Retention systems for Shopify DTC brands
Most brands we open sit at 10 to 18% of revenue from email. The gap is the system, not the channel.
FLOW
Abandoned Cart
Trigger: Checkout Started
Wrong triggerThose are two different journeys.
LIST
48,000 never-engaged profiles
Storing them costs about $800 a month
Dead weightDELIVERABILITY
Sender score
What we usually find in the first 10 minutes
Book a discovery call →Sound familiar
Most founders who call us are not new to the channel. They are on their second or third attempt, and the account shows it.
The set-and-forget agency
Flows built a year ago. No syncs since. Reporting went quiet after month two.
The flakey freelancer
Responsive right up until the invoice cleared. Then the calendar went empty.
The revenue vampire tool
The list keeps growing. Revenue does not. Bounce and spam rates quietly climb.
The template setup
Marketplace flows installed once, never touched again. Technically on. Practically off.
“I have the feeling we’re not getting everything out of Klaviyo.”
Most brands treat email as a broadcasting tool. We treat it as revenue infrastructure.
The numbers
No averages across clients. No dashboard-inflated ROI. Each of these is one brand, one timeframe, measured where you would measure it.
Forge × Xara Shilajit
SUPPLEMENTS
Xara Shilajit · SUPPLEMENTS
A 7-figure wellness brand on Klaviyo. Revenue existed, the system did not. We rebuilt deliverability, segmentation, flows and the campaign calendar.
12.03% → 28.48%
of total revenue
28 → 85
deliverability
$48 → $62.60
AOV
Forge × Maison Mahj
LUXURY COLLECTIBLES
Maison Mahj · LUXURY COLLECTIBLES
A premium collector-led brand. Full lifecycle architecture designed and deployed from zero, generating revenue within three weeks.
74.9%
of store revenue
<3,000
subscriber list
2 days
to sell out
Forge × Ettika Beach Club
JEWELRY
Ettika Beach Club · JEWELRY
An established DTC jewelry brand with 30+ overlapping flows and a list carrying 50,000 dormant profiles, rebuilt into one structured lifecycle.
$376,068
attributed revenue
50,000+
dormant profiles cut
26.1%
best-branch repurchase
Forge × The Shore Line
APPAREL
The Shore Line · APPAREL
An apparel brand with zero email and SMS infrastructure. Not broken, absent. We built the whole retention stack and connected both channels.
2 channels
email and SMS
Full stack
flows and campaigns
From scratch
no legacy setup
In their words
XARA SHILAJIT
“The Email Forge completely transformed our email marketing in less than 2 months. Revenue attribution skyrocketed, deliverability issues were fixed, and now email is one of our most profitable channels.”
Rawan · Xara Shilajit
MAISON MAHJ
“It was our launch and we had so much riding on it. They worked hard, hit every deadline, and definitely delivered more than we had imagined.”
Karla · Maison Mahj
THE SHORE LINE
“We had no retention channel at all. Six weeks later email and SMS were running as one program, and we could see exactly what each send earned.”
Dana · The Shore Line
The craft
Every send is built from your brand system and tested where your customers actually read it. Mobile first, because that is where most of the revenue lands.
Maison Mahj
Campaign · The Ritual
Barrett Fragrances
Flow · Winback
Sajada
Product education
Derm Dude
Non-buyer follow-up
1 of 100
Seasonal drop
The Shore Line
Campaign
Nutrili
Welcome flow
Drag sideways for more · scroll inside any phone to read the full email
See the full portfolioWhat we build
Flows that technically exist versus flows that actually make money. Triggers, segmentation, copy and design have to pull in the same direction, and that is the part most setups get wrong. Core revenue flows go live in the first two weeks.
Flagship case study
A deliverability score of 28. No segmentation, no cadence, flows that leaked in practice. We reset deliverability, built the segmentation system, restructured the calendar, and rebuilt the abandonment journeys.
Abandonment flow CVR: +47%
Open rate: ~21% → 50%+
Click rate: 0.3% → 0.88%
+45%
email revenue growth
12.03% → 28.48%
email’s share of total revenue
28 → 85
deliverability score, rebuilt
The Forge Method
Our operating system for retention. Four steps, run inside your account, opening with the audit ritual we call The First 10 Minutes.
We open the account before we talk strategy. Flows, triggers, list health, deliverability, attribution sanity. The First 10 Minutes usually finds the leak. The first week maps all of them.
WEEK 1
A flow map and campaign calendar sequenced by commercial impact, with segmentation built around your product lines and customer types.
WEEKS 1 TO 2
Core revenue flows go live first. Campaigns start running. Every send gets design, copy and QA before it ships.
WEEKS 2 TO 6
A/B testing once flows stabilize. Monthly strategy docs, weekly reporting, compounding gains.
FROM MONTH 2
First measurable wins inside 30 to 60 days. We will not promise week-one revenue.
