benchmark other agencies compare themselves to.

"Why is this Greek guy's company out-earning, out-positioning, and out-thinking us... in half the time we've been doing business... when they're not even living in our country?" 

In other words: Competition is about to go CRAZY. So let me be brutally honest about where we actually stand.

Our disadvantages: 

1. We're building the plane while flying it. A lot of this year has been rebuilding foundations that should've been set earlier. 

We grew decently well, but it was messy, stressful as hell, and expensive.

Founders love to glamorize chaos. I don't. This year wasn't fun at all.

2. We hired too late, too often. I’ve historically run the team to the absolute limit before adding headcount - which means we’ve always hired too late.

And hiring late has a cost:

- We lost opportunity.
- We burned good people out.
- We onboarded into chaos.
- Our churn increased.
- And our growth slowed when it didn’t need to.

Hiring fast is chaotic. Hiring slow is smooth. Fixing this in 2026.

3. I've been carrying too much of the weight myself. Founders don't talk about this publicly, but I will. 

In many ways, YOCTO is strong because I am strong - that is both an asset and a liability. When I see a problem, my default move is always:

"I have to fix it."

But when you don’t have a documented escalation protocol.. and your founder instinct is to take over and fix it... People learn to wait for you to take lead instead of solving things. 

I suck at this. Need to get better fast. 

Why we'll win anyway:

1. We're bringing in help. Our management team expands in January. And we've brought in Prosana to strengthen our hiring.

2. Out network is absurdly strong. We're getting tons of referrals from clients, agencies, tech partners, consultants, etc. 

It's compounding. 

3. Competitors can copy our ICP, they can copy our positioning, website, audit decks.

They can even name their agency "OKTO" instead of YOCTO (which actually happened - sorry for the callout Rammin 😂).

But they can’t copy original thinking.

Most agencies think within the limits of the platforms they use. Their “strategy” is whatever Klaviyo, Recharge, or the guru of the month told them.

We think from first principles. That’s the part you can’t steal.

In my opinion, competitors don't beat you. Your internal problems do. And 2025 forced us to confront all of ours, directly. 2026 will be brutal. This post may age poorly.

But based on everything I'm seeing...

I really like our chances. 🍻

CEO at YOCTO | Klaviyo Elite Partner + Advisory Council Member | #1 Lifecycle Agency for Health & Wellness | Clients: Kilo.health, BetterMe, Healf, Evereden, Frøya Organics, Heights, Miracare, Elo.health +100 Others

Pulsetto’s built a $40M+ funnel that’s scaling like crazy. I give them a 10/10 on their monetization strategy, however, certain areas can improve. I recorded a quick video breaking it all down (ads, emails, landing pages, CRO, etc.) + where I think they should be focusing on.

One of the things I aspire to do is reason through first principles, not analogy. In ecommerce - especially lifecycle marketing - people simply repeat what they’ve heard: "Don't send too many emails" "you'll annoy people," "you'll hurt deliverability," etc. 

Yet if you reason from first principles instead of folklore:

Fact 1: People can only buy if they know about your offer.
Fact 2: To know about your offer, they need to see it.
Fact 3: For them to see it, you have to send it.

Therefore - the more you send, the more chances you create for people to see and buy. 

Or as I like to say... the more you send, the more you earn. 😉 

See below, for example. The brand below sent 12 emails to the same audience in a single day.

The "best practice" crowd - the lifecycle dinosaurs - would panic. 

They'd yell, "Cut frequency in half! You'll burn the list!"

My recommendation is to double it, sending as many as 24 emails per day. 

Why? 

Every email is novel, time-sensitive, and interesting. The audience enjoys them. Unsubscribes and spam complaints are well within acceptable thresholds. Revenue is up and to the right.

They're driving 60% of total revenue from email alone, using a 24-hour, clicks-only attribution window.

(For context: most "top brands" don’t hit those numbers even with 5-day, open-inclusive attribution.)

We’ve looked at thousands of sends. The pattern is clear: The more they send, the more they earn. It's that simple.

The real issue isn't frequency, it's boredom. People spend 8 hours binging Netflix and 6 hours scrolling TikTok. They don’t hate repetition, they hate being bored.

If your emails are interesting, you can send WAY more than you think is possible. 

- G

Wishing y'all a profitable, low-CPM, Black Friday. LET'S GO! 🔥

Get out of spam FAST. This is what Klaviyo won't tell you about deliverability: https://lnkd.in/dxK3Ra6K

I have significantly less respect for lifecycle specialists who move from agency to brand than lifecycle specialists who move from brand to agency. Brand-side is easy mode! Where's the fun in going for "easy mode"!???! Only someone who's done both can recognize this.

Everyday Dose  just ran the most *INSANE* BFCM offer stack I’ve ever seen: 61% off, free creamer, VIP starter kit, random $100 cash in boxes AND 100 full refunds. 

I tore apart every step of the funnel and broke down what you can steal from them in this short YouTube video.

Question for you: do you want me to go “full nerd” and buy the product so I can reverse-engineer their onboarding, billing reminders, and churn prevention flows, too?

Video here: https://lnkd.in/dEZPcWYe 

👇 Drop a YES in the comments if you want the retention breakdown next.

We know (definitively) that every time a billing reminder is sent, churn goes up. We also know it's illegal not to send one. The conventional response is to optimize the billing reminder itself.

Stronger copy, clear skip/pause options, etc. 

There's value there. Our friends over at Zaymo (YC W24) have done great work to make the process smoother and more effective through their technology.

Yet, if you reason through first principles, the better solution isn't to optimize reminders.

It's to reduce how often they happen.

Because mathematically speaking - fewer billing moments will lead to fewer churn opportunities. 

Which means the most powerful churn-reduction tactic isn’t lifecycle-related or creative - it’s structural, and it starts with your selling plan or offer.

Sell greater quantities upfront. Quarterly. Semiannual. Annual.

Do you think it’s an accident that telco companies lock you into 24-month contracts?

:)

From $46 million to $50 million with a 5% relative improvement in this metric. 👇

You’ll find a ton of content online about e-commerce, but hardly anything useful about subscriptions. And the content that is available overcomplicate

Open article: Ecommerce Subscription Growth Playbook by George Kapernaros • 5 min read

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George Kapernaros

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