Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com

Helping DTC E-com brands cultivate a loyal fanbase through their email and SMS marketing | Book a call FREE 90 Day RoadMap included. 👇

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

Biktrix – Client Testimonial

A little late sharing this one, but not long ago I sat down with Gordon Lai, Head of Sales & Marketing at Biktrix, to talk about our partnership.

Watch the full testimonial here: https://t.co/PZe2YctWrQ

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

4-email Abandoned Checkout flow. Zero splits. Same generic email to every subscriber. The previous agency called it "done." I call it lazy.

Audited an account last week with exactly this setup.

One straight-line sequence, sent to every person who entered the flow.

I wouldn't even call this an Abandoned Checkout flow.

Every email said some version of "Your cart is waiting."

That is NOT a proper Abandoned Checkout flow.

A proper Abandoned Checkout flow creates split paths and tailors its messaging to where the customer is in their buyer's journey.

Start with the most important split: non-purchasers vs returning customers.

Email #1 to a non-purchaser:

"Hey, you left in a hurry. Don't worry, we're still holding your cart for now. But come back soon —
we don't keep unlimited stock of these. Click the link to complete checkout."

Email #1 to a returning customer:

"Hey {FIRST NAME}, welcome back. Happy to see a familiar face. Looks like you were checking out {PRODUCT NAME}. Great choice. When you're ready to complete your purchase, just click the link here."

Two emails.

For two COMPLETELY different people.

And that's just the first email.

From there, you can split further:
→ By SMS opt-in status (SMS subscribers get SMS, email-only subscribers get email)
→ By cart value (above vs below your free shipping threshold)
→ By product type (a $40 cart and a $400 cart shouldn't get the same email)

There's so much more you can do to tailor your flows for the person receiving your emails.

Not taking the time to build this out is just laziness on your part.

And it's costing you revenue you don't even know you're missing.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

0.4% unsubscribe rate. Same on the dashboard. Two completely different things. One is list hygiene. One is your post-purchase journey breaking down. Most brands react to both the same way.

Here's what's actually happening.

A non-buyer who's been on your list 8 months without ever opening — unsubscribes.

A customer who bought last week — unsubscribes.

Both count the same on the report.

Except they're not the same problem.

The first one is healthy list hygiene.

That person was never going to buy.

They unsubscribed instead of flagging you as spam.

It’s the ideal outcome for that profile.

The second one is a real problem.

A recent buyer unsubscribing means something in your post-purchase experience pushed them away.

Bad cadence.

Wrong messaging.

Pitch fatigue after the order.

That signal tells you to fix something in your post-purchase experience or flow.

But we’ve already established that your ESP doesn’t segment your subscribers this way by default.

Meaning it’s up to you.

Here’s how:

Segment your unsubscribes by buyer status before you react to them.

→ Prospect unsubscribes but (never purchased) — track but don't change strategy (yet)
→ Recent buyer unsubscribes (last 30/60/90 days) — investigate immediately
→ Repeat buyer unsubscribes (purchased 2+ times) — high priority, something broke
Once you split it this way, you have data you can work with.

Three months in a row of recent buyer unsubscribes, and increasing at that?

Your post-purchase flow needs work.

Or you're hammering them with offers meant for non-customers.

Three months of prospect unsubscribes climbing?

Your acquisition is bringing in the wrong people.

Or you’re sending too many emails to a less engaged audience.

Or you haven’t communicated expectations clearly enough.

Either way you slice it, the total unsubscribe percentage doesn’t tell you enough.

It just makes you reactive.

Stop tracking total unsubscribes.

Start tracking unsubscribes by buyer status.

That's the only version of the metric that tells you what to fix.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

Half your opt-ins never confirm. Double opt-in is supposed to be the "deliverability best practice." It's actually just throwing away subscribers you paid to acquire.

Here's the mechanic.

Someone fills out your opt-in form.

With single opt-in, they're on the list.

With double opt-in, Klaviyo sends them a confirmation email.

They have to open it.

They have to click the confirmation link.

