ECOMMERCE MARKETING · JASON SPENCER · ASHEVILLE, NC

Ecommerce marketing that owns the number.

For direct-to-consumer brands from $1M to $10M. One operator owns the strategy and the team that ships it. Named clients, dated numbers, published pricing.
No pitch. A real plan, yours either way.
Jason Spencer, founder of ROI.LIVE, in the ROI.LIVE office in Asheville, North Carolina
Every number on this page is dated
Jason Spencer
Founder, ROI.LIVE · Asheville, NC
30 yrs building businesses18 yrs digital marketing55+ industries5.4-yr average client retention
01
THE DEFINITION

What ecommerce marketing is

Four systems decide whether a store grows. Traffic was never the hard part.
Ecommerce marketing is the paid, owned, and search work that turns store traffic into first orders, repeat orders, and margin you keep. In practice it is four systems: paid ads, email and SMS, search (including the AI assistants), and the store itself. Most brands run all four. Few connect them to one number.
The four systems that decide ecommerce growth, and the named receipt behind each
SystemThe job it doesThe number it movesNamed receipt
Paid search and paid socialBuys first orders and tests offers at speedReturn on ad spend, dollars back per dollar inEast Perry, 5.09× blended paid ROAS
Email and SMSTurns one-time buyers into repeat buyersShare of revenue from your own listCRAFT, 45%+ of revenue in year one
Search and AI answersOwns the questions buyers ask before they buyReturn per dollar invested, over timeEast Perry, 18.56× SEO ROI on $71.8K invested
The store itselfConverts the traffic you already paid forConversion rate and average order valueZize Bikes, 8× monthly revenue

Every figure on this page comes from the live ROI.LIVE homepage, which is the canonical record. If a number matters to your decision, ask on the call and I will walk you through the source.

02
THE RECEIPTS

Four brands. Four numbers. All dated.

You cannot check a vibe. You can check a number.
EAST PERRY · ECOMMERCE · 3 YEARS
$396K → $2.57M
Annual revenue. 5.09× blended paid ROAS, 18.56× all-time SEO ROI on $71.8K invested, +95% year over year.
DATED · CHECKABLE
ZIZE BIKES · PLUS-SIZE BIKES
Monthly revenue, $10K to $80K+. Flat at the same number for years before the plateau broke.
PLATEAU BROKEN
REMARKABLE · DTC COATINGS
$0 → $1.2M+
Annual revenue. Arrived burning $10K a month on a big-agency retainer with nothing to show for it.
TURNAROUND
CRAFT · ARTISAN DESSERT MAKER
45%+
Of all revenue from email inside year one, up from the worst channel in the mix. Paid held 4× ROAS alongside it.
KLAVIYO · YEAR ONE
Names and figures as they appear on the ROI.LIVE homepage. East Perry ran three years. The home services receipts, Blue Tree, Coastal Carolina Comfort, and Windows Source of Houston, sit on the home services page with their own numbers.
03
WHERE THE MONEY LEAKS

The four leaks that keep a $2M store at $2M

A plateau is usually plumbing, not traffic.
Paid brings the visitors. What happens in the next sixty seconds and the next sixty days decides whether that spend compounds. These are the four places ecommerce revenue goes to die, checked in this order.
Jason Spencer working through an ecommerce growth plan on a whiteboard with a client team
THE WORK
Same person on the strategy and in the ad account
01

One-and-done buyers

The average order arrives paid and never comes back. No lifecycle system means every month starts from zero, and the ad bill sets your growth rate.
THE FIX: flows that carry repeat revenue
02

A store that leaks what paid sends

Visitors land, browse, and bounce. Cart and product page work converts the traffic you already bought, which is cheaper than buying more.
THE FIX: conversion work on the pages that close
03

Attribution you cannot interrogate

Every channel claims the same order, so you scale the loudest report instead of the most profitable one. The scorecard fixes it with one traced number.
THE FIX: revenue traced by channel, in writing
04

Invisible to the AI engines

Buyers ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude which brand to buy from. If your pages never answer their questions in plain language, the assistants never say your name.
THE FIX: answers on the page, structured to be quoted
04
THE CHANNEL YOU OWN

Email: the channel nobody can turn off on you

The list is an asset. Everything else is rent.
CRAFT is an artisan dessert maker. When ROI.LIVE took over the email program, it was the worst performing channel in the mix. Inside the first year it carried 45%+ of all revenue while paid held 4× ROAS across every campaign. Same list, same brand. The difference was segmentation, automated flows, and a person who owns the number.
45%+
Of all revenue from email in year one, at an artisan dessert maker, up from the worst channel in the book.
Return on ad spend across all paid campaigns the same year. The two channels are built to feed each other.
05
THE AI QUESTION

Buyers stopped typing keywords. They ask questions now.

