You are the owner of a relatively small ecommerce business with just a few employees or even doing it all by yourself. Productivity is probably one of your main issues. Nothing happens if you don’t take care of it.

But in order to be competitive, you need certain things done: good promotions in place, emails sent out, ads running effectively…Not to mention making business decisions based on current numbers like adding or dropping a product, ordering inventory, fixing marketing spend, working with influencers and so on.

To stay on top of things and stay sane (I know how it feels!), here’s a list of all the things you can streamline to increase your in-house productivity. Those are things small teams and one-man-shows should not waste time on – here’s how to get it done and focus on more important tasks.

Package inserts are those printed coupons, thank you notes, and stickers that you put in an order package as a gesture for your customers. They may grant them discounts, invite them to join your community on a social medium or just make them feel good about shopping from your brand.

Here’s a guide to using such package inserts for your brand if you haven’t yet.

Some subscription-based brands have exploded to stardom: Harry’s, Dollar Shave Club, BirchBox, ipsy, Trunk Club, BarkBox, etc. not to mention Amazon Subscribe and Save.

You probably also want to reap the goodness of customer love as they do, but cannot offer subscriptions for some reason. We get it! Not all products and brands can immediately get thousands people on board paying monthly. Or because your customers buy at very different time intervals (you can monitor time between orders with Metrilo’s retention analysis).

The holiday season has started and you’re probably already on fire. It’s crazy but very rewarding, I know. And not to waste any of your precious time, I have a bare-bones action plan ready for you to just plug in and cash on this holiday season.

For a brand owner and probably product creator, feedback might be hard to take sometimes. You believe in your creation and want people to like it, for sure.

But today’s market is really fragmented and an ok product that doesn’t click with any specific customer is not likely to become a lovemark.

Now, it’s better to be admired by a few than to be tolerated by the many because niche brands are the future of ecommerce and profit comes from devoted fans.

So, to win customer love, you should be improving your product to better fit their needs. And feedback is the best starting point. DTC brands have the massive advantage of being able to reach out to customers and get direct feedback to act on immediately. Before, incumbents had to work with a market research company, host focus groups, do surveys and what not, wasting precious time. Ecommerce product marketing is much more flexible.

As a founder of an online brand, you set out to create your own thing and make an impact with it.

Now, how is it going? Do you feel stuck? Overwhelmed? Like your brand’s growth is not what you expected?

We all want a trend line going up and to the right, but it’s not always the case. If you’ve reached a plateau in your growth, let’s see what might be the cause.