Then you can email them.

Every step is friction.

And every step loses subscribers.

Confirmation rates run between 50 and 70%.

That means 30 to 50% of the people who wanted on your list never make it on.

You paid the same ad spend to acquire all of them.

You only get half.

So why do brands turn double opt-in on?

Because someone told them it "protects deliverability."

That's wrong.

The real deliverability lever isn't confirmation friction.

It's engagement segmentation.
→ Send campaigns to subscribers engaged in the last 30, 60, or 90 days
→ Suppress bounces
→ Suppress spam complaints

That's the entire deliverability hygiene system at most list sizes.

Double opt-in doesn’t help.

It just shrinks your list.

If you're paying $8 per opt-in from Meta, double opt-in means you're actually paying $16 per subscriber.

Turn it off.

Manage engagement on the back end where it belongs.

Stop paying for half a subscriber.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

I once dropped $30 into a library donation jar and walked out with a stack of books to resell on Amazon. The library got its donation. I got my inventory.

This was a few businesses ago.

The Book Elf — my used-book Amazon FBA business.

The original inventory came from a storage unit my dad had to clean out after a renter died.

When that ran out, I drove to bookstores.

When the bookstores ran out of profitable titles, I ran out of ideas.

Then I learned my local library was holding a donation event.

Books on long folding tables.

No price tags.

Drop whatever you want into the donation jar.

Take what you want.

I showed up with my phone and the Amazon scanner app.

For a couple of hours, I stood at those tables scanning every spine.

Anything the app said I could make a profit on, I added to my stack.

When the stack was as tall as I could carry, I walked it to the donation jar and dropped in $30.

Drove home and ran them through the usual flow — cleaned, labeled, shipped to Amazon.

Pretty sure the people who watched me haul milk crates full of books out of the library thought I was a little crazy.

But I was willing to do whatever to make my online bookstore work.

Resourcefulness is one of the few skills I've always had.

And one I've consistently had to use across all my business ventures.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

$300 to a Fiverr editor. TikToks of crypto t-shirts spinning to music. No story. No script. I was 19, trying to launch another Shopify store.

This was a few businesses ago.

A print-on-demand Shopify store selling Bitcoin- and crypto-themed t-shirts.

I was deep in crypto at the time — deep in the hole at least. 😂

I figured nobody was making good Bitcoin merch.

So I took it upon myself to build a store.

Picked some designs.

Hooked up a print-on-demand company so I didn't have to hold inventory.

And ordered samples to my house so I could see what they looked like in person.

(I still have some of those shirts in my closet today.)

Then I sat there staring at the homepage thinking — okay, now what.

Nobody was visiting the store.

I knew I needed marketing, but I still hadn't grasped what it was or how to do it.

But what I did know was that TikTok was where people my age spent time.

So I made a TikTok account for the brand.

I filmed the t-shirts at my house.

Just the clothing.

From a few angles.

Some natural light.

I had no idea what I was supposed to do with that footage.

So I went on Fiverr, found an editor, and paid him $300 to "make some TikToks for my brand."

I didn't give him a script.

I didn't give him a story.

I didn't give him a single reason anyone should care about Bitcoin t-shirts.

I just said: Here's the footage, make something.

What I got back was exactly what I asked for.

A few short videos of clothing spinning around to music.

No message.

No hook.

No reason for anyone watching to do anything except keep scrolling.

I uploaded them anyway.

Think I got a total of 100 views, but no sales and no site traffic.

I uploaded a few more videos on my own, but nothing came of them either.

A few weeks later, I closed the store.

At first glance, there isn't much of a lesson here.

I tried something.

I failed.

Nothing new.

But looking back, the lesson is this.

I didn't have the skills I needed.

And I didn't put in nearly enough effort to learn them.

I've since realized that things take longer and require more effort than any of us wants to put in.

Alex Hormozi has a great line for this: "If people knew how much work it was actually going to be, they'd never start."

At 19, I didn't know this.

