SMS is a significantly more intimate channel. You need to communicate with your customers differently here with a level of respect for their privacy that can often be overlooked with email.
SMS should be used to communicate your most important messages to the most applicable customer. Maximum segmentation and personalization. Instead of blasting a sale to everyone, target only people who purchased that SKU within the replenishment window.
Before every SMS campaign, ask yourself four questions: Does everyone need to hear this? Am I sending this at an annoying time? Did they get another text too recently? Could I save money by further segmenting my audience?
Why spend another $50 to acquire a customer when you can create a promotion to bring them back via email — maybe a 10 cent cost per order?
Add a text-only 'Thank you' email from the brand founder. These stand out when everyone else is getting promo emails.
Add social proof to cart abandonment emails from past customers (UGC), influencers, and publications — include quotes.
Create win-back flows for churned customers to get them excited for holiday deals and new products. Make this a custom audience within ad platforms as well.
Create flows that trigger based on how many purchases have been made, and flows that trigger cross-sell and up-sell based on past category purchases. Add dynamic elements within emails and SMS to feel more personal.
Create content around the persona, not the product. In parallel to your brand channels, create a newsletter that lives around your customer persona. If you're a wellness product, include recipes, workouts, other brands they might love, upcoming events.
The biggest key to good SMS marketing is making sure the actual message feels like it was written specifically for you. This requires sophisticated segmentation based on purchase frequency, AOV, time of purchase, plus dynamic variables for personalization.
The fees for non-compliant SMS marketing start at around $500 per number. Compliance alone makes investing in a proper SMS platform worth it.
I'm surprised more brands don't treat their email list like a newsletter with interesting, innovative, and informative content. Aspire to educate with SMS, email, and video-view campaigns.
For the longest time, I never cared for direct mail. But something changed with COVID — people are a lot more careful going through their mail now. The ROI from direct mail has been astonishing, and because you already have the addresses, the cost of sending postcards is cheap.
When we launched Jolie, each Klaviyo record had every customer's local water chemicals on hand, to be utilized later in campaigns. Jones Road Beauty does the same for shade colors in creative and subject lines. Zero-party data is everything.
The best email pop-ups aren't just a one-step collection — they also get one level of zero-party data. Love Wellness asks what you're there for when you submit your email, then routes you into specialized flows. This increases your chance of conversion.
Pro tip: Any time you run a discount on your site, match that offer text in your email pop-up.
Email still drives 20–30% of all revenue for e-commerce brands. Most operators know this, but not enough act on it aggressively enough.
For email capture, you have to give something to get something. You can give them something like Jolie's water report, or a discount. 10% off in exchange for their email. The customer must get something of value.
Welcome email flow: Email 1 is casually saying hey. Email 2 at 48 hours offers a light discount. Email 3 at 72 hours highlights best-sellers with testimonials. Email 4 at 72 hours brings all the social proof. Email 5 at one week includes a great offer to close.
If someone still hasn't purchased after your welcome flow, there's a chance they don't trust you. Redirect them to buy from retailers or marketplaces you're sold at — Target, Amazon, Nordstrom. Meet them where they're comfortable.
The more you can slice and segment your email list and create custom content for each segment, the better. An apparel brand should send different offers to east coast customers getting cold versus west coast customers still in 72-degree weather.
The gold standard for a lead magnet is Jolie's water report — they tell you what's in your water once you enter name, email, and zip code. If you can't offer a discount, trade the visitor's info for genuinely valuable educational content.
Every dollar you spend on paid traffic that's not converting visitors into contactable leads — emails and phone numbers — is an unoptimized dollar. The very first thing every brand needs is a valuable email pop-up on their site.
Send product feedback emails 2-3 weeks after delivery. Make sure the customer has had time to use your product. Send as plain text from the founder — it feels more personalized and gets higher engagement.
Within all of your email campaigns, you should experiment with segments using RFM: Recency (how recent their last purchase), Frequency (how often they buy), and Monetary Value (how much they've spent). It's complex but it's the foundation of world-class retention.
Segment your email list based on general engagement — opens and clicks — and then exclude segments from new emails after they take the action you want. Stop emailing people who already converted.
Double-check your SMS flows and ensure you're not set up to overspend. Most SMS vendors will charge you for replies and for emoji usage at 2-3x the credit of a standard SMS. Don't put yourself in a place where you're scratching your head wondering how your text bill tripled when attributed sales didn't.
Once a new product goes live, I prefer to send 1 email per day for the first 3 days, and exclude purchasers before each send. For your best customers, add a VIP discount or early-bird special. On SMS, send the launch day message and only subsequent texts if there's engagement — link clicks, email opens, etc.
