Our Retention Infrastructure That Helped a D2C Wellness Brand Add $560K in Repeat Revenue

About the Client

Our client is a fast-growing D2C wellness brand selling clinically-backed nutrition and supplement products across the globe. They specialize in consumable, replenishable SKUs — daily protein blends, gut health powders, and hair and skin supplements — sold through their own Shopify store alongside marketplace listings. At the time of engagement they were doing approximately $2.6M in annual revenue, with strong product-market fit and a loyal but under-monetized customer base.

Challenges

• Acquisition-Dependent Growth: Nearly 89% of revenue came from paid acquisition. As Meta CPMs rose through the year, blended CAC climbed 34% while AOV stayed flat, compressing contribution margin on every new order.
• Low Repeat Purchase Rate: Only 19% of customers placed a second order despite selling a product designed to run out in 30 days. The brand was refilling a leaky bucket rather than compounding a customer base.
• Underutilized Lifecycle Team: The in-house team was running email as a broadcast channel — one campaign per week to the full list — with no segmentation, no ownership of flows, and no reporting beyond open rate.
• Outdated Flow Architecture: The lifecycle setup had not been rebuilt since 2023. Three flows were live (welcome, abandoned cart, order confirmation), all built on generic app templates, none of them aware of product, category, or purchase history.

Solutions

To address these challenges, we implemented a full owned-channel retention infrastructure. This strategy included lifecycle segmentation built on purchase-behavior triggers, the identification and setup of a proper retention stack, a rebuilt email and SMS flow infrastructure with deliverability foundations, and a WhatsApp replenishment program built for a high-repeat consumable category.

Lifecycle Segmentation Using Purchase-Behavior Triggers

STRATEGY

We focused on identifying and leveraging behavioral and consumption triggers to reach customers at the exact moment they were ready to buy again.

EXECUTION

Mapped days-to-second-purchase by SKU, product depletion cycles, browsing and category signals, and post-purchase review activity to build a live segmentation model. Customers were grouped by consumption stage rather than by list membership — new, replenishing, at-risk, lapsed, and high-value repeat.

OUTCOME

This targeted approach allowed us to send fewer, sharper messages tied to where a customer actually was in their product cycle, lifting flow-driven revenue without increasing send volume.

Identification and Implementation of the Retention Stack

STRATEGY

We evaluated and selected the retention tooling required to run segmentation, attribution, and multi-channel orchestration properly.

EXECUTION

Implemented a consolidated stack including Klaviyo for email and SMS orchestration, a WhatsApp Business API provider for conversational retention, a subscription and reorder app for replenishment SKUs, a post-purchase zero-party survey tool for attribution and preference capture, and a cohort reporting layer to track repeat rate and LTV by acquisition month.

OUTCOME

The integrated stack removed the reporting blind spots, made cohort performance visible for the first time, and gave the team the data to make retention decisions instead of guesses.

Email and SMS Flow Infrastructure and Deliverability

STRATEGY

Rebuilt the flow architecture from the ground up and established deliverability foundations capable of supporting a list of 340,000 profiles.

EXECUTION

Warmed the sending infrastructure, and implemented a sunset policy that suppressed 61,000 disengaged profiles. Rebuilt the lifecycle from 3 flows to 15, including a segmented welcome series by acquisition source, browse and cart recovery, post-purchase education sequenced to the product's usage cycle, replenishment reminders timed to depletion, cross-sell paths between categories, winback tiers, and a VIP track for third-time buyers.

OUTCOME

Inbox placement recovered to 94%, and flow revenue — previously negligible — became the single largest contributor to owned-channel performance.

WhatsApp Retention for a High-Repeat Category

STRATEGY

Leveraged WhatsApp as a replenishment and re-order channel in markets where it carries the highest engagement.

EXECUTION

Built opt-in capture at checkout and in the post-purchase experience, then deployed templated replenishment nudges, one-tap reorder links, subscription pause and resume handling, and a routine-adherence check-in sequence supported by short-form education content from the brand's own nutritionists.

OUTCOME

WhatsApp reached 68% read rates and became the fastest-converting reorder channel in the stack, particularly for customers who never engaged with email.