I grew a one product store's email revenue from $143K in January to $376K in March. While lowering the discount on their welcome pop-up. Most people see that and assume we ran a bigger offer. Nope. In January, email was sitting at 18% of total revenue. That's actually not bad, but most of that was just the welcome flow doing its thing... huge discount, new subscriber converts, rinse and repeat. We cut that offer down. Revenue still went up 163%. Here's what actually happened: The welcome flow couldn't carry everything anymore. So the rest of the program had to show up. And it did. Flows went from $94K to $235K. Campaigns went from $48K to $148K. Email went from 18% to nearly 22% of total revenue. The margin situation got better too. You stop attracting people who only buy when there's a big discount. We just kicked off their SMS this month too... This is what it looks like when email marketing works: → Revenue spread across the system (camps and everything, not just the welcome) → Campaigns actually converting (sending regularly only to non-buyers and occasionally to buyers as well) → A new channel is being built instead of ignored And email should grow as fast or faster than the store itself (tho that is hard to maintain when it's a one-product store)

I optimize attribution btw I care about the numbers being accurate It incentivizes the team to put out the best quality possible and really pinpoint what works for each one of our brands.

you need to keep Klaviyo attribution as accurate as possible, even if it makes your numbers look worse. better to show 20% email attributed rev and trust it than claim 40% because klaviyo claims rev that happened 10 days after an open. it makes it way easier to pinpoint the actual winners and know what’s really working and what's not.

you gotta find that fine line between acquisition and retention on the acquisition side you obviously want the strongest angle possible. obv you want the customer excited but once they’re in, expectation setting becomes super important. if they buy thinking they’ll feel some crazy difference in 3 days and the real answer is more like a few weeks of consistent use, that gap is gonna come back and hit retention.

Don't promise anything to clients. I used to, but I noticed that a relationship built based on one single promise isn't a long lasting one. Obviously, I expect them to understand that they'll see results. But that's something they figure out by looking at my resume.

give existing subs more value not a bigger discount. if non buyers are getting 25% off, you don’t need to give subs 30%. You can give them: early access ittle giftl with next shipment $20 store credit subscriber-only bundle free add-on limited hidden SKU gift for a friend double loyalty reward now they still feel like they’re getting better treatment without destroying recurring economics. this also gives you way more interesting campaign angles... the best subscriber perk is something that makes them think: “oh, this is actually because I’m subscribed.” not something anyone could’ve gotten from the homepage.

Grind Time 🔓

the worst thing you can do is spend all year convincing someone to subscribe then Q4 comes around and all you focus on is acquisition subs shouldn’t feel punished for subscribing early. the economics can even be worse on the subscriber perk and it can still make sense because you’re protecting churn + increasing LTV.

most sub brands are massively underusing email. do these if you want better retention + higher LTV: subscription started: don’t throw your subs into your normal post purchase (your “normal” post purchase should upsell subscription and get them here), focus on getting them to actually use the product, setting expectations + getting them to see value before rebill 2 failed payment: the easiest to recover. they didn’t choose to leave. make updating payment stupidly easy + have follow-ups around the retries. cancellation: better to segment by reason (too expensive/too much stocked already/no results etc) , but whole point is to win back the customer. paused sub: these customers haven’t churned yet. remind them why they subscribed, address the likely reason they paused + give them a reason to reactivate before a temporary pause turns permanent (go less aggressive here) rebill 3: more education around results and consistency. vip segment for subs who went through 3+ rebills.

lmao this is why you have to be more creative now

failed payment is probably the easiest subscription revenue to recover. yet a lot of brands either rely on the default notification or barely follow up. make the fix obvious, make the link easy to find, follow up around retries + stop the flow the second payment goes through.

retention problems start before the customer even thinks about cancelling. bad expectation setting is a huge one. customer sees an ad that makes the product feel instant. they subscribe. 2 weeks later they don’t feel anything dramatic. now they’re already questioning whether they should keep paying. that’s why subscriber onboarding should act fairly on expectation management. When should they realistically notice something? what happens first? What happens after 30 days? What happens after 60 days? How often should they use it? What mistakes reduce the chance of getting a result? What should they NOT expect? If results take time, your emails should be buying the product enough time to actually work.

for a lot of subscription brands, the most important emails happen after the customer already subscribed. especially if the product takes time to work. someone can cancel simply because they expected results in 2 weeks when the real timeline is 6-8. or because they used it inconsistently. Or because they didn’t understand what progress should actually look like. that’s why subscriber onboarding matters so much.