“Email’s handled.”
I hear it constantly. There is a flow. It sends. Money comes in. Tick.
Then we look at it. One flow, the same message to everyone, whether they bought yesterday or two years ago.
For one founder, splitting that list properly and writing to each group differently lifted the money email brought in about four times. It had been “handled” for years.
Making money isn’t the same as making what you could
Revenue gives you a quiet kind of false proof. If something makes money, it feels done. So it stops getting looked at.
That is how a business ends up stuck at the same revenue for a year while every piece of it looks fine on its own.
Three places “handled” usually hides
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Email.
It sends. But is it one message for everyone, or the right message for each customer?
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The website.
It converts. But at a rate that pays for the traffic you are buying?
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The ads.
The return looks healthy. But how much of it comes from customers who would have bought anyway?
Revenue tells you something worked. It doesn’t tell you it worked as well as it should.
The ceiling you are stuck under is often built from things you have already ticked off. Nobody reopens the box marked done.
That is the job of a Validation Sprint. Open every box, in the order the money flows, and put a number on what each one is costing you.
Stuck at the same revenue? Find out what is holding the lid on → (opens in a new tab)
The part you have stopped looking at is usually the part that is costing you.
You are on the list. The next one lands on Friday.
About the author
Mareike NiedermeierMareike Niedermeier is the founder and CEO of Sales Savvy Online and the creator of Survivable Distance, a theory of ecommerce viability. Since 2019 her team has worked with more than 200 ecommerce brands. The Australian Business Journal named her a Top Ten Marketer in Australia.
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