About Leading Online Beauty Retailer
the online beauty retailer is Australia's leading online beauty retailer, stocking more than 11,000 products across skincare, makeup, haircare, fragrance, and wellness categories. Founded in 2000 and listed on the ASX in 2020, the online beauty retailer operates as a pure-play eCommerce brand with a large and engaged subscriber base and a strong editorial identity built through its beauty podcast and content programme. The company's competitive positioning is anchored in product range breadth, expert curation, and a trusted editorial voice that differentiates it from both bricks-and-mortar department stores and international pure-play competitors entering the Australian market.
The Australian online beauty retail market has experienced significant structural change in recent years, with global platforms including Sephora, MECCA's expanded digital offering, and international direct-to-consumer beauty brands increasing competitive pressure on domestic retailers. Customer acquisition costs have risen across paid social and search as competition for beauty audiences on Meta and Google has intensified. In this context, owned channels — particularly email — have become the primary lever for profitable revenue growth, with customer lifetime value, repeat purchase rate, and database monetisation efficiency increasingly determining the commercial health of online beauty retailers.
the online beauty retailer had built a large email subscriber database but was significantly under-monetising it through a broadcast-only approach. The absence of lifecycle automation meant the company was leaving substantial repeat purchase and win-back revenue unrealised, while simultaneously eroding deliverability through indiscriminate sending to disengaged contacts. The business needed a comprehensive email and lifecycle rebuild that could unlock the latent revenue potential of its subscriber base without increasing acquisition cost or diminishing the editorial brand experience that drove subscriber trust.
Executive Summary
The full lifecycle rebuild delivered a 67% year-on-year increase in email-attributed revenue, recovered 12,400 lapsed customers generating $890,000 in win-back revenue, and established cart and browse abandonment automation producing $1.2 million in annual recovery revenue. Repeat purchase rates among email-active segments increased by 24 percentage points, and email open rates improved from 14% to 31% as deliverability improved following database hygiene and segmentation implementation.
What needed
to change.
the online beauty retailer's large subscriber database was treated as a broadcast channel — the same campaign, sent to everyone, regardless of purchase history, category affinity, or engagement level.
Lifecycle automation was entirely absent. No automated flows existed for welcome, post-purchase, cart abandonment, or win-back sequences. 38% of subscribers hadn't engaged in over six months.
Revenue attribution from email was well below what the database size warranted, and deliverability was suffering as a consequence of sending indiscriminately to disengaged contacts.
How we built the solution.
Every LVRA engagement runs through four structured phases — each one feeding the next.
Discovery & Audit
Phase 01
LVRA conducted a full technical and strategic audit of the online beauty retailer's Klaviyo account, assessing the existing broadcast campaign structure, list health metrics, deliverability signals, and the complete absence of automated flow infrastructure. The audit quantified the commercial cost of the broadcast approach — identifying the revenue gaps attributable to missing win-back, cart abandonment, and post-purchase flows by modelling expected performance against category benchmarks for a database of equivalent size and engagement profile.
The ICP and customer segmentation work began with a full RFM analysis of the subscriber database — mapping the distribution of recency, frequency, and monetary value across the active contact pool. This analysis identified six distinct behavioural segments, each with materially different purchase patterns, product affinity, and re-engagement probability, providing the segmentation architecture that would underpin both the automated flow design and the broadcast campaign personalisation strategy.
A deliverability audit assessed the online beauty retailer's sender reputation metrics, bounce rate trends, spam complaint history, and the proportion of chronically disengaged contacts contributing to deliverability degradation. The audit confirmed that 38% of subscribers had not engaged in over six months and that sending to these contacts was materially suppressing inbox placement rates across all campaigns — establishing the technical case for the sunset policy implemented in the strategy phase.
Market Intelligence
Phase 02
LVRA conducted a comprehensive benchmark analysis of email and lifecycle performance across the Australian online beauty retail market, establishing industry reference points for open rate, click rate, revenue per send, and automated flow contribution to total email revenue. This benchmarking provided the performance targets that shaped the flow design, send frequency, and segmentation decisions made in the strategy phase and established the commercial case for the investment in the full lifecycle rebuild.
Customer behaviour research examined the post-purchase journey patterns across the online beauty retailer's top-performing product categories — identifying the replenishment cycles, cross-category purchase sequences, and content engagement patterns that preceded repeat purchase events. This intelligence directly shaped the replenishment reminder, post-purchase education, and cross-category recommendation logic built into the automated flow architecture.
Competitor lifecycle analysis reviewed the automated flow structures and broadcast campaign strategies of Mecca, Sephora AU, and leading international pure-play beauty eCommerce brands — identifying the lifecycle moments and content approaches generating the highest engagement and conversion in the online beauty retailer's target audience demographic. International benchmark data from Klaviyo's beauty sector performance reports was incorporated to establish best-practice targets for each individual flow type.
Strategy Design
Phase 03
The lifecycle architecture was designed around nine automated flows covering every commercially significant customer journey stage: welcome series, post-purchase education, cart abandonment, browse abandonment, win-back, replenishment reminders, birthday, VIP onboarding, and loyalty milestone sequences. Each flow was designed with a distinct commercial objective, content framework, and performance KPI — with flow sequencing logic built to prevent message overlap between simultaneously active automations.
The broadcast campaign strategy was redesigned around the six RFM segments identified in discovery, with distinct content calendars, product recommendation logic, and send frequency applied to each segment. A sunset policy was designed to systematically move chronically disengaged contacts to a re-engagement sequence before permanent list suppression — protecting deliverability while maximising the commercial return from the disengaged segment before removal.
