Case study
with 
An Australian wig retailer two years in, and an email channel that went from something the owner had to take on trust to a number he can argue with every month.
Hitesh wanted an email channel he could hold to account every month, not one he had to take on trust.
Hitesh Parmar owns The Wig Outlet, an online retailer of fashion, costume and everyday wigs for Australian shoppers, with a wholesale line alongside. Bronwyn Farr runs approvals and offers day to day. The engagement began in July 2024, and a year in email was already a meaningful part of the business. The problem was not performance. He could not see into it. This page measures year two, from the weekend he demanded a monthly report to the year on year comparison that answered him.
- The problem
- A channel that was working, run by an agency he could not see into, with clicks below half a percent and a report that stopped arriving.
- The plan
- Make it accountable, make it compound, then make it grow, at our risk first.
- The result
- Email and SMS from 28.9% to 38.0% of store revenue year on year, with attributed revenue up 54% against 17% for the store.
Treat yourself to our chocolate wigs · Product campaign · 1 of 5
Real campaign designs from The Wig Outlet account, including the animated Halloween send
-
Step 1 · July 2025 to January 2026
Review
One year in, the numbers said the channel was working and the owner said he could not see it. Both were true. This is what the review found.
- Campaign clicks mostly under 0.5%
- Flows set up and never revisited
- Pop-up capturing a small fraction of visitors
- Wholesale bounces on the retail domain
- Reporting moved to quarterly, unasked
-
Step 2 · January 2026 onward, three phases
Strategy
Reporting first, because nothing else survives a sceptical owner without it. The order is the point.
- Make it accountable
- Make it compound
- Make it grow, at our risk first
-
Step 3 · July 2026, year two
Results after one year
38.0%Email and SMS share of store revenue, July 2026From 28.9% in July 2025, one year into the engagement1.25%Account level click rate, July 2026From campaign clicks mostly under 0.5% a year earlier, still below the 1.69% benchmark55.2%Of attributed revenue from flows, April to June 2026Not reported before the re-alignment, against a benchmark near 41%45.1%Pop-up subscribers who went on to buy, plain 10% offSpin the wheel converted 30.7% and produced less than a quarter of the revenue
The problem
A channel that was working, run by an agency he could not see into.
This is not a rescue story. Email was already a meaningful part of the business a year in. The problem was different, and it is the one most retainer clients never say out loud.
By July 2025 email was contributing just under 29% of store revenue, but the campaigns were opening well and clicking badly, mostly below half a percent. Flows had been set up and not systematically revisited. The pop-up was capturing a small fraction of visitors. A wholesale line sharing the same sending domain was pushing bounces up. And in January 2026 the monthly report did not arrive, because the team had quietly moved to quarterly reporting without asking him.
Hitesh runs two retail brands and pays for email every month. What he wanted was simple: to know each month what was sent, what it cost, what it made and what did or did not work. Without that, a decent result and a poor one feel the same from the owner's chair, and the retainer starts to feel like a subscription rather than a service. When the report stopped, he said so, plainly.
A retailer who pays monthly should be able to see monthly. Accountability is not a favour an agency does for a difficult client. It is the thing that lets a client keep saying yes with a clear conscience, and it is what turns a vendor into a channel the business can plan around.
The villain is the black box retainer.
A monthly fee, a stream of campaigns, a reassuring tone, and no fixed moment where the numbers are laid out and argued over. It is comfortable for everyone right up until the owner asks what he is paying for and nobody has a document to hand him. It slowly converts trust into suspicion, even when the work is good, and it hides the weak lines that would otherwise get fixed.
The guide
We were the agency in the black box. We had to earn the way out.
There is no clean way to say this. In late 2025 we consolidated The Wig Outlet's reporting into a quarterly view without agreeing it with Hitesh. He raised it on 7 January 2026 with a list of what a monthly payment entitles him to see: campaigns run, spend, revenue, what worked and what did not. He was right. The three month report went out within days, and the monthly cadence has held ever since, landing between the 10th and 15th of each month so that late attributing revenue is counted rather than argued about.
The plan that followed was built on that correction. Everything in it has a document behind it that Hitesh and Bronwyn could read, comment on and push back against: a year on year comparison, a test report for every experiment, a growth plan with its own scorecard, and a monthly report with the weak lines left in.
The plan
Make it accountable, make it compound, then make it grow.
Three phases, given to Hitesh in this order. The order is the point.
Make it accountable
A monthly report on a fixed date with a one page summary, deliverability, top and bottom campaigns and a next steps list that carries over month to month. Year on year comparisons instead of week to week ones. Every experiment written up as its own report with the sample size stated.
Why first: nothing else in the plan survives contact with a sceptical owner unless the measurement is agreed first. Reporting is not the output of the work. It is the licence to keep doing it.
