A lot of what I learned during my time at Deliverr influenced how I listened to and actioned the customer voice in my career since. And one of my favorite stories that comes up all the time–but until now wasn’t documented–was an email course I put together using the content (blogs and videos) we already had.
In this case study, I’ll go over how I identified a resource that would delight our customers and got 400+ signups within the first month of launch.
What customer-led content marketing looks like when there’s no brief
“Rachel set up multiple email courses for sellers, which included really helpful information on marketplace selling and has had solid adoption today. It was also an idea she thought of on her own, which demonstrates strong creativity.”
– Michael Krakaris, Deliverr Co-Founder
In 2019, Deliverr ran a webinar with Walmart. I had been noticing for a while that our audience engaged much more with our content when it was about selling on Walmart Marketplcae. Webinar Q&As, newsletter replies, and repeated seller questions in inbound all kept clustering the same topic. I never expected replies to our 20k-strong newsletter until we started writing about it.
So I built a 6-part email course in response. No brief, no budget approval, no manager direction. Just some good old customer-led content marketing, combined with feedback loops and a penchant for action.
The customer signal
Deliverr’s audience in 2019 was three populations: eCommerce sellers on our newsletter list (~20K subscribers at 34% open rate by year-end), our webinar and YouTube viewers, and inbound prospects asking pre-sales questions. Three different surfaces, three converging signals:
- Webinar Q&As after the Walmart partnership session were the loudest and most active I’d ever seen
- I started seeing newsletter replies to anything mentioning Walmart Marketplace
- Inbound seller questions about how to sell on Walmart kept piling up
The pattern was so clear; sellers wanted a guided onramp into Walmart Marketplace. So I shipped one.
The course
A 6-part email course, sequenced as a learning path for the seller who wanted to start on Walmart but didn’t know where to begin:
| Subject | |
|---|---|
| Announcement | “[Email Course] How to Sell on Walmart” — bundled into the weekly newsletter |
| 1 | “Why Walmart? The 14:1 rule” — opportunity sizing (seller-to-buyer ratio, growth metrics, low-competition framing) |
| 2 | “How to source the right products for Walmart” — Memorable / Niche / Modify product-fit framework with category examples |
| 3 | “Walmart SEO and listing optimization” |
| 4 | “Use fast shipping to gain an edge” — Walmart’s TwoDay program walkthrough |
| 5 | “Using Walmart ads and DSC” |
The build was lean by design. I pulled from videos, blog posts, and Walmart partnership material the team had already shipped. No new content production or vendors needed. The assembly was the work.
What this engagement says about how I work
Ship customer-led content without waiting. The course existed because I was watching audience signals on three surfaces and willing to act on it without a brief. That’s the loop I run at every fractional-CMO engagement now: signal in, product out, no committee.
Scale lean execution with repurposing. The course was assembled from videos, blog posts, and partnership material the team had already approved and published beforehand. The new work was compiling, sequencing/grouping, and framing. This approach was both lean and high-leverage–I scored a 10/10 on our “Be Lean” value thanks to this pattern.
Autonomous product-content decisions are CMO-tier work. You can measure this kind of thing in opens and clicks. Those numbers are fine, but you should also look at how I decided what to ship in the first place. This course is a documented, dated, on-the-record example of a decision that came from direct observations of a strategic operator working “in the weeds.”
What happened next?
Following the success of the course, we launched three more in the series. A multi-channel 101 course, a Shopify course, and a Wish course (all from our existing materials, just organized in a way that made sense and easy to surface). We achieved an additional 1,500 subscribers from the initiative.
Where the playbook goes next
If you’re a co-founder or C-suite operator at a build-phase B2B eCommerce ops company and you’re starting to tackle your marketing function, reach out. I keep the roster small by design, especially now that I’m back in school for my EMBA, but I can’t resist projects where I’ll learn something new.
Course shipped during Rachel’s tenure as Deliverr’s first marketing hire (2018–2021). Email screenshots archived from the original sends.