Welcome back! 👋

What’s the one thing you know isn’t ready for Q4?

That was the poll I invited you all to participate in over the last two weeks.

I must admit the results didn’t surprise me.

The winner, with 28% of the vote: “The offer: we still haven’t decided what our Q4 promo actually is.”

Even if you didn’t vote, is this something happening to you too?

Now, let's get into this week's edition.

Topics we'll cover today:
💠 Claude Wants To Help Run Your Store
💠 The Best Brand Missions Show Up in the Business, Not Just the Copy
💠 Latest news in the DTC space

Claude is getting deeper into e-commerce.

Anthropic just released a blueprint that companies can use to build two types of commerce AI agents:

👉 A shopping agent for customers
👉 A merchant agent for the people running the business

The shopping agent can live directly on your website and help customers:

🔍 Find products using natural language
🛒 Build a cart with multiple products
⚖️ Compare different options
🎯 Get recommendations based on their preferences
📦 Ask questions about orders, returns, exchanges, and policies

So, instead of browsing through collections and dozens of product pages, someone could simply say:

"I need a tent, sleeping bag, and stove for a weekend trip with two kids."

And the agent can put the right products together and build the cart.

But I think the merchant agent is even more interesting.

Think of it as an AI employee constantly looking at what's happening inside your store.

You could ask:

"What should we discount to clear last season's inventory?"

And Claude can use your own store data to answer.

It can also:

📈 Analyze what's selling and what isn't
📦 Monitor inventory and flag potential stockouts
💰 Recommend pricing and promotions based on sales history
📣 Draft marketing campaigns around the products you need to move

And when it proactively recommends making a change, a human still needs to approve it before anything goes live.

This is the part merchants should pay attention to.

AI in e-commerce is quickly moving beyond writing product descriptions or generating ad copy.

We're entering a stage where agents can look across your catalog, inventory, customer data, sales performance, and marketing...

...and help you decide what to do next.

Anthropic says retailers already using Claude-powered shopping agents have seen carts up to 35% larger and shoppers 60% more likely to complete a purchase.

Still early.

But the direction is pretty clear.

The question for merchants is becoming less about "How can I use AI?"

And more about:

"Which parts of my business should an AI agent be helping me run?"

Whether or not you experiment with agents like this, most brands are still leaving revenue on the table in places a chatbot won't fix: pricing, offers, customer journey, and where your marketing dollars actually go.

That's exactly what we uncover in our free Revenue Leak Check.

We'll go through your site, your live ads, and your customer journey. On the call I'll name the three places I think you're leaking revenue, and what I'd do about each one. You get that whether or not we end up working together.

👉 Book your Revenue Leak Check here

A lot of brands have a mission.

You can usually find it somewhere on their About Us page.

But does that mission actually change what the brand does?

I thought about this while interviewing Elisabeth Crossley-Wright, founder of With Love Darling.

Her mission has become part of the business itself.

For example, her collections have been built around causes like clean water, peace, and equality.

She also works with Maasai women in Kenya who produce beaded pieces for the brand.

Then, after visiting them, she discovered something she hadn't expected.

One of the biggest challenges these women and their daughters faced was access to menstrual hygiene products.

Without them, they could miss work or school for roughly one week every month.

So the brand started donating reusable period kits for every two pieces of jewelry sold.

And now they're launching another initiative called The Red Thread.

Customers can add a small red string bracelet to their order and gift it to someone they consider brave or strong.

The red thread connects back to the period initiative, while also representing the common thread behind the brand's mission.

Think about how much marketing that mission naturally creates.

Products.
Stories.
Partnerships.
Customer participation.
Content.

Reasons for customers to talk about the brand.

That's very different from writing:

"We exist to make the world a better place."

...and leaving it there.

A good question for your brand:

👉 If you removed your About Us page, would customers still know what you stand for?

If the answer is no, maybe your mission is still mostly copy.

The strongest missions show up in what the business actually does.

—
Follow me on LinkedIn for more growth marketing content.

📰 Reddit Opens AI-powered Max Campaigns to All Advertisers [read more]
📰 Google AI Max versus Microsoft AI Max [read more]
📰 Amazon Joins the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program [read more]

If you found this interesting, please leave us a review. It’d mean the world to me.

Brian Roisentul is the founder & CEO of BSR, a growth marketing agency he started in 2013 to help e-commerce brands unlock hidden revenue by identifying misalignments between their marketing and customer behavior. He is also the host of The DTC Insider podcast, where he interviews thought leaders, founders, and directors in the e-commerce space.

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