Case study
with 
A jewellery brand that could sell out a drop from one Instagram post, and a customer list that was its weakest channel until the plumbing was fixed.
Charles wanted to know why a brand that sells out drops on Instagram made almost nothing from email.
Charles Lichaa, Founder, 8 Other Reasons · with Colton Pappas, brand and marketing
8 Other Reasons sells statement jewellery and accessories from Los Angeles to an audience that is 90% women aged 18 to 30, and it can sell out a drop from a single Instagram post. Emails went out every week, and email brought in around 12% of store revenue. The engagement began in May 2025. Within 45 days of the plan going live, email and SMS were attributed to 81% of store revenue, and 80.1% again in the Black Friday month.
- The problem
- Emails were going out every week. Activity was hiding the absence of results.
- The plan
- Get seen, automate the journey, then campaign in sequences. Three phases in an order that could not be shuffled.
- The result
- Email and SMS at 81% of store revenue within 45 days, and 80.1% in the BFCM month.
Style It, Slay It · Campaign · February 2026 · 1 of 5
Real campaign designs from the 8 Other Reasons account
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Step 1 · May 2025
Audit
A full audit of the account before a single email was designed. Six causes traced to their source and given a place in a sequence.
- Spam folder
- Image only emails
- Buried offer
- Dead signup forms
- Two email cart flow
- Mailing bounced addresses
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Step 2 · 2025, in three phases
Strategy
Three phases in an order that could not be shuffled. Each one exists because skipping to the next would have wasted it.
- Get seen
- Automate the journey
- Campaign in sequences, not blasts
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Step 3 · August to December 2025
Results in the first season
81%Email and SMS share of store revenue, 45 days after the plan went liveFrom ~12% before the plan, 80.1% again in November53.1%Campaign open rate, November 2025From 29.2% at the audit, 54.9% in December61%Flow share of email revenue, November 2025Cart flow only at the audit, 50% in December0.005%Spam complaint rate, November 2025Landing in spam at the audit, one twentieth of the healthy threshold
The problem
Emails were going out every week. That was the problem.
Activity was hiding the absence of results. Here is what that looked like at three depths.
External
Campaigns were landing in Gmail's spam folder. The emails that did land were image grids with no live text and no button. The discount code sat at the very bottom of a long scroll. Both signup popups showed zero submissions. Abandoned cart was two emails and then silence. Bounced and spam-marked addresses were still being mailed.
Internal
Charles could see the send log, not the inbox. He was paying for a platform and a weekly send and had no way to tell whether the list was ignoring the brand or never seeing it. The 12% revenue contribution felt like a verdict on the brand's appeal, when it was a verdict on plumbing.
Philosophical
A brand that can sell out a drop from a single Instagram post should not have to accept that its own customer list is its weakest channel. Owned audience is meant to be the part of the business nobody can take away. It should not need luck to reach it.
The villain is the illusion of activity.
A scheduled send looks like marketing. It produces a report, a timestamp, a sense that the channel is handled. Meanwhile every send to a spam folder, every image-only email, every mail to a bounced address quietly teaches inbox providers that this sender is not worth delivering. The list looks alive on the dashboard and is dying in the inbox.
The guide
We had seen this exact account before. Not this brand. This shape.
Every account we audit that "sends every week but email doesn't work" has the same fingerprint: a fashion-forward brand whose emails are built like Instagram posts, a list that has never been cleaned, a capture form that stopped working months ago and a cart flow that was set up on day one and never touched. The engagement numbers look mediocre rather than catastrophic, which is why nobody panics. The spam folder is where the panic should have been.
So the first thing we did was not design an email. It was a full audit of the account, delivered in May 2025, with each failure traced to its cause and a sequence for fixing them. Then a plan Charles and Colton could approve as a whole, so that nobody would be reviewing a welcome email in June without knowing why it came before the campaign calendar.
The plan
Three phases, in an order that could not be shuffled.
This is the plan we gave Charles. Each phase exists because skipping to the next one would have wasted it.
Get seen
Stop mailing bounced and spam-marked profiles. Rebuild the email skeleton around a 60/40 text-to-image balance with one call to action in the first screen and the offer stated up top, not buried. Repair both signup forms so the list starts growing again.
