Email marketing when ad costs rise: what one brand's worst month showed

What happened in that month?

Here's the case. A subscription wellness brand had a month where the top of the funnel nearly disappeared.

• New customers: 1,657 the month before, 223 that month. That's a drop of about 87%.
• Store revenue: down 37%.
• Email's share of revenue: up from 41% to 53%.

When new customers fall that hard, it usually means paid acquisition got more expensive, got cut or stopped working. Whatever the cause, the effect is the same: you can't count on strangers finding you that month.

The people who kept buying were the ones the brand already had. They were on the list, and a lot of them were on a subscription.

Did email make up for the lost revenue?

No, and I want to be straight about that. Email's share went up partly because the total got smaller.

Here's the rough math, assuming both shares are measured against store revenue. If the store did 100 in the month before, email was about 41 of it. The next month the store did about 63, and email was 53% of that, or about 33. So email revenue itself fell roughly 19%, while the store fell 37%.

That's the real lesson. Email didn't replace the ads. It fell about half as hard as everything else. On a bad month, that difference is what keeps the lights on.

I go deeper on reading this number the right way in what percentage of revenue should come from email. The short version: a jump in email share during a bad month is a sign of where your revenue comes from, not a sign that email got better.

What kept money coming in?

Subscriptions and the emails around them.

The same brand's "your order is coming up" subscription reminder made $47,321 in one month. That was 74% of all its flow revenue. It's a plain email: your next order ships soon, here's what's in it, change anything you want. People add products, swap and confirm.

That email doesn't care what Meta charges per click. It goes to people who already said yes. If you sell subscriptions, it's probably the most important email you have. My post on subscription churn emails covers how I'd set it up.

If you don't sell subscriptions, the closest thing is a reorder reminder. Across 4 consumable brands in my data, reorder reminder flows earned about $2.23 per person, about 28x the best campaign. Only 2 of the 4 had one built.

Email marketing when ad costs rise: what to build before it happens

Email can only sell to people you've already captured. So the work happens before the bad month, not during it. Here's the order I'd go in.

1. Capture more of the traffic you're already paying for

Every ad click that leaves without an email address is money you can't get back. Make sure your signup form is live, shows up on mobile and offers a real reason to join. My guide on how to grow your email list goes through it.

2. Get your core flows live

I install 8 core flows for every brand: welcome series, abandoned checkout, abandoned cart, browse abandonment, collection abandonment, site abandonment, post purchase thank you and customer winback. Each one splits customers and people who haven't bought yet. They're live in the first 7 days.

These are the emails that turn the traffic you paid for into orders. Across 4 consumable brands, welcome email #1 alone earned about $4.50 per person. When ads get expensive, you want every new subscriber to get that email.

3. Add reorder and subscription reminders on top

If your product runs out, build a reorder reminder. If you sell subscriptions, build the pre-charge reminder. These aren't part of the core 8, but for a consumable brand they're the flows that keep repeat revenue steady when new customers slow down.

4. Build a campaign calendar for customers, not just the whole list

When the paid side is quiet, campaigns to customers do the heavy lifting. Segment by who's bought, how often and what. Give them news: a restock, a new flavor, a launch. Always pair the email with a reason to buy.

5. Keep your winback running

Customers who drifted are cheaper to bring back than strangers are to find. Winback emails keep paying later in the sequence, too: across 4 consumable brands, winback email #3 earned about 2x email #1.

6. Watch email share next to new customers every month

Put three numbers side by side: total store revenue, new customers and email revenue. If new customers fall and email holds, your list is doing its job. If both fall together, your list is too small or your flows have gaps.

Where these numbers come from

The new customer, revenue share and subscription reminder numbers are from one subscription wellness brand. The per-person numbers are pooled across 4 consumable brands, 2,897 campaigns and $17.7M in email revenue, so treat them as directional. The 19% figure is my rough math from the shares, not a separate report.

Should you cut ad spend and lean on email instead?

I wouldn't frame it that way. Ads find new customers. Email turns them into repeat customers. You need both.

What I would do is stop treating email as the thing you'll fix later. A brand that's only growing through ads is renting every customer. A brand with a strong list and solid flows owns a chunk of its revenue, and that chunk doesn't move when ad prices do.

FAQ

WRITTEN BY Jack White

Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.

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