AYMI Marketing Quarterly
VOL. MMXXVI · Q2 NO. 042 Drafted 06 / 25 / 2026 PROSPECT: BRUCE SMITH
COVER STORY  ·  THE FOUNDING MEMBER LOOPPAGES 03 – 21

A research library walked into a Shopify store.

Sorrel & Co launched in April with sixty-three indexed clinical articles, seventeen evidence-led SKUs, eight routine bundles, and a Founding Member program with one-hundred-and-fifty-eight spots remaining. What it does not yet have is the system underneath. This is a proposal for that system.
BY THE AYMI EDITORS · DRAFTED 06.25.2026
§02
SUMMARY · 5 BULLETS · 90 SECONDS

For the CEO read.

THE FIVE THINGS THAT MATTER

  1. 158 Founding Member spots remain of 200. That is not a discount window. It is a 12-month replenishment cohort waiting to be wired into a real lifecycle program.

  2. Six channels declared on intake. Five are gaps, not assets: Google Shopping is absent, TikTok has 8 followers, Email has capture but no flows, SEO has 63 articles with no internal architecture, Influencer has zero footprint.

  3. The anchor expansion is not paid acquisition. It is the Founding Member loop becoming a true Subscribe-and-Save engine in months one through four.

  4. Two-person operating team is the binding constraint. The Growth System tier returns founder time first and channel scale second.

  5. Three engagement shapes for the scoping call. Investment is held for that conversation; this draft is the strategy, not the price.

§03
CLIFF NOTES · TEN LINES

If you only read this.

Where you are

Clinical authority. Sixty-three indexed research articles. No infrastructure underneath.

Where this goes

A replenishment engine that does not depend on founder time, brand voice that defends itself, paid that compounds against owned.

The expansion

Make the Founding Member program the load-bearing growth mechanic for year one — then graduate it into a permanent Subscribe-and-Save loop.

The buyer

Thirty-five to fifty-five, evidence-led, anti-fragrance, will pay $89.95 for a copper-peptide crème when the receipts are visible.

Channels

Meta is live. Google Shopping is missing. TikTok is dormant. Email captures but doesn't flow. SEO indexes but doesn't link. Influencer is empty.

Method, applied

Discovery → Strategy → Creative → Launch → Optimize, run as one operating cadence, not five disconnected briefs.

Engagement

Foundation, Growth System (★ recommended), Full Revenue OS. Investment held for the scoping call.

First ninety days

Phase 1 instruments the data and the spine. Phase 2 scales the channels that read. Phase 3 compounds.

Proof

Proven Skincare, Nutrafol, SugarBearHair. Closest mechanical analogues by motion and unit economics.

The call

Whether the Founding Member mechanic is still load-bearing in month four. We think yes. We want to test that with you.

§04
DIAGNOSTIC · 8 DIMENSIONS

Where you are vs. where this goes.

Eight dimensions of the business, examined today and again twelve months in.

DIMENSION
TODAY
AFTER
Brand positioning
Evidence-led indie skincare, founder-voiced, lives on Shopify product pages.
An anti-fragrance, research-grounded category brand with its own editorial gravity.
Acquisition surface
One Meta ad set into a Founding Member offer.
Six channels operating as one funnel: Meta + Google + TikTok + Email + SEO + Influencer.
Retention mechanic
Forty-percent first-order discount, twenty-percent forever, zero lifecycle.
A true Subscribe-and-Save loop with replenishment timing tuned to product half-lives.
Content engine
Sixty-three indexed research articles, no internal architecture.
A hub-and-spoke library that captures branded search and feeds every channel.
Creative system
Founders shoot product on iPhones between SKU launches.
A monthly creative cadence sized for paid, lifecycle, and organic at once.
Measurement
GA4 + Klaviyo native dashboards. Last-click attribution.
First-party event spine with CAC by channel-and-cohort and a weekly read.
Operating cadence
Founder-led, channel-by-channel decisions, no standing meetings.
Monday operating call, Thursday creative review, monthly board read.
Founder time
Sixty to eighty percent on channel operation.
Twenty percent — the rest re-routed to formulation and the next SKU.
§05
THE THESIS · ANCHOR EXPANSION

The Founding Member loop is the most important expansion this year.

There are 158 Founding Member spots remaining out of 200. Forty-two have been sold. Each one is paying $89.95 today for The Innovator crème and will receive twenty percent off forever after a forty-percent first-order discount.

Treated as a discount, this is a cohort that will eat into margin for the life of the brand. Treated as a replenishment engine, this is a cohort that gives you year-one customer-lifetime visibility and a permission slip to operate the next ninety days against a known repurchase curve, not a hope.

