You paid for that visitor. Then you let them leave. Most people who click your ad don't buy on the first visit. They look around and close the tab. To see them again, you pay for another click. There's another way back: get their email address before they go. A signup form, a welcome offer, the first step of checkout. Once you have it, you can write to them next week, and you don't pay for the click. That's why a business that runs ads needs email marketing. Ads bring people in. Email gets them back. Ads are rented: when the budget stops, the visits stop. An email address is yours. Email marketing comes in two forms, and you need both. Flows are automatic. A customer does something and the right email goes out. They sign up, leave a cart at 2am, buy for the first time. Nobody presses send. You reach them while they're still interested. Campaigns are your call. A sale, a new product, a story. You pick the day and email your whole list. This is how people remember you between purchases. In Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks, flows were about 5% of emails sent and about 41% of email revenue. Klaviyo sells email software, so keep that in mind. Still, it shows that a small share of emails can bring a big share of the email money. I'm not telling you to stop your ads. Keep them. Just give everyone they bring in a reason to leave you their email. Then you stop starting from zero. Which one is your store missing? Send me a message. Or send this to whoever runs your ads. #emailmarketing #ecommerce #smallbusiness

Good call flagging that the 5% / 41% figure comes from Klaviyo itself. One thing I'd add for ad-driven lists: tag the signup source, so people who joined for the welcome discount get a different flow from people who joined for the content. They behave very differently after the first order.

Before / After: same café, same coffee, different reason to buy.

Most small businesses describe what they sell. Customers buy because of what it means for them. Before lists features that could fit any café in town. After starts with the customer's morning and gives them a reason to come back.

This is the storytelling step I add to every marketing plan: know the person, know the problem, then write the line they see themselves in. Illustrative example.