DTC lifestyle apparel brand
From 6-figure DTC brand sending from Gmail to 7-figure DTC brand running on a foundational email system — in 9 months
A DTC lifestyle apparel brand came to us doing about $30k/month, with email accounting for 10% of revenue. They were sending campaigns from a Gmail address, double opt-in was preventing most subscribers from ever entering the Welcome flow, and emails were landing in Spam at 17.5% open rates. Nine months later, monthly revenue had crossed $122k, email was contributing 36-51% of total revenue, and the brand was running on a proper email infrastructure that scaled with the business.
10% → 51%
email’s share of total business revenue (audit to peak month)
$3,386 → $46,000
monthly email revenue (Apr 2023 → Nov 2023)
17.5% → 60%+
campaign open rates after rebuilding deliverability
The brand
A DTC lifestyle apparel brand selling to customers worldwide, doing roughly $30k/month at the start of the engagement. Strong product, distinctive voice, real customer love — but the email channel wasn’t working. The team knew it. They just didn’t know which part to fix first, because everything was broken.
The leak
The audit found problems across every layer of the email system.
Sending from a Gmail address. Mass campaigns going out from a personal-style Gmail account, which inbox providers flag as suspicious. Emails were landing in Spam, not the inbox.
17.5% campaign open rates. Less than half of Klaviyo’s peer median (42.4%). Open rate was the single biggest indicator that deliverability was the root cause behind everything else.
Double opt-in turned on, only 3% completing. Of 200 people who gave their email in a month, only 6 ever made it into the Welcome flow. The confirmation emails were also landing in Spam — so people were giving the brand their email and then never being added to the list.
Pop-up at 1.19% submit rate (desktop) / 1.88% (mobile). Below the “Fair” threshold. Form had two overlapping pop-ups (country selector + email capture) creating UX issues, plus email + SMS on the same screen overwhelming users.
Welcome flow was a single email. The most leveraged single touch in any email system, doing one job and then ending.
Bounce rate 0.63% (above Klaviyo guidance of 0.26%). Unsubscribe rate 0.62% (more than 2x the median). Both pointed at list hygiene issues alongside deliverability.
Email revenue at 10% of total. Klaviyo’s baseline benchmark for healthy brands is 30%.
This wasn’t a brand that needed optimization. It needed reconstruction.
The foundation we built
The work spanned 9 months. Each layer rebuilt the one above it.
Week 1: stop the bleeding
Set up a dedicated business email address (not Gmail). Turned off double opt-in so subscribers would actually enter the Welcome flow. Cleaned the list of 90-day unengaged profiles to protect sender reputation. Started warming up the new domain by sending only to the most engaged segment (7-day window).
Deliverability rebuild
Moved from image-heavy emails to more HTML-based templates (a key signal to inbox providers). Tightened segmentation aggressively while reputation rebuilt. Open rates moved from 17.5% in April to 50%+ within the first 60 days. By month 4, they consistently sat above 60% — well above the 33% Klaviyo floor and within striking distance of the 42% median.
Pop-up rebuild
Redesigned both mobile and desktop forms. Resolved the overlapping pop-up issue. Split email and SMS into separate steps. A/B tested offer presentation, timing, and copy. Submit rates climbed from 1-2% range to 3-5%+ depending on the offer running.
Welcome flow expansion
The single Welcome email became a 6-7 email sequence covering brand introduction, social proof, product education, objection handling, and final reminders. Welcome flow revenue went from negligible to one of the top two revenue-generating flows every month.
Core flow ecosystem
Built or rebuilt every major automated flow:
Welcome (extended to 6-7 emails)
Abandoned Cart
Abandoned Checkout
Browse Abandonment (rebuilt)
Post-Purchase / Customer Thank You
Sunset
Winback
Review Request
Specialized BFCM flows were built ahead of the November push — including a Black Friday Welcome flow and a Black Friday Abandoned Checkout reminder that delivered $12.48 per recipient.
Campaign rhythm
Established 2-3 campaigns per week with proper segmentation. Built holiday calendars in advance. Open rates moved from 17.5% at audit to consistently 60%+ across regular sends.
The results
Over 9 months:
Monthly email revenue: $3,386 → $46,000. A 13x increase from April to November (peak).
