If you’re working with a large product catalog and steady traffic, it’s easy to assume your email program is doing well. But what if most of your customers buy once and never come back? For many e-commerce brands, the real growth opportunity isn’t in acquiring more customers. It’s in retaining the ones they already have.
In this case study, Andriy Boychuk, founder and CEO of Flowium, shares how his team rebuilt the lifecycle strategy for a sporting goods brand and increased revenue from returning customers by 150% in just 3 months. You’ll see how focusing on the post-purchase experience, repeat-purchase flows, and re-engagement strategy turned email into a predictable retention engine.
Expert
About the expert
Andriy Boychuk is the founder and CEO of Flowium, a retention marketing agency that helps eCommerce brands grow repeat revenue through email and lifecycle marketing. Before launching Flowium in 2017, Andriy spent 9 years in corporate America, progressing from a junior role to Senior Project Manager at the Clarient Group, where he focused on building complex, long-term systems. That systems-thinking approach now defines how he builds retention programs for brands.
But his very first business wasn’t digital at all: he flipped nearly 40 mobile homes with his sister, an experience that shaped his persistence, negotiation skills, and long-term thinking.
He started Flowium after noticing that many companies treated email as a short-term promotional tool instead of a core growth channel. Since then, his work has centered on creating long-term customer value, with email at the center and channels such as SMS, WhatsApp, push, RCS, and DM automation supporting the lifecycle where they truly add value. Over the years, Flowium has worked with more than 1,000 brands globally, helping turn email and other owned channels into predictable revenue drivers.
Today, Flowium is a Klaviyo Elite Partner, recognized on the 2025 Inc. 5000 list, and powered by a team of 60+ specialists worldwide.
Outside of work, Andriy values simple, unplugged downtime: movie nights at home, backyard BBQs, and time with his wife and two daughters. He’s also an avid reader who enjoys learning beyond marketing.
The challenge: Optimizing each stage of the funnel to drive higher retention and sustainable revenue growth
When we started working with this sporting goods brand, it already had a substantial audience and a strong product demand. On the surface, the performance looked solid. But when we looked deeper, it was a different story.
A large share of customers made a single purchase and never returned. That immediately told us there were gaps in the post-purchase journey and broader lifecycle strategy. The brand was generating traffic and first-time sales, but it wasn’t fully maximizing retention.
Our goal was to turn lifecycle marketing into a consistent, optimized system that could drive repeat purchases and long-term revenue growth.
What made this project unique is that we didn’t begin with performance tweaks or optimization experiments. Instead, we started by stepping back and asking, What does this brand actually stand for in email?
Before touching on the lifecycle strategy, Flowium focused on understanding the brand’s visual identity, tone of voice, and positioning. We then created five initial campaign emails to set a strong creative and strategic baseline on which everything else could build.
Andriy Boychuk,
The most immense challenge was the lack of a clear framework on which to build. We had to translate the brand into email almost from scratch. It took several rounds of iteration to get the tone, design, and messaging to feel truly on-brand. At the same time, we were working with a large, established company with a broad product range and a complex email setup. There were many existing flows already live, and before we could improve performance, we had to carefully audit and realign them.
And we couldn’t just pause everything to rebuild. Revenue was coming in through those flows. Therefore, we needed a phased approach: reviewing, redefining, and gradually rebuilding the lifecycle experience while keeping retention and sustainable growth as the main objectives.
The solution: Re-engagement email flows for different target groups
Once we clearly understood the brand and mapped out the gaps in the lifecycle, we moved into action.
1. Win-back flow
One of the first things we implemented was a win-back flow targeting subscribers who hadn’t purchased in the past 60 days. Surprisingly, this flow didn’t exist in the account before. This meant that customers could go quiet without any structured attempt to bring them back.
We identified this as a clear opportunity. Instead of letting dormant customers drift away, we built a dedicated flow designed to re-engage them at the right moment. The goal was simple: remind them why they bought in the first place, reconnect them with the brand, and recover revenue that would otherwise be lost.
(Source: Email by Flowium)
*This email is taken as an illustration of the approach.
2. Post-purchase and repeat-purchase flows
At the same time, we overhauled the post-purchase and repeat-purchase flows.
