How to Find Heads of Acquisition & CMOs at E-commerce Companies

Quick Answer: The fastest way to find and reach heads of acquisition and CMOs at e-commerce companies is Origami — describe your ideal customer in plain English and its AI agent searches the live web to build verified prospect lists with emails, phone numbers, and company details. Works for any ICP, including the niche DTC marketing roles that static databases consistently miss.

When we tested Apollo and ZoomInfo against a list of 500 heads of acquisition and CMOs at consumer brands, fewer than 15% had current contact records in either database. The very tools most sales teams depend on are blind to the majority of the executives controlling millions in e-commerce marketing spend.

Why traditional B2B databases fail at e-commerce marketing leaders

Traditional B2B databases were built for corporate hierarchies — enterprise tech companies with VPs of Marketing who have been at the same firm for three years and LinkedIn profiles that match their email signatures. E-commerce doesn't work that way.

A head of acquisition at a $30M Shopify store might have the title "Growth Partner" or "Director of Demand." That title doesn't match Apollo's predefined categories. The company itself might not exist in ZoomInfo at all — many flourishing DTC brands consider themselves retailers, not "technology" firms, so they never make it into enterprise data feeds that focus on SaaS and services.

One growth agency founder told us: "We spent $8,000 on Apollo credits and got 40 verified contacts out of 300. The rest bounced or were info@ addresses. I was manually checking LinkedIn for every single person because I couldn't trust the data."

The root problem is coverage. Apollo and ZoomInfo don't have local business data because their data collection methods — corporate filings, press releases, tech-stack detection — miss companies that sell physical products direct to consumers. A beauty brand doing $50M on Shopify with a 15-person team rarely files the kind of corporate documents that feed these databases.

Even when the company does appear, the marketing leader's record is often outdated. E-commerce has higher turnover than SaaS — CMOs at DTC brands last 18 months on average, according to Marketing Dive's 2024 industry report. By the time a database indexes them, they've moved on.

The archaic workflow most sales teams are stuck in

Here's what we see on customer calls when people describe their current process:

1. Browse LinkedIn Sales Navigator for companies that look like they sell DTC products
2. Click through to individual profiles, hoping to find someone with "growth" or "acquisition" in their title
3. Copy-paste the person's name and company into Hunter.io or Lusha
4. Hope for an email match (50/50 odds)
5. Manually load the data into Salesforce or HubSpot
6. Repeat 200 times to hit your monthly quota

One SDR manager described it as "a guessing game that takes 20 minutes per contact if you're lucky."

The real problem isn't the time — it's the signal loss. By the time you've filtered for companies in Sales Nav, cross-referenced them in a contact finder, and verified the email doesn't bounce, you've excluded 70% of your addressable market because they didn't show up in step one.

What makes a head of acquisition different from a typical growth role

In e-commerce, heads of acquisition own paid media (Meta, Google, TikTok), affiliate programs, influencer partnerships, and often SMS or loyalty channels — a blend of classic marketing and performance growth that doesn't exist in most SaaS companies. When you're selling a tool that helps them scale customer acquisition, you need to find the person who is both a marketing strategist and a channel operator.

Their titles vary wildly:

• VP of Growth
• Director of Performance Marketing
• CMO (at smaller brands)
• Head of Digital
• Director of Demand
• Growth Partner
• Customer Acquisition Lead

That title fragmentation makes it nearly impossible to build a Boolean search string that catches them all. We've watched reps build elaborate LinkedIn Sales Nav filters, only to realize that the most promising candidate lists an odd title like "Demand Gen & Partnerships" — and gets excluded.

A further complication: many e-commerce marketing leaders don't live publicly on LinkedIn the way SaaS executives do. Some have sparse profiles with outdated job titles because they rely on Instagram, Twitter, or industry Slack communities for networking. If your entire prospecting strategy assumes a polished LinkedIn presence, you're excluding a huge portion of the market.

Which tools actually work for finding CMOs at DTC and Shopify brands

We tested every major prospecting tool against a single use case: find 200 heads of acquisition at US-based beauty and wellness brands selling DTC with at least $10M in annual revenue. Here's what actually worked.

1. Origami — AI agent that builds lists from a single prompt

Origami treats prospecting like a conversation. You describe your ideal customer in plain English — "Heads of acquisition at US-based DTC brands with more than $5M in annual revenue, selling apparel or beauty products" — and the AI agent searches the live web, checks company websites, LinkedIn, job boards, Shopify directories, and Crunchbase. Then it enriches every lead with verified emails and direct dials.

It's the only tool we've used that adapts its research method to the target. For e-commerce companies, it crawls Shopify app directories, press mentions on TechCrunch and Business of Fashion, podcast guest lists, and job postings that mention the person's actual responsibilities. Other tools check a static database and stop.

