The World's Best Email and Retention Podcast

How much campaign content are you rebuilding every week? And how many steps do shoppers take before they can buy?

Jordan Gordon walks through four digital asset reframes that change how your emails and site pages work together:

• Email campaigns as homepages, with a fresh feature up top and reusable sections below

• Homepages that combine discovery, product details, and purchasing

• Collection pages with useful blog and video content beneath the products

• PDPs that introduce your brand to shoppers landing there for the first time

Using examples from Anthropologie and Grüns, Jordan explains how these changes can reduce campaign production work and shorten the path to checkout.

For help with email, retention, and CRO, visit https://www.pilothouse.co and ask to speak with Jordan.

00:00 Driving revenue through email and CRO

00:29 Episode preview

01:23 Four digital assets to rethink

02:20 The problems with campaigns, homepages, collections, and PDPs

04:43 Reframe 1: Treat email campaigns like homepages

08:06 Anthropologie’s reusable email sections

09:05 Reframe 2: Combine homepage, collection, and PDP

09:35 Grüns’ homepage breakdown

11:03 Reframe 3: Treat collection pages like content pages

13:00 Reframe 4: Treat PDPs like homepages

13:56 How the reframes change your customer journey

17:17 Closing thoughts

Work with Pilothouse: ⁠https://www.pilothouse.co/get-in-touch?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=e&rPodcast⁠

Subscribe on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@DTCPodcast

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Listen to DTC Podcast: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dtcpodcast

From the archive: Jordan Gordon breaks down how to use the first purchase to encourage a second one.

He walks through a post-purchase flow that starts with a relevant cross-sell, then introduces a broader offer that can also appear in paid ads and package inserts. The examples cover how to choose a product to feature, set an order minimum, and coordinate the offer across channels.

The episode was recorded earlier in the show’s run. Some platform setup details have changed since then, so check your current tracking and audience setup before applying the tactics.

In this episode:

• Specific cross-sell offers and broader order-value offers

• Why Jordan recommends introducing a different product category

• How email, paid ads, and package inserts can support the same offer

• What to consider when using a shared coupon code across channels

00:00 Why the second purchase matters

02:24 Where email revenue comes from

07:09 Four ways to grow email revenue

11:31 Building a post-purchase flow

12:57 Specific vs. broad offers

16:27 Cross-selling into another product category

18:26 Adding an accessories offer

19:25 Setting a minimum-spend offer

21:51 Coupon codes across channels

22:20 Bringing paid ads into the campaign

24:19 Adding an offer to the package

26:18 Recap

Work with Pilothouse: ⁠https://www.pilothouse.co/get-in-touch?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=e&rPodcast⁠

Subscribe on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@DTCPodcast

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Four brands. Four different ecommerce problems. Four ways email and website design can help solve them.

In this visual episode, Jordan breaks down how Lack of Color, Devon + Lang, DÔEN, and Netrition shape their emails, product pages, and category pages around the way customers actually shop.

You’ll see how:

• Lack of Color uses large product grids to help shoppers find a highly personal style
• Devon + Lang treats its PDP as a shoppable homepage
• DÔEN reinforces exclusivity through editorial category pages and sold-out products
• Netrition organizes a massive catalog by product type, dietary goal, and discovery content

Jordan also covers mobile email layouts, dark mode issues, PDP fold-one essentials, click-flow testing, product galleries, size guides, and dynamic email sections.

This is a visual episode, so open the video for the full email and website walkthrough.

Want help generating more revenue from your existing traffic and customer base? Visit Pilothouse and ask to speak with the Email and Retention team.

Key Timestamps

00:00 How email and CRO unlock revenue from existing traffic

01:23 Four brands and four ecommerce challenges

02:50 Lack of Color’s product-heavy email strategy

07:09 What its product page leaves unclear

08:36 Devon + Lang’s shoppable-homepage PDP

12:31 Bundles, size guides, video, and product comparisons

15:00 How DÔEN sells high-priced apparel online

16:28 Why its email sends shoppers to a category page

18:53 Building an editorial category-page experience

22:39 Why DÔEN keeps sold-out products visible

24:36 How Netrition organizes a massive food catalog

28:30 Using discovery content, recommendations, and education

30:26 Shopping by category and dietary goal

31:52 Final takeaways

Work with Pilothouse: ⁠https://www.pilothouse.co/get-in-touch?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=e&rPodcast⁠

Subscribe on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@DTCPodcast

Subscribe to DTC: ⁠https://www.directtoconsumer.co/⁠

Listen to DTC Podcast: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dtcpodcast

How healthy is your Klaviyo account?

