A brand came to us in April of 2025 to turn around their email performance by doing a total overhaul of their retention systems.

Their Klaviyo account looked like a murder scene.

Their emails were being totally ignored. Not because they weren’t sending them, but because Gmail and Yahoo were blocking them.

Nine months later, they:

1️⃣ Hit $98K in email revenue in 90 days alone.
2️⃣ Grew email revenue +127% compared to the prior period.
3️⃣ New subscribers up 33%.
4️⃣ 90-day LTV jumped from $53 to $70.

And less than 60 days in, we got this message:

Here's the exact checklist we followed to create their retention engine, and why the order matters.

We went straight to the DNS records. Repaired their broken SPF record, aligned DKIM, and moved DMARC from "none" to "quarantine" to "reject" over three weeks.

This isn't a flip-the-switch thing. You stage it. Too fast and you crater your deliverability worse than where you started.

Emails started landing in inboxes again. Open rates stabilized. Everything else we did after this worked because of this.

Your move: Go to easydmarc.com and check your sending domain. If you see red errors, fix those first.

Over 70% of their list was dead weight. We built engaged and unengaged segments, stopped sending to profiles who hadn't opened in 90 days, and used zerobounce.com to clean the honeypots, spam traps, and invalid emails from their list

We then set up a rewarming strategy for the 25% we could recover, and sunset the profiles we STILL could not get engaged

Result: We went from sending to 24% of the list to 60%. Because we were actually reaching people.

Your move: Create a segment in Klaviyo for "Opened Email at least once in the last 90 days." Send campaigns only to them for two weeks.

Their email designs were not only bad, but technically broken. Generic copy, bad UI hierarchy, boring CTA, AND didn’t have key technical elements, mailbox providers like Gmail need to understand what you’re sending, like no alt text and images so heavy they were getting clipped in Gmail, and in over 38% of inboxes, landing them in spam.

We redesigned every template to be premium and on-brand. Alt text on every image. Lighter file sizes. CTA above the fold. Cleaner copy.

This wasn't just about aesthetics. It was about engagement signals.

Higher engagement = stronger sender reputation = better inbox placement.

Your move: Open one campaign template. Add alt text to every image and compress anything over 1MB.

Their abandoned cart flow was not only 2 emails, but it also had the same technical issues their campaigns had.

Their post-purchase flow was 1 email.

Their welcome series didn’t have the code in the other 4 emails in the flow.

It was a mess, and missing SO much.

We simplified the logic, extended post-purchase to 21 days, and added proper flow filters everywhere.

We also excluded purchasers from cart and welcome flows, checkouts from browse abandonment, and so on. There was a lot of overlap.

Basic stuff that was costing them money every single day.

Your move: Open your abandoned cart flow and add "Placed Order zero times since starting this flow" as a flow filter.

We built exclusion segments so they weren't sending campaigns to unengaged profiles or promos to recent buyers.

We set up a consistent, compelling, and diverse campaign calendar instead of random blasts. We focused campaigns on engaged segments.

Copy went from basic product announcements to desire-driven messaging. "Restocked: Compression+ Shirts" became "Why elite players are switching to Compression+ technology."

Campaign revenue started climbing. Because people were seeing the emails and the emails were worth opening.

Your move: If you're not sending at least 2x per week to an engaged segment, you're training your list to forget about you.

Check your authentication records at easydmarc.com. Build an engaged segment and send only to them for two weeks. Add flow filters to exclude purchasers from cart flows.

Do these three things and I'll bet you see a lift in the next 30 days.

Or if your brand is doing $250K+ per month and you want us to audit your account the same way we did for this brand, book a Transparent Retention Audit here:

We'll go through your Klaviyo account live, show you exactly what's broken, and give you the action plan before we hang up.

— Anthony