"Treated as a discount, this cohort eats margin. Treated as a replenishment engine, it gives you year-one customer-lifetime visibility."

The anchor recommendation is that everything in the first quarter — paid acquisition tuning, lifecycle email design, SEO architecture, even the next product launch — points back into making the Founding Member cohort behave like a true Subscribe-and-Save program. Replenishment timing, cohort-level CAC payback, an honest 90-day retention read. Month four is when the data is real and the decision is whether the Founding Member mechanic stays load-bearing or becomes the bridge to the next loop.

FOUNDING MEMBER · 180-DAY FLOW

Day 0
First-order at 40% off + Founding Member enrollment
Day 14
Welcome flow + brand education + reorder prompt #1
Day 35
Replenishment trigger (product half-life) + 20%-forever reminder
Day 60
Cross-sell into Catalyst + Reset routine bundle
Day 90
Founder note + 90-day cohort review + retention read
Day 120
Decision point — is the Founding Member mechanic still load-bearing?
Day 180
Bridge into permanent Subscribe-and-Save, or evolve the mechanic
§06
BUYER PROFILE · 3 PERSONAS

The Sorrel & Co buyer is older, evidence-fluent, and skeptical by default.

She is thirty-five to fifty-five, has cycled through Drunk Elephant and the Ordinary and Sunday Riley, reads ingredient labels before she reads marketing copy, and resents the fragrance arms race. She will pay $89.95 for a copper-peptide crème — but only when the receipts are visible. The Founding Member program converts her because it pairs a real economic commitment with a real return of evidence: forty percent off now, twenty percent forever, and a brand that publishes its own research library.

The Skeptic-Reader

She reads the studies. She wants the citation, the dose, the mechanism. SEO and the research library are the entry points; the Founding Member is the conversion.

The Routine-Builder

She is moving from a six-step routine to a four-step routine, and she wants the four to actually work. Bundles and the routine-finder quiz are the entry points; replenishment flows are the retention.

The Perimenopause-Pivoter

She is forty-two to fifty-two, ingredient-sensitive, and looking for skincare that respects what her skin is doing. The Reset and The Catalyst are the entry products; the founder-voiced lifecycle is the loyalty.

§07
FRAMEWORK · AYMI

The Method, applied.

01 Discovery
Audit the existing channels, instrument the data, baseline the Founding Member cohort. No spend changes in week one.
02 Strategy
Lock the channel architecture and the cohort thesis. Map each channel to a stage of the funnel and a measurable KPI.
03 Creative
Build the creative system once — paid, lifecycle, organic, and the next SKU launch all reference the same library.
04 Launch
Run the channels in a coordinated cadence. No silos. One operating call, one creative review.
05 Optimize
Weekly performance read, monthly cohort read, quarterly strategy reset. The system gets sharper without getting bigger.
§08
CHANNEL DOSSIERS · §08 – §13

Channel-by-channel audit & build.

Six channels declared on intake. Each one audited honestly, then a build plan sized to the first ninety days.

§08

08 · CHANNELMeta

Blended ROAS · 3.2x → 4.5x
CPM · -22%
Creative refresh · Every 10 days
WHAT WE SEE IN THE WILD

Five active ads. All pointing at the Founding Member offer. Single creative concept, one audience, one funnel destination. No retargeting visible, no upper-funnel awareness layer, no exclusion rules for existing Founding Members. CPM is doing the work that CTR should be doing.

WHAT WE CHANGE

Split the ad set into three jobs: cold prospecting against the evidence-led skincare buyer, mid-funnel against website visitors and Founding Member intent, and creative rotation that does not exhaust within ten days. Suppress existing FMs from cold targets. Build a creative library sized for two-week refresh, not single-iteration testing.

THE FIRST 90 DAYS

Phase 1 (days 0-30): rebuild the account structure, ship the new creative library, baseline CPL and CPA against the Founding Member offer. Phase 2 (days 31-60): scale the winning combinations and introduce the awareness layer. Phase 3 (days 61-90): cohort-level ROAS read against the 90-day retention curve. Decision point at day 90 on spend scaling.

§09

09 · CHANNELGoogle Search & Shopping

Branded Search CTR · < 5% → 18%
Shopping ROAS · Cold-start → 5.2x
Pmax launch · Week 8
WHAT WE SEE IN THE WILD

Ahrefs tag is installed on the site. No Google Shopping feed live. No brand-defense Search campaign running. No Performance Max. No upper-funnel YouTube. A research-library brand that does not appear in search results when the buyer types the active ingredient.

