The Email Costing You Margins

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In this newsletter, you’ll find:

📧 The Email Tax Eating 10-20% Of Your Savings

📊 ChatGPT Ads Are Moving From Experiment to Platform This Week

🏆 Ad of the Day

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📧 The Email Tax Eating 10-20% Of Your Savings

Every direct email your team sends to a supplier outside the master agreement has a price tag. The procurement industry has a name for it: maverick spend. The Hackett Group puts the cost at 10-20% of targeted savings lost to off-contract purchases. 

Order.co's mid-market data is brutal; an average mid-sized company runs $322,000 annually through untracked spending.

Here's the part nobody flags: even best-in-class organizations with full e-procurement systems only hit 69% contract compliance. The average company is closer to 50%. Half of your supplier transactions are happening outside the deal you negotiated.

The leak isn't a person. It's the inbox.

1. Audit your "approved supplier, wrong terms" gap first

Most maverick spend isn't a rogue vendor. It's an approved supplier used outside the negotiated contract terms, with different pricing, exceeded volumes, and skipped the approval workflow. Your ops lead emails the same supplier finance already has a deal with, but uses spot-buy pricing instead of the volume rate. 

Pull 90 days of supplier invoices. Match line items against master agreement pricing. The delta is your monthly tax.

2. Kill the direct email lane to suppliers

Every email outside the system is a hole. Studies of compliance show maverick buying happens because employees are trying to get things done quickly, not because they're malicious, which means policy memos won't fix it. The fix is structural: route every supplier touchpoint through one system that auto-checks against the master agreement before the message goes out. 

Accio Work runs this layer natively, agentic execution intercepts supplier requests, validates them against existing contracts, and flags rate or volume violations before a PO gets cut. The "I'll just email them quickly" path stops being faster than the compliant path. You can try One Week Free.

3. Hunt your tail spend monthly, not quarterly

Tail spend, typically 20% of total spend scattered across 80% of suppliers, is where maverick purchases hide. Quarterly reviews catch it after the damage is done. 

Monthly dashboards catch the pattern early: which department, which supplier, which category. Bringing tail spend under management saves 5-15% on its own.

Most P&Ls won't show this leak because it doesn't have a line item. It shows up as "freight came in higher than forecast" or "Q3 COGS drifted." It's never one big mistake. It's six emails a month, sent fast, costing the deal you already won.

The supplier already gave you the price. The question is whether your team is actually using it.

📊 ChatGPT Ads Are Moving From Experiment to Platform This Week

Early CTR data shows ChatGPT ads outperforming traditional benchmarks while OpenAI simultaneously launched self-serve buying, CPC bidding, and pixel-based measurement, signaling a clear shift from test to platform.

The Breakdown:

Early CTRs Impress - SimilarWeb data shows ChatGPT ads generating strong CTRs versus display and podcast channels. Mother's Day prompts trigger ads three times more than average due to high purchase intent signals.

Scale Remains Uncertain - Inventory is still limited, and early performance often looks better before wider rollout introduces competition. The novelty factor may be inflating engagement, and conversion quality will ultimately determine whether this channel is real.

Self-Serve Now Live - OpenAI launched a beta Ads Manager in the US, giving advertisers direct control over budgeting, bidding, and creative uploads. CPC bidding is now available alongside CPM so advertisers can optimize for actions, not just impressions.

Measurement Catches Up - Pixel-based tracking and a Conversions API are rolling out letting advertisers measure purchases, sign-ups, and leads. Data is aggregated with no access to individual conversations, reinforcing OpenAI's privacy focus throughout.

ChatGPT ads are following a familiar platform playbook  high-touch partner-led launch followed by self-serve tools that unlock scale. WPP, Publicis Groupe, Criteo, and Adobe are already in the partner network. Conversion data at volume is what will make or break this.

🎥 Ad of the Day

What Works:

1. The bottle on a plate is a category repositioning play. Honey typically supports other foods. Centering it solo on stacked dinnerware claims star ingredient status, not supporting role. That's a direct shot at commodity perception. 

2. Yellow monochrome environment removes visual competition entirely - Background, props, and product share the same color family. Nothing competes for attention. The only contrast is the dark bottle label, which is exactly where your eye lands. 

3. Hands without a face remove demographic friction - No face means no age, no lifestyle, no "that's not me" rejection. Any buyer can insert themselves into the scene without subconscious filtering. 

Borrow staging from high-status cultural formats, press conferences, award shows, gallery exhibitions, and photograph your product inside them. Status by association is free and scales better than discount messaging. 

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