An online store came to the agency wanting more sales from paid ads. While digging through their setup, I noticed something that bothered me more than the ad account: they were collecting email addresses at checkout and then never emailing anyone. Every new customer landed in a list that just sat there.
They were paying to acquire people and then letting the relationship go cold. That gap became the project.
Why email first
Ads rent attention. Email owns it. A customer who already bought once is the cheapest sale you will ever make again, and a subscriber list is one of the few marketing assets a business truly controls. Before spending more on acquisition, it made sense to get value out of the audience they already had.
What I built
- A welcome email that went out the moment someone subscribed, with a genuine thank-you and a first-order incentive
- A short automated series after purchase: a thank-you, a “how to get the most out of it” note, and a gentle nudge to come back
- A basic abandoned-cart reminder for people who added an item and left
- Clean, plain templates that worked on a phone, since most opens happened there
The outcome
The automations started earning within the first month, because they ran on people the store had already reached. The welcome email quietly became one of the highest-converting messages in the account, and the abandoned-cart reminder recovered orders that would otherwise have vanished. None of it required a bigger ad budget, which was the point.
What I recommend
If you sell anything online and you are collecting emails without sending any, start there before you touch your ad spend. A welcome message, a post-purchase note, and a cart reminder are three automations that pay for themselves and keep paying. This was the project that taught me to fix the leaks before turning up the tap.