The fine print, out loud
We do not guarantee multiples. We do not lock you in. Contracts run month to month, and pricing steps up only as your attributable revenue does. We earn next month by what we did this month.
Engagements typically start at $3,500 a month.
Monthly rolling contracts
Leave any month. The work has to keep earning its place.
Founders on every account
Hammad or Mohammed is on every call, with a full team behind them.
Conservative projections
We will never show you a number we wouldn’t stand behind in your own dashboard.
Hammad Saeed, co-founder
From the founder
For 13 years I served as an officer in the Pakistan Army. I held the rank of Major. In 2017, still in uniform, I started teaching myself to run ads at night. In 2019 the first few dollars landed from a client on the other side of the world, and the cage I thought I was in suddenly had a door.
I spent the next five years building a freelance practice into a top-rated operation while finishing my service. In December 2024 I founded The Email Forge with Mohammed Okashah to do retention properly: open the account, find what’s broken, fix the fundamentals, own the result. No theatre. That’s the whole method.
The Email Forge is Hammad and Mohammed with a bench of designers, copywriters and Klaviyo specialists behind every account. Remote-first, built for US DTC brands. On Slack, we’re usually faster than the agency down the street.
A good fit
Not a fit
From the audit notebook
01
The flow named Abandoned Cart
It was triggered by Checkout Started. Those are two different journeys, and one of them was leaking money.
View LinkedIn profile →02
The first 10 minutes
What we check before we say a word about strategy, and why it usually finds the leak.
View LinkedIn profile →03
Dead profiles cost real money
One account paid about $800 a month to store profiles that never open. The smaller list won.
View LinkedIn profile →We keep the client list short and handpicked. Founders on every call. We start with a discovery call, and if the fit is right the audit is free.
Book a discovery callRetention systems for Shopify DTC brands
Most brands we open sit at 10 to 18% of revenue from email. The gap is the system, not the channel.
Founder-led · Handpicked client list · Monthly rolling contracts, no lock-in
ACCOUNT AUDIT · FIRST LOOK
min 00:10
FLOW
Abandoned Cart
Trigger: Checkout Started
Wrong trigger
Those are two different journeys.
LIST
48,000 never-engaged profiles
Storing them costs about $800 a month
Dead weight
DELIVERABILITY
Sender score
30 today
70 by day 45
Fixable
What we usually find in the first 10 minutes.
Brands we’ve worked with
Sound familiar
Most founders who call us are not new to the channel. They are on their second or third attempt, and the account shows it.
The set-and-forget agency
Flows built a year ago. No syncs since. Reporting went quiet after month two.
The flakey freelancer
Responsive right up until the invoice cleared. Then the calendar went empty.
The revenue vampire tool
The list keeps growing. Revenue does not. Bounce and spam rates quietly climb.
The template setup
Marketplace flows installed once, never touched again. Technically on. Practically off.
“I have the feeling we’re not getting everything out of Klaviyo.”
The sentence we hear on almost every first call.
Most brands treat email as a broadcasting tool. We treat it as revenue infrastructure.
The work
No averages across clients. No dashboard-inflated ROI. Each of these is one brand, one timeframe, measured where you would measure it.
×
SUPPLEMENTS
SUPPLEMENTS
A 7-figure wellness brand on Klaviyo. Revenue existed, the system did not. We rebuilt deliverability, segmentation, flows and the campaign calendar.
12.03% → 28.48%
of total revenue
28 → 85
deliverability
$48 → $62.60
AOV
Read the full story
→
LUXURY COLLECTIBLES
A premium collector-led brand. Full lifecycle architecture designed and deployed from zero, generating revenue within three weeks.
74.9%
of store revenue
<3,000
subscriber list
2 days
to sell out
Read the full story
→
×
LUXURY COLLECTIBLES
×
JEWELRY
JEWELRY
An established DTC jewelry brand with 30+ overlapping flows and a list carrying 50,000 dormant profiles, rebuilt into one structured lifecycle.
$376,068
attributed revenue
50,000+
dormant profiles cut
26.1%
best-branch repurchase
Read the full story
→
APPAREL
An apparel brand with zero email and SMS infrastructure. Not broken, absent. We built the whole retention stack and connected both channels.
2 channels
email and SMS
Full stack
flows and campaigns
From scratch
no legacy setup
Read the full story
→
×
APPAREL
“The Email Forge completely transformed our email marketing in less than 2 months. Revenue attribution skyrocketed, deliverability issues were fixed, and now email is one of our most profitable channels.”
Rawan
·
Xara Shilajit
“It was unreal!! Thank you so much for your team’s hard work, the email list definitely showed up and had incredible results.”
Karla Wiedemann
·
Co-Founder, Maison Mahj
“Thank you for the run down and the flows look perfect. Keep up the good work!”
Christian Strandberg
·
The Shore Line
“Great news you have turned this one around quickly, I’m impressed!!”
