Email & automation
Lifecycle messages that arrive at the right moment, and stop when they should.
Start a conversationWhat it is
Email and automation is the work of sending the right message at the right moment and stopping when you should stop. It suits any business with repeat customers or a slow decision, and every regulated market where a message is a document that has to stand behind its claims. The work covers mapping the lifecycle, writing the flows, segmenting the audience and keeping deliverability and consent in order. No other channel lets you reach customers without paying rent to a platform, which is exactly why it deserves restraint instead of volume. The number that matters is revenue per recipient, not the size of the list. We do not promise open rates or revenue from a sequence, because too much depends on your offer and your list. We promise messages that arrive when they genuinely help, and silence where silence is the better service.
Sending more email is not a strategy. It is how you train people to ignore you. The distance between a welcome sequence people finish and one that sends them hunting for the unsubscribe link is judgement about timing, relevance and restraint, and that judgement is the real deliverable. Measurement has changed too. Open rates have been unreliable since privacy changes in the major mail apps, so the figures worth acting on are clicks, conversions and what each message earns per person who receives it. Anything else is decoration on a decision nobody should be making.
We map the lifecycle before we write anything. What happens before someone buys, what happens afterwards and where a well-timed note changes the outcome. Then we build the flows around that map. Welcome, onboarding, nurture, post-purchase and win-back sequences, each one answering the question the reader has at that moment and each one ending on purpose. Segments follow behaviour rather than demographics, so relevance comes from what people have actually done instead of from inserting a first name into a template and hoping it reads as personal. Most businesses need fewer flows than they think and better ones than they have.
In a regulated market every email is a document. It should survive being read by a regulator, which means claims checked, consent recorded and unsubscribes handled properly. Deliverability gets treated as a technical discipline for the same reason. Authenticated sending domains, healthy lists and content that does not trip filters. An email that arrives at the wrong moment is not marketing. It is admin you sent to a customer, and they will remember it long after you have forgotten sending it. Restraint is cheaper than reputation repair and considerably more effective at the same time.
What we do
Lifecycle mapping
Every moment worth a message and every moment worth leaving alone. We map what happens before someone buys, what happens afterwards and where a well-timed note changes the outcome. The map is the strategy. The flows are just the wiring behind it, and the wiring is the easy part once the map is right.
Campaigns and flows
Welcome, onboarding, nurture, post-purchase and win-back sequences written with restraint. Each one earns its place by answering the question the reader has at that moment, and each one ends on purpose instead of fading into a weekly newsletter nobody decided to send and everyone regrets.
Segmentation and personalisation
Groups that reflect what people have done rather than who they look like on paper. Behaviour, lifecycle stage and product interest drive the messages, so relevance comes from timing and content rather than from a merge tag in the first line of the subject line pretending to know the reader.
Deliverability and compliance
Inbox placement handled as a technical discipline, with sending domains and lists kept healthy. Consent records, unsubscribe handling and claim checks done properly, which matters most in markets where every message is a document someone may one day read back to you in an uncomfortable meeting.
How we work
Audit
We look at what you send today, what it earns and what it costs you in unsubscribes and complaints. We also check consent records and sending reputation, because good copy on a damaged list still lands in the spam folder where nobody reads it.
Plan
A lifecycle map and a message plan agreed with you. Which flows get built first, what each says, who receives it and how success will be judged, with compliance review scheduled before the writing starts rather than after it.
Build
The flows get written, built in your platform and tested across devices and mail clients before a single real send. Segments are defined properly and the reporting is wired up first, so day one produces data instead of surprises and apologies.
Prove
Revenue per recipient, lifecycle conversion and deliverability reported monthly with the unsubscribe rate beside them. What underperforms gets stopped and what earns gets extended, because a flow that quietly annoys people is a liability wearing a report and costing you attention.