Today I'm grateful I do.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

600 flyers. 1 hour drive. 8 hours walking neighborhoods stuffing mailboxes. 0 callbacks.

This was a few businesses ago.

Royal Household Cleaners — a remote service business where I ran ads, took the calls, booked the jobs, and sent contractors out to clean.

The business worked on one ad channel: Google Local Service Ads.

Pay-per-lead.

Around $20 per call.

Top-of-page placement when someone Googled "house cleaning near me."

It was the only channel that worked.

But each lead was expensive, and most calls didn't close.

So one night I had this idea.

Skip the ad spend.

Go straight to the customer.

Print flyers.

Hand them out in nice neighborhoods.

Bypass Google entirely.

I designed a single-page flyer at home.

Phone number.

Service description.

A few lines about why we were "better than the rest."

Printed 600 copies at home.

(Ran that printer dry.)

Drove the hour from my house to my service area Saturday morning.

Parked the car.

Started walking.

Stuffed mailbox after mailbox for the better part of 8 hours.

Pretty sure it was cold that day.

Got home that night, tired, hoping all my effort wasn't just for nothing.

The next day, I waited for my phone to ring.

Eager to ask how they heard about us.

Every time I did, it was the same answer: "I saw you on Google."

Weeks went by.

Not a single flyer I sent got anyone to call.

Time, gas, printing cost — all for nothing.

I'm telling this story not because I think handing out flyers doesn't work.

Plenty of businesses still run on them.

I'm telling it because it's one example of many where I put time, energy, and money into something and saw nothing in return.

I can't tell you how many times I've repeated that cycle.

All I can really do is accumulate enough information and experience to notice faster when a play isn't working.

And identify the lesson with every loss.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

Every field on your opt-in form costs you subscribers. Every step you add gives them one more reason to close the tab. The more you ask for, the fewer subscribers you get.

Asking for more = more friction = more drop-off.

People stop doing things when you make them do more things.

That's it.

That's the whole rule.

Here's the form that works.
→ Pop-up trigger: after a time delay
→ Step 1: A question with multiple-choice answers
→ Step 2: Email field
→ Step 3: SMS field (optional — make this skippable)
→ Step 4: Success page with the discount code

No name field.

No birthday field.

No "how did you hear about us?" dropdown.

Here's why making it to the success page actually matters.

The success page can display the discount code right there and allow your subscribers to auto-apply it to checkout.

Which means they don't need to leave your site and check their email for your code.

Or open their messages on their phone.

It's right in front of them.

Keeping their focus on your store and BUYING.

If they have to leave your site to fetch the code from their inbox or messages, you've already lost most of them.

Inbox = distraction.

Distraction = no purchase.

The success page helps turn the opt-in into a sale.

But the longer your form, the fewer people make it to the success page.

The fewer people on the success page, the lower your in-session conversion.

There's also a different angle worth testing.

Email-only form first.

Then, a separate SMS pop-up that fires later, only to subscribers who haven't opted into SMS yet.

Two forms instead of one means each form has fewer steps.

More people complete the email form.

More people see the success page.

More in-session conversions.

You capture SMS in a separate moment, with its own dedicated trigger.

Less is more when it comes to forms.

Drop everything you don't actually need.

Fewer fields. More subscribers. More sales.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

Customer left your site at 2 pm. Your first cart abandon email lands at 2 pm the next day. The buying window died at 3 pm yesterday. You missed the moment by 23 hours.

Most cart abandon flows look the same.

Email 1 fires 24 hours after a profile abandons their cart.

Email 2 fires 48 hours after.

Email 3 fires 72 hours after.

That's the agency template.

It's also why most cart abandon flows underperform.

Here's what's actually happening in the customer's head.

At 2 pm, they're on your site.

They added the product to their cart.

Their kid started crying.

Their boss messaged them.

They opened a new tab to check shipping costs and got lost.

Whatever it was, they didn't buy.

But the buying mood was real.

They wanted the product.

They were 30 seconds from checking out.

By 3 pm, they're drifting.

By 5 pm, they've forgotten the cart exists.