Jordan Gordon walks through the 12-point inspection he uses to assess Klaviyo accounts in 10 to 15 minutes. The inspection covers revenue, clicks, audience growth, campaign frequency, send volume, and flows, with a second check for every metric that can be distorted by attribution settings, privacy opens, or bot clicks.

You’ll learn how to:

• Compare Shopify revenue growth with Klaviyo revenue growth

• Check whether Klaviyo’s attributed revenue is trustworthy

• Compare Shopify sessions with unique email and SMS clicks

• use Gmail performance to spot reporting or inboxing problems

• Measure list growth without Apple Privacy Opens inflating the audience

• Audit campaign frequency, headlines, and design quality

• Evaluate your campaign-to-flow revenue split

• Use your first welcome email as an account-wide health check

Need help generating more revenue from your existing traffic and customers? Visit

CHAPTERS:

00:00 Why email and CRO are the fastest revenue opportunities

00:29 The 12-point Klaviyo inspection

01:24 Introduction

02:23 How the inspection works

02:52 Revenue growth and attribution settings

05:49 Unique clicks and Shopify sessions

07:45 Checking Gmail performance

11:11 Measuring list and audience health

14:05 Forms, subscribers, and unsubscribes

16:02 Campaign frequency and creative quality

18:01 Send volume and campaign open rates

20:24 Flow revenue and welcome email health

21:54 The complete 12-point recap

Work with Pilothouse: ⁠https://www.pilothouse.co/get-in-touch?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=e&rPodcast⁠

Subscribe on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@DTCPodcast

Subscribe to DTC: ⁠https://www.directtoconsumer.co/⁠

Listen to DTC Podcast: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dtcpodcast

Should DTC brands really avoid paid ads until they hit $5M to $10M in revenue?

A viral Cody Sanchez take sparked that debate, so Eric Dyck sits down with Pilothouse’s Jordan and Raf for the first edition of The DTC Rundown: a rapid-fire breakdown of the arguments, strategies, and problems DTC operators are talking about right now.

They dig into when paid acquisition actually makes sense, why brands can end up spending money advertising to customers who were already going to buy, and why healthier growth can sometimes make your marketing metrics look worse.

They also break down what changes as brands move past the early growth stage, including the shift from capturing existing demand to creating new demand, balancing evergreen marketing with bigger campaign moments, and keeping Meta and Klaviyo audience signals clean enough to know whether you’re actually acquiring new customers.

Plus, two real examples from the trenches show what happens when a website is designed around existing customers, an acquisition funnel creates too much friction, and a brand keeps using the same playbook long after the market around it has changed.

Key timestamps:

00:00 Why email and CRO can unlock revenue without more ad spend

02:21 Should brands really avoid paid ads until $5M–$10M?

10:09 The hidden ad spend wasted on existing customers

12:02 Evergreen vs. campaigns as brands scale

20:06 Why clean audience definitions matter on Meta

23:23 What slowing growth actually looks like inside the numbers

31:04 When your website is built for existing customers

38:41 The conversion funnel mistake costing one brand sales

Work with Pilothouse: ⁠https://www.pilothouse.co/get-in-touch?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=e&rPodcast⁠

Subscribe on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@DTCPodcast

Subscribe to DTC: ⁠https://www.directtoconsumer.co/⁠

Listen to DTC Podcast: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dtcpodcast

What do you fix when your email program has a 0.25% click-through rate and deliverability isn’t the problem?

This week, Jordan breaks down a pattern he sees across larger DTC brands: daily campaigns, oversized automated flow systems, low engagement, and plenty of attributed revenue that makes the program look healthier than it really is.

He walks through how to find your real click-through rate, strip out bot activity, identify which flow messages are actually generating revenue, and figure out where relevance can still create meaningful lift. Jordan also explains why attributed revenue rewards brands for sending more email, even when those sends may have little incremental impact.

