The flat quarter that isn’t flat
📊 July's ecommerce dip made headlines as a slowdown. The Prime Day calendar shift tells a different story, and more!
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📊 The flat quarter that isn't one
July's ecommerce numbers made the rounds this month as a slowdown signal, and the raw month-over-month figure supports that reading: US online retail sales fell from June, the first sequential decline of the year.
Read as a standalone data point, it looks like the moment to defend budgets against slower-moving channels.
Read against what actually happened, the story changes. Amazon moved its summer Prime Day event from July to June this year.
June ecommerce sales jumped over 14% year over year, the first double-digit June growth since 2021, as other retailers ran matching promotions around the date.
July's dip is largely that spike unwinding, not demand disappearing, and July's year-over-year growth still landed in positive single digits, consistent with recent years.
The distinction matters because the two readings point to opposite budget decisions.
Check what's actually driving the number before you act on it
Before any budget gets reallocated off a "the quarter went flat" narrative, pull the year-over-year figure alongside the month-over-month one.
A channel review showing only sequential change will always look worse in a month following an artificially inflated one, regardless of what demand is actually doing.
Ask your own data the same question: does your July dip track the Prime Day shift specifically, visible as a spike in your own June numbers, or is it broader than that. The two carry completely different implications for August.
Don't let a lagged channel absorb an artifact
TV and CTV commitments run on longer cycles than paid social, which makes them the easiest line item to freeze when a spreadsheet says the quarter is soft. That's also exactly why they're the wrong first cut when the softness is a comparison artifact, not a real demand shift.
Cutting a channel with a multi-week ramp-up over a one-month distortion means the budget is gone before anyone realizes demand never actually moved. If a real slowdown does show up, and July's caution appears real even after accounting for Prime Day, a channel showing outcomes rather than reach tells you which line to protect first.
That's the argument for measuring linear and streaming against downstream conversion rather than trusting a topline retail number, which is where Tatari's approach for the 300+ brands buying across both starts. You can schedule a demo to see it applied against your own numbers.
Rerun this check every time a headline number moves
Prime Day won't be the last calendar shift to distort a monthly comparison. Build the year-over-year check into whatever monthly reporting already crosses your desk, so the next artifact gets caught before a budget decision gets made on top of it.
Partnership with Omnisend
They migrated a client weeks before Black Friday. It made $113K.
BFCM isn't when most brands like to experiment. With nearly 1 in 6 ecommerce brands earning at least 30% of their annual orders in that short window, it's the riskiest time to switch email platforms.
Which is exactly what agency owner Jocelyn A., COO at Ecom2Win, and her client did, moving to Omnisend just weeks before Black Friday.
They knew what was on the line: deliverability, automations, the whole setup, right before the biggest weekend of the year. Instead, revenue came in on par with the previous year.
In this article, Jocelyn shares why they switched so close to BFCM, how the migration came together, and what made the risk worth taking.
Not yet an Omnisend user? It's an email and SMS marketing platform for ecommerce used by more than 150,000 brands, generating an average of $79 for every $1 spent.
Migration is free, takes up to five business days, and plans cost up to 35% less than Klaviyo's. Since Klaviyo just increased their SMS prices, it is worth considering Omnisend's migration offer.
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