This One Change Doubled Email Revenue for DTC Brands
☕ The Growth Espresso Edition #118
🗓️ Monday, 16 Jun 2025
Hi, and welcome back to Growth Espresso - your one-stop destination for everything e-com.
You ever open your inbox and feel like you’ve seen the same brand email 10 times in different fonts? Yeah, that’s traditional email marketing gasping for air.
Here’s the deal.
The brands that are quietly crushing it right now? They’ve already gone all-in on AI. Not because it’s trendy. But because it works. Better targeting, better content, and most importantly — better money math.
We’re talking 2x revenue from the same list.
And if you’re still manually building campaigns like it’s 2018, you might be leaking thousands of dollars every month without realizing it.
Let’s break this down.
1. Personalization Isn’t Optional Anymore
You browse a bag.
You add it to your cart.
You don’t check out.
You’ve got $50 in loyalty points sitting idle.
If you’re not sending an email that references all of this? You’re not doing email marketing. You’re doing email hoping.
Today, smart brands are letting AI track each of those actions — and automatically trigger ultra-relevant, 1:1 emails based on real-time behavior. That customer? They get a nudge reminding them about the exact bag + a reminder they’ve got $50 in points. It feels eerily personalized… because it is.
With a smart AI tools, you can track all these events, and create personalized emails like this one:
Another customer gets a completely different email, based on their actions.
And you? You do zero manual work.
2. Waiting to Show Loyalty Points at Checkout? Rookie Move.
Let’s talk about The Body Shop.
They realized showing customers their loyalty points only at checkout is too late — decision’s already made. So they started showing those points inside the email itself — while the customer is still browsing.
AI helped them do that automatically.
Result? Higher redemption. More conversions. Better email ROI.
You’re giving discounts anyway — might as well make them work harder.
3. Predictive Emails That Practically Read Minds
Imagine your email platform knowing when someone’s likely to reorder, when they’ll churn, or when they’re ready to buy again.
That’s not future-speak. That’s happening now. With AI.
A cereal brand we work with (yes, cereal) uses AI to predict:
When customers are likely to reorder
When they’re about to churn
How likely they are to switch brands
Their average lifetime value
And based on that, sends preemptive nudges that hit right before a buying decision.
If you’re waiting around with a generic “Hey, we miss you” two weeks too late — you’re playing checkers while your competition is playing 4D chess.
Need help with AI?
With how the internet has blown up with AI tools, it can get incredibly overwhelming to figure out a place to start.
However, RetainIQ has been using AI since the past year to consistently improve eCommerce brands’ email revenue for the past 1 year. We’ve tried countless tools to figure out the ones that are really useful - resulting in stellar results.
If you want a progressive, reliable and knowledgeable partner to handle your email marketing, RetainIQ is a good choice. Feel free to schedule some time on our calendar to talk about AI!
4. Subject Lines That Actually Work (Not Just Sound Cute)
If you’re still writing subject lines in Slack threads like:
“New arrivals just dropped?”
“Summer Sale inside!”
“Open me 👀”
It’s over.
AI can now generate subject lines that mimic your brand voice — and continuously test which ones get opened the most. It learns from every campaign. Adapts in real-time. And yes, it outperforms humans in this department.
We’ve seen brands go from 18% to 38% open rates with nothing but AI-powered subject line testing.
You decide: keep brainstorming over coffee, or let a machine do it 24/7?
5. Reporting That Doesn’t Make You Want to Cry
Most dashboards feel like punishment. Pages of data, zero insight.
AI-based reporting gives you the one thing that actually matters: “What worked and what didn’t?”
No fluff. You’ll see things like:
“This loyalty email drove $4,200 in added revenue last week”
“These two flows have dropped 18% in conversion. Fix them.”
That’s power. And peace of mind.
Final Thought: Traditional Email Is Dead. AI Didn’t Kill It — Your Competition Did.
It’s not just that AI makes email marketing faster. It makes it smarter.
More relevance
More conversions
More lifetime value
More $$$
Brands who resist this shift? They’re just warming up their lists for the brands that do.
What You Should Do Now
If any of this hits close to home — and you suspect your email performance could be way better — we should talk.
We’ve opened up just 5 audit slots this month to review email programs for growing DTC/eComm brands.
Here’s what you’ll get:
✅ Deep dive into your flows and campaigns
✅ Identify where your email $$ is leaking
✅ Simple, no-fluff roadmap on how to use AI (no tech jargon)
✅ Benchmarks based on your exact brand size and industry
✅ Recommendations on subject lines, segmentation, and automation
→ Book your AI-powered email audit here
Spots are limited, because these take actual work. But they’re worth it.
This is for brands doing $1M+ in annual revenue and want to scale smarter, not just louder.
Because if email is one of your top channels — you can’t afford to be average anymore.