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The Email Trap That Kills Even The ‘Best’ Retention Engines
What starts as stability ends in stagnation. Don’t fall for it.
Kody Nordquist
June 17, 2025
Welcome back to the 119th edition of Nord Media
The majority of brands unknowingly hit their email ceiling around year 2.
Revenue flatlines. Retention stalls.
The numbers for opens, clicks, and conversions look fine, but nothing’s really growing.
That’s what makes this trap so dangerous.
It doesn’t feel broken until you compare it to what your list should be doing.
We’ve seen this same arc play out across hundreds of brands:
Strong initial ram. Sharp 12-month growth. Then, around months 18 to 24, flatline.
It’s time to overcome this
Today’s email breaks down:
The 3 false assumptions that cause most brands to stall.
Why list size, open rates, and campaign volume often lead teams astray.
The hidden levers that high-performing retention teams obsess over.
And most importantly, how to get out of the plateau before it becomes your new ceiling.
Let’s dive in.
Think You Know Retention? Let's find out.
Can you answer these 3 questions (honestly)?
1️⃣ Are your flows segmented by AOV or just batch-and-blast?
2️⃣ Do you know your Revenue Per Email — and what’s driving it up or down?
3️⃣ Are your campaigns mapped to lifecycle stages… or are you filling a calendar just to stay busy?
If you hesitated on any of those — you're not alone.
Most marketers we talk to want to build smarter retention systems…
But they're stuck doing reactive work, guessing at strategy, and repurposing the same playbook from 2021.
That’s why we built eCom Email Certified. It's an online course for marketers who are ready to stop winging it and start sending with intention.
Inside, you’ll get:
✅ 125+ hours covering flows, segmentation, creative, and measurement
✅ Proven frameworks used by real brands
✅ The why behind the tactics — so you can adapt them to any business
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The 3 Lies That Stall Your Email Growth
Sometimes everything looks fine, but under the surface, you’re losing steam.
By the time you notice, the plateau has already set in.
Here are the 3 assumptions that cause it:
1. “Our list is engaged.”
Healthy engagement isn’t about averages.
You need to know who’s consistently opening, clicking, and converting and who’s not.
Be cautious not to rely solely on broad metrics and overlook the quiet decay occurring in your core segments.
2. “Our flows are optimized.”
Automation is a trap when it isn’t revisited.
Flows built six months ago may no longer reflect current buyer behavior, product mix, or lifecycle stages.
Retention teams who win treat automations like campaigns by always testing, updating, and improving.
3. “We just need more subscribers.”
Volume solves nothing if list health is declining.
Subscriber growth often hides deeper problems: declining deliverability, stale targeting, or weak onboarding.
Retention scale comes from depth, not just width, and these assumptions set the ceiling.
What used to be a baseline for revenue becomes your high watermark.
While stuck brands chase broad metrics like open rates and list size, retention leaders zero in on signals that actually move revenue.
Here’s what they track:
1. Segment health over list size
They know how many people are active in the last 30, 60, and 90 days, not just how many addresses are stored.
They track deliverability by segment, not campaign.
And they suppress aggressively to protect the sender's reputation and avoid the spam trap.
2. Revenue per recipient over send volume
The amount of emails you send doesn’t really matter.
It’s about how much each one earns.
Top teams pull back when returns dip and optimize for profit, not just reach.
3. Time between touchpoints
They don’t just track when people open or click.
They measure how long it takes from email engagement to conversion, and adjust automations accordingly.
This drives smarter send timing, better offers, and tighter lifecycle loops.
4. Subscriber velocity
They track how fast subscribers move from passive to active, and how quickly they reach first purchase, second purchase, and churn risk.
This shapes onboarding, post-purchase, and winback strategies.
The best teams treat email like a performance channel, not a broadcast tool.
Every data point is a chance to sharpen revenue. Not just report on it.
Escaping the plateau doesn’t require overhauling your entire email program.
It requires replacing guesswork with structure and shifting from campaign thinking to retention systems.
Here’s where to start:
1. Audit your automations every 90 days
Treat flows like live campaigns.
Review open rates, click-to-conversion, and drop-off points.
Test new subject lines, product pairings, and time delays to keep performance sharp.
2. Rebuild your engagement segments
Start tracking engagement in 30, 60, and 90-day windows.
Suppress cold subscribers.
Send strategically based on recent behavior, not generic list-wide blasts.
3. Shift your core metric from send volume to revenue per recipient
Volume doesn’t scale forever.
RPR tells you how efficiently your list is monetized and where to focus optimization.
4. Layer in lifecycle stages
Map out your full email journey from first touch to repeat purchase to churn prevention.
Build modular flows that reflect where someone actually is in the journey.
This creates clarity for the brand and consistency for the subscriber.
5. Use email to increase LTV, not just capture it
Post-purchase education. Retention offers. Cross-sell logic.
These are your compounding levers, and they’re often overlooked in favor of one-off campaigns.
The brands that break through don’t chase volume.
They build better systems to extract more value from the attention they already have.
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Final Thoughts
Brands sometimes fail to realize they’ve plateaued until months, sometimes years, have passed.
The signs are subtle. The metrics look stable.
But growth quietly stalls while opportunity slips away.
To build better systems, question what’s “working.”
Audit what others leave on autopilot.
And measure what actually drives revenue, not what’s easiest to report.
If your email channel feels stuck, it’s not a list size problem.
It’s a visibility problem.
The sooner you fix it, the faster you grow past the ceiling that most brands never escape.
Want growth that looks like this👇?
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HOW??
We Use Strategies and Systems that Produce Consistent Results.
We’ve helped 100+ brands—from early-stage DTC startups to global brands—scale smarter, grow faster and get profitable. Whether your goal rapid growth, consistency at scale or just to be profitable again, we've built systems and strategies to achieve that for hundreds of brands over the years.
The results? You get reliable and consistent growth without sacrificing your profitability.
» Hire me to scale your DTC Brand «
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Thank you for reading! I appreciate you.
Sincerely,
Kody
Disclaimer: Special thanks to eCom Email Certified and surefoot for sponsoring today’s newsletter.