Email’s share of total revenue: 10% → 36-51% in peak months. The channel moved from a minor contributor to a primary revenue driver.
Total monthly business revenue: ~$33k → $122k+. Email wasn’t the only factor in that growth, but it became the channel that captured and converted everything else the brand was doing.
Campaign open rates: 17.5% → 60%+. From “Poor” against peer median to comfortably above benchmark.
Newsletter signups doubled in November, from ~400/month to 800 — the brand was now compounding subscribers, not just retaining them.
Black Friday delivered the brand’s best month ever — $122k total revenue, $46k email revenue. Deliverability and infrastructure held at high frequency.
Foundation held through volume. No spam complaint spikes, no bounce rate degradation, no deliverability collapse as sending frequency increased and the list grew.
The brand crossed from 6-figure to 7-figure during the engagement. Email wasn’t the only reason — but the email system was no longer the bottleneck holding everything back.
Why it worked
We fixed the foundation before doing anything else. Sending from Gmail with double opt-in on and emails landing in Spam meant no amount of clever copy or design would have moved the needle. Every dollar of subsequent work compounded because deliverability was rebuilt first.
The Welcome flow was rebuilt completely. Going from one email to a full 6-7 email sequence wasn’t an optimization — it was building the highest-leverage touchpoint in the system from scratch.
Flows in priority order. Capture, Welcome, Abandonment, Post-Purchase, Winback. The core 5 systems, each rebuilt properly before the next layer was added. No shiny objects until the basics were generating revenue.
The system scaled with the business. Monthly revenue tripled across the engagement. The email infrastructure didn’t strain — it kept pace, even through BFCM peak sending frequency.
The brand
A mid-7-figure direct-to-consumer apparel brand based in Texas, with a strong identity built around regional design and storytelling. Total monthly revenue in the $80k-$148k range across the engagement, with consistent paid traffic feeding the site and a loyal repeat-purchase customer base. Active Klaviyo account, regular campaign sending, an existing basic flow setup at audit.
The campaigns were performing well. The brand had a clear voice and a list that engaged. The opportunity was downstream — adding the retention infrastructure to capture the value campaigns were already creating.
The gap
The initial audit showed a brand doing the visible work well, but missing the systems that compound it.
Flow library was thin. Welcome and Abandoned Cart existed but had been running unchanged for 1-3 years. Browse Abandonment was last updated in 2023. Back In Stock was from 2022. Missing entirely: Abandoned Checkout, Post-Purchase, Sunset, Winback, and a proper Review Request flow.
Pop-up was underconverting. Mobile submit rate sat at “Fair” levels, and there was no separate form for mobile vs. desktop — unusual for a brand with strong mobile traffic.
No SMS coordination in flows. SMS Welcome existed, but the rest of the flow ecosystem was email-only. Texas SMS regulations also required attention.
Email at ~20% of total revenue. A healthy floor, but well below where it could sit for a brand with this campaign performance and list quality.
Segmentation was static. Mostly time-based engagement segments. No customer-journey or interest-based segmentation to support deeper personalization later.
The foundation we built
We worked the systems in the order that compounded fastest.
Flow ecosystem build-out
Built or rebuilt every major automated flow with email and SMS coordination where applicable:
Welcome (email + SMS)
Abandoned Cart
Abandoned Checkout (new)
Browse Abandonment (rebuilt)
Back In Stock (rebuilt)
Post-Purchase (new)
Review Request + Review Posted follow-ups (new)
Sunset (new)
Winback (new)
By October 2025, the flow library was running 7+ active flows generating revenue, up from the 2-3 functional flows at audit.
Pop-up rebuild
Split the pop-up into separate mobile and desktop forms. Ran A/B tests on offer presentation, copy, and form structure. Mobile submit rate climbed from baseline through “Fair” into “Good” territory (2.07%), and desktop reached 3.19% — both rated “Good” against Klaviyo benchmarks. Zero-party data capture (style preference: Men’s/Women’s/Kid’s) integrated into the flow so future segmentation could draw on it.
Campaign rhythm and design
Established a consistent Wednesday + Friday send rhythm. Refreshed campaign templates while preserving the brand’s existing voice. Open rates held above 70% across 59 campaigns over six months — well above Klaviyo’s recommended floor of 33% and double the 40-50% range typical of healthy brands.