By 9 pm, they're scrolling Instagram, and a competitor's ad shows up.

By 11 am the next day, they bought something else or moved on.

By 2 pm the next day — when your cart abandon email finally lands — the purchase has already happened somewhere else.

Or it didn't happen at all.

You missed the moment.

Here's the fix.

The first cart abandon email should fire 30 minutes after the profile abandons their cart.

Not 24 hours.

Not 4 hours.

30 minutes.

At that point, they're still on their device.

Still in the same browser tab.

Still in the buying mood that brought them to checkout in the first place.

The email arrives like a tap on the shoulder.

"Hey, you forgot this."

They click.

They buy.

Then build the second and third emails after.

→ #1 Email, 30 minutes after abandon: short reminder

→ #2 Email, 3 hours later: bring back the buying motivation (objection handling, social proof, scarcity)

→ #3 Email, 6-24 hours later: last-chance pressure (limited stock, hard deadline)

That's the structure that works.

Your competitor's first 3 emails finish before your first email even fires.

The 24-hour delay isn't a strategy.

It's the default that came with your ESP template.

And it's costing you the sale every single time.

Send the first email fast.

And catch them while they're still in the buying mood.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

The first business I built with a friend, we erased each other's work. He'd build something, I'd undo it. I'd build something, he'd undo it. Neither of us realized we were doing it.

This was a few businesses ago.

Kratos Lifestyle — a fitness-band dropshipping store on Shopify.

I hesitate to call this a business; it was really just a website in the end. We got stuck on the whole ads thing.

Anyways, a friend from high school had bought a Shopify course while he was home from college for Christmas break.

He reached out the same week, asking if I wanted to build something together.

I said yes the same day.

For the better part of 2 weeks, we would FT for multiple hours while working on the store.

He designed it.

I watched dropshipping videos and worked on whatever assets he needed.

We were both 18 at the time.

We thought we'd be rich by January.

(Actually. This is how dumb we were.)

Then January came.

He went back to college.

I was now the one "running" ads and making decisions for a store with no traffic.

Except, what I didn't realize was that my friend didn't stop working on our store.

He'd open the Shopify backend between classes and tweak the homepage.

I'd open it the next morning and tweak it back without realizing he'd changed anything.

He'd update the product copy.

I'd rewrite it later that day without checking.

I'd swap out a hero image.

He'd swap it back without telling me.

Neither of us was trying to undermine the other.

We were just both working on the same thing without a system.

And every time one of us changed something, the other's work disappeared.

It went on for weeks before either of us said anything.

Then the arguments started.

"I just spent two hours on that homepage."

"I didn't know you were touching the homepage."

"Why would you rewrite the product page without telling me?"

"Why would you change the image I picked?"

By the time we were arguing about who owned what, the answer was: neither of us.

We'd both been erasing each other's work for a month.

A few weeks later, we both said the same thing.

"This isn't going anywhere."

And we walked away.

My takeaway here isn't that friends shouldn't go into business together.

It's that the skill needed for a partnership to work isn't chemistry.

It's coordination.

Most friendships don't have that built in.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

$5,000 spent. $5,000 earned. Roughly break-even on the day I decided to close the business. Then I made one decision that cost me another $4,000.

This was a few businesses ago.

The Book Elf — an Amazon used-book FBA business I ran starting at 19.

The inventory came from an unusual source.

My dad runs a mini-storage facility in town.

One of his renters had died and never paid.

The unit had to be cleaned out.

And lo and behold, it was a 12x12 packed full of books.

Not too long ago, I'd seen a YouTube video about selling used books on Amazon.

Now I had a free supply.

I figured I'd give it a shot.

For months, I'd haul boxes home from the storage unit.

Scan each book with an Amazon scanner app.

Sort the ones worth money from the ones that weren't.

Clean them up.

Print labels.

Package them in boxes.

Ship them to Amazon for fulfillment.

Some weeks I made $50.

Some weeks I made $350.

After about 6 months, the books in the original unit ran out.

