TLDR
- Who: Yawns, a sleep and wellbeing supplement brand launching into a competitive wellness niche.
- What changed: NUOPTIMA built the full email program from scratch: list acquisition forms, 9 automated flows, and a Black Friday campaign strategy that turned a new subscriber base into buyers.
- The number: 260% increase in email revenue over Black Friday.
About Yawns and the challenge
Yawns makes sleep and recovery supplements from real organic ingredients. The brand believes that sleep is the single biggest lever for human performance, and its product range is built around that conviction.
NUOPTIMA came in at launch, before Yawns had a list, any automated flows, or a track record. The brief was to build a scalable email channel from zero and have it performing by Black Friday, the highest-revenue window in DTC. That meant solving two problems in sequence: grow a qualified subscriber base fast, then convert it before a hard deadline.
Who we were targeting
As a launch-stage DTC supplement brand, Yawns had no existing customer base to draw on, so the email program was built around capturing shoppers at different points of intent and moving them through a product line built for daily use.
- Wellness-focused DTC shoppers new to the brand, captured through three simultaneous signup methods (a discount-led form, a product recommendation quiz, and an exit-intent pop-up) to catch interest at different stages of the browsing journey.
- Customers segmented by need through the product quiz, then split further by which of Yawns' day or night supplements they had bought, so cross-sell offers targeted the specific complementary product they were missing.
- Existing customers likely to become repeat buyers given a supplement's need for consistent daily use, targeted with replenishment flows and a bundle or subscribe-and-save path to protect lifetime value.
What we did
List acquisition: three capture points across the shopper journey
To capture intent at every stage, we deployed three signup methods simultaneously:
- Two-step signup form with a 10% welcome discount, plus an SMS opt-in step for additional savings
- Product recommendation quiz to segment shoppers by need before they reach the cart
- Exit-intent pop-up for visitors about to leave without converting
The two-step form drove both email and SMS subscribers. Shoppers who submitted a phone number received a coordinated mix of email and SMS messages over a two-week period. That channel mix produced a 5% conversion rate on SMS, solid for a supplement brand with no prior SMS history. List growth ran at 112% month on month from launch.
Sign up Form Gallery
9 automated email flows
We built 9 flows covering the full purchase lifecycle: 5 pre-purchase and 4 post-purchase.
| Welcome Series | Convert users who have given their email but not purchased |
| Welcome Quiz | Convert users who have taken a product recommendation quiz but have not purchased |
| Abandoned Browse | Encourage users who browsed the product page, but didn't add to cart, to revisit the product page and complete checkout |
| Abandoned Cart | Encourage users who added to cart, but didn't complete checkout to visit and complete checkout |
| Abandoned Checkout | Encourage users who started checkout to now complete checkout |
| Instant Upsell | Ask a user who has just placed order to add an additional item to their order before delivery goes out |
| User Generated Content | Encourage a user after order fulfillment to share content around the product for varying levels of discount. |
| Replenishment Product 1 | Encourage a user after 30 days to restock up on their previous order. |
| Replenishment Product 2 | Encourage a user after 30 days to restock up on their previous order. |
The User Generated Content flow
Yawns is a social-first brand that needs a constant supply of UGC for ads and organic content. Rather than asking customers informally, we built a dedicated post-purchase flow that presented a tiered monetary offer: different discount amounts for a photo, a video, or a written review. Designs showed real past UGC to set expectations and make the ask feel credible.
The flow hit a 61% open rate and a 10% response rate. Content collected fed directly into Yawns' social calendar and future email campaigns as social proof.
User Generated Flow Email Gallery
The Instant Upsell flow
Yawns sells day supplements and night supplements, a natural pairing. Customers who bought one product but not the other received a cross-sell email immediately after order confirmation, offering up to 30% off the complementary item before dispatch. Customers who had already bundled received a general next-order offer instead.
That segmentation produced a 7.68% conversion rate at a 55% open rate on the upsell emails.
Post Purchase Flow Email Gallery
Bundles and subscriptions
Supplements work better with consistent daily use. We recommended Yawns add a bundle option and a subscribe-and-save path so shoppers could commit to regular use at a lower per-unit cost. This protected LTV and gave the replenishment flows a higher-value cohort to target.
Results
260%
Email revenue increase, Black Friday
112%
List growth, month on month from launch
7.68%
Conversion on instant upsell emails
Building the list from zero with three capture points and growing it at 112% MoM gave us a large enough pool to campaign aggressively into Black Friday. The 9 automated flows kept that list engaged between campaigns, which meant open rates were healthy when the Black Friday sends went out. The combined effect was a 260% increase in email revenue over the Black Friday period.
Key takeaways
- List quality at launch determines peak-season revenue. The three capture points (welcome discount form, product quiz, exit-intent pop-up) caught buyers at different intent levels and built a segmented list before any campaigns ran. A poorly segmented list at the same size would have converted far below 260% at Black Friday. This is the same principle behind how NUOPTIMA approaches paid acquisition: reach the right audience before you spend on peak-window budget.
- Automated flows are the revenue floor. The 9 flows meant Yawns earned from abandoned carts, post-purchase upsells, and replenishment windows without manual sends. The 7.68% instant upsell conversion and 61% UGC open rate show what happens when the right message hits the right moment. Brands relying only on campaigns leave that revenue on the table every week.
- Channel mix lifts the ceiling. Adding SMS to the welcome form and building UGC collection into the post-purchase sequence created two compounding assets: a second touchpoint channel (5% SMS conversion) and a library of real customer content that reduced creative spend on future campaigns. Diversifying channels early is the same reasoning behind combining organic search with email so the two acquisition sources reinforce each other rather than cannibalizing the same budget.
If you run an ecommerce brand and want to build or rebuild your email program before the next peak season, book a call with the NUOPTIMA team.