An existing audience, barely used
The business had a customer list, but was barely doing anything with it. Email was reporting around £100,000 a year. The opportunity was to turn that existing audience into a channel the business could use deliberately, rather than a place to send the occasional promotion.
I led the programme over several years: planning the calendar, writing and building emails, setting up automated journeys, sending campaigns and reviewing what happened. We established a regular rhythm that mixed useful content with sales messages. The aim was to give subscribers reasons to stay interested, then make relevant offers when there was something worth buying.
The answer was not a prettier template
Each send gave us something to learn. We tested messages and formats, looked at the response and changed what went out next. It was sustained work, not a one-off redesign.
One of the clearest lessons challenged the creative instinct. The highly designed emails looked impressive, but simple letters from the founder often worked better. They sounded like a person with something worth saying. Rather than keep polishing the template, we changed the mix of emails around what the tests were telling us.
Using the channel for the business
That did not mean every email became a plain letter. Educational content, product information and offers still had different jobs. We used email to support product launches, build interest over time and give customers a reason to return. When the business needed to move older stock, email could help with that too, without announcing the same clearance offer to the whole list.
Purchase history, products owned and previous engagement helped us decide who would find a message relevant. The segmentation stayed simple enough to maintain and to produce worthwhile content for each group. That made email more useful as a commercial tool without treating every subscriber as the same person.
Alongside regular campaigns, I built automated follow-ups for moments that did not fit a sending calendar: joining the list, leaving a basket unfinished, making a purchase or becoming less engaged. Campaigns and automation worked together: one let us respond to business priorities; the other responded to what an individual customer had done.
A programme that kept learning
Test the assumption
Compare formats and messages instead of assuming the most polished email will win.
Change the mix
Give the founder’s direct voice a place when customers respond to it.
Keep the rhythm
Use regular campaigns and customer-triggered follow-ups to keep the work consistent.
From £100,000 to more than £1 million
Over several years, reported annual email revenue grew from around £100,000 to more than £1 million, while the customer list grew modestly. The same reporting approach was used at both ends of that comparison.
The result belongs to the programme as a whole, alongside other marketing activity; it is not a claim that one founder letter produced the increase. What changed was that email became a channel the business could use for launches, customer relationships and stock decisions, guided by a habit of testing assumptions and listening to the response.