Segmentation expansion
Built engagement-based segments (30/60/90/180-day windows) alongside customer-journey segments. Added size-based segments for targeted campaigns (e.g., size-specific sale launches went to the right subset of the list, not the whole base).
Deliverability stewardship
Maintained deliverability through high-frequency sending periods including BFCM. Klaviyo deliverability score held at 80 (“Good”) through October 2025, with spam complaint rates consistently below 0.05% and bounce rates under 0.5%. The list could sustain the campaign volume without degrading.
The results
Over the six months from November 2025 through April 2026 — the period covering BFCM, holiday, and post-holiday — the channel delivered consistent results across seasons.
$104,000 in campaign-attributed revenue from 59 campaigns. 1,096 orders attributed to those sends.
73.2% average open rate across the period, weighted by recipients. Open rates held above 70% in every month except February (where a few targeted small-segment sends pulled the weighted average down slightly).
1.22% average click rate, sustaining above Klaviyo’s 1.20% recommended floor.
Email’s share of total business revenue moved from ~20% at audit to ~28-29% in peak months, with the channel consistently in the 25%+ range.
Total business revenue grew from $135k in August 2025 to $148k+ in October 2025 (the latest covered period in the monthly reports), with email contribution growing in parallel.
Pop-up submit rates moved from “Fair” to “Good” on both mobile (2.07%) and desktop (3.19%) by mid-engagement.
List grew from ~26,000 to ~27,000+ active subscribers across the first three months, with sustained healthy daily growth thereafter.
Deliverability held throughout BFCM and holiday peak frequencies. Spam complaint rates stayed below 0.05%. Bounce rates under 0.5%.
The brand kept doing what it was already doing well — strong product, consistent paid traffic, distinctive design. Email became the channel that captured and compounded the value of all of it.
Why it worked
The campaigns were already good. We didn’t break them. The team had a voice and a rhythm that was working. The job was to add the infrastructure around it, not to rewrite what was already converting.
Flow build-out before any complexity layer. Filling out the core 5 systems (capture, welcome, abandonment, post-purchase, winback) before any logic-heavy personalization or AI-driven segmentation. Touchpoints compound when each one is structurally sound.
Deliverability stewardship at scale. Holding 73%+ open rates across 59 campaigns over six months — including BFCM peak frequency — is a deliverability story, not a content story. The list stayed clean, the sending pattern stayed consistent, and the inbox kept letting us in.
Segmentation built to serve flows, not the other way around. New segments were built when a flow or campaign needed them, not in advance. Avoided the trap of overbuilding the targeting infrastructure before there was anything to target with.
The brand
A 7-figure UK gymwear brand doing roughly £150,000/month in sales, with a 7-year operating history and a list of around 105,000 active Klaviyo profiles when we came on. Strong traffic from paid ads, a growing product line, and consistent campaign frequency. The team was running Klaviyo themselves and knew it wasn’t fully dialled in — they wanted someone to take the channel off their plate and tighten the operation.
The leak
The account was technically functional but expensive. Most of the problems traced back to the same root cause: the list and segmentation hadn’t kept up with the brand’s growth.
Inflated billing. 105,932 profiles sitting against a 135,000-profile plan, with email sends at 98% of capacity. They were paying for volume they weren’t converting.
Every campaign went to the entire list. No engagement-based suppression. Unengaged profiles were dragging down open rates, click rates, and inbox placement.
Spam complaint rate above Klaviyo’s recommended threshold. Deliverability was at risk if sending behaviour continued unchanged.
Flow library was thin. Welcome and Abandoned Checkout existed but were short and dated. Winback, Post-Purchase, and Review Request were missing or incomplete. No SMS integration in any of them.
No zero-party data. Pop-up was capturing emails but not what kind of customer was signing up (gym vs. streetwear) — meaning Welcome content couldn’t be tailored.
The foundation we built
We worked through the core systems in order. Each fix made the next one work better.
List health and segmentation
Created a master Newsletter list to consolidate scattered audiences. Built engagement-based segments (7-day, 30-day, 60-day, 90-day) and customer-journey segments. Ran re-engagement campaigns to unengaged profiles, then suppressed the non-responders. Set up a Sunset flow to keep this process running automatically every month.
