Email Agencies are scamming you

Some email marketers and agencies are scamming brands.

Founders who are not aware of this, will get caught out.

Sometimes when I audit Klaviyo accounts, red flags show up.

Most are sadly not aware of this. 

And it’s fairly common.

These are tricks to over attribute revenue, or hide low sales.

And founders need to protect themselves.

Here are 3 shady tactics every brand owner must know about.

1-Attribution Window Manipulation.

The attribution window is how an email takes credit for a sale.

If someone clicks on an email within the attribution window and buys, that email claims the sale.

I just audited an account set to 15 days(default is 5) in Klaviyo.

This is a direct way for emails to steal credit from paid ads.

If your agency increases this setting in any way, run as they are lying to you to over attribute their work.

I've seen accounts claim 45% of revenue from email when the real number is closer to 20%.

2-Forced Email Popup Verification

“Check your inbox for your discount code” = a bad customer journey.

✅ Visitor → Popup → Product → Purchase

❌ Visitor → Popup → Inbox → Email → Click link → Website → Product → Purchase

If you show a discount popup, give access to the discount immediately.

If someone has to leave your site to get a discount, you’ve just added needless friction.

They may NEVER return.

We’ve seen a drops of up to 0.5% in conversion rates when this is done badly.

If your agency follows this, they are likely not monitoring conversion rates 🚩.

Your email dashboard will report higher email sales, but you’ve lost sales money by dropping conversion rates.

3-Abuse of discount codes

If your email expert advises you to use discounts regularly, watch out.

Your products will sell, but this starts looking desperate and cheap fast.

I saw an ecom store lose 70% of their monthly revenue by removing discounts.

Their audience got used to it, and now they didn’t want anything else.

Use discounts sparingly. 

There are plenty of brands we advise that never discount, there’s plenty of alternatives while protecting profit.

Your agency or email marketer should focus on long-term brand and customer lifetime value.

Daniel Filipe

PS. Fancy working with me?