A cross-channel integration strategy was designed to synchronise email engagement signals with Meta advertising audiences — suppressing email-active purchasers from paid retargeting to reduce advertising waste, and using paid social to re-engage disengaged email segments who were not responding to email re-engagement sequences. This integration logic was designed to maximise total owned-and-paid channel efficiency rather than optimising email and paid in isolation.
Launch & Optimise
Phase 04
The nine automated flows were launched in a sequenced rollout over six weeks, beginning with cart abandonment and welcome series as the highest-impact immediate revenue opportunities, progressing through post-purchase, browse abandonment, and win-back flows as each was tested and approved. Each flow launched with A/B tests running on subject lines, send timing, and primary CTA variants — with performance data used to select winning variants within the first 30 days of each flow's activation.
The RFM-based broadcast segmentation was implemented alongside the flow rollout, with the full segment taxonomy applied to all subsequent campaign sends. Open rates across the active segments immediately outperformed the previous broadcast benchmark, confirming that relevance-driven segmentation was generating measurable inbox engagement improvement before the deliverability improvements from the sunset policy had fully taken effect.
By the end of the programme's first twelve months, email-attributed revenue had increased 67% year-on-year, 12,400 lapsed customers had been recovered through win-back automation, cart and browse abandonment flows were generating $1.2 million in annualised recovery revenue, and the email open rate had improved from 14% to 31%. The cross-channel integration with Meta advertising was confirmed to have reduced retargeting CPM by suppressing email-active audiences, improving the efficiency of the paid programme in parallel with the email rebuild.
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How it was built, channel by channel.
RFM Segmentation & Database Hygiene
LVRA implemented a full RFM segmentation across the online beauty retailer's Klaviyo database, creating six behavioural segments with distinct content strategies, send frequencies, and product recommendation logic. Segment definitions were built on rolling recency, frequency, and monetary value calculations updated automatically based on purchase and engagement events — ensuring segment membership remained dynamically accurate rather than decaying into irrelevance over time.
A sunset policy was implemented in parallel, routing contacts with more than six months of zero engagement into a three-email re-engagement sequence before permanent list suppression. The sunset process removed a significant volume of chronically disengaged contacts from the sendable list, improving sender reputation metrics within eight weeks and contributing to the email open rate improvement from 14% to 31% achieved over the programme period.
Nine-Flow Lifecycle Automation Build
LVRA designed, built, and launched nine lifecycle automation flows in Klaviyo, covering every commercially significant customer journey stage from first subscription through to lapsed customer re-engagement. Each flow was built with multi-step message sequences, conditional branching based on purchase and engagement behaviour, product recommendation blocks pulling from the live product catalogue, and time-based suppression logic to prevent message overlap with broadcast campaigns and other active flows.
Win-back flow design gave particular attention to the segmentation of lapsed customers by their last purchase category and monetary value tier — allowing the re-engagement messaging and incentive structure to be calibrated to each segment's commercial value and most likely re-engagement trigger. The win-back sequence generated $890,000 in lapsed customer reactivation revenue across the programme period.
Cart & Browse Abandonment Recovery
Cart and browse abandonment flows were designed as three-step sequences with progressively stronger commercial incentives and urgency signals across each touchpoint. Cart abandonment email one triggered within one hour of session exit, with a simple product reminder and no discount — preserving margin for the subset of abandoners who would convert without incentive. Emails two and three introduced social proof elements and a time-limited offer for contacts who had not yet returned to complete purchase.
Browse abandonment flows were triggered by product page session depth and time-on-page thresholds, distinguishing between casual browsers and engaged consideration-phase visitors. The flow architecture incorporated product review aggregation and low-stock signals from the inventory system where applicable — adding authentic urgency triggers that improved click-through rates across the browse abandonment sequence.
Cross-Channel Integration with Meta Advertising
LVRA implemented a real-time audience synchronisation between Klaviyo engagement data and the online beauty retailer's Meta advertising account, creating dynamic suppression and retargeting audiences based on email channel behaviour. Email-active purchasers were automatically excluded from paid retargeting audiences — eliminating the CPM waste of advertising to customers already engaged and converting through the owned email channel.
Disengaged email segments identified through the RFM analysis were targeted with paid social re-engagement campaigns, using creative frameworks and offer structures aligned with the email re-engagement sequence running in parallel. This cross-channel coordination increased total re-engagement programme reach without additional email sends to deliverability-sensitive segments.
3 pillars. One integrated system.
Each strategic pillar was designed to feed the next — creating compounding returns across every channel activated.
The numbers
that matter.
Every metric comes from verified campaign data — attributable to specific strategic decisions made during this engagement. No projections. No vanity numbers.
What this engagement taught us.
These principles carry forward into every engagement that follows — applicable well beyond Leading Online Beauty Retailer's specific context.
Industry
Online Beauty Retail
Market
Australia
Duration
Ongoing engagement
Broadcast email destroys the potential of large databases.
A database of 400,000 contacts receiving the same email generates poor results and steadily decays deliverability. The same database, properly segmented, is worth 3–5x the revenue of a broadcast approach.
Win-back automation is the most underestimated revenue recovery tool.
Most brands focus acquisition spend on new customers. Recovering 12,400 lapsed customers at near-zero marginal cost consistently outperforms new customer acquisition on ROI — every time.
RFM segmentation is table stakes for email in retail.
Treating all subscribers as equal is the fundamental mistake of broadcast email. Recency, frequency, and monetary value tell you everything about how to message each segment — and what not to send them.
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