Then he gets into the fix: build a true control group, simplify bloated flow systems, concentrate automated messaging around high-intent windows, reduce broad campaign frequency, and measure whether email is actually increasing customer spend across channels.

Key Timestamps:

01:23 The 0.25% CTR problem

03:20 How to find your real click-through rate

05:13 The 80/20 test for bloated flow systems

07:09 How to rule out deliverability as the problem

09:33 Finding the audience where relevance matters most

13:24 Why attributed revenue rewards sending more email

15:51 Building a control group to measure incremental lift

20:10 How to simplify flows and reduce campaign volume

Work with Pilothouse: ⁠https://www.pilothouse.co/get-in-touch?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=e&rPodcast⁠

Subscribe on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@DTCPodcast

Subscribe to DTC: ⁠https://www.directtoconsumer.co/⁠

Listen to DTC Podcast: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dtcpodcast

The customers that got your brand to its current size may not be the customers who take it to the next stage of growth.

This week, Jordan is joined by Pilothouse’s Rafael Gi to break down a pattern they’re seeing across brands at very different stages: the customer base, acquisition strategy, and messaging that once worked can eventually become a ceiling.

They walk through three real brand scenarios, including a skincare company where 80% of free-sample buyers never purchased again, a sports brand that had outgrown its parent-focused positioning, and a sunglasses brand seeing its higher-AOV customer segment grow while its traditional core market declined.

Jordan and Raf discuss how to spot these shifts early, what your new-to-repeat customer mix can tell you, why revenue per email sent matters, how acquisition platforms get trained on the customers you attract, and how to realign your ads, website, and retention strategy around the customers with the most future value.

In this episode:

• How to tell when you’re marketing to the wrong customers
• Why growing brands can outgrow their original customer segment
• The danger of training Meta and Google to find discount buyers
• Why 80% of one brand’s free-sample customers never purchased again
• How to analyze new vs. repeat customer cohorts
• Revenue per email sent as an early warning signal
• Matching PDP messaging to the audience landing there
• How to shift toward a more valuable customer segment without losing your existing base

01:22 Why your current customers may be holding back your next stage of growth

03:39 Three brands facing the same customer-segment problem

08:00 How to tell when you’re marketing to the wrong people

09:29 Using Shopify cohorts to diagnose customer quality

10:27 Revenue per email sent as an early warning signal

11:52 When your PDP is speaking to the wrong customer

16:39 How discount acquisition can train Meta and Google on the wrong buyers

20:57 When a higher-value customer segment starts replacing your core market

Work with Pilothouse: ⁠https://www.pilothouse.co/get-in-touch?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=e&rPodcast⁠

Subscribe on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@DTCPodcast

Subscribe to DTC: ⁠https://www.directtoconsumer.co/⁠

Listen to DTC Podcast: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dtcpodcast

Jordan is in the middle of rewarming an email account that Gmail was sending straight to spam, so this week he’s taking you inside the process.

He breaks down what damaged the account’s sending reputation, the engagement segments he’s using to rebuild it, why static send size matters during a rewarm, and how he’s using Gmail-specific data, GlockApps, and Postmaster Tools to tell when it’s safe to scale back up.

Jordan also explains why your reported email revenue may be inflated by Apple Privacy Opens, why list size is one of the most misleading metrics in email, and what brands should watch before a struggling program gets this far.

In this episode:

• The email trilemma: traffic, inboxing, and list growth
• What 100% Gmail spam actually means
• The segments Jordan uses during a rewarm
• Why engaged senders should ramp volume slowly
• The problem with Apple Privacy Opens and email attribution
• Why prospect-only campaigns can hurt engagement
• How to use Google Postmaster Tools during recovery
• When to start expanding your audience again

If your email performance looks healthy on paper while clicks and inbox placement tell a different story, this episode shows you where to look.

