questions worth asking before you hire anyone.

Across the market, monthly retainers usually run from €500 to €8,000, depending on list size, sending volume and whether copy and design are included. One-off projects, such as building a set of flows or moving to Klaviyo, typically cost €2,000 to €10,000. real. starts at €500 a month for one focused service and goes up to about €2,000, depending on how much we take on. You get a fixed monthly price in writing before anything starts. The full price breakdown explains what each bracket buys.

No. If you don't have an email platform yet, we set one up during onboarding, and if you're switching tools, moving your list and flows is part of that. If you already use Mailchimp, Customer.io or something similar and it works, we work in it. For most Shopify brands we recommend Klaviyo because it reads store events such as orders and product views directly. We won't push you to switch just because it would make our job easier.

Email numbers move first. Clicks and revenue per email usually shift within the first 30 days, because a flow starts working on the day it goes live, and your first one is live in week two. Repeat purchases and support tickets take longer, since a full round of customers has to pass through the new flows before those numbers mean anything. Expect day 45 to 60 there.

With three numbers we agree on in writing before we start: email revenue, repeat purchase rate and support ticket volume. You see them in the same dashboard we use, every week, including the weeks that look bad. If they're still where they started after 90 days, the guarantee applies and we keep working at no extra cost until they move. The guarantee covers our work and does not include a refund.

We're young and small, and we work like it. Nobody passes your account to a junior after the sales call. There's no discovery phase that bills for a month before anything goes out, because the first flow is live in week two. A person writes every email, without a template library or a model draft dressed up as strategy. What we don't have yet is a long list of case studies, and the 90-day guarantee is how we take that risk off you.

Three months. Retention needs one full cycle of customers moving through the flows before the numbers say anything reliable, and the 90-day guarantee covers exactly that stretch.

Not much. You approve emails before they go out, and once a month we talk through numbers and direction. Strategy, copy, build and reporting stay with us. If you want to be more involved, you can be.

It plans, writes, builds and measures the emails a shop sends. In practice that covers the automated flows (welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase, win-back), the campaigns in between, segmenting the list, keeping deliverability healthy so mail lands in the inbox, and reporting revenue per email. A good agency also tells you which of those you don't need yet.

Klaviyo's 2026 benchmarks, based on more than 183,000 brands, put the average ecommerce campaign open rate at 31 percent and the top 10 percent of senders at 45.1 percent. Don't steer by it, though. Since 2021, Apple Mail Privacy Protection has loaded images automatically, which records opens that never happened. Click rate is more honest: 1.69 percent on average for campaigns and 5.58 percent for flows, in the same dataset. Our statistics page lists the sources.

It depends on your list more than on any rule of thumb. Flows send when a customer does something, so their frequency takes care of itself. For campaigns, send as often as you have something worth opening, and watch unsubscribes and spam complaints while you do. Google requires senders to keep complaints below 0.3 percent and recommends staying under 0.1 percent. We also pick the send time per subscriber, based on when each person tends to open, instead of one slot for the whole list.

Start with the two closest to a purchase: a welcome series for new subscribers and an abandoned cart flow. Then build the flows that bring buyers back: post-purchase (order and shipping clarity first, then how to get the most out of the product), a review or referral request once the product has arrived, and a win-back for customers who have gone quiet. If you sell something that runs out, such as coffee, skincare or supplements, add a replenishment reminder. Our flow guide goes through each one.

Email itself, yes, at almost any size. A welcome and an abandoned cart flow work from the first subscriber and cost little beyond the software. An agency is a separate question. At €500 a month, a retainer costs €6,000 a year, which is 12 percent of revenue for a shop turning over €50,000. Below roughly that size, set up the core flows yourself or get a one-off audit, and bring in an agency once email revenue can carry the fee. The retention calculator estimates what better flows could add for your store.

A freelancer fits when you need one specific thing built and can brief it clearly, but strategy and follow-through stay with you. In-house makes sense once email is already a large, predictable revenue line, and even then one hire rarely covers strategy, copy, design and deliverability. An agency sits in between: several skills for one monthly fee, and you can stop when it stops paying off. Our Shopify guide compares the three in a table.