The store
A US reseller of pre-loved luxury accessories on Shopify. The client is not named, and this case gives shares and rates only, never the store’s revenue: the client’s business figures are theirs. The brand is strong on social and runs no discounts on the catalogue. Every item is a one-off: when it sells, the product page is gone. That shapes everything about email.
What email does here
In the 12 months to October 2026, Klaviyo attributed 21.6% of store revenue to email. Month by month, from the reports we send the client:
| Month | Email share of store revenue | From flows |
|---|---|---|
| July 2026 | 18.9% | 79% |
| August 2026 | 17.2% | 79% |
| September 2026 | 21.5% | 86% |
| October 2026 | 20.7% | 83% |
Flows do 4 of every 5 email dollars. The flow set is built per brand: a browse abandonment and an abandoned checkout flow that know whether the visitor was looking at one house or another and show the same brand, the same size class and the nearest price band, because the exact item may already be sold. A welcome series explains how the store works and what authentication means before it shows a single product. A post-purchase flow asks for a review and invites the customer to sell to the store, which feeds the catalogue.
Campaigns are weekly and editorial. Per recipient they earn about the benchmark median ($0.19 against $0.20), but the orders they close are four figures: the best newsletter of October 2026 closed orders averaging well into four figures, the second best had the month’s highest click rate at 1.65%. Open rates sit between 62% and 66%, which on this list is mostly Apple opening the email; we judge sends on clicks and placed orders.
What did not work
- A spring dip. April 2026 had email revenue down 26% on the previous month while store revenue was flat. Seasonality was part of it; the other part was that the welcome and brand flows had not been A/B tested since launch. The tests ran in May and June (subject lines, product block order, send delay on browse abandonment), and attributed revenue rose about 40% from the spring level by September. Flows are not a build-once asset; they drift.
- Discount tests. Two campaigns in 2025 tested a modest sitewide code. Revenue per recipient barely moved and the brand got a week of “do you have a code” replies. The store does not discount, and email that pretends otherwise trains the list to wait. We dropped it.
- Popups. The signup form converts 1.9% of unique viewers, well under the 4.7% benchmark median. That is the price of refusing a discount hook on a luxury brand. The welcome flow makes up for it: the people who do sign up are buyers.
What to take from it
If you sell high-ticket, one-off inventory on Shopify:
- Put the build time into flows that understand what the visitor was browsing, including a fallback for sold-out items. That is where 80% of the money is.
- Treat campaigns as a magazine, not a sale. Weekly, consistent, one story per send; measure them on placed orders, not opens.
- Expect a low popup rate without a discount, and do not fix it with a discount. Fix the welcome flow instead.
- Re-test the flows twice a year. The drop in April was recoverable because we were looking.
The store is on our Elite retainer. The free 30-minute audit tells you whether your account has the same gap between flows and campaigns.
The next benchmark, before it is public
Every quarter we re-pull the numbers from the accounts we run and send the summary first to the list, with the teardowns in between. No weekly newsletter, no discounts, unsubscribe in one click.