The questions that decide it, what a good answer sounds like, and the point where we tell you we're the wrong shop.
Every agency sounds the same on a first call. So ask all of them the same questions, in the same order, and write the answers down.
If we stop working together on Friday, what is still mine on Monday?
The account is yours, in your billing, with the agency a user you can remove. List, templates and flows stay put.
It sits in the agency's name, or the list gets called theirs. The one asset you can't rebuild.
Are these flows built in my account, or is last month's build getting my logo dropped in?
They name the flows they'd build and why, and the logic moves with your own margins and reorder cycle.
A fixed list of flows with a fixed number of emails, quoted before anybody opened the account.
Which attribution window are you quoting, and what did the store total in the same period?
One agreed window, printed on every report, read against the store's own revenue, not the platform alone.
A revenue share with no window, no dates, no store total. That's a screenshot, not a report.
The first ninety days are the catch-up. What does month three look like?
A named plan past go-live: the campaign calendar, the tests queued, flows rewritten because the data moved.
A proposal that stops the day the build ships, or a retainer that becomes a few sends a month.
Who writes and builds this, and who am I speaking to on a Wednesday?
Named people, given before you sign, and whoever pitched still on the account in month six.
The pitch team and the delivery team are different, and nobody will say which is which.
What am I committing to, and how do I leave if this isn't working?
Scope in writing, a rolling or short term, notice you can serve, the work left in your account.
A year committed before the work is proven, or an exit that costs you the templates.
Our own answer to the reporting one: Rebel Aromas, email attribution 8.9% to 27.3%.
No good agency can promise you a result. Two points when the answer is in writing, one when they said the right words, none when the subject changed.
Top marks: twelve. Under half is asking you to take the rest on trust.
Our Flow Audit Scorecard is the same idea pointed at your own Klaviyo account: twenty-five yes or no checks, fifty points, five sections. Run it before the calls and you'll know which answers you actually need.
Open the scorecardNone of these is about a particular agency. They're about answers you'll hear on a first call.
Nobody knows what your account will do before opening it. A guaranteed figure is a closing tool, not a forecast.
If the account, the authentication or the list live with the agency, leaving costs you the asset you paid for.
A revenue share with no window, no dates and no store total tells you how generous a setting is.
Long terms protect the agency's forecast, not your outcome. A quarter is long enough to show your work.
Sold to by the founder, delivered to by somebody you've never met. The commonest complaint we hear.
Authentication, list hygiene, sunsetting and send volume decide whether the work reaches an inbox. It should come up unprompted.
The five reasons we turn work away, and where we'd point you instead.
Strategy, design, build and analysis all cost something before they earn anything back. A budget that can't cover the work can't buy the result.
Run the scorecard and build the two flows it marks lowest. Cheapest revenue in the account.
We have to be interested in what you sell, and you've got to be on board with the approach. A clash on the first call doesn't soften by month six.
Hire the shop whose published work you already like. Enthusiasm is most of the difference.
We work best with sign-off on direction, not approval on every subject line. Momentum and a four-stage approval loop can't share an account.
A freelancer working to your brief will make you happier, and cost less to direct.
Retention compounds month after month. It doesn't detonate, whatever somebody else's homepage implies.
If you need the revenue this week, email is the wrong instrument. Ask us and we'll say so.
We explain what we're doing and why, in plain English, on every report. But we're not running a training course alongside your campaigns.
Take the playbooks instead. Free, and the documents we work from on live accounts.
The honest edges of what we do, not a filter. The reasons we say yes are on the discovery call page.
Open any of them and put the six questions to us about it.
The service itself, the flow library behind it, and the programmes it sits alongside.
In-house wins on brand knowledge and on small changes made quickly. An agency wins on range: deliverability, copy, design, build and reporting are five different skills, and one hire rarely covers all five. Most people do best with an agency until the programme is stable, then a hybrid.
We won't print a number here: the ranges are so wide it would mislead you. The shape matters more. A one-off build cost agreed in writing, then a monthly retainer for the campaigns and the reporting. Ask what's included, what counts as extra, and what the notice period is.
Flows you already have often improve inside the first month. A rebuilt evergreen stack takes about a quarter before it's worth judging, because enough traffic has to see it first.
Ask which attribution window every figure uses. Ask for the dates. Then ask what the store turned over in the same period, because a revenue share only means something with the denominator attached. And ask to see a programme that didn't go to plan. Everybody has one.
A figure guaranteed before anybody's opened the account. The platform account held in the agency's name. Reports with no window and no dates, a year committed before the work is proven, a pitch team you never meet again, and deliverability treated as a checkbox.
Scope, the notice period, who owns the platform account and the data, who does the work, and what the reporting looks like and when it lands. An answer that's comfortable on a call is comfortable to write down.
No. We're an official Klaviyo partner and it's what we build in, so our playbooks assume it. On another platform we'll tell you straight whether moving is worth it, or whether what you've got is fine.
Please do, and do it before the call, not after the invoice. The account and the data stay yours. The flows get built in your platform, the case studies name the client and the period, the team page names who'd run your account, and the terms are thirty-day rolling.
Bring the score sheet and put us through it. If the answers don't suit you, you've lost half an hour and gained a better shortlist. No hard feelings.
Book a call with our founder.
We're all about relationships built on trust, mutual respect and a shared vision for success. If that sounds like your vibe, let's make some waves together 🌊
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