Were you forwarded this email? Sign up here to get the next edition.

🎧 Spotify | 🎧 Apple | 📺 YouTube

🎧 Spotify | 🎧 Apple | 📺 YouTube

It’s easy to treat re-engagement as a clean-up job. Send a few emails to lapsed customers, maybe add a discount to sweeten it, and write off anyone who doesn't bite. Dom’s email for Tiger Mist and I.AM.GIA runs with open rates sitting at 50-60%, and her most underrated flow right now has no discount, no urgency, and no tricks. It's outperforming her welcome flow.

Rule 1: Define "lapsed" at 90 days, not 365

Most brands wait too long to re-engage. By 12 months, a lapsed customer has forgotten you exist. Dom targets customers who haven't opened or clicked in the last 90 days, which is still within a window where brand recall is alive and product curiosity is real.

Rule 2: Strip the discount from the re-engagement

The default assumption is that a lapsed customer needs an incentive to come back. For a brand with a compelling product, that assumption is often wrong. The customer who went quiet wasn't unhappy. She was busy. Showing her what she missed is enough, and you haven't trained her to expect a discount every time she drifts.

Rule 3: Let open rates signal when to add segmentation

Standard email advice pushes brands toward increasingly complex segmentation. Dom's honest counter: if your open rates are still 50-60%, the audience is engaged enough that complexity isn't the bottleneck. She watches that number as the trigger. If it drops, she adds segmentation. Until then, keeping things simple means the team's capacity goes into content quality and flow freshness, not segment management.

The Klaviyo industry benchmark for fashion email open rates sits around 20-25%. Running at 50-60% means Dom's audience is roughly two to three times more engaged than the category average. The re-engagement flow working without a discount is a result of a list that's been treated well enough that customers still want to hear from the brand, even when they've gone quiet.

Your lapsed segment isn't a problem to discount your way out of. If your product is worth buying, it's worth showing. Build the flow, strip the discount, and check the numbers before assuming you know what a lapsed customer needs.

🎧 Spotify | 🎧 Apple | 📺 YouTube

Klaviyo Is 1% Done: What Their Co-Founder Says the Other 99% Looks Like | EP630
The re-engagement flow insight sits right alongside this one. Ed Hallen, Klaviyo's co-founder, makes the case that your disengaged list isn't a cost to manage, it's a segment to talk to differently. Worth listening back-to-back.

Growth Without Discounts: How Merry People Played the Long Game | EP591
Two themes connect here: building a brand that doesn't need discounts to convert, and what it actually takes to crack the US market from Australia. Great lessons from Danielle Holloway, founder of Merry People.

The $20M Marketplace Mistake Most Brands Don't Know They're Making | EP514 If I.AM.GIA's US growth got you thinking about your own international strategy, Sean Walsh breaks down how Australian brands should think about marketplace entry, what ASOS and Amazon actually open up, and where most brands get it wrong.