I sourced more from a couple of other units my dad had to clear, then started buying lots from bookstores when those dried up.

Then the library, when they were offering up their old books in exchange for a donation.

Eventually, there was no more free supply, and the margins on bought books were too thin to scale.

I let the account run on existing inventory for almost another year.

Sales kept coming in, but much slower.

Amazon's monthly fees kept running.

Eventually, the fees crossed over what I was earning every month.

That's when I decided to shut it down.

When you shut down an FBA account, Amazon gives you two options.

Dispose of the remaining inventory.

Or ship it back to you.

I chose to ship it back.

The reason I gave myself: "I already spent the time and money to get them there."

But here's the catch, or the fine print I didn't read.

Amazon was going to charge me to ship my books back — I wouldn't have chosen this option if I knew that.

Amazon charged me a little under $4,000 in return shipping.

I received a pile of books I had no use for and no way to sell.

A business that had been break-even on the day I decided to close was now $4,000 in the hole.

Here's what I should have asked myself in that moment.

What is this inventory worth to me — sitting in this house — right now?

The answer was zero.

Paying $4,000 to receive something worth nothing to me is one of the dumbest decisions I've made in business.

The expensive decisions rarely get made when the business is going well.

They get made at the end.

When you're emotionally done.

When the only thing still anchored to the business is the time and money you've already spent.

That's exactly when you should be asking yourself: what is this thing worth to me right now?

Not what it cost to get here.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

A friend told me she values the service at a restaurant more than the food. I thought she was crazy. Then I realized that's the exact retention problem most brands have.

Her logic was simple.

The food matters once.

The service is what she remembers.

She'll go back to a mediocre restaurant with great service before she'll go back to a great restaurant with mediocre service.

I thought about it for a week.

Then it clicked.

This is exactly what retention is.

The product is the food.

Everything around the product is the service.

And most brands obsess over the food while ignoring the service.

Think about what a great restaurant does.
→ The waiter refills your drink before you ask
→ The host remembers your name
→ Someone slides a free mint onto the table on the way out
→ The kitchen sends out an extra appetizer when they hear it's a birthday
→ The whole staff makes you laugh at least once

None of that is the food.

All of it is why you come back.

Now translate that to e-commerce.
→ Reply to every review within 24 hours — positive or negative
→ Answer support tickets in minutes, not days
→ Slip a handwritten thank-you note in the first order
→ Add a free gift the customer didn't pay for → Send a follow-up text 5 days after delivery — "how's the [product] working out?"
→ Make the packaging feel like a gift, not a shipping container
→ Include setup instructions written in your founder's voice, not a tech manual
→ Ship fast — every day saved is a service signal

Same principles.

Different industry.

The brands compounding LTV aren't competing on product alone.

They're competing on the experience around the product.

There's a book called Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara.

He tells a story about overhearing two guests at Eleven Madison Park say they hadn't eaten a New York hot dog the whole trip.

So he sent a runner to a hot dog cart on the corner.

Brought one back.

Plated it between the tasting menu courses.

That hot dog cost a couple of dollars.

It earned them a story they'll tell for the rest of their lives.

That's retention.

Email is one piece of the service.

If your retention strategy starts and ends with the inbox, you're delivering a slice.

Your customer is buying the whole thing.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

20 hours on YouTube. 4 hours on Reddit. 6 hours reading reviews. 80+ pages of notes. That's what it used to take before I'd open Klaviyo.

2 years ago.

Now Claude does most of it for me.

Here's what changed.

I used to spend the better part of a work week on customer research before touching a client account.

YouTube founder interviews.

Reddit threads.

Amazon reviews — the 3-star ones specifically, because that's where the almost-killed-the-purchase signals live.

Instagram comments.

Industry articles.

80+ pages of typed notes.

Then I'd write the welcome flow.

That whole process is condensed now.

I built a "Brain Dump" workflow with Claude — feed it the brand, the category, the platforms to mine, and it scrapes and summarizes everything.

Reviews.

Founder voice.

Customer pain in their own language.

Common objections.

