Podcast · Business

Chain Pod

by Chain Social · English · Business

The marketing podcast that gives you an unfair advantage. The Chain Pod is hosted by the team behind Australia's leading all-female agency, Chain Social. Built for business owners and marketers who want what's working, not what's trending. Presented by CEO, Shelby Van Zwol and Digital Director

New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 26 min
Latest: 10 Oct 2026
Language: English

Latest episode

10 Oct 2026 · 26 min

Spilling the Tea on the NYC Meta Agency Summit

Welcome to our NYC mini series 🗽🤎 Meta invited Chain to New York for its Agency Summit, and we were one of only three Australian agencies there. The day after, Shelby and Adele sat down in an iconic New York studio to tell you everything while it was still fresh: the new features, the big themes and what the next 6–12 months look like for anyone running ads. In this episode: 💫 Meta Ads Creative Studio: deeper creative analysis, performance by demographic, and industry benchmarking 💫 Optimising for margin, lifetime value and profit, not just CPA 💫 Why your signal back to Meta matters more…

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Earlier episodes 13 most recent

3 Oct 2026 · 13 min
The Black Friday Hangover: How to Rebuild Your Funnel Before Christmas (and Survive January)
If they didn't buy during your November sale, why would they buy the week after at full price? In our final Black Friday episode, Adele and Shelby unpack the post-sale hangover, and what to do when sales fall off a cliff after BFCM. In this episode: Why a new product drop is the best cure for the post-sale slump Treating early December as a rebuild: excluding November visitors and shifting budget to add-to-cart and checkout campaigns Gifting angles and shipping cut-off urgency across email, abandoned carts and your site Free express upgrades and gift card offers that bring customers back in…
27 Sep 2026 · 14 min
Don't Trade Your Brand for a Quick Sale: Black Friday Creative That Actually Stands Out
Creative is more than half the outcome on Meta, and in November every feed looks the same. Adele runs through the Black Friday creative types that keep winning: simple offer statics with your logo on them (yes, your logo), cart screenshots showing the savings, text message exchanges, founder and employee content, pack an order with me, and creator content like unboxings, try-ons and demos. Meta is pushing paid partnership ads harder than ever, so if they're not in your mix, you'll fall behind. We also get into refreshing last year's winners with a sale banner or a green screen founder…
19 Sep 2026 · 22 min
Don't Get Discovered in November: Your BFCM Runway, Month by Month
If your Black Friday strategy starts in November, you're already behind. Adele breaks down the runway that actually decides your sale. September is for testing creative motivators, targeting, campaign types and bidding strategies. October is for building a high-quality audience while shoppers hold out, and November is your Super Bowl, where you stop testing and scale. We get into why you need to relax your efficiencies across September and October, why your conversion rate will dip in October and why that's normal, and swapping purchase objectives for add to cart to get up to four times the…
12 Sep 2026 · 24 min
Share of Wallet: Building a BFCM Offer Worth Holding Out For
Episode ten and we're going straight to the thing that decides your November — the offer. Adele spitfires every offer type we've seen work (and flop) across our client base: sitewide percentages, gift with purchase, spend and save, BOGO, the hidden collection play, and why free shipping alone will get you unsubscribed. We get into share of wallet and why shoppers pre-plan their November spend, whether it's even worth partaking if you can't beat 10%, auto-applied discounts vs codes, using subscriptions to rescue an expensive November CPA, and the tip we run for every client — testing your…
29 Aug 2026 · 23 min
Creative Velocity: What to Load Into Meta Before Peak Season
So with peak season coming, Adele's in the hot seat for a mini episode. We reveal the winning creative on Meta, how many new ads you actually need each week, the 70/20/20 split and how to preheat creative so you're not gambling in your purchase campaigns come Black Friday. Short, sharp and straight into the nitty gritty so you can be prepared for a record-breaking BFCM this year. 💌: Links & resources 🔗 The Motion creative benchmark report — the table we referenced, broken down by industry and spend, with how many new creatives you should be testing each week: DOWNLOAD🔗 Want this taught…
24 Aug 2026 · 45 min
BFCM Won't Fix Your Cash Flow: Money Talk with Steff Anderson
We sat down with Steff Anderson of Pinnacle Road, Chain Social's accountant of ten years, and the woman we send our clients to when they need someone realistic in the room. 🤎 This one's for every e-comm founder heading into BFCM on vibes. Steff joins Shelby and Adele to pull apart the numbers behind the biggest sales period of the year. What your margin actually needs to be before you can discount, why in-platform ROAS isn't telling you the truth and the bills that land in your inbox long after the sale ends. Warning: you may want a spreadsheet open. In this episode: 💸 Why MER beats…
