Blog
Notes from people who send this stuff for a living.
No growth hacks and no “10 subject lines that convert”. What mailbox providers, messaging platforms and regulators actually require, what it costs, and what we changed after finding out.
Leaving Klaviyo: what actually moves, what has to be rebuilt, and what you lose
Profiles, consent, suppressions, lists, segments and events come across through the API. Flows do not, and neither does your sending reputation. The honest inventory, endpoint by endpoint.
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Leaving Klaviyo: what actually moves, what has to be rebuilt, and what you lose
Profiles, consent, suppressions, lists, segments and events come across through the API. Flows do not, and neither does your sending reputation. The honest inventory, endpoint by endpoint. Read it →
Ecommerce SEO: the four things that compound, and the rest that does not
Product data, structured markup, one canonical page per product and copy a person would actually read. Everything else is a rounding error on a catalogue of a thousand items. Read it →
Gmail clips your email at about 102 kB. Here is what it costs you.
The unsubscribe link, the tracking pixel and half your products end up behind a “View entire message” link. The fix is boring and takes ten minutes. Read it →
An email opt-in is not an SMS opt-in, and it is definitely not a WhatsApp opt-in
Four channels, four legal bases, one checkout form. What you can reuse, what you have to ask for again, and what auditors look at first. Read it →
The bulk sender rules are not new any more. Most shops still fail one of them.
SPF, DKIM, DMARC, one-click unsubscribe and a complaint rate under 0.3 %. A checklist you can finish this afternoon, and the one item that quietly breaks later. Read it →
The abandoned cart flow that does not sound desperate
Three messages, one discount at most, and a condition that checks whether they already bought. Plus the legal detail most shops get wrong about cart reminders. Read it →
The open rate has been broken since 2021. Here is what to report instead.
Apple's Mail Privacy Protection pre-loads your tracking pixel whether or not anyone read the message. Four metrics that survived, and one that got more important. Read it →
WhatsApp now charges per message, not per conversation. Budget accordingly.
The 24-hour conversation window stopped being the billing unit in July 2025. What changed, what is still free, and when a WhatsApp campaign beats an email. Read it →
AI product images: generate the scene, never the product
Generated backgrounds are fine and legal. Generated labels, generated fabric and generated features are a returns problem and, since August 2026, a disclosure problem. Read it →
Segments that survive contact with a real catalogue
Six definitions that still work when the shop has 1,200 products, half of them seasonal, and someone renames a category on a Tuesday. Read it →
Your customer list is still the best ad audience. It is just harder to upload now.
Consent Mode v2, hashed matching and server-side events, explained for people who have to run the campaign rather than argue about it. Read it →
Never send marketing and receipts from the same subdomain
One bad campaign should not stop order confirmations from arriving. Separating the two takes an afternoon and is the cheapest insurance in email. Read it →
The welcome series is the only flow that pays for itself in week one
Three emails to people who have just decided they are interested in you. What goes in each, why the first one should not sell, and the two mistakes that waste the best audience you will ever have. Read it →
Browse abandonment is not cart abandonment, and sending the same email costs you both
A cart is an interrupted decision; a browse is an open question. The email that recovers one reads as surveillance when you send it for the other. Timing, wording and the threshold worth having. Read it →
The second order is the one that matters. A post-purchase flow that earns it.
Most shops say nothing for a fortnight after an order, then ask for a review on day two. What to send between delivery and the second purchase, and why the timing comes from your own data. Read it →
Win-back flows: what to send at 90 days, 180 days and never
A lapsed customer is not a prospect. Three tiers by how long they have been gone, why the discount belongs last rather than first, and the point at which stopping beats escalating. Read it →
Replenishment reminders: the right day is already in your order table
If you sell anything that runs out, the best automation you own is a reminder timed to when it runs out. How to compute the interval per product from real repeat orders, and what to do when it is bimodal. Read it →
RFM segmentation for ecommerce: how to build it without a spreadsheet
RFM needs three fields you already have. How to score customers, why four groups beat 125 cells, and the message each group should get — without exporting anything to a spreadsheet. Read it →
Sending from a new domain: how to get the first thousand emails delivered
A new sending domain has no reputation, and mailbox providers treat that closer to bad than good. Authentication, the first audience, volume ramp, and the three signals that decide the next hundred thousand. Read it →
Double opt-in in the EU: when it is required and how to implement it
The GDPR never says "double opt-in", but several national regulators effectively require it. Where it is expected, where single opt-in holds up, and how to build a record that survives a complaint. Read it →
SMS marketing in Europe: what it costs and how to launch it properly
Sender IDs are registered per country, opt-out handling is mandatory, and the price per message varies more than tenfold across the EU. The practical checklist before your first campaign. Read it →
Product photography for AI: how to shoot images a model can work from
The source photo decides almost everything about a generated lifestyle image. What to shoot, how to light it, and the four mistakes that make a product impossible to place convincingly. Read it →
Revenue per recipient: how to calculate it and why it beats open rate
One number that compares a campaign to a flow to a channel. What to include, what to exclude, the attribution window it depends on, and the two variants worth reporting beside it. Read it →