The whole customer mental model in a fraction of the time.

But here's where most agencies will get this wrong.

Claude is for breadth.

You are still responsible for depth.

You can't read the Brain Dump output and skip to building the welcome flow.

You have to read some of the reviews yourself.

You have to watch a few of the YouTube videos yourself.

You have to scroll the subreddit yourself for 20 minutes.

Because Claude can tell you the patterns.

But it can't put the customer voice in your head.

And without the customer voice in your head, you'll write copy that's technically accurate and emotionally dead.

Even if Claude writes the majority of your copy, you still need to make the final edits.

The "skip-the-research version" of this trap is the agency that opens Klaviyo on Day 1 and starts building.

The "skip-the-context version" is the agency that runs the Brain Dump, reads the summary, and starts building.

Same outcome.

Templated copy.

The discipline is the same as it always was — know your customer before you write to them.

The tool changed.

The job didn't.

If your retention agency built your welcome flow in week one, ask them how much time they personally spent in your customer's world.

Not how much research they ran.

How much they actually saw.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

Saved a client $1,200/month last quarter. Not on flows. Not on copy. On their Klaviyo bill. Their previous agency hadn't looked at it in 18 months.

Here's the mechanic.

Klaviyo's pricing tiers are based on active profile count.

15,000 profiles is one price. 25,000 is another. 50,000 is another.

The day your list crosses a threshold, Klaviyo auto-upgrades your plan.

You don't have to approve it.

You don't have to acknowledge it.

The next invoice just charges you more.

That part most agencies know.

Here's what they miss.

Klaviyo doesn't auto-DOWNgrade.

If you clean your list — suppress unengaged, bounced, marked spam — and drop back below the tier threshold, your plan stays at the higher tier.

You have to downgrade manually.

Most brands don't know that.

Most agencies don't tell them.

So the bill keeps climbing — even when the actual list size doesn't justify it.

Here's the fix.

Audit your Klaviyo bill every quarter.
1. Go to "Billing," check the plan vs your active profile count.
2. If your active profiles are below the next tier down, select a lower tier.
3. Repeat every 3 months.

This audit takes less than a minute.

It's worth four figures a month if you're a few thousand profiles past a tier line.

Your retention agency should be doing this for you.

If they aren't, ask them why.

You're partnering with them to act in your best interest; Klaviyo billing is part of that.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

A $15 book sale made my first dollar online. I was 19. Kneeling on dusty concrete in a 12x12 storage unit, surrounded by a dead guy's books.

This was a few businesses ago.

The Book Elf — an Amazon used-book FBA business I'd just gotten started on.

My dad runs a mini-storage facility in town.

One of his renters had died and never paid.

The unit had to be cleaned out; it was packed wall to wall and filled to the ceiling with boxes of books.

A few weeks back, I'd seen a YouTube video about selling used books on Amazon.

And when my dad asked if I wanted to deal with the unit, I immediately said yes, for one specific reason.

✨ FREE INVENTORY. ✨

The next couple of months, I'd be going to the storage facility to sort through a mountain of books.

Scanning each one with the Amazon scanner app.

Sorting the money piles from the no-money piles.

Taking them home.

Cleaning them up.

Printing labels.

Packing them in boxes.

Driving them to Canada Post.

And shipping them off to Amazon.

After about 4 weeks, I hadn't sold a single one yet.

Some weeks I'd think: this is going to work.

Other weeks, I'd think: I'm just moving a dead guy's books from one location to another.

Then one afternoon — sitting in the storage unit, scanning the next box, dust in the air — my phone pinged.

A notification from the Amazon app.

$15 sale.

A title I recognized because I'd packed it a week earlier.

I stared at it.

Someone, somewhere, had logged into Amazon and bought a used book.

Not from a store.

Not from a publisher.

Not from an established seller.

From me.

A 19-year-old kid kneeling in a storage unit.

That was the day my dream of making money online stopped being a dream.

At this point, I had watched dozens of YouTube videos over the last year, claiming you can make money online.

Dropshipping.

