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Our client, a premium art supplies brand, had artist-developed products, specialist materials, and a compelling founder story. What it lacked was a connected retention program. We built the lifecycle foundation during April and May, then launched managed retention on June 1. By August 26, email had been attributed $33.9K in revenue, with automated welcome journeys becoming the largest revenue contributor.
Email retention · The early results
June 1–August 26, 2026
Main + source-specific journeys
June–August vs. January–March
April–May was the pre-launch build phase. Revenue reporting covers June 1–August 26, 2026. Returning-customer comparisons exclude the build phase; the early improvements do not isolate email as the sole cause.
Client’s Story
The brand serves artists working with specialist creative materials. Its products are supported by founder expertise, practical education, and a highly visual creative process. Those strengths gave the business plenty to communicate, but the customer journey did not connect them consistently.
Before the managed program, the brand sent occasional standalone emails. A signup form and basic automations existed, but there was no structured campaign calendar or coordinated lifecycle strategy.
UM became the embedded retention team across strategy, copy, design direction, forms, flows, campaigns, segmentation, deliverability controls, reporting, and testing. Our role was to connect acquisition, education, conversion, and repeat purchasing into one managed program.
Challenges We Faced
- Isolated customer touchpoints: Welcome, cart, and checkout automations were each limited to a single email.
- Missing lifecycle stages: Browse abandonment and post-purchase journeys were absent.
- No structured campaign program: Occasional emails lacked a consistent calendar or connected editorial direction.
- Limited capture testing: The existing signup popup lacked a disciplined A/B-testing program.
- Underdeveloped audience management: Segments existed without a deliberate engagement-tier architecture.
- A gap between product and presentation: Functional creative did not fully communicate the sophistication of the materials or the founder’s expertise.
The historical assets below show the starting point: a simple welcome email, a lead-capture form offering two free art lessons, and a straightforward cart reminder. The touchpoints existed, but they did not form a coordinated customer journey.
From Build Phase to Managed Retention
April 2026 · Pre-launch build
Create the retention foundation
We created the main and source-specific welcome flows, rebuilt desktop and mobile popups, and established a new visual direction for retention.
May 2026 · Pre-launch build
Cover the customer journey
We built cart, checkout, browse, and post-purchase automations so the key lifecycle stages were covered before the managed program launched.
June 1, 2026 · Official launch
Begin active retention management
The program moved into campaign planning, engagement-based segmentation, suppression logic, testing, and ongoing reporting.
July 2026 · Testing and editorial
Expand the campaign program
Cart and checkout experiments compared discount and no-discount paths. The campaign calendar expanded beyond launches into a founder-led studio series.
August 2026 · Personalization
Refine customer and currency paths
Returning customers received welcome paths without a discount. Cart and checkout journeys added first-time versus returning-customer logic and currency-specific branches.
Improve Signup Timing
We rebuilt desktop and mobile capture around visitor engagement. The designs brought the materials and creative possibilities into the signup experience, paired with a 10% first-order offer. The visual below illustrates the layout; the timing results come from Klaviyo form reporting.
The current test kept the offer and core creative constant while changing when the popup appeared. The earlier version triggered after 5 seconds or 30% page scroll. The later version triggered after 8 seconds or 60% page scroll.
| Version | Views | Submissions | Submit rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mobile · earlier trigger | 15,219 | 1,251 | 8.22% |
| Mobile · later trigger | 13,652 | 1,244 | 9.11% |
| Desktop · earlier trigger | 8,931 | 319 | 3.57% |
| Desktop · later trigger | 8,545 | 337 | 3.94% |
The later trigger recorded a 10.9% higher submission rate on mobile and a 10.4% higher submission rate on desktop. It reached fewer impressions on both devices. Mobile submission totals were nearly unchanged, while desktop submissions increased.
These are observed differences between current live form versions. The supplied report does not establish statistical significance or a separate revenue uplift caused by the timing change.
Make Welcome the Revenue Foundation
We built a three-email main welcome sequence and a separate source-specific welcome flow. Together, they introduced the artist’s perspective, explained the materials, offered creative support, and encouraged a first purchase.
After June 1, the welcome ecosystem generated approximately $18.2K in attributed revenue and 288 attributed Placed Order events. The main flow contributed approximately $17.1K, with another $1.1K from the source-specific flow.
The strongest welcome message
Welcome Email 1
Welcome Email 1
Welcome Email 1
Klaviyo flow reporting aligned to send date, June 1–August 26, 2026.
Revenue was concentrated in the first message. That made the opening email a clear strength while identifying an opportunity to improve the education, proof, and product guidance in later messages. As the program developed, returning customers entered welcome paths without a discount, reducing unnecessary incentives.
Match Each Journey to Customer Intent
Browsing, adding a product to a cart, beginning checkout, and completing a purchase represent different customer needs. We created separate journeys for each stage and added customer-history and currency logic.
- Browse abandonment: Build interest and help visitors understand the materials.
- Cart abandonment: Reinforce product relevance and purchase confidence.
- Checkout abandonment: Address friction close to the purchase decision.
- Post-purchase: Provide support, education, and relevant next-product guidance.
- Conditional paths: Adapt messages for first-time and returning customers, with CAD, GBP, and USD branches.
| Flow | Attributed revenue | Conversion rate | Revenue / recipient |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main welcome | $17,061 | 4.64% | $2.92 |
| Source-specific welcome | $1,097 | 2.50% | $2.29 |
| Cart abandonment | $1,835 | 2.05% | $1.80 |
| Checkout abandonment | $2,008 | 5.96% | $6.29 |
| Browse abandonment | $1,367 | 1.41% | $1.21 |
| Post-purchase | $2,336 | 0.78% | $0.52 |
All amounts are USD. Flow metrics use send-date reporting. Individually rounded revenue figures may differ slightly from reported totals.
