How to sell to Heads of Marketing at E-commerce companies
Heads of Marketing in E-commerce are primarily measured by customer acquisition cost (CAC) and return on ad spend (ROAS). They respond to outreach that demonstrates a clear understanding of their current campaign performance and how to improve it using data-driven strategies. Highlighting specific metrics or case studies relevant to their current challenges can prompt a positive response.
Written and maintained by the SoloRiff team, who build outbound software and run outbound with it. The figures below are our own: we measured 578 e-commerce company domains over public DNS on 2026-09-03. Last updated 2026-09-03.
What actually hurts
- high customer acquisition costs
- low return on ad spend
- ineffective ad targeting
- poor campaign performance
The playbook
- 01
Identify recent campaign performance drops
Use tools like Google Analytics or Facebook Ads Manager to find E-commerce brands experiencing a decline in ROAS over the last month. This indicates potential pain points in their marketing strategy, making them more receptive to outreach that offers solutions.
- 02
Target brands launching new products
Filter your lead list for E-commerce companies that have recently announced new product launches via press releases or social media. These brands are likely seeking innovative marketing strategies to promote their new offerings, making them more likely to engage.
- 03
Analyze competitors’ marketing tactics
Research competitors of your target E-commerce brands to identify successful campaigns they’ve recently implemented. Highlighting these tactics in your outreach can provide valuable insights and position you as a knowledgeable partner who understands their market landscape.
- 04
Address common objections about budget constraints
Prepare responses to objections regarding marketing budget limitations, particularly in the current economic climate. Offer insights on cost-effective strategies or case studies where similar brands achieved significant results with limited budgets to alleviate their concerns.
- 05
Follow up post-campaign analysis
Reach out to Heads of Marketing after they’ve completed a major campaign, offering to discuss insights and performance analysis. Timing your outreach within a week of the campaign's end shows that you’re attentive and ready to provide value when they’re evaluating results.
Can e-commerce companies even receive your mail?
We measured the DNS of 578 e-commerce companies, sampled evenly across company sizes, to see how many authenticate their own email. It matters in both directions: a domain that does not authenticate is a domain whose team is used to mail going missing — and if your own domain is in the gap, yours is the mail going missing.
Publishes a DMARC policy of quarantine or reject — the domain actually asks receivers to act on failures.
The gap is the finding: 19.6% of 1–10-person companies against 67.5% of the largest — 48 points apart. Small companies are where the unauthenticated domains are, and small companies are who most cold outreach is aimed at.
Where does your domain sit?
Same three lookups, run live against your domain. Nothing is stored and nothing is emailed to you.
How this was measured
Company domains were sampled within employee-count bands, then queried over public DNS for SPF (TXT at the apex), DMARC (TXT at _dmarc.) and MX. One domain per company, deduplicated. Anyone can reproduce any single row of this with dig.
DKIM is deliberately absent. A DKIM key lives under a selector that cannot be enumerated from outside the domain, so a company with flawless DKIM under a name we did not guess would be counted as having none. That would measure our guess list, not the industry.
Domains with no MX record are excluded rather than counted as failures — parked and redirect-only domains would otherwise drag every figure down and make the result an artefact of the sample.
Sampled within bands, so this describes the population of companies, not of employees: a 10-person company counts once, as does a 10,000-person one. Each band is at least 60 domains; bands below that are not published. Figures are percentages of the sample, not of the whole industry, and we publish no company names — only counts.
Measured 2026-09-03. Re-measured monthly.
The full census across every industry — sortable, with sample sizes, free to reuse under CC BY 4.0.
Subject lines that fit
- Improving your ROAS
- Strategies for new product launches
- Tackling high CAC challenges
Questions
- Why do Heads of Marketing in E-commerce ignore outreach about analytics tools?
- They often receive numerous pitches and may prioritize immediate needs over long-term analytics solutions. If they’re focused on urgent campaign performance issues, they might overlook messages that don’t directly address their current challenges.
- What motivates E-commerce marketing heads to engage with vendors?
- They are motivated by solutions that can demonstrate a clear impact on improving customer acquisition costs or return on ad spend. If a vendor can provide insights or case studies that resonate with their current goals, they are more likely to engage.
- How do E-commerce marketing heads prefer to receive information?
- They typically prefer concise, data-driven insights that directly relate to their specific challenges. Visual content, such as infographics or case studies, can be particularly effective as it allows for quick comprehension of potential benefits.
- What are common timing issues for E-commerce marketing heads?
- They often face timing pressures around major product launches or seasonal sales periods. Reaching out during these peak times can be counterproductive, as they may be too focused on immediate tasks to engage with vendors.
Or have it run itself
SoloRiff does every step above on its own — finds the companies, finds the people, writes each of them individually, and handles the replies. Drop your URL and watch it work before you sign up for anything.
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