Affiliate marketing.

Print on demand.

Amazon FBA.

All of them sounded real, but none of them felt real.

Those $15 made it real.

It wasn't a lot of money.

But it was just enough to prove the system worked.

Every business owner I've ever met remembers their first dollar online.

The number doesn't matter.

The medium doesn't matter.

The setting doesn't matter.

What matters is the moment the abstract becomes tangible.

And earning those $15 was one of the best feelings I have ever felt.

SIDE NOTE: I originally wanted to call my Amazon store "The Book Shelf," but someone already took that name.

So I just removed the "S" and went with "The Book Elf."

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

$800 deep clean. Family moving in the next day. They arrived and said the house hadn't been cleaned. The cleaner swore he had.

This was a few businesses ago.

A remote house-cleaning service I ran for about a year while I was working a full-time job.

I was 21 at the time.

The model was simple. I'd run ads, take the inbound calls, book jobs, then schedule contractors I'd recruited off Indeed to do the work.

I took 50%.

The contractor took 50%.

That was the business.

This particular job came through the Google local service ad I was running.

Family just bought a new house, called looking for a deep clean before they moved in.
$800 job.

I booked it and sent in one of my cleaners.

He told me afterwards he'd cleaned the place top to bottom.

Even checked off everything on the checklist in the scheduling app.

The job was done, or so I was told.

The next day the family arrived and called me immediately.

The house was filthy.

Either nothing had been done, or he cleaned the wrong house.

(Like that was even possible.)

I called my cleaner.

He insisted he'd been there for hours.

But there was no way I could prove this because I never made him take any pictures.

The client wanted their money back.

But I had already paid my cleaner for work he INSISTED he did.

So what did I do?

I refunded the family anyway.

Without clawing back what I'd paid my cleaner.

And just like that, an $800 job turned into a $400 out-of-pocket loss.

That was the day I learned:

In a service business with someone else doing the work, you're not selling the work.

You're selling the promise that the work happened.

And without proof — photos, timestamps, anything that turns "he said, they said" into evidence — you're not running a business.

You're just gambling.

Every week, betting that nobody's stories contradict each other.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

Your subscriber got the welcome code on Day 1. Then they entered Browse Abandon. The reminder for their code? Still in your welcome flow. Never going to fire. Sale lost.

Here's the architecture problem.

Once a subscriber starts engaging — browsing your site, adding to cart, starting checkout — they exit the welcome flow.

Every email still queued in welcome, including the discount reminders, stops firing for them.

The code they got on Day 1 is still active.

But you stopped reminding them about it.

The subscriber forgets.

The code expires.

The sale dies on the table.

Here's the fix.

Pull the discount reminders out of the welcome flow.

Build a separate "Welcome Code Reminder" flow.
→ Trigger: When someone is added to newsletter
→ Filter: Placed order zero times since starting this flow
→ Send: 2-3 short text-based emails ("3 days left," "Code expires tomorrow," "Last call")

This flow fires INDEPENDENTLY of whatever other flow the subscriber is in.

Browse Abandon? Still gets the reminder.

Cart Abandon? Still gets it.

Every subscriber gets the chance to use their coupon before it expires.

And makes a conscious choice — buy or let the offer pass.

A subscriber who exits your welcome flow after browsing or adding to cart is the highest-conviction prospect you have.

Don't let them lose the code that brought them in.

Build the separate flow.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

Just wanted to give a shoutout to my CRM, Clarify.

On May 21st, their servers went down for about 90 minutes, and just before that, I was actively updating my CRM.

When their servers came back online, I found out that all the work I had been doing for the past hour had been erased.

And of course, I was pretty frustrated by this, being a paying customer.

So when they reached out a few days later to explain what happened, I asked for a free month for the inconvenience — not at all expecting them to give it to me.

In my head, I was like, "You don't get what you don't ask for."

So I asked.

And 24 hours later, they said they would give me a free month for the inconvenience.

This is great customer service and a great way to retain your customers.

So thank you, Clarify, for the free month.

