Email is 30% of mature DTC revenue. Yours probably isn't.
Most accounts have one welcome flow, one cart-abandon, and an unused 'newsletter' list. We rebuild the lifecycle architecture — flows, segments, deliverability, SMS layer — and turn lifecycle into the highest-margin channel on your P&L.
Lifecycle marketing is the discipline of engaging existing and prospective customers through owned channels — email, SMS, push, in-app — across the full customer lifecycle from sign-up to win-back. For ecommerce, the canonical flows are welcome, browse abandonment, cart abandonment, post-purchase, replenishment, win-back, and VIP, typically built on Klaviyo, Listrak, Iterable, or Braze with SMS via Postscript or Attentive. For SaaS, it's onboarding, activation, expansion, churn-save built on Customer.io, HubSpot, or Iterable. The under-discussed lever is deliverability: SPF / DKIM / DMARC / BIMI configuration, sending-domain segmentation, sender-reputation maintenance, list hygiene. A poisoned reputation degrades every flow regardless of copy quality. Mature lifecycle programs deliver 25%+ of total ecommerce revenue and lift SaaS trial-to-paid 30–50%.
What's broken in most lifecycle programs
A 'thanks for subscribing — here's 10% off' email and nothing else. Best-in-class welcome series are 7–10 touches over 21 days, generate $2–4 per profile, and onboard customer LTV. Most brands are leaving $30–80K/mo on the table.
DKIM partial, SPF half-set, DMARC absent. Sending domain mixed with transactional. Apple Mail Privacy Protection treated as 'open rate broken' instead of 'optimise differently'. Inbox placement is the silent killer.
RFM segmentation never built. Predicted-LTV not used. VIPs not separated from one-time buyers. The whole list gets the same campaign, the engaged audience tunes out, and deliverability degrades.
SMS layer added with the same cadence and copy as email. No urgency, no exclusivity, no segmentation. Result: high opt-out rate, regulatory risk, and low ROI per send.
Browse abandonment, post-purchase education, replenishment, win-back, VIP — drafts sit untouched while the team manually sends one campaign per week. Activation is more valuable than another campaign.
What we run
Klaviyo (preferred — operator-grade tooling)
Customer.io (SaaS — event-driven)
HubSpot Marketing Hub
Listrak (enterprise DTC)
Iterable, Braze (enterprise + multi-channel)
Postscript / Attentive (SMS)
Deliverability audits (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI)
Lifecycle architecture: welcome, abandonment, browse, post-purchase, win-back, replenishment (ecom); onboarding, activation, expansion, churn-save (SaaS)
How we audit & operate
Deliverability scorecard
SPF, DKIM, DMARC, BIMI audit. Sending domain segmentation. Spam-trap monitoring. List hygiene. Sender reputation against Microsoft + Google + Yahoo. We fix this BEFORE writing flows — flows on a poisoned reputation perform poorly regardless of copy.
Flow architecture
Map the 8–15 flows your category needs. Build with senior copy + design. Wire to events that exist (and add the ones that don't). Test variants of every flow against control.
Segmentation strategy
RFM, predicted-LTV, behavioural, lifecycle stage. SMS segments distinct from email. VIP recognition. Re-engagement vs. suppression rules.
Campaign cadence
Editorial calendar tied to product launches, replenishment cycles, holiday windows. A/B testing register. Performance reported against revenue per recipient + revenue per send.
What lands in your inbox.
- Deliverability scorecard + remediation plan
- 8–15 flow architecture (built or rebuilt)
- Segmentation map + RFM/predicted-LTV setup
- Monthly campaign calendar + execution
- Weekly revenue-per-recipient + revenue-per-send reporting
- Quarterly list health audit + win-back program
Where this worked.
Email rev 6% → 27% of total in 5 months
- Deliverability fixed (DKIM, SPF, DMARC, dedicated sending domain)
- 12 flows built end-to-end from one welcome
- SMS layer added at $9.40 revenue/send
Trial activation +29 percentage points
- Customer.io event-driven onboarding rebuilt
- Day-3 aha-moment email lifted activation 18%
- Churn-save sequence recovered 11% of cancellations
Questions we actually get asked.
Will you migrate us to a new ESP?
If your current ESP is the bottleneck, yes. Klaviyo migration is a 4-6 week project for ecom. Customer.io migration for SaaS is similar. We've done both and price as one-time projects ($15-25K) plus normal retainer.
How fast does email revenue lift?
Welcome flow rebuild + deliverability fix typically lifts email revenue 30–60% in 60 days. Full lifecycle rebuild compounds over 4–6 months. Email % of total revenue at 25%+ is achievable for most DTC brands within a year.
Do you do SMS too?
Yes. Postscript or Attentive for ecom. Twilio direct for SaaS event-triggered. SMS is a separate channel with separate strategy — not 'email v2'.
What about BIMI and Apple Mail Privacy?
BIMI deployed where the brand has VMC eligibility. Apple Mail Privacy Protection optimised by shifting attribution away from open rate to click-through, conversion, and revenue per recipient. Open rate is no longer a useful metric — we report what is.