How to sell to Product leads at E-commerce companies
Product leads in e-commerce, such as CPOs or VPs of Product, are primarily measured on the growth of their online store's conversion rate. They respond to outreach that demonstrates a clear understanding of how to enhance user experience and streamline product development processes, particularly through data-driven insights or integration capabilities that can reduce time to market.
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
- low conversion rates
- high cart abandonment
- integration issues with tools
- slow product release cycles
The playbook
- 01
Identify recent platform upgrades
Research e-commerce platforms like Shopify for announcements about new features or upgrades. Filter your list to target companies that have recently launched new product lines or updated their online store experience. This indicates they may be open to solutions that enhance their new capabilities.
- 02
Highlight user experience challenges
Craft your outreach to emphasize common pain points in user experience for online shoppers, such as cart abandonment rates or slow load times. Reference industry benchmarks to show you understand the specific challenges faced by their teams, making your message more relevant and compelling.
- 03
Leverage seasonal sales data
Time your outreach around key retail seasons or sales events, like Black Friday or Cyber Monday. Use data from previous years to highlight trends in conversion rates during these periods, positioning your solution as a way to capitalize on these opportunities and improve sales performance.
- 04
Address integration concerns
Be prepared to tackle objections regarding integration with existing tools. Research common tools used in e-commerce, like CRM or inventory management systems, and explain how your solution can seamlessly integrate, ensuring minimal disruption to their current workflows.
- 05
Suggest a data-driven strategy session
Propose a brief call to discuss how data analytics can inform product decisions and enhance conversion rates. Offer specific insights or case studies from similar e-commerce companies, positioning the call as a collaborative strategy session rather than a sales pitch.
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
- Boost your conversion rates
- Enhance your online store experience
- Optimize product launches
Questions
- Why do product leads in e-commerce ignore outreach about analytics tools?
- Product leads may overlook outreach about analytics tools if they perceive it as an added complexity rather than a solution to existing problems. They prioritize tools that can seamlessly integrate with their current systems and deliver immediate, actionable insights that directly impact conversion rates.
- What challenges do product leads face when launching new products?
- Product leads often encounter issues with coordinating cross-functional teams, managing timelines, and ensuring that marketing aligns with product launches. These challenges can lead to delays and missed opportunities, making them particularly receptive to solutions that streamline collaboration and enhance efficiency.
- How can outreach be tailored to resonate with e-commerce product leads?
- Outreach should focus on specific pain points such as user experience and conversion metrics. By demonstrating a clear understanding of the e-commerce landscape and providing actionable insights or solutions, outreach becomes more relevant and likely to elicit a response from product leads.
- What timing is best for reaching out to e-commerce product leads?
- The best timing for outreach is just before key retail seasons or product launch periods. This is when product leads are actively looking for solutions to improve performance and are more open to discussions about tools that can enhance their strategies and outcomes.
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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