Why first: a rebuilt welcome flow or a perfect BFCM sequence sent to the spam folder is a rebuilt nothing. Deliverability is the ceiling on every later phase.
Automate the journey
A welcome series with conditional splits, so a subscriber who buys off the first email stops receiving the pitch. Abandoned cart extended and re-triggered with exit rules. Browse abandonment with order filters and separate paths for first-time and repeat visitors. A VIP flow for the customers who already love the brand.
Why second: flows earn while nobody is pressing send, and they are what the campaign traffic in phase three lands on. Run campaigns before the flows exist and every visitor a campaign creates leaks straight back out.
Campaign in sequences, not blasts
Build the peak-season calendar as a story: tease, launch, remind, last chance. Reactivate the dormant SMS channel at the moments where urgency is real. Test subject lines and angles so each send teaches the next one.
Why last: campaigns are the most visible work and the least durable. They only compound when the list is clean and the flows are catching what campaigns stir up. Done first, they are the illusion of activity all over again.
What Charles did
The plan needed him to do four things and not do one.
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Gave access. The email platform, the store, the imagery folders, and later the SMS channel.
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Approved the sequence, not just the emails. The audit and plan were signed off as a whole in May, then each welcome email was reviewed against a fixed go-live date of 9 June 2025.
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Fed the calendar. New collection dates, product imagery, offer decisions and BFCM discount levels, often on short turnarounds and sometimes adding launches mid-month, which the calendar was built to absorb.
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Held his nerve on the list. Cleaning the list meant watching the active profile count fall as invalid and unengaged contacts were suppressed. It is the least comfortable thing a founder is asked to approve and the single biggest lever on deliverability.
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Did not ask for more volume to fix results. When engagement wobbled the instinct is to send more. The plan asked for better sends first, more sends later.
The stakes
What this avoided, and what it became.
The failure this avoided
- Another Black Friday with the brand's best offers of the year filtered into spam by the one channel that costs nothing per send.
- A list that keeps shrinking in practice while growing on paper, because nothing was capturing new subscribers and old ones were being burned.
- Continuing to pay for a platform and a weekly production cycle in exchange for roughly one dollar in eight.
- A sender reputation degraded to the point where fixing it becomes a months-long warm-up rather than a cleanup.
The success it became
- Email and SMS attributed to 81% of store revenue within 45 days of the plan going live, and 80% again in the BFCM month.
- Open rates in the mid 50s, held through the highest-volume sending weeks of the year.
- A deliverability score in the platform's Good band during peak, with spam complaints at one twentieth of the healthy threshold.
- Automated flows producing the majority of email revenue, so the account earns between campaigns.
The transformation
Charles can now open the report and see a channel, not a cost.
What changed for him is legibility. Before, the monthly numbers described emails that were sent. Now they describe money that email made, where it came from, and what to do next. The 45 day comparison in early October was the first time the report answered his original question directly: email had gone from around 12% of store revenue to 81%.
The December figure is the honest one to dwell on. Email's share fell from 80% to roughly half because total store sales grew faster than the list did. That is not email failing. It is email having reached the size of the audience it is allowed to talk to. The next constraint is acquisition, and the plan says so: paid traffic to feed the forms, a sunset flow to keep the list lean, and a capture path for existing customers who never opted in.
Charles can now say, with the report open, which flow made the money, which BFCM email did the work ("Last few days left, Don't Miss Out", because three emails before it had already done the explaining), and why an SMS channel dormant for months is worth keeping warm.
Email and SMS share of store revenue
Platform attributed. Absolute revenue withheld. The outlined bar is the published benchmark band midpoint for established stores.
Before figure from the May 2025 audit. The 45 day figure is from the October 2025 comparison; November and December are from the monthly reports. Benchmark is the 25 to 40% email revenue share range for established DTC stores.
