Stop Training Your Audience to Wait

Hey there Smarty 👋

Are you geared up to catch the latest and greatest in quick shorts?

And just a quick heads-up! If you stumbled upon us through a friend, make sure to subscribe here! That way, you’ll never miss out on the trending shorts.

🥹 Stop Training Your Audience to Wait

Launch week usually performs. The real signal shows up after the deadline passes.

If momentum collapses immediately, you haven’t just lost velocity, you’ve trained your audience to respond only to novelty. 

That conditioning quietly raises your future CAC because every campaign now requires a bigger event to trigger the same attention.

That’s the hidden tax. You can design against it before the launch even starts.

1. Structure the Launch to Carry Forward

Momentum doesn’t sustain itself. It must be engineered. During launch week:

• Anchor identity clearly so the right buyers self-select faster.
• Offer a permanent advantage, such as a locked founder tier, instead of a shallow discount that disappears.
• Introduce a second spotlight event mid-launch, like a structured playbook or limited variation, to reset evaluation instead of repeating the pitch.

Each move changes the decision matrix. Nothing stays static.

The tradeoff is discipline. If you reopen the “permanent” tier later or recycle urgency language too loosely, credibility erodes fast.

2. Activate Phase Two Immediately

The biggest mistake is returning to regular programming once the deadline ends.

Instead, launch Phase Two.

• Public proof from early buyers.
• A visible onboarding sprint.
• A structured challenge or usage system that keeps the product moving.

The mechanism is narrative continuation. If the story expands, attention stays allocated. Without that second arc, the product becomes background noise.

3. Expand Reach Without Resetting Stakes

Sustaining hype is not about extending the same offer.

It’s about widening the chamber while keeping urgency intact.

Segment intensity so engaged subscribers feel the stakes are tightening while colder audiences receive reinforcement instead of pressure. This protects deliverability and increases conversion density.

If additional reach is needed, distribution like Share Local Media’s Shared Mail program can introduce new qualified households into the same evolving narrative without operational drag. April Shared Mailings close on 3/2. Secure your spot now!

Launch week creates a spark. Phase Two creates oxygen.

Without oxygen, your brand becomes addicted to fireworks. And fireworks get expensive.

Together with Section

Free Event: AI ROI Conference on March 5

On March 5 from 2–3 PM ET, Section is hosting the AI:ROI Conference, a practical session for leaders responsible for making AI deliver real business results.

As leaders shift from funding experiments to demanding results in 2026, this is required learning for teams responsible for making AI pay off.

You’ll learn directly from AI pioneers who have already made the mistakes, worked through the complexity, and built repeatable paths to ROI, so you can fast-follow their playbook and set your 2026 AI strategy up for success.

Speakers include Brice Challamel, Head of AI Strategy and Adoption at OpenAI, Diane Igoche, Director of Agentforce Governance at Salesforce, and DJ Sampath, SVP of AI Software and Platform at Cisco.

🌐 Cloudflare’s Markdown Feature Raises SEO Concerns

Cloudflare introduced “Markdown for Agents,” a feature that converts HTML pages into Markdown when AI crawlers request it. The aim is to reduce token usage and make content easier for AI systems to process. The rollout has sparked debate around SEO integrity and content transparency. 

The Breakdown:

1. HTML Converted at the Edge - When a request includes Accept: text/markdown, Cloudflare converts HTML into Markdown automatically. It does not create a new URL but serves a different representation. Token usage can drop by up to 80%.

2. Built for AI Crawlers - The feature targets AI agents that consume structured text more efficiently. A token estimate header is included in the response. Separate cached versions are stored using content negotiation rules.

3. Cloaking Risk - Because the markdown header is forwarded to the origin server, sites can detect AI traffic, allowing different content to be served to machines versus users. That opens the door to hidden instructions or altered data. 

4. Search Engine Resistance - Google and Microsoft discourage machine-only page versions. They warn about added crawl load and the need to verify content similarity. HTML remains the preferred standard.

Serving cleaner formats may improve AI efficiency, but it complicates trust, indexing, and verification. Operators should weigh token savings against potential search risk before enabling machine-specific representations.

🚀Quick Hits

🎯 Campaigns shouldn’t stall when you scale. Modash gives you access to 250M+ creators, real-time performance tracking, and built-in product seeding tools, all without leaving the dashboard. That’s why 1,500+ teams rely on it. Start your 14-day free trial now, no credit card needed.

📊 The 53% “drop” in SaaS AI traffic isn’t a collapse, it’s consolidation. Discovery is shifting into embedded tools like Copilot, 41% of visits land on internal search pages, and Q4 declines mirror normal B2B budget cycles.

💎 Luxury shoppers aren’t searching less; they’re researching smarter, with 34% using generative AI to assess value, 44% deciding what’s worth paying more for, and 53% open to AI-powered image search.

🧠 Google’s Gemini 3 Deep Think upgrade enhances advanced reasoning, enabling advertisers to analyze incomplete campaign data, build no-code marketing agents, and tailor AI “thinking levels” for complex media planning and research tasks.

📺 Roku reported strong Q4 results with revenue up 16% to $1.4B and platform revenue rising 18% to $1.2B, as streaming hours grew 15% and its ad business outpaced the broader OTT market.

That’s a wrap for today! Tell us your thoughts about today's content as we line up more Shorts! And don’t hesitate to share this with someone who’d adore it. 🥰