01:24 Why this email account needs a rewarm

02:22 The email trilemma: traffic, inboxing, and list growth

05:13 Inside an account hitting 100% Gmail spam

08:08 How Apple Privacy Opens can inflate email revenue

11:05 The exact segments Jordan uses to rewarm an account

14:02 Why static send size matters during a rewarm

20:54 GlockApps, Gmail segments, and Google Postmaster Tools

24:12 Using high-engagement promos to rebuild sending reputation

Work with Pilothouse: ⁠https://www.pilothouse.co/get-in-touch?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=e&rPodcast⁠

Subscribe on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@DTCPodcast

Subscribe to DTC: ⁠https://www.directtoconsumer.co/⁠

Listen to DTC Podcast: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dtcpodcast

Jordan has a new favourite email program, and it breaks a lot of the rules marketers usually follow.

In this episode of The World’s Best Email and Retention Podcast, Jordan breaks down Dôen’s email program, from its layered photo grids and behind-the-scenes creative to tiny copy, cursive fonts, and understated CTAs.

The program assumes its audience actually wants to spend time with the brand. That matters when your emails are competing inside a promotions tab packed with dozens of other brands.

Jordan also catches one mistake in Dôen’s otherwise excellent program: two different abandonment emails landing within four minutes of each other. He explains why overlapping cart, checkout, site abandonment, and third-party identification flows can cause this, plus the waterfall exclusions he uses to prevent it.

What you’ll learn:

• Why Dôen has become Jordan’s new favourite email program
• How behind-the-scenes content helps pull customers deeper into a brand’s world
• Why intentional creative can make subscribers actively look for your emails
• How to use photo grids, GIFs, location shoots, and community content
• The abandonment-flow mistake Jordan found in his own inbox
• How to structure exclusions across checkout, cart, site abandonment, and third-party triggers
• Why winning an individual CRO test can still degrade the overall brand experience
• How email design, copy, CTAs, and creative work together as one system

00:00 – Why email + CRO are the fastest path to more ecommerce revenue

01:25 – Jordan’s new favourite email program: Dôen

04:15 – Why Dôen designs for an intentional reader

08:01 – The behind-the-scenes email that immediately got Jordan to open

09:00 – How to stand out in a completely stuffed Promotions tab

12:52 – Jordan finds a mistake

15:49 – The abandonment flow waterfall that prevents duplicate emails

17:17 – Why a “winning” CRO test can slowly degrade your brand

Work with Pilothouse: ⁠https://www.pilothouse.co/get-in-touch?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=e&rPodcast⁠

Subscribe on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@DTCPodcast

Subscribe to DTC: ⁠https://www.directtoconsumer.co/⁠

Listen to DTC Podcast: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dtcpodcast

After auditing hundreds of email programs, Jordan Gordon has seen the same mistakes show up again and again.

In this episode of The World’s Best Email & Retention Podcast, Jordan runs through 11 common problems that make retention programs harder to manage and less effective, from creating endless Klaviyo segments and bloated flows to mixing too many goals into one post-purchase journey.

He also gets into why non-opener resends can hurt your sending reputation, where your best offer should appear in an email, what brands miss when testing dark mode, and why producing more campaigns can leave you with thinner creative.

Then he moves beyond the inbox with two CRO mistakes he sees constantly: underdeveloped top product pages and homepages that have accumulated too many competing ideas.

What you’ll learn:

• Why you probably have too many Klaviyo segments
• How bloated flows create dead weight in your retention program
• Why each automation should have one clear conversion goal
• Who you should ask for reviews and UGC
• Why non-opener double taps can hurt deliverability
• Where your strongest offer should appear
• Why every brand should be checking emails in dark mode
• How too much campaign volume can weaken your creative
• What your highest-traffic PDP needs above the fold
• How to clean up an overloaded homepage

00:00 – How Email + CRO Drive More Revenue

01:22 – The Email Mistakes Jordan Sees Every Day

03:19 – Why Too Many Flows Become Dead Weight

06:16 – UGC, Reviews & Post-Purchase Mistakes

10:07 – Give Every Automation One Clear Goal

13:29 – Offers, Non-Opener Resends & Dark Mode

16:22 – When Too Much Email Content Hurts Performance

22:13 – PDP & Homepage CRO Mistakes

Work with Pilothouse: ⁠https://www.pilothouse.co/get-in-touch?utm_source=dtc&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=e&rPodcast⁠

Subscribe on YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@DTCPodcast

Subscribe to DTC: ⁠https://www.directtoconsumer.co/⁠

Listen to DTC Podcast: ⁠https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dtcpodcast