Elliot Scott

Content, Social Media & Marketing

Founder & CEO at ElliotDigital | Retention marketing for DTC brands | Email & SMS marketing

Hey, I’m Elliot — founder of ElliotDigital, a multi award-winning retention marketing agency helping leading eCommerce brands turn browsers into loyal customers through world-class email & SMS.

Since launching in 2021, we’ve had the pleasure of working with some of the most loved DTC brands on the planet, including:

- CRAFTD London
- Candy Kittens
- Magic Mind
- Untamed
- Cake Box
- Heights
- Free Soul
- SURREAL
- Days brewing

Too many brands treat retention as an afterthought. They pour time and budget into paid ads, but leave money on the table with clunky email design, shallow segmentation, or disconnected customer journeys.

That’s where we come in.

We combine data-driven strategy with beautiful, high-converting creative, to boost LTV, drive repeat orders, and make retention a brand-building channel.

Founder & Owner

Every one of these started as a blank screen.

No templates. No shortcuts.

Our in-house strategy & creative teams really crushed it in January.

We shipped deep, long-term benefit breakdowns…

and simple, scroll-stopping product moments.

A few of my favourites from the month. But which one’s your pick? 👇

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#retention #emailmarketing #ecommerce #klaviyo #emaildesign

Retention marketing for DTC brands | Founder & CEO at ElliotDigital | Email & SMS marketing

It might be Lent…
But we’re not giving up these tasty creatives 🍬 

Sweet drops.
Bold flavours.
And promos that actually earn the click.

Different brands. Different tones. All built from scratch.

Here are a few of my favourite emails we ideated, designed and shipped in February. As usual, the team killed it!!

Which one’s your pick? 👇

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#retention #emailmarketing #ecommerce #klaviyo #emaildesign

POV: Our team Slack channel when we share our favourite monthly emails.

A team with a shared vision.

The reactions say it all.

Not many people know this, but ElliotDigital was my Fiverr name. 

Before building the business to where it is now, I was freelancing. I spent my early days saying yes to everything. 

Shopify builds. Paid ads. Social media. Email. 

If someone on Fiverr was willing to pay for it, I was doing it. 

But here's what I noticed. Every brand I worked with was obsessing over their ad dashboards. The numbers were up, down, always at the mercy of the ever-changing algorithm - one iOS update and everything shifted. 

Meanwhile, email was quietly generating serious revenue. Stable, consistent, and when brands needed to rely on it the numbers were crazy. 

It was an undervalued channel. 

One night, walking home from the pub, my partner Chloe said something I still think about five years later. 

"Why don't you just go all in on email? It's what you enjoy the most" 

It was my lightbulb moment. 

Almost overnight, I tried to convert every freelance client to retention only. 

I lost all of them but one. 

One client. That was my entire business - a client that we still have a great relationship with now. 

But it was enough to prove the model, and enough to start building. 

Today we're a 12-person in-house team in London, working with leading DTC brands. 

I still think about that lightbulb conversation I had with Chloe. 

Probably helped that I'd had a few pints.

I help 7-9 figure DTC Ecommerce brands predictably scale with lifecycle marketing retention strategies including:

➡️  Email Flows + Campaigns
➡️  List Growth
➡️  Copywriting
➡️  Email Design
➡️  Content Strategy
➡️  Reviews, Referrals, and UGC
➡️  SMS Strategy (Attentive, Postscript, Klaviyo)
➡️  Email Marketing Strategy (Klaviyo, Mailchimp, Hubspot, Braze)

Notable clients include:

* Tumble Living
* Jocko Fuel
* Cuisinart
* Happy Head
* Akova Gear
* Lane Eight
* Psychedelic Water
* Jack Adams
* Standard Proof Whiskey
* Teren Designs
* Artisan Revere

At Eternal Inbox I'm partnering with Ecom brands to identify new areas of opportunity, gain more leverage, & increase attributed email/SMS revenue.

Lets chat if you're a business that:

✅  Has an email list with 20k+ subscribers
✅  Sells killer products/services
✅  Is willing to implement new ideas/strategies
✅  Makes at least $200k/mo 

👇 Want to learn more? Go here (*FREE Email Audit Upon Request)

www.eternalinbox.com

Brandon Zinser

9 million emails sent last month.