Customer match after consent mode: how to keep uploading audiences lawfully
Your customer list is still the strongest ad audience you own. What consent mode changed, why hashing is not anonymisation, and how to keep uploads lawful without shrinking the audience to nothing. Read it →
Lost webhooks: how to catch the drift with a nightly reconcile
WordPress will drop a hook eventually, and nothing errors when it does. Why webhooks alone are never enough, how to build a nightly checksum reconcile, and the three bugs that make it lie to you. Read it →
Migrate from Mailchimp: what it takes and how to do it
Contacts and tags export cleanly; consent history, automations and sending reputation do not. What actually moves, what has to be rebuilt, the order to do it in, and how to avoid a deliverability cliff. Read it →
Product page SEO: how to earn a second visit from search
Most product pages are a photo, a price and the manufacturer's paragraph — the same page a hundred other shops have. What to add so it is worth ranking, in the order that pays back. Read it →
Engagement gating: how to set it up and why it belongs at send time
Filtering dormant addresses is the cheapest deliverability work available. Why the gate has to run at send time rather than at list build, what window to use, and how to exempt transactional mail correctly. Read it →
SPF, DKIM and DMARC: how to set all three up and what each one stops
Three DNS records explained by what breaks without each one. The ten-lookup limit that silently kills SPF, why DKIM needs a selector per service, and how to move DMARC to reject without losing mail. Read it →
Data processing agreements: what has to be in one and how to get it signed
Article 28 requires a contract with specific contents before a supplier touches customer data. What must be in it, which of your tools need one, and the three clauses worth actually reading. Read it →
The WhatsApp 24-hour window: how it works and how to plan around it
One clock, started by the customer, decides whether you may write freely or must use a pre-approved template. How the window works, what template approval involves, and how pricing follows from both. Read it →
One photo into six formats: how to write a brief that holds
Six surfaces, six framing problems, one source photo. How to write a format brief that produces all of them consistently — and the safe areas that decide whether the crop survives. Read it →
Attribution windows: how to choose one and stick to it
Seven days or thirty, click or view, last touch or first. Every answer is defensible; changing answers mid-year is not. How to pick a window, write it down, and read platform numbers against it. Read it →
Product feeds for Google and Meta: how to keep price and stock honest
A feed is a continuous promise that a product exists at that price and can be bought today. How often to refresh, which fields decide whether you rank, and the mismatches that get an account suspended. Read it →
Idempotency for shop integrations: how to build it and why it is the whole contract
Any system that retries will deliver the same event twice. How to choose an idempotency key, why a duplicate must answer success rather than 500, and the three places double-counting actually shows up. Read it →
Move your sending domain: how to migrate without losing reputation
Reputation attaches to the domain and the IP, and neither transfers. Why to change one thing at a time, how to split traffic during the move, and the DNS record that must be removed afterwards. Read it →
Product structured data: how to implement it so it matches the page
Markup tells search engines what a page means. Which properties matter, why price and availability must match the visible page, and the review markup that earns a manual action. Read it →
Segment size and revenue: how to find the smaller list that earns more
The instinct before a big campaign is to widen the audience. How to test the opposite on your own data, why revenue per recipient falls as the list grows, and where the real ceiling sits. Read it →
Spam traps: how they get onto a clean list and how to get them off
A spam trap is an address that could not possibly have consented. The three kinds, how each arrives on an otherwise clean list, and why deleting them is not how you fix the problem. Read it →
One-click unsubscribe: how to implement RFC 8058 and stay compliant
Two headers and an endpoint, required by Google and Yahoo for bulk senders. What to send, what the endpoint must do, the two-day rule, and why the footer link still has to exist. Read it →
Viber or WhatsApp: how to choose for a European shop
The answer is mostly geography and partly pricing. How to find out which app your customers actually use, what each costs, and why running both is usually worse than running one well. Read it →
Email subject lines: how to write ones that survive the preview pane
A subject is read in about forty characters beside a preheader you probably did not write. What survives the preview pane, how to use the preheader properly, and why most A/B tests prove nothing. Read it →
Holdout groups: how to run one and what it will tell you
Attribution tells you which message a buyer saw last; a holdout tells you whether it changed anything. How to size one, where to run it permanently, and how to read a result that comes back at zero. Read it →
Retargeting with a shrinking pool: how to keep it working
Consent banners and browser restrictions have cut retargetable audiences to a fraction of site traffic. What still works, why first-party segments outperform pixel pools, and when to stop spending on it. Read it →
Storing prices with tax and currency: how to get totals right for every shop
A number in a price column means nothing alone. Why currency, tax inclusion, rate and shipping must each be stored, and the four calculations that go wrong when any of them is assumed. Read it →
Rebuilding flows after a migration: how to recreate what will not export
Automations have no useful export format. What to document before you lose access, the order to rebuild in, and why exit conditions matter more than the copy you are worried about. Read it →
Faceted navigation and crawl budget: how to stop wasting it
