In this episode of The Orita Podcast, Aaron Schwartz sits down with Drew Marconi, Co-Founder & CEO of Intelligems, to talk about the most under-discussed lever in ecommerce: how you price, promote, and merchandise profit on purpose, not by vibes.

Drew built dynamic pricing systems in ride share, then brought that same experimentation mindset to Shopify brands. The result: a platform (and a philosophy) that treats your storefront like a living sales machine and forces teams to stop making “local” decisions that quietly fight each other.

Together, they dive into:

• Why “the right price” isn’t a number, it’s a strategy that changes with timing and cohorts

• How to test pricing without freaking out your customers (or your support team)

• The hidden truth: your site has a dozen “pricing” levers beyond the product price

• Why most brands test too small and how to build a roadmap that breaks real constraints

• The segmentation starting point that matters most: new vs returning (then source)

• Shipping thresholds, discounts, and offers: why you can’t optimize them in isolation

• Personalization that rhymes: matching the promise in the email/ad to the on-site experience

• How the best brands think in LTV first and won’t debate decisions without it

• The role agencies play in making experimentation real (and scalable)

• What’s next: APIs, MCP-style building blocks, and storefronts that get more dynamic fast

If you’ve ever watched your team argue over pricing, CRO, shipping, and promos like they’re separate worlds, then this one will make those dots connect.

👥 Meet the guest Drew Marconi, Co-Founder & CEO at Intelligems

🎙 Hosted by Aaron Schwartz, Co-Founder & Co-CEO at Orita.ai

🎧 Chapters

[00:00] From McKinsey to Ride Share to Shopify: Why Drew Built Intelligems [03:07] “Cost-Plus Is a Lie”: The New Rules of Pricing [07:43] Price Testing Without Starting a Customer Riot [09:58] Personalization That Pays (Not Just “Hi {FirstName}”) [13:09] Your Site Is Frankensteined: Making Offers, Shipping, and UX Work Together [14:58] Retention Math: Stop Optimizing Orders, Start Optimizing LTV [17:24] The Shift Back to Growth, But With Guardrails [19:57] CRO Isn’t Enough: Test the Business Model, Not Button Colors [22:54] The Only Segmentation Question That Matters First [25:56] Find Your “Money Segments” Before You Overcomplicate Everything [29:40] How to Build a Real Experimentation Culture (Without Getting Fired) [33:29] A Brand Went Full Mad Scientist and It Worked [36:58] Why Agencies Win: The Secret Growth Engine Behind the Best Tests [40:43] What Intelligems Is Building Next: Dynamic Storefronts + APIs + AI

🌐 Check out Orita.ai for more episodes of The Orita Podcast, where we sit down with the most interesting operators, marketers, and founders in e-commerce to talk about what’s working right now. Hosted by the Orita team. Orita uses machine learning to help brands send smarter, more profitable marketing, by figuring out who actually wants to hear from you and when.

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