In 2026, deliverability is king.

For one of my largest clients, over 9 MILLION emails were delivered in the last 30 days, and deliverability has been the silent engine behind every open, every click, and order placed. 

Here’s the thing most marketers STILL don’t grasp:

✅ Deliverability isn’t just “sent vs received.” It’s about landing in the inbox, not Promotions, not Spam, where real humans actually see your message. That’s where revenue happens.

✅ With AI-driven inbox filters, stricter authentication standards, and smarter provider algorithms, how and where your email lands now defines success.

✅ Engagement signals, real opens, clicks, replies, now outweigh list size (for the most part) , IP reputation, or blasting frequency.

✅ A clean, consent-based list with solid engagement is now deliverability’s strongest signal. Anything less gets filtered out before it even gets a chance.

What this means for revenue:

Higher inbox placement = more eyeballs
More eyeballs = more actions
More actions = more pipeline & sales

Metrics like open and click rates are no longer vanity, they are health indicators of deliverability. When you see high opens + low bounces + minimal spam complaints (like our client’s trending metrics), you’re not just hitting benchmarks… you’re earning trust with ISPs and customers alike.

In 2026, deliverability isn’t an ops checkbox, it’s a growth strategy. 

If you’re still thinking in terms of “send more,” instead of “send smart,” you’re already behind.

10yr Email & SMS Expert Helping DTC Brands Increase Customer LTV & AOV | Never Been on Forbes List | $100+mil In Client Tracked Revenue

My friend sent me a job posting & asked if she should apply.

I told her the answer was already in the listing.

The role: Part-time retention marketing contractor. Remote. Flexible hours with quarterly performance bonuses.

Sounds great, right?

Then you get to the application requirements.

➡️ Step 1: Send your resume. 
➡️ Step 2: Share examples of email flows and campaigns you've built. 
➡️ Step 3: List the DTC brands you've worked with. 
➡️ Step 4: Write a short note explaining your approach to retention marketing. 
❌ Step 5: Oh, and sign up for our email list and tell us everything you'd change about our automations and campaigns.

Let me get this straight.

Before a single Zoom call. 
Before one human being looks you in the eye. 
Before anyone has even decided if they want to spend 30 minutes with you.
 
✅ They want your strategic thinking.
✅ Your channel expertise. 
✅ Your brand experience. 
‼️AND a free audit of their retention program packaged neatly into an application form.

The most qualified person for this role is going to recognize what this is immediately. And they're going to close the tab.

Not because they can't do the work. But because they've done it long enough to know their time is valuable. 

To be clear: I'm not saying the company is malicious. 

I'm saying the process reveals something about how they value the people they're trying to hire.

And the best candidates notice that before they hit submit.

I told my friend to keep scrolling.

She did.

Most lifecycle strategies rely too heavily on email.

And I say that as someone who’s built a career on email.

Email is powerful.
But it’s only one piece of lifecycle.

Strong lifecycle doesn’t revolve around one channel.
It revolves around the customer’s purchase timeline.

Most brands build around what’s easy to send.
The best brands build around when customers are most likely to act.

Here’s what that actually looks like 👇

Instead of asking:
“When should we send the next campaign?”

Ask:
“What is the customer experiencing right now?”

Then align touchpoints to behavior, not a calendar.

A strong lifecycle system coordinates multiple moments:

📩 Email
→ Education
→ Cross-sell
→ Replenishment reminders
→ Loyalty building over time

📱 SMS
→ High-intent nudges
→ Cart recovery
→ Time-sensitive drops
→ Subscription upsells

📬 Direct Mail
→ Winback for at risk customers
→ Surprise-and-delight for VIPs
→ Re-engagement when digital fatigue is high

📦 Packaging
→ Reinforce brand promise
→ Set up the second purchase
→ Introduce referral or loyalty
→ Reduce post-purchase anxiety

Here’s the shift most brands miss:

Customers don’t think in channels.

They think in:
• “Did this product solve my problem?”
• “Do I need more?”
• “Is this brand worth sticking with?”

Retention improves when lifecycle aligns with how customers actually buy, not blasting endless email-only messaging weekly.

This A/B test doubled the conversion rate...

The only difference?
How the email was structured.

Same audience.
Same offer.
Same send time.