Three filters with four values each produce more URLs than most shops have products. How to decide which facets deserve indexing, and the four controls that stop the rest eating your crawl budget. Read it →
Lookalike audiences: how to pick a seed that actually works
The platform's model is rarely the problem; the seed is. How to choose one, why a smaller high-value seed beats your whole customer list, and how often to refresh it. Read it →
Domain warm-up: how to ramp sending volume week by week
A concrete four-week ramp, what to check before each increase, and the hold rule that matters more than the schedule itself. Plus why consistency beats volume for a new sender. Read it →
Proof of consent: how to record it so it holds up with a regulator
Article 7 puts the burden on you to demonstrate consent was given. What a defensible record contains, how to version the wording, how long to keep it, and what to do about consents you inherited. Read it →
Push notifications for ecommerce: when to use them and how to write them
Web push is cheap, instant, and the fastest permission to lose for ever. What it is actually good for, how to ask for the permission, and the frequency that quietly destroys the channel. Read it →
Alt text for email and ecommerce: how to write it and why it is read first
Many inboxes block images by default, making alt text the first thing read. How to write it for products, decorative images and image-only emails, and the mistakes that make it useless. Read it →
Ecommerce analytics: how to count people instead of clicks
A visitor who refreshes ten times is one visitor. Why session-based metrics mislead, the four numbers worth reporting, and how to handle the traffic that consent rules make invisible. Read it →
Conversions API: what it fixes, what it does not, and how to set it up
Server-side events recover measurement that ad blockers and browser limits removed. What they genuinely fix, why deduplication matters, and why this is not a route around a visitor's refusal. Read it →
Sync lag: how to find out your data is an hour behind, and fix it
Stale data does not announce itself — everything renders and every number looks plausible. How to measure real end-to-end lag, the three causes worth checking first, and what to put on screen. Read it →
Running two marketing tools at once: how to plan the overlap
The fortnight where both platforms are live is cheap insurance and an easy way to send everything twice. What to switch when, the three rules that prevent duplicates, and how to compare fairly. Read it →
Category page SEO: how to make them the pages that rank
People search for the category and buy from the product. Why category pages carry the ranking, what copy belongs on them, and how to handle pagination, sorting and thin categories. Read it →
Profile merging across devices: how identity resolution actually works
A phone and a laptop are two records until something connects them. What the identifiers are, what should happen at the moment of a merge, and why creating the profile early is the whole point. Read it →
Bounce handling: how to tell a soft bounce that should be treated as hard
A hard bounce is permanent and a soft bounce is temporary — until you meet the ones that repeat for ever. How to classify by code and by repetition, and the retry schedule that stops the damage. Read it →
Data retention for ecommerce: how long to keep customer data and how to delete it
There is no single retention period, because different data has different clocks. How to set one per category, why deletion means anonymisation for orders, and what a deletion request actually requires. Read it →
Choosing a channel per message: a framework that holds up
Email, SMS, WhatsApp and push have different costs, permissions and tolerances for interruption. Three questions that decide where a message belongs, and a table of the common cases. Read it →
AI product images: when to use them and when not to
Generating a background is ordinary image editing at scale. Generating the product, or a claim about it, is not. Where the line sits, what EU rules require, and the four checks before publishing. Read it →
Reconciling ad platform numbers: why they never match and what to trust
Meta says 340, Google says 210, your shop recorded 402 orders total. Five structural reasons they disagree, which number to plan with, and the ratio worth tracking instead. Read it →
Splitting ad budget without reliable attribution: how to decide
Attribution got worse and is not coming back. How to allocate budget using holdouts, marginal tests and a stable baseline rather than waiting for a number you will never have. Read it →
Time zones in reporting: how to stop them breaking one report a quarter
A day is not a fixed thing. Where to store times, where to convert them, why scheduled sends need the shop's clock, and the daylight-saving cases that break a report twice a year. Read it →
After a migration: what to check on day one
Most migration problems that become expensive were visible on day one. A checklist in priority order, the two numbers to watch for a fortnight, and what to keep before cancelling anything. Read it →
Ecommerce blog strategy: which posts to write and which to skip
Most shop blogs are company news and seasonal filler. The four kinds of post that earn traffic which converts, the three that never do, and how to link them to the products. Read it →
Back-in-stock alerts: how to build the flow and what it is worth
A back-in-stock request is the clearest purchase intent a shop ever receives. How to capture it, how fast the alert has to be, how to handle variants and thin restocks, how to write it, and the demand signal it hands your buyer. Read it →
Review requests: how to ask so people actually answer
Reviews are the cheapest high-converting content a shop can produce. When to ask, why one specific question beats a star widget, what to do with bad reviews, what EU law now requires, and how to get the value back out. Read it →
VIP customers: how to identify them and what to actually do for them
Most shops define VIPs by lifetime spend and reward them with the discount everyone gets. How to define the group so it stays current, why recognition outperforms discounting, the entry message, and how to handle people falling out. Read it →Nothing in this category yet — pick another one.
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