Five algorithms decide whether they find you: Google, Bing, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.
Each one reads your store differently, and each one decides which brand it names when a buyer asks. The more questions your site answers in plain language, the more the engines pick it up, because most people typing into an assistant are asking a question. Answers are the new keywords.
Run this test today: ask ChatGPT “who makes the best [your product] for [your buyer]” and see whether it says your name. The gap between that answer and the questions your site answers is the work.
06
PRICING · PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 2026

What it costs

Published. Not “contact us for a quote.”
FRACTIONAL CMO · ROI.LIVE
$5K to $15K
Per month, scaling with scope, covering strategy and the team that executes it. Starts at $5,000.
VERSUS
THE SPLIT YOU HAVE PROBABLY TRIED
Two invoices, two margins, two agendas: a strategist on one and an agency on the other. Nothing shares an owner, so you referee when they drift.
Ad spend, software licenses, and third-party production are billed separately at cost and never marked up. A $10,000 retainer with $8,000 of media behind it is an $18,000 month. Any operator who will not split those two lines is hiding one of them from you.
Open the retainer bands by revenue
ROI.LIVE retainer bands, published September 2026
Your revenueTypical monthly retainerWhat it coversBilled separately
$1M to $3M$5,000 to $7,500One constraint at a time. Usually offer, paid, or measurement.Ad spend, software
$3M to $6M$7,500 to $12,000Full channel mix plus the measurement rebuild.Ad spend, software, production
$6M to $10M$12,000 to $15,000Full marketing ownership plus team direction.Ad spend, software, production
Full pricing mechanics, including the worked comparison against a full-time CMO hire, live on the fractional CMO page.
07
FIT

Who this is for, and who should not call

I will tell you on the first call, not after the first invoice.

Hire me if

  • You run a store between $1M and $10M with demand already proven.
  • You are spending on ads and cannot say what a customer costs you.
  • Repeat revenue is a rounding error instead of a system.
  • Your last agency sent dashboards and never touched the store.
  • You want the person setting the strategy to own the number.
  • You will act on what the data says, even when it stings.

Do not hire me if

  • You are pre-revenue. You need first customers, not a CMO.
  • You want to trade equity for marketing help.
  • You have a validated plan and need production volume. That is an agency job.
  • You need someone on site five days a week.
  • You want a channel plan handed over in thirty minutes.
  • You are not willing to hand over the marketing decisions.
Deepest receipts: ecommerce and direct-to-consumer, pools and outdoor living, home comfort and HVAC, windows and exteriors, landscaping. Each has a named client with a number on this site.
08
THE FIRST 90 DAYS

What happens in the first 90 days

No brand workshop. I open your accounts in week one.
01
DAYS 1 TO 14

The diagnosis

Access to ad accounts, analytics, the CRM, and the P&L. Where the money goes and what each dollar produces, by channel.
You get: the Growth Constraint Snapshot
02
DAYS 15 TO 30

The plan

The one constraint capping the others gets named, and the sequence to clear it gets written down with owners and dates.
You get: a written 90-day plan
03
DAYS 31 TO 60

Changes ship

For a store that is usually paid structure, the cart and product pages, or the welcome and abandoned-cart flows. In market, not in a deck.
You get: live changes
04
DAYS 61 TO 90

Measurement

Attribution rebuilt so every dollar is traced to an order. Then the next constraint gets named and sequenced.
You get: a baseline and a scorecard
What lands in your inbox every month

One scorecard, one written recommendation with a decision attached, and one review call. The scorecard carries the same five numbers every month so the trend is legible: orders, cost to acquire a customer, revenue by channel, repeat rate, and blended return on spend. Impressions never appear on it.