Main welcome generated the most revenue; checkout abandonment produced the highest revenue per recipient. Together, they show the value of covering both the first introduction and the final stages of purchase intent.
Turn Founder Expertise into an Editorial Series
We built a recurring studio series around the founder’s materials, process, and practical judgment. Each edition introduced a creative idea before presenting the product, giving subscribers a reason to engage between launches.
- The first two reported editorial episodes: Approximately $1.81K in attributed revenue, 26 attributed orders, and a 2.55% weighted click rate.
- A three-email art-course launch: Approximately $5.84K in attributed revenue and 50 attributed orders.
Launch campaigns delivered the largest immediate commercial peaks. The studio series established a repeatable format for education and founder-led storytelling. The creative collage illustrates that direction; the reported results apply to the specified sends, not every concept shown.
The Early Results
From June 1 through August 26, the store recorded approximately $160.2K in tracked revenue and 3,522 Placed Order events. Email accounted for 21.2% of tracked store revenue under Klaviyo’s attribution settings.
| Metric | Result | Reporting basis |
|---|---|---|
| Email-attributed revenue | $33.9K | Order event time |
| Email-attributed store revenue share | 21.2% | Order event time |
| Campaign-attributed revenue | $8,005 | Send date |
| Flow-attributed revenue | $25,705 | Send date |
| Campaign click rate | 2.23% | Weighted by delivered email |
| Flow click rate | 5.98% | Weighted by delivered email |
| Campaign recipient volume | 22,040 | Across six sends beginning June 5 |
Campaign and flow send-date revenue totals $33,710. The $33.9K headline uses order event time; the difference reflects reporting alignment. Recipient volume is cumulative across sends, not a count of unique subscribers.
Automations contributed 76.3% of send-date attributed revenue. The welcome ecosystem alone represented 53.9%. Flows supplied the base of the program, while campaigns added launch activity and editorial variety.
Early Signs of Stronger Repeat Purchasing
Shopify customer reports showed improvements in returning-customer behavior after launch. We excluded April and May from the before-and-after comparison because those months covered the infrastructure build.
| Metric | Baseline | Post-launch | Relative change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weighted returning-customer rate | 12.33% January–March |
14.47% June–August |
+17.4% |
| Month-1 cohort retention | 2.10% January–March weighted baseline |
2.65% June cohort |
+26.2% |
June was the first fully post-launch cohort with Month-1 maturity. These are directional signals from an early reporting window, not proof that email alone caused the changes. Changes are relative percentages.
Why the second purchase matters
Separate customer exports added context to the strategy. Returning customers represented 6.8% of customer records but 24.5% of cumulative spend. Their average total spend was €173.54, compared with €39.13 for one-time customers—approximately 4.4 times as much.
Among 607 customers with exactly two orders, the median time between purchases was 25 days. That suggests the first month after purchase is a useful window to test education, complementary-product recommendations, and creative support.
Customer-value exports cover August 27, 2025–August 26, 2026 and use EUR. These are descriptive comparisons, not time-normalized lifetime value or results attributed to UM.
The Deliverability Roadblock
The rollout included a significant deliverability incident. On July 2, one course-launch campaign recorded 703 bounces, a 13.38% bounce rate, and 86.63% delivery.
Subsequent campaigns recovered to approximately 99.8–99.9% delivery. The July 16 bounce rate was 0.15%, followed by 0.24% on July 31 and 0.18% on August 14. The August 14 campaign recorded zero spam complaints.
Later campaigns used exclusions for bounced, spam-marked, inactive, and selected inbox-provider segments. The recovery is visible in the reporting, but the available records do not establish the incident’s root cause or which action produced the improvement.
The Foundation for the Next Phase
The brand now has six live lifecycle programs, an emerging campaign calendar, engagement-based audience controls, and an ongoing testing process. Founder expertise has a recurring place in the customer journey, while automation supports both acquisition and purchase recovery.
Further opportunities include deeper browse education, stronger later welcome messages, post-purchase review capture, and continued cohort tracking. Winback and SMS remain future priorities; neither was live in the reviewed account. Most cart and checkout discount-test variations are still too small to support a confident winner.
Reporting Notes
Period: Managed-program results cover June 1–August 26, 2026. April–May was the build phase and is excluded from headline post-launch performance.
Sources and alignment: Store revenue, Placed Order totals, and headline email attribution use Klaviyo order event-time data. Campaign and flow performance use send-date reporting. This explains the difference between the $33.9K headline and the $33.7K campaign-plus-flow total.
Attribution: Revenue reflects platform attribution settings. This is not an incrementality study or a matched annual transformation comparison.
Baseline: Historical assets and the retention audit support the description of the inherited setup. Historical flow figures do not fully reconcile with the current account and are excluded from exact before-and-after revenue claims.
Campaign scope: Six meaningful sends beginning June 5 are included. A one-recipient preview send is excluded. Click rates are weighted by delivered email.
Currency: Klaviyo revenue figures are USD. The separate customer-spend comparison is EUR.
Retention: Shopify returning-customer rates compare January–March with June–August. Month-1 retention compares the weighted January–March baseline with the June cohort. The short window and single mature post-launch cohort limit causal conclusions.
Visuals: Historical customer-facing assets, explanatory charts, and representative creative layouts are identified in their captions. Representative layouts illustrate the creative direction and are not screenshots of performance reporting.
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