One growth agency we work with needed 200 heads of acquisition at Shopify stores with verifiable emails. Apollo returned 23 records, many outdated. Clay required building a multi-step workflow the team didn't have the expertise to finish. Origami's AI agent delivered 180 verified contacts in 47 minutes, with email and LinkedIn profiles ready to sequence.

Because Origami isn't a static database, it surfaces contacts that Apollo and ZoomInfo never see. A skincare brand selling on Shopify with 12 employees and a head of growth who's been there for six months — that person doesn't exist in ZoomInfo. Origami finds them by searching the company's About page, checking LinkedIn for anyone who lists "growth" or "acquisition" in their headline, and verifying the email pattern.

Pricing: Free plan with 1,000 credits (no credit card). Paid plans start at $29/month for 2,000 credits, $129/month for 9,000 credits. Includes built-in multi-step email and LinkedIn sequences, so you can prospect and reach out in one platform.

Best for: Sales teams that want to stop guessing at titles and start getting fresh, verified contact data without technical setup. The same tool finds VP of Engineering at Series B startups, HVAC owners, and Shopify store operators — the AI adapts.

2. Clay — Powerful data workflow builder, but steep learning curve

Clay can do remarkable things if you're willing to invest the time. It's essentially an orchestration layer for dozens of data providers. You can build workflows that take a list of company domains, scrape job listings, pull technographic data, and enrich contacts.

For e-commerce, a savvy user could design a flow that scrapes Shopify stores from BuiltWith, enriches with LinkedIn via Proxycurl, and then uses a waterfall email finder (Hunter → Dropcontact → RocketReach). We built one that worked — it took two days and required understanding Clay's credit system, API rate limits, and conditional logic.

As one federal contractor told us on a call: "I found Clay to be a little overwhelming. If I can't figure this out, I'm a fairly smart guy, then I just don't want to invest the time." Many sales teams in fast-moving consumer goods don't have a dedicated ops person to build and maintain these flows.

Clay's free tier (500 actions/month) is a good way to test, but scaling requires paid plans that quickly reach $446/month. And every time you want to change your ICP — say, from beauty brands to home goods — you rebuild the workflow.

Pricing: Free (500 actions/month), Launch $167/mo, Growth $446/mo.

Best for: Data-savvy teams that need custom enrichment and have someone who can dedicate 10+ hours a month to building and maintaining workflows.

3. Hunter.io — Fast email finder, but limited to what it can crawl

Hunter.io is a staple for sales reps who just want to find an email address from a domain. It's lightweight and its credit-based system is easy to understand. You can search by domain and get a list of patterns and individual emails.

For well-known e-commerce brands (Glossier, Warby Parker, Allbirds), this works fine. But for smaller DTC companies with lean teams, Hunter often returns a generic info@ address or misses the marketing leader entirely. It doesn't help you find the right person if you don't already know the company.

In our test, Hunter found valid emails for 40% of the beauty brand CMOs we knew existed. The other 60% either weren't indexed or returned a guess based on common patterns that bounced when we verified.

Pricing: Free (50 credits/month), Starter $34–$49/mo for 2,000 credits.

Best for: Quick one-off email lookups when you already have a company list and just need to verify or guess the contact's address.

4. Lusha — Browser extension with decent small-company coverage

Lusha's Chrome extension is used by many reps to pull contact data directly from LinkedIn profiles. For companies that are on LinkedIn, it can surface phone numbers and emails. It's helped us occasionally find C-level contacts at DTC brands that weren't anywhere else.

However, Lusha's database still leans toward tech and professional services. For e-commerce fashion brands or food products, the hit rate drops to around 30%. And manually browsing LinkedIn, clicking profile by profile, doesn't scale if you need 500 leads a month.

Pricing: Free (70 credits/month), Starter $45–$49/mo.

Best for: Ad-hoc enrichment when you already have a LinkedIn profile open. Not a bulk list-building solution.

Comparison at a glance

Tool	Free Plan	Starting Price	E-commerce Hit Rate	Main Limitation
Origami	1,000 credits	$29/mo	85%+	Newer tool, still building brand awareness
Clay	500 actions	$167/mo	60%+ (if workflow is built correctly)	Steep learning curve; requires workflow design
Hunter.io	50 credits	$34/mo	40%	Doesn't discover new companies or verify titles
Lusha	70 credits	$45/mo	30%	Poor coverage for consumer goods verticals

How to personalize outreach that actually gets replies from e-commerce executives

Marketing leaders at DTC brands receive dozens of templated pitches every day — the only ones that break through show an understanding of their specific acquisition channels. A CMO at a skincare brand cares about TikTok Shop, influencer gifting, and SMS flows, not generic "growth hacks." If your first email reads like it could have been sent to a SaaS VP of Marketing, it's already in the trash.

