How we went from 0-10k email subscribers in 8 weeks with no ad spend

(and how you can do it too)

We had a client in the art niche who had an old email list from a previous brand they were running 3 years ago.

They had a couple of inventory problems and had to close the store down.

And now they wanted to launch a new brand within the same niche and wanted our consultation.

They had this list of over 67k email subscribers from the previous brand.

They wanted to use it to make them re-subscribe into their new brand email list and start making money right away without any ad spend.

They came to me thinking that they just could upload that list into Klaviyo and start sending right away.

This couldn’t be further from the truth.

Platforms like Klaviyo, MailChimp, and the other well-known ESP’s are not good platforms for this kind of strategy.

First off, they were likely to get banned from their platform super quickly. (The subs on their old list opted in to the old brand email list and not the new one so they didn’t have any consent to start sending promotional emails to their inboxes)

Second, even if we could somehow bypass it , we’d be paying an arm and a leg for their service if we’re doing this at scale.

Also, we could ruin the sending reputation, deliverability and burn their domain. We couldn’t give a normal treatment to this re-engagement strategy...

What we did do instead? We started using COLD EMAILS... Cold email when done right can be one of the most effective acquisition channels.

How did we do it? We cold emailed every subscriber asking to join our newsletter in exchange for a discount, access to a giveaway, or an early bird ambassador program with huge incentives.

We didn’t include any links in our cold emails we were just asking for a “YES” or a “NO”

Once they replied “YES” one of our VAs would reply to the email with the actual link to join the newsletter

We did that to not impair the deliverability of the domains we were using.

Here’s what we did after:

1. Setting Up The Basics

  • Buy 5 Google Domains

  • Forward to the main domain

  • Authenticate each domain

  • Set up DNS record, SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records on each domain

  • Set up SendGrid SMTP servers

2. Set-up Continued

  • Get a Mail shake Account For 5 sending domains

  • Get A Lemlist account for the 5 sending domains or Gwarm (free option)

  • Set up Mail shake tracking custom domain

  • Start Warm-Up

3. Meanwhile…

  • Write the main script (PERSONALIZATION is KEY)

  • Clean the CSV file -

  • Look for key properties (product bought, date, location, etc)

  • Come up with 20 subject lines to test

  • Come up with 3 different offers to test

  • Write 2 follow-ups

4. Cross- Checking

Make sure the scripts land on the primary tab (use mail genius)

  • Build 3 embedded forms on Klaviyo for the 3 different offers

  • Create KPI's tracking spreadsheet

  • Get a VA ready to start replying to emails

5. Testing Phase

After warming up the 5 domains for 2 weeks, start the testing phase by taking a 7k batch of leads in which we'll test:

  • Subject lines: we'll test 20 different subject lines, 1 every 200 leads until we get a subject line that gives us a 40%+ open rate.

  • Offers: we'll test 3 offers, 1 every 1000 leads.

This is the sending schedule:

  • 1st week send 20 emails/day per domain ( 100 emails per day, 700 per week)

  • 2nd week send 40 emails/day per domain ( 200 emails per day, 1400 per week )

  • 3rd week send 80 emails/day per domain ( 400 emails per day, 2800 per week)

  • 4th week send 120 emails/day per domain( 840 emails per day, 5880 per week)

  • By the end of week 4, you’d already know what is working and what's not, and are ready to scale!

Scaling Time!

After having the ideal subject line and script and offer, we'll start scaling the frequency in which we send emails, maxing out at 480 emails/day per domain.

Scaling schedule:

  • 5th week send 240 emails/day per domain ( 1200 emails per day, 8400 per week)

  • 6th week send 480 emails/day per domain ( 2400 emails per day, 16000 per week)

  • 7th week send 480 emails/day per domain ( 2400 emails per day, 16000 per week)

  • 8th week send 480 emails/day per domain ( 2400 emails per day, 16000 per week)

  • By the end of week 8, we hit the whole list of 67k subs, converted 10k into subscribers and we were ready to start sending some follow-up emails…