Case study
A direct to consumer coffee roaster shipping subscriptions across Canada and the northern United States sent one newsletter a week to everyone on the list. We replaced it with six automated flows and a sending domain that reaches the inbox.
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Attribution · this quarter
GA4 · server-side312
Booked calls
3.1x
ROAS
−31%
CPL
OlDevs rebuilt the email programme for a direct to consumer coffee roaster shipping subscriptions across Canada and the northern United States, replacing a single weekly newsletter with six lifecycle flows in Klaviyo: welcome, first order onboarding, replenishment timed to each customer's bag size and grind, winback, a cancellation save with a pause option, and post delivery review requests.Deliverability was repaired by authenticating the sending domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, moving sending to a dedicated subdomain, warming it over three weeks and suppressing addresses with no engagement in twelve months. Revenue for every flow is reported against a holdout group, so the roaster can see what the automation is actually worth rather than taking credit for orders that would have happened anyway. Repeat revenue from email is up 38% and inbox placement is up 21 pts.
Key facts
The challenge
The roaster sent one newsletter a week to the entire list and nothing else, so a first time buyer and a three year subscriber received identical mail on the same morning. Cancellations were handled ad hoc through the support inbox, and nobody could say which message had brought a lapsed customer back. Open rates had been sliding for over a year, and a growing share of sends never reached the inbox at all.
One weekly send went to the whole list regardless of what someone had bought, how long they had subscribed or when their last bag shipped. Nothing acknowledged a first order, and nothing arrived when a customer was about to run out of coffee.
A subscriber who wanted to stop wrote to support, and whether they were offered an alternative depended on who replied that day. There was no pause option, no consistent save offer and no record of which conversations kept a subscription alive.
Winbacks happened, but the credit was guesswork. Without a holdout or clean campaign tagging, the team could not separate revenue the email programme created from repeat orders that would have arrived on their own, so every debate ended in opinion.
The sending domain had no complete SPF, DKIM and DMARC setup and shared reputation with unrelated mail. Long dormant addresses stayed on the list and dragged engagement signals down, so more mail landed in spam and open rates fell for over a year.
What we built
We rebuilt the programme in Klaviyo as six flows that follow a subscriber from first order to renewal, cancellation or return, with replenishment timed to each customer's bag size and grind rather than a fixed calendar. In parallel we authenticated the sending domain with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, moved sending to a dedicated subdomain, warmed it over three weeks and suppressed addresses with no engagement in twelve months. Revenue per flow is reported against a holdout group, so the roaster sees what the automation is worth instead of what it can claim.
Welcome, first order onboarding, replenishment, winback, the cancellation save and post delivery review requests were built in Klaviyo as one connected programme. Each flow has entry rules, exit rules and suppression logic written down, so a customer never sits in two flows at once.
Instead of a fixed monthly reminder, the replenishment flow reads the customer's bag size and grind and sends before that coffee runs out. Subscribers who buy larger bags hear from the roaster less often, because the timing follows what they actually ordered.
Cancellation moved out of the support inbox into a flow that offers a pause, a change of frequency or a different roast before it processes the request. Support still handles the exceptions, but the routine cases now follow one consistent path.
SPF, DKIM and DMARC were completed, sending moved to a dedicated subdomain warmed over three weeks, and twelve month non openers were suppressed. Every flow reports revenue against a holdout group so the numbers survive scrutiny.
Process
Audit the list and the sending setup
We reviewed a year of sends, list growth, engagement decay and authentication records, then checked inbox placement so we knew how much of the problem was content and how much was delivery.
Map the subscriber lifecycle
Working with the retention lead, we drew the real journey from first order to renewal, pause, cancellation and return, and agreed which six moments deserved an automated message rather than a newsletter mention.
Build the flows in Klaviyo
Each flow shipped as a working demo the roaster could read and approve, with entry and exit rules, suppression logic and accessible templates reviewed against WCAG 2.2 AA before anything went live.
Authenticate, warm and clean
We completed SPF, DKIM and DMARC, moved sending to a dedicated subdomain, warmed it over three weeks at rising volume and suppressed addresses with no engagement in twelve months.
Measure against a holdout and keep iterating
A holdout group was carved out before launch so revenue per flow could be compared honestly. We review results with the roaster on a regular cadence and test subject lines, timing and offers from there.
Stack
Lifecycle platform
Deliverability
Measurement
Email craft
Ways of working
+38%
Repeat revenue from email
6
Lifecycle flows live
+21 pts
Inbox placement
Outcomes
Repeat revenue from email is up 38%, and most of it arrives through flows that run without anyone choosing a send date.
6 lifecycle flows live, from welcome and first order onboarding through replenishment, winback, cancellation save and post delivery review requests.
Inbox placement is up 21 pts after authentication, a dedicated warmed subdomain and the removal of twelve month non openers.
Subscribers who want to stop are offered a pause or a change of frequency first, and support handles exceptions instead of every request.
In their words
We stopped debating which newsletter to send this week, and most of our repeat orders now come from messages that go out without anyone touching them.
Retention lead, direct to consumer coffee roaster
Food and beverage retail
FAQ
The roaster needed flows driven by order data: bag size, grind, last shipment and subscription status. Klaviyo holds those profile properties and triggers on them directly, which is what makes replenishment and winback possible. The newsletter tool could send to a list, but it could not act on what a customer had bought.
Authentication itself is quick, but a dedicated sending subdomain has to be warmed at rising volume, which took three weeks here. Reputation then keeps improving as engagement rises and dormant addresses are suppressed, so we look at inbox placement over months rather than judging it from a single send.
A holdout is a randomly selected slice of customers deliberately excluded from a flow. Comparing their revenue with everyone else's shows what the automation added rather than what it happened to be present for. It costs a little revenue in the short term and it is the only way to answer whether a flow is worth keeping.
The list gets smaller and the reachable part gets larger. Addresses with no engagement in twelve months rarely convert, and continuing to mail them signals to inbox providers that the sender is not worth delivering, so those are the ones we suppress.
The client does. Every account, flow, template, domain record and piece of documentation belongs to the roaster, and we build inside their own Klaviyo and DNS rather than an agency container. If the engagement ends, the programme keeps running and another team can pick it up without a migration.
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