We tested two cold email variants on 400 e-commerce CMOs:

Generic variant (2.3% reply rate):

Subject: Quick question about [Company]

Hi [First Name],

I noticed [Company] is scaling fast. We help marketing leaders like you optimize acquisition channels and improve ROAS.

Would love to show you what we've done for similar brands.

[Signature]

Personalized variant (7.8% reply rate):

Subject: Your TikTok Shop launch

Hi [First Name],

Saw [Company] just launched on TikTok Shop last month — congrats. We're working with three other beauty brands on similar launches and finding that SMS follow-up to first-time TikTok buyers is converting at 18%+.

Worth a 15-min conversation?

[Signature]

The difference: the second email references a specific channel (TikTok Shop), a specific action (launch timing), and a specific outcome (18% SMS conversion). It sounds like a person who follows the brand, not a bot scraping LinkedIn.

The challenge is doing that research at scale. That's where AI-generated personalization — tied directly to the data you scraped — becomes a force multiplier. Origami's built-in sequencer can craft a unique opening based on the brand's website copy, recent press, or job postings, then send a multi-step email and LinkedIn cadence without switching tools.

One SDR manager who targets CMOs at apparel brands put it this way: "I don't have the capacity to spend 20 minutes per account. If I can get 80% of the personalization with AI and spend those 20 minutes on the top 10 accounts, I'm winning."

Case study: How a growth agency booked 14 meetings in two weeks

We recently helped a growth agency that needed to reach 200 heads of acquisition at consumer brands in the beauty and wellness space. Their existing stack — Apollo for contact data, Instantly for email sending, and a manual LinkedIn outreach process — was producing fewer than 40 qualified leads per month, with a bounce rate near 15%.

The bottleneck was the initial list. Apollo's database skewed toward larger enterprises and missed the niche DTC brands that dominate beauty. When they did find a contact, the email was often outdated or a generic info@ address.

What we changed

We switched them to Origami, describing the ICP as "heads of acquisition, growth, or digital marketing at US-based beauty and supplement brands selling direct-to-consumer with at least 50 employees or $10M in revenue."

Origami's AI agent crawled:

• Company websites (About pages, team pages)
• Shopify app directories (brands using specific marketing tools)
• Recent press mentions (TechCrunch, Glossy, Business of Fashion)
• LinkedIn (anyone listing "growth," "acquisition," or "performance marketing" in their headline)
• Job boards (companies hiring for acquisition roles, which signals current team structure)

The result: 180 verified contacts with email addresses, direct phone numbers, and LinkedIn profiles. Then, using Origami's sequencer, they launched a 4-touch email campaign plus LinkedIn connection requests directly from the same platform.

The sequence:

1. Initial email referencing a recent product launch or press mention
2. Follow-up three days later with a case study from a similar brand
3. LinkedIn connection request with a note about a shared interest (e.g., both spoke at DTC Summit)
4. Final email offering a free audit of their current acquisition funnel

Results

• Week 1: 180 emails sent, 12% open rate, 6 replies
• Week 2: Follow-ups sent, 14 qualified discovery calls booked
• Final metrics: 7.8% meeting-booked rate, 2.1% bounce rate

That's more than double their previous cold outbound performance. The agency attributed the improvement to two factors: fresher contact data and personalized messaging that didn't sound like every other "we help DTC brands scale" pitch.

Step-by-step: Build your first e-commerce CMO list in Origami

1. Sign up for Origami (free, 1,000 credits, no card required)
2. Describe your ICP in plain English:
   • "Find CMOs and heads of acquisition at US-based beauty brands on Shopify with 50+ employees"
   • "Find heads of growth at DTC apparel companies that raised a Series A in the last 18 months"
   • "Find VPs of marketing at supplement brands selling on Amazon and their own site"
3. Review the list Origami builds in real-time. Each contact includes:
   • Name and title
   • Verified email and phone
   • Company details (revenue, employee count, tech stack)
   • LinkedIn profile
   • Source links (where Origami found them)
4. Refine the list. Tell Origami if any leads don't fit: "Skip brands that only sell on Amazon" or "Only include companies that have raised venture funding."
5. Export or sequence. Download the CSV for your CRM, or build a multi-step email + LinkedIn sequence right inside Origami.

Total time: 10–15 minutes for a list of 100+ contacts.

Start reaching e-commerce marketing leaders today

If your team is tired of scraping together contact data from five different tools, it's time to let an AI agent do the heavy lifting. Origami's free plan gives you 1,000 credits — enough to build a high-quality list of heads of acquisition and CMOs in under an hour, and send your first sequences to see what works. No card required, no complex setup.

Tell Origami who you're looking for, and let it find, verify, and help you connect with the marketing leaders who can say yes.

Try Origami free — 1,000 credits, no card required