Over the past month, several brands have approached me asking for retention marketing help:
“We want to decrease our 1-3 month churn.”
“Our automations are outdated.”
“Email only accounts for 15% of our total sales.”
Some of these brands sell consumables with a subscription, some sell one-off items with a long product lifecycle, others sell luxury goods.
My response is always the same…
Once I *pop the hood* and take a closer look at your Klaviyo account (and any subscription apps you use), I can actually see what’s going on.
And guess what…
Most of the issues are similar.
Very similar.
That’s why today, I wanted to go over some of the biggest email mistakes I keep seeing.
All these mistakes I’m about to share are low effort, high impact fixes that are actually worth your time.
Let’s get into it…
Mistake #1: No pop-up A/B tests
A lot of brands are giving up WAY too much margins for first-time buyers.
One brand I audited sold $300 leather boots and gave a 20% discount off the first purchase.
That’s $60!
By giving away that big of a discount, it likely means you’re betting on your customers coming back for a second and third purchase, which is a risky game to play for fashion brands.
If your AOV is > $100, you should test a $-based incentive.
Instead of giving away a 20% discount, can you give away $25 instead?
A person seeing the pop-up will think 25 > 20, and you might see similar conversions anyway.
It’s all about the perceived value.
Or better yet, if you want to be perceived as luxury, stay away from discounts altogether, and find alternative ways to get people on your email list.
Luxury brands are NOT built on Meta ads and Alia pop-ups.
Mistake #2: Zero plain text emails
The case against text-based emails has always been “but what if I sell something visual like fashion or accessories?”
“Don’t people LOVE the infographics?”
That’s a completely valid point.
However, I’d argue that’s actually the reason to DOUBLE DOWN on it.
Here’s why…
Everyone is too busy nowadays using Claude to create fancy visuals and write copy.
So, if every once in a while, you send a plain text message that sounds like it was written from a close colleague or friend (not a greedy corporation using the latest AI model), you immediately stand out.
For one of my clients that sold luxury leather bags, I replaced their fancy cart abandonment email with a text-based alternative.
Guess what?
The conversions jumped from 2.52% to 5.12%.
That’s tens of thousands of recovered revenue that otherwise would’ve been lost.
Every automation you send should include at least one plain text email.
Or at the very least, you should test text-based vs image-based emails.
Zig when everyone else is zagging.
If you want some inspiration, here are 15 plain text emails you can send to your list.
Mistake #3: Post-purchase flow = order confirmation email
When you think of the average customer journey these days, it looks something like this:
Scrolls IG at 1 am.
Sees your ad.
Clicks on it.
Buys on an impulse.
Forgets about it until they hear the doorbell ring.
Now, the thing is… unless your product blows your customer away (either in a positive or negative way), they’ll likely forget about you for good.
The first 30 days post-purchase is your biggest opportunity to reduce customer churn.
Transactional emails get massive engagement. And if you currently do zero re-marketing, you’re leaving a ton of revenue on the table.
For subscription brands, that could mean crafting a 5-email onboarding sequence where you educate the customer on building a new routine, show before-and-after transformations, and get them excited about the benefits.
For brands selling non-consumables, it could be an introductory video where you show them how to install your product.
If you want post-purchase email ideas, I literally analyzed 8,851 of them and handpicked 36 of them.
Mistake #4: Welcome flow = one email
Most email marketers will never admit this, but a lot of people who sign up to your email list have already made up their minds — they’re just there to grab the discount code and buy.
That’s also why I believe welcome flows are kinda overrated, whereas post-purchase flows are underrated (which is a subject for another newsletter).
For people that don’t convert immediately, it makes sense to nurture them.
That usually means sending 5-7 automated emails answering the question “Why us?”
You can introduce your bestselling products, brand mission, founding story, and really focus on the problem you solve.
It’s also a good idea to address any objections (Meta ads comments section is a great place to find ideas).
I cover a few welcome email examples in my Eight Figure Flows eBook.
Mistake #5: Oversegmenting
I see oversegmenting just as much as I see undersegmenting.
You don’t want to blast every single email to your whole list, obviously.
But you also don’t want to limit your ability to make revenue.
An example of this is excluding recent buyers from weekly sends.
If you don’t have a comprehensive post-purchase sequence in place, don’t exclude recent buyers from campaigns.
These people literally just bought, and the probability that they’ll order again will never be higher.
Another example of oversegmenting is limiting your active send pool. If your campaigns consistently get 50-60% open rates, expanding that segment to 120 or even 180 days engaged is probably a good idea.
I cover the 12 segments you should have set up in your Klaviyo account here.
Emails That Sell #32: One Moment Story
This week, I’m breaking down the marketing psychology behind August’s story-based campaign.
You’ll learn Eddie Shleyner’s secret storytelling technique that turns a simple, everyday moment into your most persuasive sales pitch.
Click here to read the breakdown >>>
That’s it for this week.
Good luck!
