The Client
An established Shopify e-commerce store in the United States with a large email list, a loyal customer base and a busy product calendar. We also manage the store's Google and Meta ads. The client's name is withheld under a non-disclosure agreement.
The Challenge
The store's own team ran Klaviyo the way many busy stores do:
- A campaign almost every day. 26 campaigns in 30 days.
- To everyone, every time. Each campaign went to the same list of about 67,000 people, including a segment of contacts who hadn't opened a single email in almost six months. Nobody was excluded, and Smart Sending was off.
- 1.6 million+ emails in a month, each earning about five and a half cents.
Mailing people who never open costs more than it earns. It drags down the store's sender reputation with Gmail and Outlook, so even the good emails start landing in spam.
What We Did
1. Stopped mailing the people who stopped reading
Every campaign now excludes the unengaged segment, and Smart Sending is on, so nobody gets two campaigns too close together.
2. Segments instead of blasts
We built the calendar around who buys what: buyers of each main product category, VIP tiers, and engaged readers by recency (30, 60 and 180 days). Each campaign goes to the segment most likely to buy that product.
3. Fewer, better campaigns
One campaign every other day instead of every day: 15 in our first 30 days instead of 26, each one planned around a product, a segment and a reason to buy now.
The Results: Our First 30 Days
Every number here is a percentage or a rate, as Klaviyo reports it. "Before" is the store's last 30 days running its own campaigns; "with us" is our first 30 days.
Revenue per recipient
5.7x
Click rate
3.1x
Orders per 1,000 emails
5.1x
Open rate
2x
Orders per campaign
+42%
Spam complaints
-85%
Lower is better
People unsubscribing
-58%
Lower is better
Emails sent
-83%
Lower is better
Every campaign, before and with us
Each bar is one campaign. Grey: the store's 26 campaigns in the 30 days before us. Gold: our 15 campaigns in our first 30 days.
The one tall grey bar is the only campaign in that month the store sent to a segment instead of the whole list. It earned nearly ten times its other campaigns: the same lesson our calendar is built on.
The full numbers
| KPI | Before us | With us | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue per recipient | 5.5 cents | 31.7 cents | 5.7x |
| Click rate | 0.54% | 1.72% | 3.1x |
| Orders per 1,000 emails | 0.22 | 1.13 | 5.1x |
| Open rate | 25.5% | 51.6% | 2x |
| Orders per campaign | 14 | 20 | +42% |
| Revenue per campaign | +59% | ||
| Average order value from campaigns | +12% | ||
| Spam complaints | 160 | 24 | -85% |
| People unsubscribing | 1,013 | 421 | -58% |
| Emails sent | 1.6M+ | 270K | -83% |
Targeting is what paid
Our best segmented campaign earned almost 10 times per recipient what the store's best full-list blast had earned in the month before. Campaigns to category buyers and VIPs consistently earned two to five times more per recipient than campaigns to the broad list.
Not seasonality
A year earlier, the same two windows under the store's old approach earned the same revenue per recipient both months. The 5.7x jump came with the change in how the campaigns were built.
Key Takeaways
- Daily full-list blasts are expensive. They burn sender reputation and earn very little per email.
- Exclude the unengaged on every send. It protects deliverability for everyone else.
- Send each product to the people who buy it. Category and VIP segments out-earn the whole list by a wide margin.
- Judge email by the rates. Revenue per recipient, clicks and orders per email show whether campaigns work; total volume hides it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can sending fewer emails really make more money per email?
Yes. In our first 30 days this store sent 83% fewer campaign emails than in the 30 days before, and each recipient brought in 5.7 times as much. The difference is who gets the email: segments of people who buy that kind of product, instead of the whole list every day.
Is this just seasonality?
No. The same two windows a year earlier, under the store's old approach, earned the same revenue per recipient both months. The jump came with the change in how the campaigns were built.
Why isn't the store named?
The client asked us to sign a non-disclosure agreement, so we report the results without the name. The numbers are exactly as Klaviyo reports them.
About This Engagement
Industry: E-Commerce (Shopify) Platforms: Klaviyo (campaigns, segmentation, deliverability), plus Google Ads and Meta Ads Location: United States Engagement: October 2026 to present (ongoing)
The client's name is withheld under a non-disclosure agreement. Figures are Klaviyo's own campaign reporting (email campaigns, Klaviyo's default attribution), comparing the 26 campaigns sent in the 30 days before we took over with the 15 we sent in our first 30 days. Flows were built by the store's team and are not counted here. Rates are rounded down.