Dataships Q1 2025 Retro: Turning Opt-in Moments into Long-term Revenue

The line between "cost center" and "growth engine" isn't always clear — until you start measuring what actually moves the needle.

At Dataships, that line came into sharp focus in Q1.

What began as a compliance solution has transformed into something much more powerful — a reliable system for unlocking incremental revenue through smarter consent.

This quarter, we doubled down on proving that value. We've shipped A/B testing tools to redefine how we show impact and aligned our product roadmap around a simple truth: Compliance can't just check a box — it has to drive outcomes.

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Focus #1: Making Compliance a Revenue Driver for Shopify Plus Brands

Dataships now sits at the intersection of compliance and revenue, helping brands turn the fleeting checkout opt-in moment into measurable value. Our core focus is incrementality — not just increasing opt-in rates but showing the actual lift in retention and repeat purchase behavior over time.

This came out of a real need. Attribution today is a mess. Brands often work with overlapping tools, all claiming the same lift. They need confirmation that every vendor drives true value. We've seen this firsthand: 10 vendors taking credit for the same $500k revenue bump, but you only have $1M in the bank.

By operationalizing rich incrementality tests, we give brands visibility and confidence that we only charge for the results we actually impact. That's where we focused in Q1:

- Rolled out A/B testing tools to isolate Dataships' impact from business baseline

- Built impact reports that tie opt-in lift directly to list growth and projected LTV

- Made it easier for brands to see the long-tail effects of something as simple as a better consent prompt

As a result, our GTM play has shifted. We doubled down on Shopify Plus, where scale and global compliance complexity make those incremental gains even more meaningful. For these brands, a small uptick in checkout opt-ins can generate thousands of additional high-intent subscribers — without changing their offers, traffic, or strategy.

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Focus #2: Shipping Value with A/B Testing & Impact Reporting

As we shifted our positioning toward incrementality in Q1, we needed a clearer, more defensible way to demonstrate Dataships' revenue impact. This led to two key product investments.

The first was our A/B testing framework, built to compare a brand's existing checkout opt-in experience with Dataships' Dynamic Consent. It runs across live traffic and tracks the difference in opt-in rate between a control group and a variant group using our widget.

The second was an updated impact reporting process to translate that opt-in difference into:

- Monthly subscriber lift

- Revenue projections based on CLV and LTV

- How consent performance affects downstream retention

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These features have been critical for customers like Benchmade, where a new growth hire wanted to prove the incremental value of Dataships.

Instead of defending the tool with a pitch, we ran a test. The results projected a mid six-figure revenue lift in the first year, proving Dataships' value and reframing the platform internally as a revenue tool.

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Focus #3: Increased our Headcount with Top Talent to Power What's Next

We made two key hires in Q1 to support our shift toward incrementality and our growing focus on Shopify Plus brands. These roles were scoped specifically to improve the customer journey and accelerate product delivery.

- Christian Freitas, Senior RevOps Manager, is improving visibility into the full customer lifecycle — from first touch through activation — and ensuring sales, success, and product teams have the right data to support our accounts.

- Alejandro Perez Favieres, Senior Software Engineer, will be critical in executing our roadmap faster with an emphasis on merchant-facing feature velocity, internal tooling, and broadening our integrations.

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A Look Ahead at Q2: The Era of Ecosystem Support

As we scale, our goal is to build a platform that naturally integrates with the tools brands already rely on. That's the focus for Q2: Expanding our ecosystem coverage for cohesive consent collection, regardless of the tech stack.

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"Now that we're well established on Klaviyo, our next push will allow brands to funnel marketing contacts into any platform. That means incremental audience and LTV growth and a single source of truth for compliance regardless of the platforms being used." — Michael Storan, Co-Founder & CEO

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Here's what's coming in Q2:

- Expanded Marketing Tool Integrations: While Dataships supports Klaviyo by default, we are expanding ESP and SMS support, starting with Yotpo. We're also working to abstract the integration layer entirely, making it easier to spin Dataships into any email or SMS marketing platform.

- Automated Translation Support: Compliance requirements multiply as more Shopify Plus brands scale globally. In Q2, we're adding automated translation support for our consent layer to help brands stay compliant in more regions, build trust with more buyers, and boost opt-in rates with localized prompts.

- Major Impact Metric Upgrades: We're launching deeper analytics and reporting around seasonality, LTV, and opt-in behavior for greater visibility into how signups impact retention and revenue.

- Operationalizing Incrementality Data: We're turning our results into real-world success stories to show just how much revenue Dataships captures for ecommerce brands. These stories will also help establish industry benchmarks for opt-in rates and repeat purchases, giving companies clear standards to measure their performance.

And there's still more in the works.

Ready to unlock more from your checkout? Connect with our team to try Dataships for free today or learn more about what's next.