From $0 to $246K: What We Learned Building an Email Program From Scratch

In January 2025, we took on a DTC home and lifestyle brand that was doing $38K/month on Shopify. Their entire revenue came from paid ads — $840K/year across Meta and Google. No email flows. No campaigns. No Klaviyo revenue.

The founder was skeptical. He'd seen email work for other brands but wasn't convinced it could move the needle for his.

Twelve months later, Klaviyo accounts for $246,150 in attributed revenue — 11.8% of total store revenue. The email channel runs on autopilot through 9 automated flows and a consistent campaign cadence.

This is the full story of how we built it, including the failures.

Starting From Zero

The first two weeks were all foundation work that generates zero visible revenue. DNS authentication, SPF/DKIM/DMARC setup, dedicated sending subdomain, list cleaning, segment architecture.

This is the part where most agencies cut corners. They want to send campaigns immediately because that's what the client can see. But if your deliverability foundation is broken, everything you build on top of it underperforms.

We cleaned the existing list of about 17,000 contacts. Removed hard bounces, spam traps, role-based addresses, and anyone who hadn't engaged in 180+ days. The list got smaller before it got bigger. That's by design.

The Failure That Changed Everything

In March 2025, we sent a campaign called "Spring Cleaning Tips" to nearly 20,000 subscribers. The open rate was 50% — outstanding by any benchmark. People were clearly interested.

The result: zero orders. Not one.

We analyzed the data. The audience wasn't the problem. The timing wasn't the problem. The offer wasn't the problem. The creative was the problem.

The hero image showed a lifestyle photo — a couple in bed — but you couldn't clearly see the product. The CTA was small and embedded inside the image. The copy led with utility ("how to clean your blanket") instead of emotion and benefit.

Three specific fixes:

1. Product above the fold. The blanket needed to be the first thing people saw.
2. Larger CTA. Big, bold button. Impossible to miss.
3. Emotion over utility. "Happiness starts with comfort" instead of cleaning instructions.

Seven days later, we sent "International Happiness Day" to the same audience. Same list, different creative.

Result: 12 orders and $1,086 in revenue.

That was the turning point. A 50% open rate with zero conversions pointed directly at the creative — not the audience, not the timing, not the product. We had the formula. Now we had to scale it.

Building the System

With the creative approach validated, we applied the same principles across everything:

Welcome Series rebuild: Product-first design, benefit-led copy. Conversion rate hit 3.86%. This single flow generated over $171K over the year — more than every other flow combined.

Abandoned Checkout sequence: 4 emails recovering $36K+ in abandoned carts.

Campaign cadence: Moved from sporadic, unplanned sends to a consistent 2-3x/week schedule with segment-based targeting.

Segmentation: Built engagement segments (14/30/60/90 day), VIP segments, category affinity segments. Each segment gets different content at different frequencies. Engaged 14 gets 4-5 sends per week. Engaged 90 gets one. Unengaged gets nothing except the Sunset flow.

What Worked

VIP early-access strategy. Our best customers get every product launch, sale, and announcement 24-48 hours before the main list. This drives immediate revenue from high-AOV customers and creates exclusivity.

Non-opener resends. 48 hours after each campaign, we resend to engaged subscribers who didn't open — with a new subject line. Consistently adds 15-25% more revenue per campaign.

Consistent cadence. Going from sporadic to consistent 2-3x/week was one of the biggest levers. Email is a frequency game when you have proper segmentation protecting your list.

Deliverability obsession. Spam complaint rate stayed below 0.03% — well under the 0.1% industry benchmark and far under the 0.08% critical threshold. This doesn't show up as a revenue line item, but it's the foundation that makes everything else work.

What We'd Do Differently

Start the campaign engine earlier. We spent the first 6 weeks focused on flows and infrastructure. That was right. But we could have started a basic campaign cadence in week 3 while still building flows — the two aren't mutually exclusive.

Test SMS sooner. SMS contributed only $1K of the $246K. We were conservative with it because the client was skeptical. In hindsight, SMS for abandoned checkout and VIP early access should have been implemented from month one.

Push harder on content mix. We over-indexed on promotional campaigns because they drive immediate measurable revenue. But the relationship-building content (behind-the-scenes, founder story) drove disproportionate engagement that made the promotional sends more effective.

The Numbers

The Takeaway

Building an email program from scratch isn't complicated. It's systematic. The technology exists. The playbook is proven. The flows are well-documented.

The hard part is execution: getting the creative right, maintaining the cadence, protecting deliverability, and continuously optimizing based on data instead of assumptions.

The founder who started skeptical now says email is "an absolute game changer" and that the automation has increased his business valuation.

That didn't happen because of one clever campaign. It happened because of a system — 9 flows, consistent campaigns, disciplined segmentation, and an obsession with the data — running every single day for 12 months.