09
THE PERSON ON YOUR ACCOUNT

Jason Spencer

Jason Spencer, founder of ROI.LIVE, in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina
No bench. No account manager layer. No junior handoff after the sale.
The operator on every ROI.LIVE engagement. He runs Constellation Capital and ROI.Contractors alongside the agency, which means he is signing payroll and losing deals the same weeks he is setting your strategy.
30 years building and running businesses, 18 of them in digital marketing, across 55+ industries, from Asheville, North Carolina. He did not start in a marketing department. He started as an IT innovator inside the largest private company in Philadelphia, left in 2004 to build an IT services company to a team of twelve, and sold it in 2008 to build ROI.LIVE.
30
years building businesses
18
years in digital marketing
55+
industries served
5.4 yr
average client retention
10
QUESTIONS

Questions owners ask before they book

What does an ecommerce marketing agency do?

It runs the systems that turn store traffic into revenue: paid ads, email and SMS, search visibility, and the conversion work on the store itself. Most agencies run one piece and report on their piece. The ROI.LIVE model puts one operator over all four and reports one number: revenue.

How much does ecommerce marketing cost?

ROI.LIVE retainers run $5,000 to $15,000 a month, scaling with scope, and cover both the strategy and the execution team. Ad spend, software, and third-party production are billed separately at cost and never marked up. A $10,000 retainer with $8,000 of ad spend behind it is an $18,000 month.

What is a good ROAS for ecommerce?

ROAS is return on ad spend, dollars back per dollar in. The honest target is break-even at your margins, and it is different for every brand. A $60 product with $24 in landed cost and $12 in fulfillment leaves roughly $24 to acquire a customer, so your price and your repeat rate set the target. CRAFT held 4x ROAS across all paid campaigns in year one while email carried 45%+ of revenue, and that combination is the actual goal.

Should I fix paid, email, or the store first?

The constraint decides, and the constraint is rarely where the squeak is. The diagnosis in the first 14 days reads all three against your numbers and the sequence follows the data. In ecommerce the answer is usually paid structure or lifecycle, but I have been wrong about that on arrival, which is why the audit comes first.

Why would ChatGPT matter for my store?

Because a growing share of buyers now ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude what to buy instead of searching. Those engines name the brands that answer buyer questions in plain language on sites they can read. If your product pages never answer the questions buyers ask, the assistants have nothing to quote. That work is answer engine optimization, and it sits inside the search system on this page.

How fast will I see results?

Audits surface the leaks in the first 30 days. Channel changes land inside 60. Compounding growth shows up 6 to 12 months in, which is the honest timeline for any operator who is not lying to you. East Perry ran three years to $2.57M, and the arc mattered more than the first invoice.

Do you work with Shopify?

Yes. Shopify is where most of the ecommerce receipts on this page were earned, and there is a dedicated Shopify management page on this site. The platform matters less than the four systems around it.

Will you work with my in-house marketing person?

Yes, and it is the most common setup at this size. Your person keeps doing the work and gains someone senior setting direction and unblocking decisions. I direct rather than replace by default, and I will say so early if the role and the person are mismatched.

What size store is the right fit?

$1M to $10M in annual revenue with demand already proven. Below that, you need first customers and a working offer before you need a CMO. Above it, the job becomes team and portfolio decisions, which is a different conversation.

How are you different from every other ecommerce agency?

One operator holds the strategy and owns the team that executes it, so the plan and the delivery share an owner. The receipts are public and dated, the pricing is published, and the client count is capped. If an agency cannot show you a named client with a number, they are asking you to be the test.

Keep reading

EMAIL MARKETING
The email marketing agency page
How a list went from worst channel to 45%+ of revenue in a year, and what gets built first.
HOME SERVICES
The home services marketing page
Blue Tree at $172 of marketing investment per job won, Coastal Carolina Comfort to a Q1 2026 exit.
CHOOSING AN AGENCY
How to choose a marketing agency
A ten-question scorecard, the contract red flags, and the 30-minute test that catches AI slop.
THE NEXT STEP

Bring your numbers.

I will tell you which leak is eating your margin and what fixing it is worth. If your store does not need me yet, I will say so.
Free 30-minute growth plan call. You keep the plan either way.