Evidence
Before, achieved, benchmark
Every line we could source a published benchmark for. Lines below benchmark are left in. A page with no weak lines reads as unverified.
| Metric | Before | Achieved | Benchmark | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email and SMS share of store revenue | ~12% | 81% (45 days) · 80.1% (Nov) · ~50% (Dec) | 25 to 40% | Above |
| Campaign open rate | 29.2% | 53.1% (Nov) · 54.9% (Dec) | 32.5% jewellery | Above |
| Campaign click rate | 1.04% | 0.16% to 0.18% (Jan 2026 sample) | 1.6% jewellery | Below |
| Deliverability score | Landing in spam | 77 (Nov) · 65 (Dec) | 75 to 89 = Good | Good in Nov, Fair in Dec |
| Spam complaint rate | Not reported | 0.005% (Nov) | Under 0.01% healthy | Above |
| Bounce rate | Not reported | 0.35% (Nov) · 0.10% (Dec) | Under 1% healthy | Above |
| Unsubscribe rate | Not reported | 0.24% (Dec) | Under 0.3% healthy | Above |
| Flow share of email revenue | Cart flow only | 61% (Nov) · 50% (Dec) | ~41% | Above |
| SMS campaign click rate | Channel dormant | 7% average, 5 sends | 8.9% to 14.5% = Good | Below |
| Signup form submit rate | 0.0% | Rebuilt; rate not reported | Not compared | Unmeasured |
Before figures from the May 2025 audit. Achieved figures from the October 2025 45 day comparison and the November and December 2025 monthly reports. Benchmarks: Klaviyo 2026 email benchmarks (jewellery vertical where published, otherwise all industry), Klaviyo deliverability guidance, Klaviyo SMS campaign benchmarks (US, October 2025), and the 25 to 40% email revenue share range for established DTC stores.
Results by programme
| Initiative | Outcome | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Account audit and plan (May 2025) | Six causes traced and sequenced; plan approved as a whole so later approvals had context. | n/a |
| List hygiene | Invalid, bounced and spam-marked profiles suppressed; flow entry conditions tightened to engaged profiles only. Spam complaints fell to one twentieth of the healthy threshold. | 0.005% spam rate |
| Email structure reset | 60/40 text-to-image, one call to action above the fold, offer stated in the first screen, mobile-checked before send. Open rate roughly doubled. | 29.2% → 53 to 55% opens |
| Welcome flow | Rebuilt with conditional splits and purchase exits; live 9 June 2025. | n/a |
| Abandoned cart, browse abandonment, VIP | Cart flow extended and re-triggered; browse flow given order filters and first-time versus repeat logic; VIP path added. Flows became the majority of email revenue. | 61% of email revenue (Nov) |
| BFCM sequence | Tease, launch, remind, last chance across email and SMS, with extra sends absorbed mid-month. Best send: "Last few days left, Don't Miss Out". | 80.1% share (Nov) |
| SMS reactivation | Five campaigns after months dormant; engagement healthy for a cold restart, revenue contribution limited in this phase. | 7% click |
| Signup forms | Both popups rebuilt after showing zero submissions. | Rate not reported |
In the client's words
Both lines are paraphrased from the engagement's own threads and meeting minutes, not verbatim quotes.
Charles asked directly why email was not contributing more to revenue, and said that if the channel was going to justify itself the answer had to be visible in the numbers, not in activity.
Charles Lichaa, Founder. Paraphrased from the 45 day comparison thread, 3 October 2025.
Charles described the audience as 90% women aged 18 to 30 who respond to subtle, editorial design rather than corporate layouts crowded with buttons, and asked for the emails to feel like the brand's Instagram, not a catalogue.
Charles Lichaa, Founder. Paraphrased from the weekly sync minutes, 22 October 2025.
Your turn
Charles's plan is the same plan we would give you.
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Get seen
We audit the account and find where your emails actually land. You approve a cleanup you will not enjoy watching.
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Automate the journey
We rebuild the flows so they respect what each customer has already done. You approve them against a date, not a mood.
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Campaign in sequences
Your peak season goes out as a story, on a list that can hear it.
If your platform is set up and sending, and you still cannot say what email is worth to the business, the first step takes 45 minutes.
Sending every week and still cannot say what email is worth?
The first step takes 45 minutes: an audit of where your emails actually land, then a plan in the order Charles approved. Get seen, automate the journey, campaign in sequences.