Jim
·
JRS Industrial Supplies
“I appreciate your communication and process thus far.”
Drew Plotkin
·
Chief Dude Officer, Derm Dude
“Thanks guys and appreciate you working on this email and I know Black Friday Cyber Monday is crazy, so appreciate all your hard work.”
Sydney Pugh
·
Ettika
“It’s so impressive that New York sold out so quickly.”
Jennie Adams
·
Maison Mahj
“All done thanks Hammad, very pleased.”
Richie
·
1 of 100
The craft
Every send is built from your brand system and tested where your customers actually read it. Mobile first, because that is where most of the revenue lands.
Maison Mahj
Campaign · The Ritual
Barrett Fragrances
Winback
Sajada
Product education
Derm Dude
Non-buyer follow-up
1 of 100
Seasonal drop
The Shore Line
Campaign
Nutrili
Welcome flow
Scroll sideways for more · scroll inside any phone to read the full email
What we build
01
Flows that technically exist versus flows that actually make money. Triggers, segmentation, copy and design have to pull in the same direction, and that is the part most setups get wrong. Core revenue flows go live in the first two weeks.
02
12 to 15 sends a month, built around your products and segments rather than a blast schedule. Strategy, copy, Figma design, Klaviyo implementation and QA, reported weekly.
03
A smaller, healthier list outperforms a bloated one every time. We cut the dead weight you are paying to store, repair sender reputation, and grow with value-led opt-ins instead of discount-only popups.
04
One connected program with email, not a separate blaster. Cadence mapped to how your customers actually buy.
FLAGSHIP CASE STUDY
A deliverability score of 28. No segmentation, no cadence, flows that leaked in practice. We reset deliverability, built the segmentation system, restructured the calendar, and rebuilt the abandonment journeys.
Abandonment flow CVR: +47%
Open rate: ~21% → 50%+
Click rate: 0.3% → 0.88%
+45%
email revenue growth
12.03% → 28.48%
email’s share of total revenue
28 → 85
deliverability score, rebuilt
The Forge Method
Our operating system for retention. Four steps, run inside your account, opening with the audit ritual we call The First 10 Minutes.
01
Audit and diagnosis
We open the account before we talk strategy. Flows, triggers, list health, deliverability, attribution sanity. The First 10 Minutes usually finds the leak. The first week maps all of them.
WEEK 1
02
System architecture
A flow map and campaign calendar sequenced by commercial impact, with segmentation built around your product lines and customer types.
WEEKS 1 TO 2
03
Implementation and launch
Core revenue flows go live first. Campaigns start running. Every send gets design, copy and QA before it ships.
WEEKS 2 TO 6
04
Optimization and scale
A/B testing once flows stabilize. Monthly strategy docs, weekly reporting, compounding gains.
FROM MONTH 2
First measurable wins inside 30 to 60 days. We will not promise week-one revenue.
The fine print, out loud
We do not guarantee multiples. We do not lock you in. Contracts run month to month, and pricing steps up only as your attributable revenue does. We earn next month by what we did this month.
Engagements typically start at $3,500 a month.
Monthly rolling contracts
Leave any month. The work has to keep earning its place.
Founders on every account
Hammad or Mohammed is on every call, with a full team behind them.
Conservative projections
We will never show you a number we wouldn’t stand behind in your own dashboard.
Hammad Saeed, co-founder
From the founder
For 13 years I served as an officer in the Pakistan Army. I held the rank of Major. In 2017, still in uniform, I started teaching myself to run ads at night. In 2019 the first few dollars landed from a client on the other side of the world, and the cage I thought I was in suddenly had a door.
I spent the next five years building a freelance practice into a top-rated operation while finishing my service. In December 2024 I founded The Email Forge with Mohammed Okashah to do retention properly: open the account, find what’s broken, fix the fundamentals, own the result. No theatre. That’s the whole method.
The Email Forge is Hammad and Mohammed with a bench of designers, copywriters and Klaviyo specialists behind every account. Remote-first, built for US DTC brands. On Slack, we’re usually faster than the agency down the street.
A GOOD FIT
Founder-led Shopify DTC, roughly $1M to $15M
On Klaviyo, or willing to move
Email stuck below 20% of revenue
Wants a partner in the account, not a vendor on a retainer
NOT A FIT
Cheap newsletters or one-off blasts
Shopping for a guaranteed multiple
Pre-revenue, no list and no traffic yet
Wants email handled without ever getting on a call
From the audit notebook
01
The flow named Abandoned Cart
It was triggered by Checkout Started. Those are two different journeys, and one of them was leaking money.
02
The first 10 minutes
What we check before we say a word about strategy, and why it usually finds the leak.
03
Dead profiles cost real money
One account paid about $800 a month to store profiles that never open. The smaller list won.
We keep the client list short and handpicked. Founders on every call. We start with a discovery call, and if the fit is right the audit is free.
Book a discovery call