The Email + SMS Stack That Generates 60% of Our Revenue
If someone told us two years ago that email and SMS would account for more than half our revenue, we'd have said that sounds optimistic. Now we'd say it sounds conservative. These two channels — done right — are the most reliable revenue levers in ecommerce. Most stores are running them at a fraction of their potential.
Why we use Klaviyo for email
Klaviyo isn't an email marketing tool. It's a customer data platform with email built on top — and that distinction matters more than it sounds. Klaviyo knows who bought what, who browsed a product three times without buying, who hasn't ordered in 90 days, and who's spending 4x the average. You build flows that trigger on behavior, not just on being on a list.
We're running eight active flows right now: welcome series, abandoned cart (with a two-step sequence), post-purchase, cross-sell, win-back, and a browse abandonment flow. Each one runs automatically. Combined, they generate revenue around the clock — while we're sleeping, while we're at the dentist, while we're doing literally anything else.
The difference between Klaviyo and a basic ESP isn't features — it's the model underneath. When your email platform understands purchase data, you stop guessing who to send what. You just set it up once and let it work.
Why we use Postscript for SMS
Postscript does for SMS what Klaviyo does for email. But the channel itself is fundamentally different — and that changes how you use it.
SMS has open rates above 95%. Most messages are read within three minutes of delivery. That sounds incredible until you realize it also means you can't spam people. One too many irrelevant texts and they unsubscribe for good. Postscript's approach is compliance-first: double opt-in, clear expectations, and real segmentation so you're only texting people who want to hear about a specific thing at a specific time.
Our SMS subscribers convert at nearly double the rate of email for time-sensitive campaigns — flash sales, back-in-stock alerts, limited drops. The channel is direct in a way that email can't match. When something is happening right now, SMS is how you tell people.
How they work together
The mistake brands make is treating email and SMS as competitors. They're not — they're a sequence. Email does the storytelling: product launches, brand narrative, longer educational content, relationship building over time. SMS is the closer: the flash sale that ends in six hours, the back-in-stock alert on the item they looked at twice, the cart nudge when timing is right.
We schedule them to complement each other. If someone opens an email about a sale, they don't get the SMS version too. If they don't open the email after 24 hours, the SMS goes out. That coordination is what makes 60% attribution possible — neither channel is burning out its audience by working alone.
The actual numbers
Email accounts for roughly 45% of our attributed revenue. SMS is another 15–20%. Combined, they run us around $300/month at our current list size — which is covered by the first few hundred dollars of flow revenue every month. If you're not running both, and running them together, you're leaving a material amount of money behind.
