Happy Sunday!

I hope your first week of 2026 was a success. We’re now 3% of the way through 2026 and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t even more excited for the remaining 97% this year. 

This past week I went to a couple of dinners with founders, and aside from hearing how they’re using channels like retail media, truckside billboards, celebrities for big product launches, and building their own creator networks (The Hudson Method), they are also using Q1 and Q2 to focus on not just being reliant on Meta and Google. 

This email carries a theme from my newsletter just two weeks ago — testing new channels. Most brands, especially those doing between $5M to $25M in annual revenue, are stuck or reliant on 1 to 2 main channels, usually Meta and Google. Being honest with yourself, if you diversified spend into other channels, it would not only be appreciated by your CFO and CEO, but it would also allow you to scale faster and balance budgets where it makes sense vs where you’re constrained to.

The best brands I know don’t wake up and get mad when their CPMs go up. Instead, they take their budget from one channel (maybe TikTok one day) and move it to another (TV), because they have better CPMs that day. They can only do that if they have funnels, offers, creatives, and messaging that makes sense for the channel... and of course a killer product that delivers on its promise.

If 70–90% of your new customers come from two platforms, you’re not diversified, you’re dependent. The problem with how most brands in this stage of their business approach testing a new channel, is they typically do it wrong. Not by any fault of their own... there just aren’t enough resources. TikTok or AppLovin don’t teach you how to think about the offer should be specific to those channels, or how you need to change (or lessen) your catalog feed to be successful on Snap. That’s what today’s newsletter is going to be about... no longer should you say, “This channel didn’t work for us” after a 7-day test with $10k. I want you to understand how to think about testing each new channel, or initiative (whether it’s a media channel, organic TikTok or even an experiential IRL event).

But before we get into that...

Vendor of the Week

Instant — New year, new retention strategies that drive more out of your existing traffic & customers.

It’s the new year, my favorite time for two reasons: (1) it’s time to do all the things you should’ve done; (2) if you’re a health and wellness brand, it’s game time.

An influx of new customers (even potential-subscribers) means you need to audit your retention marketing plans with it. Here’s what actually matters:

  1. Use Instant’s predictive opt-in to double email opt-ins.
  2. Use Instant to remember 10x more of your shoppers when they come back to compare products, routines, and subscriptions.
  3. Replace generic email flows with personalized messaging (yep, using Instant).

Instant does all these things, and it helps brands drive amazing results with it. Book your demo with Instant and see and see what stronger retention looks like heading into 2026.

PS — if you’re at NRF, I’m talking about brand retention on Tuesday afternoon. Come join me! Oh and Instant is at booth #1847.

Limited Supply

Did you hear the first episode of Limited Supply Season 15? We are back baby! While I only covered half the new channels you should think about testing in 2026, it was packed with ideas of how you can do more.

In 2026, we’re doing things a bit differently at Limited Supply HQ. As a result, you will start to see some changes here and there roll out throughout the next season. You know me... I like to test into things that scale well.

If you are a Limited Supply listener and you have 5 minutes, FILL OUT THIS SURVEY! I’m giving 100 random submitters a $5 Starbucks gift card — have a coffee on me. On top of that, 5 random people will get their hands on the upcoming Limited Supply PR box.

The “Sharma Way” of Testing a New Channel

It’s too common I hear the sentence, “We tried it, but it didn’t work.” It’s usually in response to a question like, “Did you try {INSERT CHANNEL HERE}?” Or, “Have you tried out {INSERT TACTIC HERE}?” Channels might be different media channels, and tactics could be anything from advertorials to landing pages to founder-led content. In fact, when I hear, “We tried it, but it didn’t work,” I always ask for more context. Often times, there wasn’t much planning behind the test or much thought... it was simply executed the lazy way (using the same creative as another channel or measuring success the wrong way), and then that moment marked the end of that channel’s livelihood at your brand. Sometimes it’s even, “Well we tried it, but our ‘brand’ creative team briefed the assets to stay on brand and then gave it to our agency to run.”

Sorry brand creative teams, but you unfortunately should rarely be involved in these conversations.

Am I over-reliant? How do I choose a channel?

Once you have figured out what the channel is you want to test out, and you feel confident as to why you chose it, you need a systematic approach to going live. Here’s what I call the Sharma Way to test new channels:

  • Funnel research
  • Offer creation
  • Creative planning
  • Web/destination planning
  • Experiment design

Let’s walk through each of these and then I’ll explain a 5th-grade-level version of it at the end. Deal?

Funnel Research.

This is arguably one of my favorite parts of exploring or committing to testing a new channel. How are the best in the business doing it? Me, personally, I have a handful of brands I feel are at the forefront of performance marketing (but also have a good understanding of “brand” too). I like to go through their funnels. Most of the time I setup a NEW account (fresh / no prior interests baked into the algorithm), and then go in and start engaging with the platform. Find the brands you know are good ones to follow, engage with them, maybe click their link-in-bio on their profile, signal what you’re interested in.

Your goal should be to click every single ad, look at each landing page, take note of all the creatives (especially those that catch your eye), and start to build a swipe file of what you consider to be well-done on that channel.

Every week, I send my assistant 50-100 different ads I find on Instagram, TikTok, Snap that I think are great ads. We build a swipe file, and then whenever we have a brand that wants to test, we can open and see what is “Good” for that platform.

When it comes to the creative, it’s pretty self-explanatory of what you should look at. Hook rate, share of text to creative, aggressiveness, etc. When it comes to the website, my recommendation is to take note of site speed, social proof badges, how the quotes are written out, the order of sections, what the content in those sections is, what the offer is, how many choices there are to click out, etc. Anything else you can think of, take note of it.