Preparation is king with your email and SMS strategy. Have all your emails written, designed and ready to fire as soon as possible. You need: sale announcement, sale launched blast, mid-day blast to engagers, 24-hour warning, last call, sold out emails, a technical difficulties template, a shipping delays template, and a post-BFCM thank you.
Most people tend to setup their email flows once, then never revisit them for months or years. There is so much money you're leaving on the table by not rigorously optimizing your flows. Campaigns make a lot of money, but you'd be surprised how much more money your flows can be making you.
Include gifting reminders in abandoned cart emails — prompt customers to think about how their items could make great gifts. Add a 'Buy as a gift' button to capture these sales.
Most brands have an email opt-in rate of 1-3%. The average is 3%. You should be at 6-9% for email and 3-6% for SMS. To keep SMS opt-in high, offer a slightly better discount for SMS than email — 10% for email, 15% for SMS.
The best pop-ups ask someone to first opt-in to the discount by clicking the CTA, then collect the email address. That two-step process dramatically increases conversion.
Your first email in the welcome flow has the highest open rate. Maximize it with UGC, press quotes, third-party testing results, and ingredient/material highlights. The hero image gets the most views — constantly A/B test it.
Don't use a generic code like WELCOME15 in your welcome flow. A generic code isn't believable to expire soon, can easily get leaked causing misattribution, and doesn't make anyone feel special.
Email engagement tiers: 0-30 days gets every email, 30-60 days every email, 60-90 days every other email, 90-180 days weekly, 180+ days twice a month. Sunset everyone with no engagement over 18 months.
While most campaigns are promotion or offer related, always weave in brand-building, nurturing, and storytelling. Pay attention to opt-out rates — a sudden increase means you're sending too frequently.
If you're collecting below 7% of emails from your site traffic, you need to focus on driving more opt-ins. Aim for 12% opt-in on email and 7-9% for SMS.
Your email campaigns shouldn't be set-and-forget. Audit and optimize flows regularly — copy, design layouts, offers, merchandising, CTA placements.
Keep subject lines under 50 characters. Think about the email notification on someone's lock screen — what will fit there? Will it prompt enough interest to swipe it open?
The best non-sales emails from brands should be content that a reader can consume, bring up at a dinner table, and share something fun or insightful. Your emails should create dinner stories.
If you're selling at events with a field marketing team, make sure they're collecting first-party data and relaying it back to CRM. Customers found at IRL events should see a different onboarding flow than those from the on-site pop-up.
Until you're processing around 100 orders per day, send review request emails one by one from a real email account, not automated. You want the highest deliverability and to appear in the Important tab.
A high-converting pop-up can collect 16% of site traffic's emails versus the prior 4%. By 4x-ing opt-in, you lower new customer CPA because your welcome flows save more customers.
When you aren't treating your Post-Purchase Flow or Welcome Flow like a performance-oriented acquisition funnel, you're missing massive revenue. The more customers you save with welcome flows, the lower your CPA and higher your ROAS.
Don't just use the 1 email that comes standard in your reviews app. Set up a 5-7 email sequence pushing for review collection with different messaging — a nudge a week after delivery, a personal follow-up from the founder.
Email can NOT be something you set up and forget. Most brands sprint to get all the flows setup in the beginning, then start running ads, and email becomes an afterthought. If your flows are bad, you're letting revenue slip through your fingertips.
A once-neglected cart abandonment email flow showed a 33x increase in revenue after being properly optimized. A new 'Collection View' reminder flow that didn't exist before added 5-figure monthly revenue overnight.
Long code SMS numbers might feel more human, but they're more expensive, slower, and could lead to sending errors. Over 80% of consumers have received marketing texts before — short codes are built for mass communications.
For SMS segmentation, instead of blasting a sale on a SKU to everyone, target only people who purchased it before within the replenishment window. You'll see higher conversion rates and a lot less unsubscribes.
I tested two subject lines — 'Case Study: A $5-figure launch with a bootstrapped brand' vs 'Step by step: Launching an influencer's new brand.' The case study framing had a slightly higher open rate AND higher click-through rate. People love case studies — use them in your email subject lines.
The shorter the attention span of your traffic source (TikTok being the lowest), the more enticing your email capture offer should be. Sometimes you don't need a discount — just think: what can I put there so someone wants to give me their email?
Match the angle of your landing page to the angle of your welcome flow's first email. If your LP sells Sandland Sleep with 'No more waking up in the middle of the night,' the email flow should match that exact messaging. Consistency across every touchpoint.
