Email and SMS should be generating 30–40% of your store’s revenue. For most DTC brands we audit, it’s under 15%. Forge is a Klaviyo Master Gold partner and a Shopify development partner — so we don’t just build the flows, we integrate the whole retention stack behind them: subscriptions, loyalty, reviews and custom connections where the native integration falls short.
The retention gap
Most ecommerce brands we take over are running a welcome flow, an abandoned cart, and a weekly newsletter — then wondering why email stalls at 12% of revenue while paid media eats the margin.
The brands clearing 30–40% aren’t sending more email. They’re sending the right email: segmented by behaviour, timed to the lifecycle, and split across email and SMS so the same customer gets the message on the channel they actually open.
That’s the whole job. Retention is where the margin is — it just needs building properly.
We clean it, re-segment it, and run a sunset and re-engagement sequence before we send another campaign — so your sender reputation recovers instead of degrading.
SPF, DKIM and DMARC authentication, a branded sending domain, list hygiene and a warming plan. Usually the fastest measurable win on a new account.
Flows should be roughly a third of Klaviyo revenue. We rebuild welcome, browse abandon, checkout recovery, post-purchase, winback and VIP as a connected system, then A/B test the branches.
Proof, not adjectives
Three client programs, with the Klaviyo dashboards they came from. Every number below is attributed revenue inside the client’s own Klaviyo account.
Innerbody Labs · Supplements
Innerbody had patchy flows, no welcome monetisation and no launch cadence. We rebuilt the lifecycle engine — multi-step email and SMS welcome, browse and behaviour flows, RFM segmentation — and wrapped a product-led campaign calendar around their four hero SKUs.
Irwin Naturals · Supplements
One month into the partnership, email was driving 28% of total store revenue.
“Forge has helped us generate over 40% of our store revenue from email and SMS alone. Their strategies pay for themselves 10x over month after month.”— Kelsie, Owner, Botanical Remedies
The work
Strategy, copy, design and build are all in-house — no template library, no offshore handoff. Every email below was designed by Forge and shipped in a client’s Klaviyo account.
Hover any email to stop the reel and read it top to bottom.
The automation library
Most agencies ship four flows and call it a lifecycle program. This is the full inventory we architect against — email and SMS, triggered on real customer behaviour. Which ones you get depends on your catalogue, margin and purchase cycle, not on a package tier.
We don’t build all of these on day one. We sequence them by revenue impact for your specific catalogue — a 90-day consumable and a once-a-year purchase need completely different lifecycle architecture, and building flows you don’t need is how programmes get slow and expensive.
Email + SMS
Email carries the story. SMS carries the urgency. Run separately they compete for the same customer; run together they compound.
Every send is consent-based and TCPA compliant. We build the compliance in at setup rather than retrofitting it after a complaint.
What actually makes us different
This is the part most email agencies can’t do. Your retention program doesn’t live in Klaviyo alone — it lives across your subscription app, your loyalty platform, your reviews tool and your store’s own data. Because Forge builds Shopify stores too, we integrate that whole stack properly and write custom connections where the native integration falls short.
That means a loyalty tier can trigger a Klaviyo flow. A failed subscription payment can route to SMS instead of email. A customer’s product-cycle date can drive replenishment timing. When an app’s built-in integration doesn’t expose the event we need, we build it with webhooks, custom Klaviyo metrics and profile properties, and Shopify metafields.
Pre-billing notices, dunning, pause-instead-of-cancel, swap and skip logic, and one-time-to-subscription upsell — wired to the subscription platform’s real events, not a guessed schedule.
Points balances, tier changes, expiring rewards and referral prompts pulled into Klaviyo as usable segments and flow triggers — so loyalty stops being a widget nobody opens.
When the native integration doesn’t expose what the flow needs, we build it — webhooks, custom metrics and profile properties, Shopify metafields, and API work by the same developers who build our clients’ stores.
Platform
Forge holds Klaviyo’s Master Gold partner certification — the tier that requires a demonstrated track record of client results, not just an account login.
Klaviyo is our default because it integrates natively with Shopify, WooCommerce and BigCommerce and gives us real-time behavioural data to segment on. If you’re already on another platform we’ll tell you honestly whether migrating is worth it for your list size.
Who we work with
Forge came out of a decade brand-side in the supplement industry. We write email that converts and survives an FDA or FTC read — structure/function claims, testimonial substantiation, and disclosure placement handled at the copy stage rather than by legal after the fact.
