Explain why email and SMS revenue moved.

When revenue, deliverability or a cohort’s repeat rate moves, a clear answer within days: what changed, how sure we are, and the one test to run.

Start with a retention review How it works

Repeat rate down 3 points · October first orders

Cause	Share of the drop	Evidence
More buyers came in on the 20% code	58%	Code buyers repeat at 8%, others at 13%
Fewer Care Kit buyers	27%	Kit buyers repeat more often
Slower delivery in two states	15%	Late orders repeat less

The diagnosis, ranked by how much of the drop each cause explains.

Sound familiar?

Email revenue dropped, and three people have three theories.
This fall’s first-time buyers aren’t coming back the way last fall’s did.
Open rates moved, and nobody knows whether it’s deliverability or the audience.

Without a cause, teams rewrite the subject line and miss the promotion that changed who they were acquiring.

What changes.

TodayWith the engine

First reaction: Theories in SlackA diagnosis within days
Causes: Subject lines and send timesAudience, timing, content, delivery and product, ranked
Cohorts: Compared by monthCompared by source, first product, discount and delivery
Next step: A long list of ideasOne test, with an owner

How it works. 5 steps, 4 stages.

AI1
Rules and automation3
Your team1
Approval

1Spot
1. Rules and automation
  Spot the change
  Alerts fire when revenue, repeat rate or deliverability move beyond normal.
  - Klaviyo
  - Google Analytics
2Separate
1. Rules and automation
  Check sending health first
  Sender authentication, unsubscribe handling and complaint rates, before anything about content.
  - Klaviyo
2. Rules and automation
  Cut by cohort and channel
  Splits by acquisition source, first product, discount, delivery and returns.
  - Shopify
  - Hightouch
3Explain
1. AI
  Explain the difference
  Ranks likely causes, and keeps what the data shows apart from what it only suggests.
4Test
1. Your teamApproval
  Choose the test
  Your team picks one change to test, with an owner and a date.

Each test resets the baseline

What you get. Real work, every week.

Memo 014Owner: head of lifecycle

October’s first-order buyers repeat less. The welcome code is the likeliest reason.

Seen: Repeat rate 8% for code buyers, 13% for the rest
Not shown: That the code caused it
Test: Hold the code from half of new visitors for three weeks
Check: Repeat orders at 60 days

The memo that goes to the owner: what the data shows, what it doesn’t, and the test.

Sending health · October

Sender authentication
One-click unsubscribe
Spam complaintsRising on weekly sends
Inbox placement at Gmail

Sending health, checked before any theory about content.

How you’ll know it’s working.

Time from change to diagnosis
Days to an answer, not a quarter of theories.
Diagnoses with a confirmed cause
How often the answer held up once we tested it.
Revenue and repeat rate recovered
Whether the fix moved the number that started the question.

Baselines agreed before we build.

Works with what you have.

Email & SMS

Klaviyo
Attentive

Commerce

Shopify

Data

Hightouch

Measurement

Google Analytics

We configure first: Klaviyo’s reports and Shopify’s order data hold most of the evidence. We connect them and check sending health first.
We build when: The cause sits across audience, product, discount and delivery data that no single report joins.

What a first build includes.

Built in your accounts, around your team. Scope, fee and baseline agreed before we start.

1Design
2Build
3Run it, or hand it over

Start with a review Scope this build

We build

Alerts on revenue, repeat rate and deliverability
Cohort cuts by source, product, discount and delivery
A ranked-cause memo for every alert
A follow-up test for each memo

We start from

Klaviyo and SMS account access
Order, refund and discount data
The campaign and promotion calendar

From your team

Owner: Head of lifecycle
Involves: Lifecycle
Growth
Finance

Questions teams ask.

How often is too often to email?

It depends on the audience, so we test it. A randomized experiment at a large North American retailer covered 603,153 customers. Alternate-day coupon emails cut unsubscribe probability by 59.2% against daily sends, and short-term revenue fell 5 to 8% (a 2026 working paper). We’d test frequency on your list before changing it.

Do Gmail’s sender rules change this?

They set a floor. Gmail’s bulk-sender rules expect authenticated mail and easy unsubscribe from large senders, and we check those before looking at content. A drop with a sending-health cause looks different from an audience drop, so we separate them first.

Who owns it once it’s running?

You do. It’s built in your accounts, documented, with training for the people who run it. Ownership usually sits with your head of lifecycle. We can keep running it with you, or step back.

How do we start?

Usually with a retention review: two to four weeks, a fixed fee credited to the build, and a plan that’s yours. If the job is already clear, we can scope the build directly.