In this episode of The Orita Podcast, Aaron Schwartz sits down with Zak Cassady-Dorion, Founder & CEO of ECD Digital, to talk about what it really takes to drive revenue in modern ecommerce and why most brands are still leaving money on the table.

Zak’s path to building a 30+ person agency wasn’t traditional: from running a mountain bike tour company in Costa Rica, to sailing across the ocean, to helping legalize equity crowdfunding in the U.S., to finally building one of the most performance-driven ecommerce agencies in the space. That journey shaped a simple but ruthless philosophy: if it doesn’t drive revenue, it doesn’t matter.

Together, they dive into:

• Why the only metric that matters is simple: “Are we making the client more money?”

• The biggest mistake brands make: optimizing metrics that aren’t even real (hello, bot clicks)

• How to audit a $10M+ brand and instantly find hidden revenue opportunities

• Why most Klaviyo accounts are broken and where the fastest wins actually are

• The overlooked growth channel: direct mail and how to make it measurable

• Why segmentation is still the hardest (and most valuable) part of retention

• The shift happening right now: execution is dying, strategy is the only moat

• How AI is accelerating great operators and exposing weak ones

• What’s changing in ecommerce workflows as tools get faster, cheaper, and easier

• The real unlock: freeing teams from manual work so they can think strategically

• Why “learning and testing everything” is now table stakes in marketing

If you’re running an ecommerce brand and feel like your marketing is busy but not actually moving revenue, this episode will force you to rethink how you prioritize, measure, and execute.

👥 Meet the guest

Zak Cassady-Dorion, Founder & CEO at ECD Digital

🎙 Hosted by

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

🎧 Chapters

[00:00] From Costa Rica Tours to Ecommerce Operator

[03:29] How ECD Digital Was Actually Born and Why It Works

[06:17] The Only Rule: Make Clients More Money

[09:19] The Revenue Audit Playbook: Finding Hidden Millions

[12:24] Why Klaviyo + Postpilot = Untapped Revenue

[15:16] Direct Mail Is Back And Now It Prints Money

[23:17] The Overlooked Retention Channel Nobody Uses Enough

[24:19] Most Brands Track the Wrong Metrics (Here’s the Fix)

[27:13] The Email Stack That Actually Drives Revenue

[29:03] AI Isn’t a Tool Anymore, It’s Changing the Game

[34:18] Execution Is Dead. Strategy Is the Moat

[36:53] Why He Finally Started a Podcast (After Years of Waiting)

[42:15] Building a New Ecommerce Brand from Scratch

🌐 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.

🚀 Get your free email audit from Orita, turn segments into superpowers: https://orita.ai

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