Onboarding
From signed agreement to first campaigns live in the market, without a two-month discovery phase.
Agreement signed, account created, your team assigned. Onboarding starts the same day.
You complete our intake form covering brand, products, margins, past performance and voice. Detail here directly determines how fast we can move.
We audit your Klaviyo account, research your competitive set, and draft your lifecycle architecture, first campaign copy and template design with an opt-in offer.
Meet the team. We present the strategy and first designed deliverables for your review and approval.
Copy, design, Klaviyo configuration and segmentation run in parallel. Branded sending domain configured and authenticated, custom email graphics built to brand spec, flows constructed.
First batch of designs to you for approval or revision.
Final revisions, templates built in Klaviyo, and your first 30-day campaign calendar scheduled and live.
FAQs
A specialist ecommerce email marketing agency runs three things: the automated lifecycle flows that fire on customer behaviour, the campaign calendar that goes out to segments each month, and the list growth and deliverability work underneath both. At Forge that includes strategy, copywriting, design, the Klaviyo build itself, SMS, and monthly reporting against attributed revenue — not just sending what you write.
For a healthy DTC brand, 30–40% of total store revenue attributed to email and SMS is a realistic target, with flows contributing roughly a third of that. Most brands that come to us are between 10% and 18%. If you’re under 20%, the gap is almost always flow coverage and segmentation rather than send volume.
Pricing depends on list size, send frequency, how much of the design and copy load sits with the agency, and whether SMS is in scope. We’ve written a full breakdown of what drives the number and what to expect at each tier: what it costs to hire an email marketing agency.
Ask for their Klaviyo partner tier — Master Gold and above requires demonstrated client results, not just certification. Then ask to see attributed-revenue screenshots from inside a client’s Klaviyo account with dates on them, ask what flow share of revenue they typically reach, and ask who writes the copy. An agency that can’t show you a dashboard is showing you a deck.
Deliverability and flow fixes usually move numbers inside the first 30 days — Irwin Naturals saw a 157% lift in attributed email revenue in month one. Structural gains from a rebuilt lifecycle engine compound over three to four months; Innerbody Labs reached 3.6× Klaviyo revenue in four.
Yes, and it’s usually the first thing we do. We set up SPF, DKIM and DMARC authentication, configure a branded sending domain, run list hygiene and a sunset policy on unengaged subscribers, and follow GDPR and TCPA requirements. Sender reputation recovers over weeks, not days, so the sooner it starts the better.
Yes — and we build them as one program rather than two. SMS handles cart recovery nudges, restock and price-drop alerts, launch reminders and VIP outreach, timed around the email sequence rather than competing with it. Consent capture and TCPA compliance are configured at setup.
In Klaviyo, go to Settings → Account → Users and invite the agency’s email address with Manager or Admin access. You never need to share your password, and you can revoke access at any time. As a Klaviyo partner we can also be added through Klaviyo’s partner access flow.
It’s our core category. Forge’s founder spent over a decade brand-side in the supplement industry before starting the agency, so structure/function claim language, testimonial substantiation and disclosure requirements are handled at the copywriting stage. See our supplement marketing services.
Yes — this is where being a Shopify development partner as well as an email agency matters. We work in Recharge, Loop and Stay.ai for subscriptions and Smile.io, Yotpo and Stamped.io for loyalty and reviews. Where an app’s native Klaviyo integration doesn’t expose the event a flow needs, we build the connection ourselves using webhooks, custom Klaviyo metrics and profile properties, and Shopify metafields.
Yes. Forge is a Shopify development partner, and the same developers who build our clients’ stores handle the retention-stack integration work. In practice that means a loyalty tier change can trigger a Klaviyo flow, a failed subscription payment can route to SMS, and replenishment timing can be driven by a product’s real purchase cycle — things an email-only agency has to raise a ticket with your developer for.
We’ll audit what you’re on and tell you honestly whether migrating is worth it. For most Shopify and WooCommerce brands above a few thousand subscribers it is, because of the behavioural segmentation Klaviyo exposes. If you’re better off staying put, we’ll say so — we run programs on other ESPs too.
Book a free audit. We’ll open your Klaviyo, show you your current flow coverage and attributed revenue share, and tell you where the gap is — whether or not you hire us.
Prefer to talk? Call Carolynn on 630-328-3369.