Check what percentage of your SMS subscribers have never bought from you and how long they've been on your list. If they've been there 30-60+ days past your typical consideration phase, bump them to less frequent, more education-focused messaging. There's a goldmine in that cohort.
On Small Business Saturday during BFCM week, send a plain-text founder email specifically to your 'BFCM sale non-buyers' — those on your list who haven't purchased your BFCM offer yet. It's a personal nudge that converts fence-sitters.
The 16 essential email flows should be set up in a specific order, starting with Step Zero: the perfect popup. Capture name, email, and phone number. Lead with a valuable offer — emails and phone numbers are a form of currency. Make sure you're offering the visitor a fair trade.
Most SMS vendors charge you for replies and emoji usage — 2-3x the credit of a standard SMS. With holiday traffic influx, double-check your SMS flows so your text bill doesn't triple while sales attributed didn't. Postscript doesn't do this, but most others will.
The 3 email flows you must have before launch: (1) email capture popup, (2) branded receipt with shipping notifications including estimated delivery and tracking — majority of CS complaints come from 'when does my package arrive?', and (3) a story-forward welcome flow that treats the inbox like Shark Tank.
Think of the welcome flow like dating: Email 1 is casually saying hey — brand intro, what to expect. Email 2 is introducing yourself to her parents — explain why you deserve a purchase by speaking to benefits. Build trust before asking for the sale.
Emails should be treated as assets on the balance sheet. Once you have someone's email, you can remarket to them with new offers and campaigns forever with direct deliverability. Give something to get something — a discount, a lead magnet like Jolie's water report.
To keep SMS opt-in rates high, offer a slightly better discount for SMS capture than for email submission. For example, offer 10% off for email but 15% off for SMS. Or offer free shipping for email and 10% off for SMS.
Your first email in the welcome flow has the highest open rate. Maximize it by combining UGC content, reviews, press quotes, Us vs Them comparisons, founding story, third-party testing results, and highlights of materials or ingredients — all in one email.
The first hero image of your welcome email gets the most views. I'm a fan of incorporating a design that combines the discount code, social proof, and CTA, with an image that makes it easy to know what the product does. Constantly A/B test it.
Any time there is a discounted offer or product linked in an email, your URL should include the coupon code as an automatically applied offer. Don't make someone go to checkout and manually add a discount code — it should already be applied.
If you collect zero-party data on the opt-in form, use that data to build conditional branches in your email flows depending on what users select. Different benefits drive different CTRs for different segments.
My favorite post-purchase move comes from Matteo, the founder of Eight Sleep. Buy an Eight Sleep, and you immediately get a plain text email from Matteo thanking you and prompting you to reply with questions. It moves your emails to the primary inbox and goes such a long way.
For product launches, send a pre-launch teaser sequence of 2 emails, then a launch announcement with a resend to non-openers. Give VIPs and SMS subscribers early access or an exclusive drop.
Use a 0-1-2-step email pop-up process: Step 0 categorizes the user (e.g., bedding or bathroom), Step 1 collects the email (like a credit card — it may change), Step 2 collects the phone number (like a bank account — it rarely changes).
You wouldn't run the same ad for 18 months, so why are your email flows stuck in 2022? Audit everything automated: Is it firing properly? Do links have auto-applied discounts? Does the pop-up fire on email traffic? Are subject lines optimized?
Run gated quizzes to collect subscribers: holiday-themed quizzes like 'What gift should you get for your partner?' or 'Find your perfect holiday bundle' — gate the results with an email opt-in. People love this stuff and it's a fun way to build your list.
Don't just use the 1 review-request email that comes standard in your reviews app. Set up a 5-7 email sequence: a nudge a week after delivery, a personal follow-up from the founder, a 'show us how you use it' request. The more social proof you generate early, the more future customers convert.
Fayt the Label had only 2 email flows active (cart and checkout abandonment), each with a single touchpoint. After launching AI-driven flows with 3-5 touchpoints each, their flow-driven revenue jumped 14x in 45 days, abandoned checkout flow 3x'd, and they spun up a 'Collection View' reminder flow that added 5-figure monthly revenue overnight.
Fix your email flows first — it's the single highest-leverage thing when a brand is underperforming. Priority order: Welcome series (5-6 emails over 7 days), abandoned cart (1hr, 24hr, 72hr), abandoned checkout (2 emails, tighter timing), browse abandonment (2hr reminder, 24hr social proof), post-purchase (confirm, educate, review, cross-sell), win-back (60-90+ days lapsed).
One brand had 50%+ of their total email revenue coming from the welcome series alone. That's not a sign the welcome series is great — that's a sign everything else is broken or nonexistent.