I'm happy to continue using you as my go-to CRM.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

Free shipping at $50. Average order at $48. You're not driving AOV — you're confirming it. The threshold is supposed to push the customer past their default spend. Yours doesn't.

Here's the math.

Your AOV is $48.

Your free shipping threshold is $50.

The customer hits $48, sees "$2 away from free shipping," adds the cheapest thing in their cart to get there.

They land at $52.

Lift: $4.

Now move the threshold to $65.

The customer hits $48 and sees "$17 away from free shipping."

Now they have a real decision.
→ Bail (you lose the customer)
→ Pay shipping (no AOV lift, but you don't pay for shipping)
→ Add a complementary product to qualify (real lift — $17+ added to the order)

The third outcome is what you want.

And most customers will choose it — they'll add items to qualify for free shipping rather than pay for it.

It's a simple lever to drive a higher AOV, so set your free shipping threshold above your AOV, not at it.

Now, the second move most brands miss.

Once you've set the threshold, build the cart abandonment flow around it.

→ Split path A: cart BELOW threshold. Send: "You're dollars away from free shipping. Add [recommended low-AOV product]."

→ Split path B: cart AT or ABOVE threshold. Send: "Your order qualifies for free shipping."

Different messages.

Different motivations.

Both come out of the same flow.

The free shipping threshold isn't just a checkbox in your shipping settings.

It's an asset.

Set it above your AOV.

Build the flow around it.

And you’ll make more money.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

Most win-back flows trigger the unsubscribe. "We miss you." "It's been a while." Those subject lines remind the subscriber they don't care anymore. You might as well be telling them to unsubscribe.

Here's the psychology.

The subscriber sees "We miss you" in their inbox.

Their first thought: "I don't miss you."

Their second thought: "Why am I still on this list?"

And… unsubscribe.

You wrote the email that ended the relationship.

The standard win-back flow goes:
→ "Hey, it's been a while."
→ "We'd love to have you back. Here's 20% off."
→ "Last chance — your discount expires tomorrow."

Every subject line forces the subscriber to question, "why am I getting these emails?"

The 20% off in email 2 isn't enough to overcome that.

It's the email equivalent of "please don't leave me."

Here's what an actual win-back looks like.

The subject lines don't draw attention to the lack of interest or engagement from the subscriber.

Not once.

Not in the subject.

Not in the body.

Not in the P.S.

Instead, you send compelling content as if nothing happened.
→ "Our new [product] just dropped"
→ "Behind the scenes of [a thing the brand made]"
→ "[Founder's name] has a story for you"
→ "Exclusive access for the community"

The goal isn't to remind them they used to engage.

The goal is to give them a reason to engage now.

Re-engagement is about restarting the relationship.

Not begging them to pay attention to you.

Stop telling lapsed subscribers how much you miss them.

Start giving them a reason to open the next email.

[Reyd Cronkwright | Email + SMS Marketer For E-Com @ReydCronkwright]

60%+ open rate. The highest in your funnel. Comes from [email protected]. Looks like phishing. Most brands haven't fixed it.

The customer just paid you $150.

They open the email expecting their receipt.

They see "https://t.co/eKztUtV27O" as the sender.

Their first thought is, "is this real?"

That doubt isn't free.

The order confirmation is the most-opened email in your customer journey.

It hits open rates of 60-70% — double what your campaigns ever pull.

And most brands let it look like a third-party generic receipt.

Fix it in 10 minutes.
→ Shopify Settings
→ Notifications
→ Sender Email
→ Add your own domain ([email protected])
→ Shopify gives you 4 CNAME records to add to your DNS
→ Click Authenticate and wait

Then go one step further.

Open every transactional template — order confirmation, shipping confirmation, delivery notification, refund — and brand them as much as Shopify lets you.

Transactional emails are crucial to your retention efforts.

The customer just spent money.

They trust you enough to give you a credit card.

Don't waste the next two emails making them wonder if you're a phishing scam.

Make every transactional email feel like a brand email.

Because that's what it is.