Pop-up capture
Split the pop-up form into mobile and desktop variants. Tested timing, copy, and offer presentation independently on each. Mobile submit rate climbed from baseline to 9.43% in January and 9.91% in February — both rated “Excellent” against Klaviyo benchmarks. Adding the gym vs. streets question (zero-party data) didn’t reduce submit rates.
Welcome flow
Rebuilt the Welcome flow with updated copy, design, and sequencing. Added an SMS Welcome flow timed to fire 2-3 hours after the email. The initial Welcome email saw 3x the click rate after the redesign. Revenue per recipient went from £8.06 in December → £13.00 in February → £12.50 in March. The SMS Welcome flow hit an 11.2% click rate and 7.9% placed order rate once corrected.
Core flow ecosystem
Built or rebuilt every major automated flow with combined email + SMS sequences:
Welcome (email + SMS)
Abandoned Checkout
Browse Abandonment (email + SMS)
Post-Purchase
Winback (email + SMS)
Review Request
Sunset
By February, automated flows were generating 30% of total email revenue, up from 20% when we started. Total flow revenue was up 34.3% month-over-month in February alone.
Billing
Tighter segmentation immediately reduced the active profile count. After the first month, the Klaviyo plan dropped by ~$2,110 USD/month — less than half of what it had been. In March, continued list cleaning let us reduce the plan by a further ~$900 USD/month. Total monthly savings: roughly $3,000.
The results
Over four months from December 2024 through March 2025:
Klaviyo plan cost down ~$3,000 USD/month through list cleaning alone. Same brand, smaller plan, better performance.
Welcome flow revenue per recipient: £8.06 → £13.00 — a 61% improvement.
Flow revenue contribution: 20% → 30% of total email revenue.
Email attribution: 34% → 41% of total business revenue (December vs. March).
Mobile pop-up submit rate: 9.91% — rated “Excellent” against Klaviyo benchmarks.
SMS list: 14,508 → 22,815 profiles — up 57% in four months.
Campaigns to 34% fewer recipients, but 8% more unique opens in December — the cleanest signal that segmentation was working.
Deliverability stayed safe throughout. Open rates held around 41-42% (well above Klaviyo’s 33% recommendation). Bounce rate stayed under 0.40%. Unsubscribe rate stayed under 0.20%. Given the high campaign sending frequency, that’s meaningful — the list was clean enough to sustain it.
Why it worked
The cost savings and the performance improvements came from the same set of decisions. They weren’t a trade-off.
Smaller list, same engaged audience. The profiles we removed were the ones never opening, never clicking, never purchasing. Removing them reduced billing and improved deliverability simultaneously.
Email signal got cleaner. Inbox providers saw a higher proportion of engaged opens-to-sends, which lifted inbox placement for the entire list.
Foundation came before complexity. We rebuilt the core 5 systems (capture, welcome, abandonment, post-purchase, winback) before adding SMS coordination or zero-party data. Each layer worked because the one underneath it was solid.
The Welcome flow alone justified the engagement. A flow generating £13/recipient is the result of a properly structured sequence sent to people who just opted in. Once that mechanic was working, every new subscriber from the pop-up improvements compounded.
The brand
A lifestyle apparel brand with a distinctive design point of view and a loyal community. Total monthly revenue in the $25-65k range depending on the season, with regular new product drops as the core business rhythm. Active Klaviyo account, an existing flow setup, campaigns going out consistently. The team had been running email themselves but knew the channel wasn’t pulling its weight.
The product was strong. The marketing calendar was full. Email was the part that didn’t feel reliable.
The leak
The initial audit showed an account that looked functional but had problems running underneath.
Campaign open rates at 25.6%. Klaviyo’s recommended floor is 30%; healthy brands sit in the 40-50% range. Open rates this low almost always mean Promotions or Spam placement, not inbox.
Several emails landed in Spam during the audit itself. Deliverability was the root cause behind most of the other problems.
Pop-up converting at 1.4% on mobile. Klaviyo’s target is 3%+ mobile and 6%+ desktop. The form was capturing maybe a third of what it should have been.
Flow structure was thin. Welcome and Abandoned Cart existed but were short, dated, and image-heavy — which hurt deliverability further. Winback was incomplete. SMS wasn’t coordinated with email.