Make it compound
Run every sale as a two send structure, a first promo seven to twelve days out and a second promo near the close, because the data across five sales showed both sends earning in every case. Re-align every flow to every major sale so automation carries the offer, not just campaigns. Test the pop-up properly: offer type first, then step count, then display timing, one variable at a time.
Why second: these are the mechanisms that make each month's revenue less dependent on any single email. They only pay off once there is a report to show they are paying off, which is why they follow phase one.
Make it grow, at our risk first
Add four campaigns a month for two months at no extra cost and measure whether the list could absorb a heavier cadence without fatigue. Launch SMS through the existing platform rather than a separate tool, starting with the welcome flow. Split the wholesale line onto its own sending account so its bounces stop touching retail deliverability.
Why last: increasing volume before the reporting and structure were in place would have made any fatigue invisible until it showed up as unsubscribes. Done in this order, the growth test had a scorecard waiting for it.
What Hitesh did
He demanded the report, then he used it.
- Called out the reporting gap. In writing, over a weekend, with a specific list of what he expected to see each month. That message is the reason phase one exists.
- Set the offers and kept them simple. Sitewide percentage codes for EOFY and State of Origin, free shipping thresholds, Payday as a recurring fixture. Bronwyn briefs each sale with dates, code and audience, and approves designs by email.
- Approved 45 day calendars in advance. Which is what made a three emails a week cadence possible without last minute approvals.
- Chose the simpler SMS route. Offered a third party integration or native SMS, he took native, avoiding duplicate data and another tool to maintain.
- Replaced VIP sends with unified sales when it suited the business. He asked for a single sitewide offer during the April Glam Sale and Click Frenzy rather than a separate VIP campaign, and the plan absorbed it.
- Held steady through a traffic collapse. In March 2026 the store's paid search account was hijacked and site traffic fell sharply. Email kept sending to the list it had, which is exactly what an owned channel is for.
The stakes
What this avoided, and what it became.
Failure avoided
- A retainer that ends in January 2026 over a missing report, with a channel already at 28% of revenue walking out the door on a process failure rather than a performance one.
- Campaigns that keep opening at 70% and clicking below half a percent because nobody is measuring clicks month to month.
- Wholesale bounces quietly degrading retail inbox placement through the peak season.
- A pop-up offer chosen on instinct. The spin the wheel variant felt more engaging and produced less than a quarter of the revenue of a plain 10% off.
Success it became
- Email and SMS share of store revenue up from 28.9% to 38.0% year on year, with attributed revenue growing 54% against 17% growth in the store overall.
- Account level click rate at 1.25% in July 2026, from campaign clicks that mostly sat under 0.5% a year earlier.
- BFCM revenue up 18% on the prior year; Payday up 117%; seasonal storytelling up 71%.
- Flows carrying 55% of attributed revenue across two sale periods, and eight extra campaigns absorbed with a 66% average open rate and no fatigue signal.
The transformation
Hitesh can now open one document a month and see what he paid for.
What changed for him is not that email started working. It is that he can now see it working, see where it is not, and argue with the numbers on equal footing. The July 2026 report told him in one page that the store grew 20% on the prior month and email grew 81%, that opens were at 60% and clicks at 1.25%, and in the same breath that unsubscribes were above benchmark, two general interest campaigns had opened brilliantly and sold nothing, and the pop-up submit rate was still rated poor. He did not have to ask.
The year on year comparison is the document he asked for in January, delivered in August. Same month, same store, twelve months apart: total revenue up 17%, email and SMS revenue up 54%, share of revenue up nine points. Payday, the recurring concept he keeps in the calendar, more than doubled. The character and costume theme that opened well and sold nothing in July 2025 became the top revenue campaign of July 2026.
What he can say with the report open: which campaign structure earns twice, which pop-up offer converts subscribers into buyers at 45% rather than 31%, why the unsubscribe rate is above where it should be and what is being done about it, and that the wholesale line now lives on its own account so its bounces are its own problem.
Email and SMS share of store revenue
Platform attributed. Absolute revenue withheld. The teal band is the published 25 to 40% email revenue share range for established stores. Figures from the July 2025 to July 2026 comparison report and the October to December 2025 quarterly report.