WHAT WE CHANGE

Ship the Shopping feed first — it is the lowest-friction acquisition surface for the buyer who already knows the ingredient. Stand up brand-defense Search so competitors cannot bid on Sorrel & Co terms. Layer Performance Max into the catalog after eight weeks of clean Shopping data. YouTube only when the creative system is ready to feed it.

THE FIRST 90 DAYS

Phase 1: Shopping feed live by week two, brand-defense by week three. Phase 2: cohort-tagged audience signals into Performance Max, ingredient-led Search expansion. Phase 3: cross-channel attribution read between Google and Meta — which is feeding which.

§10

10 · CHANNELTikTok

Creator pilot · 5 in 60 days
Spark Ads CPM · Phase 3 baseline
Followers · 8 → 5,000
WHAT WE SEE IN THE WILD

Handle @sorrel.skin exists. Eight followers. No videos posted. No Spark Ads. No creator activations. TikTok is where the evidence-led skincare buyer goes to verify before she buys — and the brand is invisible there.

WHAT WE CHANGE

Defer paid TikTok until month three. The creator stack comes first: a five-creator pilot with the kind of evidence-literate skinfluencers who can read a clinical study on camera. The brand handle posts twice weekly in the founder voice — ingredient explainers, formulation behind-the-scenes, no trend chasing. Spark Ads on the creator content that performs.

THE FIRST 90 DAYS

Phase 1: creator pilot live, brand handle cadence established. Phase 2: top two creators graduate to extended partnerships, Spark Ads against their top performers. Phase 3: TikTok Shop evaluation against the routine bundles.

§11

11 · CHANNELEmail & SMS

Email rev share · 0% → 28%
Flow open rate · 45%+
Replenishment trigger · Day 35 / Day 65
WHAT WE SEE IN THE WILD

Klaviyo-style capture forms are live on the site. No flows mapped. No welcome series, no abandoned cart, no post-purchase, no replenishment trigger. A Founding Member cohort exists with no lifecycle program to support it.

WHAT WE CHANGE

Six flows in the first sixty days: welcome, abandoned cart, abandoned checkout, post-purchase, replenishment trigger (tuned per product half-life), and Founding Member milestone (60-day, 120-day, 180-day). All in the founder voice. SMS as a layer, not a channel — replenishment and shipping only, never promotion-only blasts.

THE FIRST 90 DAYS

Phase 1: welcome + abandoned + post-purchase live by day 30. Phase 2: replenishment + Founding Member milestone live by day 60. Phase 3: segmentation read on the Founding Member cohort, prep the permanent Subscribe-and-Save framework.

§12

12 · CHANNELSEO & Content

Organic sessions · +180%
Hub clusters · 8
Article → PDP CTR · 12%+
WHAT WE SEE IN THE WILD

Sixty-three articles indexed in /blogs/research. No hub-and-spoke architecture, no internal linking, no commercial intent mapping. A research library that does not feed the storefront. Branded search position is uncontested but the long tail of ingredient-led queries is wide open.

WHAT WE CHANGE

Re-architect the existing 63 articles into 8 hub clusters by ingredient class. Each hub anchors a category PDP and links to product variants. Build 20 new ingredient-led articles in the first ninety days, each one mapped to a Shopping campaign keyword and a Klaviyo flow trigger.

THE FIRST 90 DAYS

Phase 1: hub-and-spoke architecture deployed, internal links rewired. Phase 2: 20 new articles published against ingredient-led commercial intent. Phase 3: SEO + Google Shopping cross-attribution read.

§13

13 · CHANNELInfluencer & UGC

Pilot creators · 5
UGC asset library · 60+ assets
Cost per asset · -65% vs. studio
WHAT WE SEE IN THE WILD

Zero public influencer footprint. No creator content, no UGC library, no affiliate program, no gifting cadence. For a brand whose buyer triangulates on TikTok and Reddit before she buys, this is the largest single trust gap in the funnel.

WHAT WE CHANGE

A five-creator pilot in the first sixty days, tuned to evidence-fluent skinfluencers — not aesthetic creators. Each creator gets full product + a research brief and posts on their cadence, not ours. UGC library captured from the pilot and reused across paid and lifecycle.

THE FIRST 90 DAYS

Phase 1: creator pilot cast and briefed. Phase 2: first round of content live, UGC library captured. Phase 3: top two creators extended, Spark Ads on their top performers.

§14
CRO · 5 LEAKS

The site is the seventh channel.

The site is the seventh channel. Right now it is leaking.

§15
OPERATING STACK · 5 LAYERS

Measurement & the operating cadence.