Email contributed only ~15% of total revenue in slow months, and was inconsistent month-to-month. The channel couldn’t be planned around.
The foundation we built
We rebuilt the systems in the order that protected the next one.
Deliverability first
Before touching content or design, we addressed why emails weren’t reaching the inbox. Set up a dedicated sending domain. Reduced image-heavy emails in favor of HTML-based templates. Tightened segmentation to send mostly to engaged subscribers (30- and 60-day windows) while reputation rebuilt. Within four months, campaign open rates moved from 25.6% to 53.7%. They reached 62.3% — rated “Excellent” against Klaviyo benchmarks — and held there for the rest of the year, including at higher sending frequencies.
Pop-up rebuild
A/B tested offer types ($15 off vs. percentage discount vs. free hat), timing (immediate vs. multi-page-view triggered), copy variants, and form structure. The combination that landed: a multi-page-view trigger paired with a dollar-off offer, which pushed mobile submit rate to 3.85% and then to 4.47% — “Excellent” benchmark territory.
Welcome flow rebuild
Rewrote the entire Welcome flow with updated copy, new design, better sequencing, and a coordinated SMS variant timed to follow the email. The first email’s open rate moved from 22% at audit to 65%+. Click rates on that first email moved from 2.9% to 13%. Same product, same audience — different infrastructure delivering it.
Core flow ecosystem
Built or rebuilt every major automated flow, with email + SMS coordination across all of them:
Welcome (email + SMS)
Abandoned Cart (with conditional splits for cart size)
Browse Abandonment
Post-Purchase
Review Request
Winback
Sunset
Every system contributing instead of one carrying the load.
Campaign rhythm
Established a 2-3 emails/week cadence with proper segmentation. Built holiday calendars in advance (Black Friday, Christmas, Memorial Day) rather than scrambling. Campaign open rates that started at 25.6% finished the year consistently in the 50-60% range — above the 40% benchmark, even at higher sending frequency.
The results
The headline isn’t dramatic growth — it’s reliability. Over 12 months, email became a channel the brand could plan around.
+62% year-over-year email revenue in August 2024 vs August 2023, per Klaviyo’s own reporting. A meaningful gain in a slow month for the category.
Email’s share of total revenue moved from ~15% at audit to consistently 20-30% through most of the year. The brand could now budget around it.
Campaign open rate: 25.6% → 62.3%. From “Fair/Poor” to “Excellent” on Klaviyo’s scale. Open rates above 50% became the new normal.
Mobile pop-up submit rate: 1.4% → 4.5%. From “Fair” to “Excellent” on Klaviyo’s scale.
Welcome flow Email #1 open rate: 22% → 65%+. Click rate on the same email: 2.9% → 13%.
SMS list and SMS Welcome flow built from zero. A second owned channel running in coordination with email by mid-year.
Spam complaint rate held below 0.1% throughout. Unsubscribe rate stabilized under 1% even at increased sending frequency.
Top-line business revenue moved with the email system. Peak months that had previously sat in the $50-65k range climbed into the $80k+ range during the engagement. Email wasn’t the only factor — but it stopped being the bottleneck.
Why it worked
The goal was reliability, not a transformation. Every decision protected that.
Deliverability before everything else. None of the content, design, or copy work would have mattered if emails kept landing in Promotions. Rebuilding sender reputation early was what made every later improvement stick.
The Welcome flow got rebuilt, not tweaked. Going from 22% to 65% open rates on the first email isn’t a copy edit. It’s a full teardown — content, design, timing, deliverability, traffic quality — with each layer working because the one underneath it was solid.
The core 5 systems built in order. Capture, Welcome, Abandonment, Post-Purchase, Winback. No shiny objects, no AI personalization layer, no behavior-triggered logic complexity. The fundamentals that drive most of the revenue, built properly.
The brand
A premium coastal lifestyle and apparel brand operating two retail locations in the northeastern US. Steady foot traffic from both locals and tourists, strong in-store experience, solid retail conversion. The brand had already invested in a photo booth at one of the locations as part of the customer experience — a small attraction that gave visitors something to do beyond browsing.
The retail side was working. The opportunity was downstream of it.