Evidence
Before, achieved, benchmark
"Before" is July 2025, one year into the engagement, because no pre-engagement baseline is on file. Lines below benchmark stay in. A page with no weak lines reads as unverified.
| Metric | Before | Achieved | Benchmark | Standing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Email and SMS share of store revenue | 28.9% (Jul 2025) · 28.3% (Q4 2025) | 38.0% (Jul 2026) | 25 to 40% for established stores | Upper end of band |
| Attributed revenue growth, year on year | n/a | +54% (store +17%) | Not compared | Outpacing store |
| Campaign open rate | 55.8% (Q4 2025) | 60.3% (Jul 2026) | 31% all industries | Above |
| Campaign click rate | Mostly under 0.5% (Jul 2025) | 1.25% account level (Jul 2026) | 1.69% all industries | Below, improving |
| Deliverability score | 70 (Q4 2025) | 75 (Jul 2026) | 75 to 89 = Good | Bottom of Good |
| Bounce rate | 0.13% | 0.10% | Under 1% healthy | Healthy |
| Spam complaint rate | Not reported | 0.01% | Under 0.01% healthy | At the line |
| Unsubscribe rate | Not reported | 0.65% (Jul 2026) | Under 0.3% healthy | Below |
| Flow share of attributed revenue | Not reported | 55.2% (Apr to Jun 2026) | ~41% | Above |
| Pop-up submit rate | 2.32% (Apr 2026, rated Fair) | 1.13% (Jul 2026) | Platform rating: Poor | Below |
| Pop-up subscriber to purchase rate | 30.7% (spin the wheel) | 45.1% (plain 10% off) | Not compared | Small sample |
Before figures from the July 2025 side of the year on year comparison and the October to December 2025 quarterly report. Achieved figures from the July 2026 monthly report, the year on year comparison and the April to May 2026 growth plan report. Benchmarks: Klaviyo 2026 email benchmarks (all industry; no published wigs vertical), Klaviyo deliverability guidance and hub bands, Klaviyo form benchmarks as quoted in the client reports, and the 25 to 40% email revenue share range for established DTC stores.
Results by programme
| Initiative | Outcome | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly reporting reset (Jan 2026) | Quarterly reporting reversed after Hitesh's objection; monthly reports now land between the 10th and 15th with a one page summary, weak lines included. | n/a |
| Two send sale structure | Promo 1 and Promo 2 analysed across five sales from May 2025 to February 2026; both sends earned in every case. Adopted as standard for the sales calendar. | 5 of 5 sales |
| BFCM 2025 | Flows and pop-up re-aligned to the live offers; every campaign in the quarter attributed revenue. | +18% YoY |
| Pop-up offer test (Feb to Mar 2026) | Plain 10% off beat spin the wheel on sign up rate, order rate and revenue per view; adopted as the primary capture. Sample small, direction clear. | ~4.7× revenue |
| Growth plan: 8 extra campaigns (Apr to May 2026) | Cadence raised from two to three emails a week at no extra cost. No fatigue signal. UGC and content led themes were the strongest recurring performers; one sale send earned nothing despite strong engagement. | 66.2% avg open |
| Flow re-alignment (Apr and Jun 2026) | Every active flow updated for the April Glam Sale and EOFY; conditional splits added for bounced and unsubscribed profiles. | 55.2% of attributed revenue |
| SMS launch (Apr 2026) | Native SMS chosen over a third party integration; live in the welcome flow only. Net positive from two messages; expansion recommended. | 1.6% of attributed revenue |
| Pop-up timing test (Jul 2026) | Four second delay beat ten second on submits and orders by a small margin; adopted cautiously. Report states timing was not the core lever and offer testing comes next. | 1.15% vs 1.09% |
| Wholesale separation | Wholesale campaigns moved to a separate sending account after their bounces were traced to retail deliverability. | n/a |
| Year on year comparison (Aug 2026) | Same month comparison delivered at Hitesh's request; Payday +117%, seasonal +71%, share of revenue +9.1 points. | +54% attributed |
In the client's words
"These both look great, thanks so much for making those changes. All are approved."
Bronwyn Farr, who runs approvals and offers at The Wig Outlet. Approval email, 15 January 2025.
A monthly payment needs monthly visibility: what was sent, what it cost, what it made, and what worked against what did not. Moving to quarterly reporting was never discussed or agreed.
Hitesh Parmar, Owner, The Wig Outlet. Paraphrased from his message to the team, weekend of 3 to 4 January 2026, recorded in the 7 January minutes.
Your turn
Hitesh's plan is the same plan we would give you.
-
Make it accountable
A monthly report on a fixed date, weak lines included, before we touch anything else.
-
Make it compound
Two send sales, flows aligned to every offer, and one pop-up variable tested at a time.
-
Make it grow, at our risk first
Extra cadence and new channels tested on our account before they touch your fee.
If you are paying an agency monthly and cannot say what last month made, that is the first thing to fix. Start with the audit.
If you cannot say what last month's email made, start with the audit
We put a monthly report on a fixed date with the weak lines left in, then build the sale structure, flows and tests on top of it, in the same order we did it for The Wig Outlet.