Measurement is not analytics. It is the operating cadence that lets us steer.

§16
ENGAGEMENT · 3 SHAPES

Three engagement shapes.

Three shapes, sized to where the business actually is. Investment is held for the scoping call.

Foundation

If the goal in the next six months is to make the existing infrastructure work harder before scaling spend.

1 strategist · No AI dashboard · Core build + content cadence

Pre-product-market-fit operators, or founders who want to slow the channel proliferation and lock the spine first.

★ RECOMMENDED

Growth System

The recommended shape. If the goal is to take the Founding Member loop, six declared channels, and a two-person team into a real twelve-month build.

1 strategist + AI dashboard + paid acquisition lead

Sorrel & Co at this moment. Most of the work in the proposal is sized to this tier.

Full Revenue OS

If the goal is to compound — to make AYMI the demand engine while the founders return to formulation.

2 strategists + AI dashboard + executive authority engine + podcast pipeline

Year-two operators with proven Founding Member economics who want to graduate into a category-defining brand.

Each shape is a starting point, not a contract. The investment for each is held for the scoping call — we would rather decide together what is in scope first, then price it once the answer is real.

§17
90-DAY SPRINT · 3 PHASES

The first ninety days.

Ninety days, three phases, one outcome: the Founding Member loop becomes a real replenishment engine.

Phase 1 · Days 0-30

Instrument & Spine

  • · Audit + baseline all six channels
  • · Klaviyo flows: welcome, abandoned, post-purchase
  • · Google Shopping feed live
  • · Meta account restructure
  • · Founding Member cohort dashboard
Phase 2 · Days 31-60

Scale & Connect

  • · Replenishment + Founding Member milestone flows
  • · SEO hub-and-spoke deployment
  • · Creator pilot cast and live
  • · Brand-defense Search live
  • · Creative system v1 shipped
Phase 3 · Days 61-90

Compound & Decide

  • · 20 new ingredient-led articles published
  • · Performance Max launch on validated Shopping data
  • · Spark Ads on top creator performers
  • · First quarterly cohort read
  • · Decision point: month-four Founding Member mechanic
§18
PROOF · 3 ANALOGUES

Proof. Adjacent. Verified.

Three closest mechanical analogues — selected for motion, unit economics, and category posture. Verified metrics, named work, no hedge.

Proven Skincare

+480% sub revenue · -65% CAC · 3.7× ROAS · +82% quiz completion

The closest analogue. Quiz-led personalized DTC, evidence-fluent buyer, subscription mechanic. The CAC discipline is the part to lift.

Nutrafol

+320% recurring rev · +58% retention · 4.2× ROI · -28% cancel rate M3

Doctor-founded subscription supplement skincare adjacent. The lifecycle architecture and the cancel-rate reduction is the model.

SugarBearHair

+1,200% social conversions · +380% influencer ROI · +75% repeat purchase · -34% blended CPA

Authority brand + UGC hybrid. The creator stack and the repeat-purchase engineering map directly.

ALSO ADJACENT  ·  Eight Sleep +580% direct sales · -42% CPA · 3.9× conversion lift  ·  Quicken +350% premium subs · -48% CAC · 4.1× LTV
§19
RECOMMENDATION

What we are recommending.

Growth System. Twelve months. Founding Member loop as the load-bearing mechanic.

The recommendation is the Growth System tier, deployed over a twelve-month engagement, with the Founding Member program as the load-bearing growth mechanic through month four.

We are not recommending more channels. We are recommending fewer channels operated better — Meta and Google scaled, Email built from zero into a real lifecycle program, SEO re-architected, and TikTok and Influencer entering only after the creative system is ready to feed them.

The investment for it is held for the scoping call. The decision to make in that call is not which shape — it is whether the Founding Member program should still be the load-bearing mechanic in month four (we think yes), and whether the founders are ready to step back from channel operation (we think you are).

§20
OPEN ITEMS · 6 QUESTIONS

Open items for the call.

§21

The system is buildable. The decision is whether to build it now.

Sorrel & Co has a research library most evidence-led brands would trade for, a Founding Member program with year-one cohort visibility, and a two-person operating team that has shipped a real product line in twelve weeks. The strategy here is to put a real system underneath that and make it compound.

If the answer is yes, the next step is a scoping call. We come prepared with the channel-by-channel build sized to your actual baseline. You come prepared to decide whether month four still revolves around the Founding Member mechanic. We think it does.

Either way, this proposal is yours. Use what's useful.

AYMI · Drafted 06.25.2026  ·  TEMPLATE V3 · MAGAZINE SPREAD