The gap
Most retention agencies focus on website pop-ups. In-store visitors never see those pop-ups. They walk in, browse, buy, and leave — and the brand has no way to reach them again unless they happen to sign up online later.
Retail visitors are the warmest customers a brand can have. They’ve shown up, touched product, and chosen to spend. But the moment they leave, the value disappears. No list capture, no follow-up, no review nudge while the experience was still fresh in their mind.
The conventional fix — a discount code in exchange for an email at checkout — wasn’t right for this brand. It would have eroded margin on a premium price point and didn’t fit the in-store flow. They needed a capture mechanism that earned the email instead of buying it.
The system we built
Four pieces, working together. The photo booth was already there. The retention infrastructure around it was what we built.
The capture mechanism
The photo booth became the email opt-in. Customers took photos in-store, entered their email address to receive a digital copy, and left with a memory of their visit. The brand captured a warm, opted-in contact in exchange for something the customer actually wanted. No discount required, no friction at the point of sale, and the experience felt like a service the brand offered rather than a marketing ask.
The welcome flow
A dedicated Klaviyo welcome flow triggered every time a customer signed up through the photo booth. The flow had two jobs: introduce new subscribers to the brand, and ask for a Google review at the right moment. Subscribers were segmented by store location so each location’s reviews stayed separate and trackable.
The review email
The subject line: “How did your photobooth pics turn out? 📸”
Timing was the whole point. The email landed in the inbox after the photos arrived, when the customer was still in the warm afterglow of a fun in-store moment. Every recipient had physically visited the store, used the photo booth, and voluntarily given their email. The review request felt like a natural follow-up to a positive experience — because it was.
The list integration
Every photo booth sign-up flowed into the main brand email list, tagged by location. The contacts didn’t just generate reviews — they became a long-term audience the brand could keep reaching with campaigns, product drops, and seasonal sends. One opt-in source, three downstream outcomes: list growth, reviews, and lifecycle revenue.
The results
Over twelve months, the Photo Booth Welcome Flow added 19,887 new contacts to the brand’s Klaviyo list across both locations.
The review email performed well above industry benchmarks:
Location A:
Delivered: 11,496
Open rate: 54.5% (6,268 opens)
Click rate: 1.7% (200 clicks)
Location B (newer location):
Delivered: 4,818
Open rate: 49.4% (2,374 opens)
Click rate: 2.1% (181 clicks)
For context, the average automated flow email open rate across Klaviyo benchmarks sits closer to 40-45%. Both locations beat that substantially. Click rates were strong given that the call to action was leaving a review — a higher-friction ask than a typical product click.
The Google review results tracked the email performance:
Location A: 4.8★ across 93 reviews
Location B: 4.9★ across 19 reviews (newer location, smaller sample)
Multiple reviews mention the photo booth by name — meaning the capture mechanism wasn’t just generating reviews, it was generating reviews that referenced the experience itself, which strengthens the review profile for future visitors reading them.
Why it worked
Most Google review requests fail because of context. They go to cold lists, weeks after a purchase, from a brand the customer has already moved on from. This system worked because the context was right at every step.
The opt-in earned its own value. Customers got something useful in exchange for their email. No discount, no margin erosion, no friction. The list grew with subscribers who had a positive reason to be on it.
The review request landed at peak sentiment. Every recipient had a recent, positive, memorable in-store moment. The email arrived while that was still top of mind — not after they’d moved on.
One asset doing two jobs. The photo booth was already creating in-store memories. The retention infrastructure turned each one into a list subscriber and a review opportunity, without adding work on the retail side.
The list compounds beyond reviews. Every photo booth opt-in is now part of the brand’s main list. That’s lifecycle revenue the brand will keep collecting from contacts who originally came in just to take a photo.
The brand
A six-figure DTC lifestyle apparel brand with strong product, an existing customer base, and a Klaviyo account that had grown messy over time. Active in the brand’s marketing rhythm but operating on infrastructure that hadn’t been audited in a long time. The team knew the channel wasn’t performing the way it should — it just wasn’t clear which lever to pull first.
The leak
The audit surfaced a system that looked active but was working against itself.
Email at 8% of total revenue. The Klaviyo benchmark for a brand this size is 30%. Email was running, but it wasn’t contributing what it should.