➡️ Version A results:

54.6% open rate
4% click rate
10.3% placed order rate

➡️ Version B results:

52.7% open rate
2.3% click rate
5% placed order rate

In other words:

👉 One version drove over 2x the conversion rate.

Not because of a better discount.
Not because of a different audience.
Not because of a different send time.

Just content structure and layout.

This is why A/B testing matters.

Most brands spend time debating:

subject lines
send times
conditional splits

But often the biggest gains come from how the message is presented once the email is opened.

Small changes can have massive downstream impact:

And the best part?

Once you find the winner, that improvement compounds across every future subscriber entering the flow.

Lifecycle marketing isn’t about guessing.

It’s about running small tests that produce big revenue insights.

Don’t sleep on “snail mail.“

Omnichannel retention is getting that much easier to implement.

Big news from PostPilot. Direct mail just got a whole lot smarter. You can now run automated direct mail campaigns using emails from your entire tech stack, via API triggers.

You can now trigger postcards directly from basically any tool in your tech stack — Braze, Gorgias, Recharge, Iterable, you name it. If it can make an API call, it can send a postcard.

Think about what that actually means:
- A customer pauses their subscription → postcard hits their mailbox. 
- A buyer shows churn signals in your data → postcard beats them to the door.
- A CS interaction needs a physical follow-up → done automatically.

The channel was already underrated. Now it's automated, personalized, and fully connected to the rest of your stack.

This is the kind of thing that will set brands apart in 2026.

I subscribed to a supplement brand last week.

In the first 72 hours…I received 12 emails.

Not 12 over a month.
Not 12 over a week.

12 in three days.

And here’s the interesting part 👇

They didn’t just send from one name.

It wasn’t:

“Brand Name”

It was:

• “Carson at [Brand]”
• “Mike Matthews”
• “[Brand Name] ”

Different “from” names.
Same inbox.
Same promotion.
Same BOGO urgency.

This isn’t clever segmentation.

It’s frequency masking.

And customers aren’t dumb.

What actually happens when you oversend like this?

You might see:
• A short-term spike in revenue
• A few extra redemptions
• Some urgency-driven conversions

But here’s what you’re quietly building:

🚩 Mass unsubscribes
🚩 Spam complaints
🚩 Inbox fatigue
🚩 Gmail reputation damage
🚩 Lower primary inbox placement
🚩 Long-term revenue decline

Deliverability is not just about authentication and warming.

It’s about respecting attention.

When someone signs up, that’s a moment of trust.

If your first impression is:

“BOGO ends in 4 hours!”
“Final hours!”
“Last chance!”
“Extended!”
“Actually extended again!”

You’re training them to tune you out.

Or worse, hit spam.

Oversending creates 3 silent problems:

1. Engagement decay
Open rates fall → mailbox providers notice → placement drops.

2. List quality erosion
You burn high-intent subscribers before they even buy.

3. Artificial revenue addiction
You need more sends to hit the same revenue target next month.

That’s not lifecycle marketing.

That’s panic marketing.

The cheapest person you hired to run your lifecycle marketing is probably your most expensive employee.

I recently audited a brand’s email program and found something a bit comical, but also shocking.

They had an active “unsubscribe flow.”

The trigger? A contact unsubscribes.

The follow-up? A multi-email sequence trying to win them back.

On paper, it sounds logical. In practice, it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how email works.

Every major ESP — Klaviyo, Braze, Iterable, take your pick — will not send emails to unsubscribed profiles. 

It’s actually illegal…

The moment someone opts out, they’re suppressed. They’re gone from deliverability.

The result: a fully built, “live” flow sitting in the account with zero sends. Zero opens. Zero revenue. 

Just hours of setup work from the copywriter, graphic designer, and developer.

This wasn’t a junior mistake at a small operation. This was someone entrusted with the lifecycle program of a real brand with a real customer base.

And this is exactly why “who’s the most affordable person we can get to manage this?” is the wrong question.

Lifecycle marketing isn’t just scheduling campaigns. It’s understanding suppression logic, segmentation hygiene, deliverability, behavioral triggers, and how revenue attribution actually works inside your stack.

The wrong hire doesn’t just cost you their salary. It costs you the compounding revenue you should have been generating the entire time they were in the seat.

Hire for expertise. Or pay for it twice

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