What it costs
Email work is priced by the flows and the platform effort behind them, and what moves the number is how many sequences are built, how much copy is written and how messy the data is. A clean list with one obvious lifecycle costs far less than an account with ten years of unorganised contacts and three abandoned tools. Platform matters less than agencies pretend. We work in yours and recommend a change only when the tool is genuinely the problem. Migration and consent work add cost once, then the work settles into writing, testing and reporting. Most of the value lands in the first three flows, so we build those before anything else.
Who it is for
For businesses with repeat purchase or a long sales cycle. Retailers, membership organisations, software companies and professional services where the decision takes months of quiet contact. In regulated markets such as iGaming, fintech, healthcare and law, every message is a document whose claims must be defensible and whose consent must be recorded. For local service businesses, reminders, review requests and seasonal follow-ups are usually the cheapest growth available. What everyone shares is a list they have not finished earning, and the discipline that keeps it valuable is the same everywhere. Treat the list like an asset and it behaves like one.
Two kinds of business come to us: local service businesses and companies in regulated markets. See everything in Be talked about.
Questions we get asked
Do you send WhatsApp Business messages?
Yes. The same discipline on a different channel. Lifecycle messages on WhatsApp Business, sent with consent, at the moments they genuinely help and stopped when they do not. For businesses whose customers already live in a chat app it beats email on response rates, and the compliance rules are stricter still, so the consent work happens first rather than afterwards.
Which platform do you use?
Yours where it works. Klaviyo, HubSpot, Mailchimp, Braze and the others all do the job in the right hands. We recommend a change only when the tool is genuinely the problem, and we say what a migration involves before you agree to one. Switching platforms rarely fixes a strategy problem, it is an easy way to lose six months, and the contacts who get lost on the way never come back. Platform choice matters far less than what you send and when. Spend the money on the thinking before the software.
How do you measure email?
Revenue per recipient, lifecycle conversion, click-through and deliverability. Open rates have been unreliable since privacy changes in the major mail apps, so we treat them as indicative only and never make a decision on them. The unsubscribe and complaint rates are the numbers that tell you when you have gone too far, and most businesses look at them too late. We put them beside the revenue figures every month so nobody gets to ignore them. A channel measured on opens is a channel nobody is being honest about. If your finance team cannot reconcile what email claims to have earned against what actually arrived, the model is wrong and we fix that before we optimise anything.
Is email marketing still worth it?
It is the one channel where the audience belongs to you rather than to a platform that can change the rules or the price, which makes it the most defensible asset in your marketing. The businesses that ruin it do so by sending too much rather than too little. Restraint is the strategy, and it shows up in the revenue per subscriber within a few sends. The list is worth protecting in the same way a shop floor is. Nobody was ever persuaded by the eleventh email of the month.
How many emails should we send?
Fewer than you think and better than you do now. The right pace is the one where people still open, click and buy, and it is different for every list, every offer and every season. We test our way into it and watch the unsubscribe and complaint rates like warning lights, because they move before revenue does. When a list starts to tire, the answer is usually fewer messages rather than cleverer ones. Frequency is a decision worth making on purpose instead of by calendar default.
Can you fix our deliverability problems?
Usually, and it starts with the dull parts. Sending domains authenticated, list hygiene done, complaints investigated and the content taken out of the patterns that trigger filters. It takes weeks rather than days, and the fix is often to stop sending to people who never asked to hear from you. That is the part clients like least and benefit from most. Deliverability is a reputation, and reputations are rebuilt slowly by behaving well. There is no switch to flip, and anyone promising one is guessing with your domain. The encouraging part is that good behaviour improves a sending reputation just as reliably as bad behaviour damages it, so the curve turns within a few sends once the pattern is disciplined.
Do we need consent to send marketing email?
In the UK and Europe the default is yes, with limited exceptions and rules that vary by message type and market. Other territories differ and the details matter. We configure the platform for the rules that apply to you and keep the consent records in order, because an audit is a bad time to discover a gap. Where the answer is genuinely uncertain, we point you at proper legal advice rather than guessing and hoping nobody asks. Consent is also a data-quality issue, since people who never asked rarely behave like customers.
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