The first-purchase experience was completely redesigned. We revisited the strategy, rewrote the copy, and updated the design to better reflect the brand’s identity and long-term positioning. The goal was to move beyond transactional communication and to create a stronger relationship from the very first order.
We also rebuilt the repeat customer flow from the ground up. Instead of treating the second purchase as the finish line, we focused on guiding customers from their second to third order because that’s where long-term retention really starts to compound. The strategy, messaging, and structure were optimized to support that transition and encourage consistent buying behavior.
(Source: Email by Flowium)
*This email is taken as an illustration of the approach.
Rather than making isolated changes, we treated each flow as part of a larger system. Every update was intentional and aligned with the broader goal of turning email into a predictable retention engine instead of a one-time sales channel.
Andriy Boychuk,
Flowium implemented continuous A/B testing on the highest revenue-driving flows, specifically the welcome flow and checkout abandonment flow. Multiple variables were tested, including subject lines, send timing and message delays, offer vs. no-offer strategies, and dynamic product blocks versus static imagery and category-based layouts.
The results: 75% flow revenue growth and 150% more returning customers
We didn’t have to wait long to see the impact. Within just 3 months, the numbers clearly showed that the lifecycle rebuild was working.
Among the results, we would especially like to highlight the following:
- attributed revenue grew by 102.3%. That means email wasn’t just “supporting” the business; it became a much stronger revenue driver;
- campaign revenue increased by 164.8%, showing that the new creative baseline and more strategic campaign structure resonated with the audience;
- flow revenue grew by 75.9%. This was especially important to us because flows are the foundation of predictable, long-term performance;
- first-time customer revenue grew by 69.7%, which confirmed that the redesigned post-purchase experience was helping convert new buyers more effectively;
- returning customer revenue increased by 150.7%. This was a clear sign that the repeat purchase and win-back strategies were doing exactly what they were designed to do: bringing customers back and strengthening retention.
For us, this case reinforced a simple idea. When lifecycle marketing is treated as a long-term system, the results quickly compound.
What can email marketers learn from this case study?
If there’s one takeaway from this project, it’s this: Set up a sunset flow early and automate list hygiene from the start. This way, you’re consistently re-engaging subscribers who still have intent while quietly filtering out inactive ones. It keeps deliverability strong and ensures that every future campaign performs better by default without having to resolve problems later.
Andriy Boychuk,
Practical steps you can apply to your own email program:
- Audit your lifecycle gaps first: Look at where customers drop off. Do you have a structured win-back flow? Are you intentionally guiding customers from first to second purchases and from second to third? Identify the missing stages before jumping into optimization.
- Redesign the first-purchase experience: Don’t treat it as a transactional confirmation series. Use it to set expectations, reinforce brand positioning, and introduce the next logical step in the journey.
- Focus on moving customers to the third purchase: Retention compounds after repeat buying behavior becomes consistent. Build flows specifically designed to accelerate that transition.
- Implement a win-back flow with clear timing: Don’t wait 6–12 months to re-engage customers. Define a meaningful inactivity window (for example, 60 days, depending on your buying cycle) and proactively bring customers back before they fully disengage.
- Set up a sunset flow early: Automate list hygiene from the start. Re-engage subscribers who still show buying intent and quietly remove inactive contacts. This protects deliverability and improves the performance of every future campaign without needing emergency fixes later.
- Build before you optimize: If your brand identity isn’t clearly translated into email, performance tweaks won’t scale. Establish a strong creative and strategic baseline first, and then build on it.
Retention is rarely about one “brilliant” campaign. It’s about consistent, well-structured lifecycle work that turns email into a predictable revenue channel.
Wrapping up
This case shows that strong retention results don’t come from isolated campaigns. They come from a well-structured lifecycle system. By redefining the post-purchase experience, rebuilding repeat purchase flows, and filling key gaps like win-back and re-engagement, email quickly became a predictable revenue driver.
If your brand is seeing strong first-time sales but weak repeat behavior, the opportunity may already be inside your existing audience. The key is building a lifecycle strategy that intentionally moves customers forward, not leaving retention to chance.
Read other case studies from the Email Marketer’s Сode series and get inspired to create new, effective campaigns.
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