« Back to Solutions

The Frugal Founder's Playbook for Live Shopping ROI

Are your live shopping events on BigCommerce falling flat? You invest time and effort, but your promotions feel like shouting into the void. With scattered social media posts and email blasts, you can't tell what's driving viewership or sales, making it impossible to calculate your marketing ROI and make smart decisions for your next event.

Introducing 'The Frugal Founder' stack—your blueprint for effective, trackable live shopping promotions without the hefty price tag. This playbook shows you how to leverage the generous free tiers of MailerLite and Buffer to create a powerful, automated marketing machine. You'll learn to generate unique UTM tracking links for every email and social media post, allowing you to see exactly which channels drive viewers and sales right inside Google Analytics. No more guesswork, just clear, actionable data to maximize your return on investment.

Expected Outcomes

  • Pinpoint exactly which promotional channels (email, Instagram, Facebook, etc.) drive the most traffic and sales to your live shopping events.
  • Calculate the precise ROI for each marketing campaign to justify and optimize your budget.
  • Eliminate wasteful spending on ineffective channels and double down on what works.
  • Drive higher viewership and engagement by implementing a coordinated, data-backed promotional strategy.
  • Achieve clear marketing attribution with zero recurring software subscription costs.

Core Tools in This Stack

MailerLite

Visit website

An all-in-one digital marketing platform that helps businesses of all sizes grow their audience and revenue through email marketing, automation, websites, and landing pages.

Key Features
  • Email Automation
  • Drag & Drop Editor
  • Landing Pages & Websites
  • Signup Forms & Pop-ups
  • A/B Testing
  • E-commerce Integration
  • AI Content Generation
  • Segmentation
Ideal For

Company Size: Micro, Small, Medium

Industries: Technology & Software, Business & Professional Services, Retail & E-commerce, Creative & Media, Education & Non-Profit, Health & Wellness, Other

Pricing

Model: Freemium, Subscription

Tier: Low

Ease of Use

Beginner

Buffer

Visit website

A social media toolkit for small businesses that helps users plan, schedule, and publish content, engage with their audience, and analyze performance across multiple platforms.

Key Features
  • Content Scheduling & Publishing
  • Social Media Analytics & Reporting
  • Audience Engagement Tools (Comments & DMs)
  • AI Content Assistant
  • Custom Landing Page Builder (Start Page)
  • Multi-Platform Integration (Instagram, Facebook, X, TikTok, etc.)
Ideal For

Company Size: Micro, Small

Industries: Creative & Media, Retail & E-commerce, Business & Professional Services, Education & Non-Profit

Pricing

Model: Freemium, Subscription

Tier: Small Business

Ease of Use

Very Easy

The Workflow

graph TD subgraph "The Frugal Founder" direction LR N0["MailerLite"] N1["Buffer"] N0 -- "New sent campaign adds each unique link as a new post to queue" --> N1 end classDef blue fill:#3498db,stroke:#2980b9,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff; classDef green fill:#2ecc71,stroke:#27ae60,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff; classDef orange fill:#f39c12,stroke:#d35400,stroke-width:2px,color:#fff; class N0 blue; class N1 blue;

Integration Logic

  • Buffer Link Injector

    This integration triggers when a new campaign is successfully sent from your MailerLite account. It retrieves the HTML content of the sent email, parses it to extract all unique URLs, and then iterates through this list of links. For each unique link found, it creates a new, separate post and adds it to your selected Buffer queue, ready to be published according to your Buffer schedule.

Download Your Live Shopping ROI Playbook

Stop guessing and start measuring what drives sales and viewership for every event.