75,000+ “active” Klaviyo profiles, but only ~25,000 actually engaged. The brand was paying for capacity it wasn’t using and sending to people who hadn’t opened in months.
Campaigns going to ~15,000 recipients when only 5-10k were genuinely engaged. Inbox providers see a high proportion of unopened emails and downrank the sender. Wide segments don’t just waste sends — they hurt the engaged subscribers too.
Click rates below 1%. A signal to inbox providers that the audience isn’t responding. Click rate is what most directly tells the inbox “this sender is worth delivering.”
Welcome flow at 3 emails. The most leveraged single touchpoint in the system, under-built. A healthy Welcome flow should be 6-7 emails covering brand introduction, social proof, product education, and objection handling.
Pop-up at 2.7% combined submit rate. Decent, but with no separate mobile and desktop variants there was no way to test independently.
None of this was unique to the brand. It’s the natural state of a Klaviyo account that’s been running for a few years without anyone cleaning underneath it.
The foundation we cleaned
The goal was efficiency, not expansion. Most of the work was structural.
List cleanup and suppression
The largest single project. Worked through the 50,000+ profiles that were technically active but hadn’t engaged in months. Either re-engaged them through targeted campaigns or suppressed them entirely. By May, the list was effectively cleaned — the brand could finally send campaigns to people who actually wanted to receive them.
Klaviyo billing tier reduction
Once the list was cleaned, the brand could comfortably operate in a lower Klaviyo billing tier. Monthly Klaviyo cost dropped from approximately $1,155/month (75k active tier) toward $565/month (30k active tier) — a savings of roughly $590/month, or $7,000+ per year.
Segmentation rebuild
Replaced wide time-based segments with proper engagement tiers (7-day, 30-day, 60-day, 90-day windows) and customer-journey segments. Campaigns went from blasting 15k to sending to the 5-10k who were actually engaged — improving open rates, click rates, and signal to inbox providers.
Pop-up split and optimization
Built separate mobile and desktop forms. Started running A/B tests on each independently. Submit rates climbed through the engagement, reaching 3.18% on mobile by July.
Welcome flow extension
The 3-email Welcome flow became a longer sequence covering brand introduction, social proof, and product education. Open and click rates on the rebuilt sequence stayed strong throughout.
SMS integration
Added SMS as a coordinated channel. By mid-engagement, SMS was contributing 10-26% of attributed email/SMS revenue depending on the month — a second owned channel running alongside email.
The results
Across the engagement:
Email’s share of total revenue moved from 8% (audit) to a stabilized 20-24% range across most months, with peaks above that. Roughly tripled from the audit baseline.
Klaviyo billing reduced by ~$590/month through list tier reduction. The brand stopped paying for capacity they weren’t using.
List was effectively cleaned — 50,000+ unengaged profiles either re-engaged or suppressed. The remaining list was meaningfully smaller but substantially higher-intent.
Welcome flow rebuilt with stronger sequencing and open rates that held above benchmark.
Mobile pop-up submit rate climbed to 3.18% — “Good” against Klaviyo benchmarks.
SMS list and SMS coordination built from zero. A second owned channel contributing alongside email by the second half of the engagement.
Deliverability stabilized. With cleaner segments and a smaller active list, signal to inbox providers improved across the board.
Total business revenue stayed roughly flat through this period — $8-11k per month. The email channel got healthier and cheaper to run, but the engagement wasn’t a growth story for the business as a whole. That’s an honest read of what happened.
Why it worked
The fix was structural, not creative. No new offer strategy, no aggressive discounting, no creative overhaul. We addressed list hygiene, segmentation, and billing — the layers underneath the channel that most agencies skip.
List cleaning is the highest-leverage Klaviyo move most brands never make. It cuts costs, improves deliverability, sharpens segments, and makes every campaign perform better. One project, four downstream benefits.
Smaller, engaged list outperforms a larger, unengaged one. Reducing the active profile count from 75k to ~25k didn’t reduce revenue — it improved revenue’s share of total, because the channel got more efficient at the work it was doing.
Cost reduction is a real result. $590/month in saved Klaviyo billing is $7,000/year that goes straight to the bottom line. For a brand at this stage, that’s a meaningful number — and it compounds for as long as the brand stays on the cleaner tier.
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