15 Aug 2026 · 51 min
Ep. 7 BFCM Starts in August: Email Tips For Your Biggest Peak Season
This week, Adele is joined by Amelia (aka Mims) Chain's Email & CRM weapon and the woman behind the email ecosystems doing 30%+ of revenue for our clients. She's across flows, segmentation, deliverability, loyalty, the lot. And she's here to kick off our BFCM series. Because here's the thing: no one is discovering your brand in November. It's too loud, it's too expensive and every other brand is shouting at the same inbox. The customers who buy from you during BFCM are the ones you nurture between now and then - which makes August, September and October crunch time. In this episode: 💌 The…
8 Aug 2026 · 26 min
Ep. 6 The Meta Cheat Sheet for Startups with Aimee Smart
Adele has pulled in the one person who knows her brain better than anyone: Chain's Digital Team Lead, Aimee Smart. Eight years working side by side and still on the tools for six clients. If you want to know what's actually working in real Meta accounts right now, this is your girl. We unpack what Aimee is seeing convert this week, plus a full launch strategy for a hypothetical ecomm startup with 3k a month to play with. The Meta Cheat Sheet: 📣 Only running purchase campaigns is the biggest mistake in most accounts (most expensive objective, almost guaranteed to hit the ceiling). 📣 Cold add…
25 Jul 2026 · 51 min
Ep 5. How Nala Built A Content System To Successfully Scale On Meta
Adele is joined in the studio by Phil De Winter, co-founder of Aussie intimates brand Nala. Together, they unpack how Nala scaled from $3k a month on Meta to a multi-million dollar e-commerce powerhouse, built an unstoppable in-house content machine, and navigated the wild ups and downs of performance marketing. If you're looking to scale an e-commerce brand on Meta without burning through cash or putting all your eggs in one basket, this is your blueprint. Plus the night Meta glitched and spent $20k in an hour, why Meta still holds brands by the balls over TikTok, and how consumer economic…
11 Jul 2026 · 22 min
Ep 4. Meta Ads What's In / What's Out Right Now - Rapid Fire with Adele Elliott
Adele is in the hot seat. Shelby fires off the Meta tactics brands are still clinging to, and Adele calls each one IN or OUT for 2026, with the why behind every verdict. No digressing, straight into the good stuff. If you run Meta ads (or pay someone who does), this is your cheat sheet for what is actually working right now. The scorecard: 💌 Hundreds of campaigns: OUT - consolidate. One purchase campaign, assets split with a strategy. 💌 Ad sets per product: IN when price points and audiences genuinely differ. 💌 Advantage+ catalogue shopping: IN, and huge for 2026. 💌 Traffic campaigns: OUT -…
28 Jun 2026 · 52 min
Ep 3. AI Decoded for Brands & Marketers, Without the Overwhelm with Daniela Valencia
Our very first guest, and who better than an AI consultant? Shelby and Adele sit down with Daniela Valencia to make AI feel less overwhelming and a lot more useful for marketers, agencies and brand founders. The big reframe: AI is not here to replace your team, it is here to enhance it. Speed up the admin, surface the data insights, and free your humans to do the thinking only humans can do. We get properly tangible: where to actually start, why Claude is our pick for agencies and founders, building your "business OS", turning your process into a reusable skill, and the day-to-day use cases…
26 Jun 2026 · 30 min
Ep 2. The Conversion Equation Every E-Com Brand Needs Before Spending on Ads with Shelby Van Zwol
You can't advertise your way out of weak foundations. Period. In this (not-so-short) episode, Shelby and Adele get into the nitty gritty of what every e-commerce brand needs BEFORE you pour budget into paid. It all comes down to one equation: Revenue = Average Order Value × Conversion Rate × Traffic. Nail those three numbers and you can reverse-engineer almost any revenue goal. We unpack each one - why your product page (not your home page) does the heavy lifting, the website rebuild that took one skincare brand from a 1.5% to a 5.5% conversion rate, why not all traffic is created equal, and…
29 May 2026 · 46 min
The Pilot: Meet Shelby, Adele and Your New Unfair Advantage
Welcome to the very first episode of the Chain Social podcast! We are kicking off the series by stripping back the glossy facade of digital marketing and giving you an honest look at who we are, how we got here, and why we’re finally launching this show. In this pilot episode, hosts Shelby Van Zwol (Founder & Director) and Adele Elliott (Digital Director) share their unconventional career journeys, the reality of building a fully female-founded, non-toxic agency, and why most startup brands fail before they even get off the ground. We're not here to give you generic "inspiration"- we’re here…

About Chain Pod

Chain Pod is a English business podcast from Chain Social. Melo plays each episode straight from the publisher's own feed — no ads added, no account needed — and remembers where you stopped, in this browser only.

Publisher: Chain Social
Language: English
Category: Business
New episodes: Weekly
Typical length: 26 min
Latest episode: 10 Oct 2026
Feed: RSS — paste into any podcast app
Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1896841565

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