You know that quote, “Good artists copy, great artists steal?” You don’t need to steal (that’s lame and lazy)... but take a hard look at everything you admire, and note it down. If you see a “Viral on TikTok” badge that catches your attention, jot it down. If you see social proof from younger customers when coming from Snap, not it down. You should effectively create a mini brief, compiling everything you like from the creative and the sites you visit when clicking on these ads.

Offer Creation.

Creating the offer is arguably the most intricate part of the equation. I like to think of all these pieces as vertical reels in a casino slot machine, but this one carries the most weight. Brands that are the best at creating scalable offers tend to be in the supplement, vitamins, healthcare, beverage, and really anything that has ongoing consumption. Why? Because as long as your product is good, they’re relying on the 3rd, 5th, 9th purchase to come back.

With that context, the goal is to create value up front for the shopper that is SO good, it lowers the barrier for someone to want to try the product. Some ways these might be displayed:

  • A (%) off or ($) off offer, such as 30% off your first order, or $50 off your first order.
  • Same as above, but contingent to subscription, such as, “Get 50% off your first order, when you subscribe.” 
  • Gift with purchase, such as, “Subscribe to the IM8 Daily Ultimate Essentials and get a free tumbler.” ($28 value)
  • Access to another app’s subscription. “Subscribe to Everyday Dose and get access to Othership’s breath work app for 60 days.” ($65 value)
  • Get a free wellness booklet or meal-prep book with your purchase. ($19 value)
  • Subscribe to 3 months upfront, and get 30% off.
  • Subscribe and benefit from a scaling subscription discount — 10% off month 1, 20% off month 2, 30% off month 3+. We just did this for Vora (drinkvora.com).
  • Choose 3 free samples or a free gift at checkout with your order. This is usually done by skincare/makeup companies.

Now you might be thinking, these brands are just giving stuff away for free? No. In exchange, they’re targeting an AOV that is usually 2-3x higher than what their single-product AOV might be. However, in exchange, they are giving a slightly larger discount to a first-time purchaser. This creates a win-win for the brand and the consumer. No one is left holding the bag.

The brand wins by charging a slightly higher AOV to a new customer, likely coming from a paid media channel, where they can better offset their costs of customer acquisition.

The customer wins because they get to sample the product, with enough variety, enough quantity, and with some free gifts.

You may already be running a smart offer to customers coming in via Meta and Google already, but if not, it’s something you should probably test. A good offer enables scalable, efficient spend.

When testing offers on new channels, you want to make sure the offer matches the funnel stage, the consumers mindset, etc. For example, if you’re coming from TikTok, you might need an offer more focused on TikTok Shop bundles, or one that feels more gamified (bigger discount on your first TikTok Shop subscription order). Whereas if someone is coming from AppLovin, you can get away with a higher AOV focused offer and fewer freebies.

Creative Planning.

This is often times the toughest part for brands when testing new channels because they are usually stuck in their own ways, and/or their creative team feels the need to interject and own the briefing process. Let me be the first to say, if your “brand-marketing-focused” creative team wants to brief a new channel’s test assets, you may as well take your media dollars and flush them down the toilet instead, respectfully.

As far as it goes with your creative, my best advice is to take the same brilliant minds who ideate your scaling creative, to ideate, brief, and produce creative you test in a new channel. 

Do NOT just take what works in another channel and bring it to a new one. Take it one step further, don’t even just take a winning angle/concept/story from one channel and bring it over. Start fresh, from scratch. Use the research you did before looking at competitor ad libraries and understand how they have thought about the psychology of the user on that platform, and let that inspire your creative.

Web/Destination Planning.

Moving to the next vertical reel in the slot machine... where you send the traffic. For some reason, while the creative gets so much thought and effort put into it, the destination where everyone goes to rarely does. Generally the first thought is, “Let’s send them to the same place they were going on Meta since we know that works.” But you’re forgetting that user has had an entirely different journey with the brand until they got there from a Meta ad.

Whether you’re sending them to an in-app shopping experience, like TikTok Shop or (now) a ChatGPT product card, or you’re sending them to a listicle (because they’re coming from TV), you need to think about what that person may or may not know by the time they get there, and fill the gaps.

If you are a subscriber to this newsletter, you know how much I stress having good landing pages. Landing pages might sound like conversion machines, but it doesn’t mean they always need to convert right away and drive the sale. Sometimes, the best landing page from a TV ad or an AppLovin creative is to drive people to a listicle where they can learn more about the product. In other scenarios, you might want to use your landing page to get lead information (like this window replacement lead gen flow). https://thesuperiorwindow.com

If you’re driving customers to TikTok Shop, make sure your visuals are optimized. Make sure that your subscription option has a badge to point out the first subscription order discount. Make sure the product carousel is full of infographics, social proof, benefits, and reasons to try.

Experiment Design.

This is where you decide budget, targeting, flight (how long it runs), what audiences you include or exclude, your bidding, placements, etc. It’s hard for me to comment much on how you approach this, other than what my general recommendation is: 

  1. Start with retargeting to leverage a shorter feedback loop.
  2. Like a hawk, look for where the traffic “leak” is, and plug it. Use heat maps, user session recordings on web pages, etc.
  3. As you find your funnel “clicking” and working, move the campaigns into colder audiences.
  4. Test and iterate like crazy. Don’t just put it live and let it run.
  5. If you find bugs in tracking, measurement, or anything that hinders the experiment from successfully running a test (whether it succeeds or fails), it’s worth pausing, fixing and then turning it back on.

That's all for this week

If you made it this far, I appreciate you getting all the way here. There’s nothing I love more than writing newsletters on flights. As you get into the new year, find new channels that work for you, and allow your Q4 to work even harder for you.

It’s Sunday night, so I hope you plan to get 9 hours of sleep tonight, going into the new week.