Email rev 6% → 27% of total in 5 months
Klaviyo deliverability + 12-flow rebuild + checkout CRO + SMS layer.
Where they were.
Email at 6% of total revenue. Add-to-cart-to-checkout completion at 41%. Both were known internally, both had been on the founder's roadmap for 18 months, and neither had moved because the operator bandwidth wasn't there. A $14M GMV apparel brand four years post-launch, Q4 approaching, board expecting +35% YoY — and an in-house team that was excellent at brand and merchandising, conspicuously thin on lifecycle and CRO.
What the audit turned up.
Klaviyo deliverability degraded — DKIM partial, SPF half-set, DMARC absent. Inbox placement at 76% (best-in-class: 95%+).
Welcome flow was one "thanks for subscribing — 10% off" email. No nurture, no education, no second touch.
Checkout flow forced mandatory account creation. 19% of guest checkouts abandoned at this step alone.
Shipping calculator surfaced only AT checkout (not on cart) — 14% of carts abandoned post-checkout-load on shipping shock.
Mobile PDP missing sticky ATC. 64% of traffic was mobile. Conversion rate gap mobile vs desktop: 1.8% vs 3.4%.
No SMS layer. Postscript installed but never activated. List of 18,400 unsubscribed but recoverable.
The work.
- Fixed deliverability: dedicated sending domain, DKIM/SPF/DMARC complete, sender reputation rebuilt over 30 days.
- Rebuilt welcome flow as 7-touch sequence. 3 product education emails, 2 social proof, 2 conversion-led. Generates $2.84/profile.
- Built 11 additional flows: browse abandon, cart abandon, post-purchase, replenishment, win-back, VIP, etc.
- Killed mandatory account creation in checkout. Added guest checkout. ATC-to-checkout completion went 41% → 67%.
- Surfaced shipping calculator on cart page — calculated by zip before checkout. Shipping-shock abandonment cut in half.
- Mobile PDP redesign with sticky ATC + image stack optimisation. Mobile CR went 1.8% → 2.9%.
- Activated SMS layer via Postscript at 9.4× revenue per send.
What moved.
| Metric | Before | After | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Email revenue % of total | 6% | 27% | +21 pts |
| ATC → checkout completion | 41% | 67% | +26 pts |
| Mobile conversion rate | 1.8% | 2.9% | +61% |
| Email revenue per recipient | $0.47 | $2.84 | +6× |
| SMS revenue | $0 | $31K/mo | from zero |
| Klaviyo inbox placement | 76% | 94% | +18 pts |
Transferable, not flattering.
- Deliverability fixes lift email revenue more than any creative refresh — but no agency wants to do them because they don't bill enough.
- Mandatory account creation is the single biggest checkout leak we see. It's a 5-line config change worth 5-figure monthly revenue.
- Activating dormant SMS lists on a fixed cadence is faster than building a new acquisition channel.
We'd been planning the lifecycle rebuild for 18 months. RoiSpends shipped it in 8 weeks. Email went from a guilt project to our highest-margin channel.Founder