Pet Product Email Marketing Case Study

Wicks Fur Change

INDUSTRY: Pet-Friendly Homemade Candles & Wax Melts
PLATFORM: Klaviyo (moved from Omnisend)
TIMELINE: 8 weeks
TYPE: E-Commerce
SERVICE: Core E-Commerce Email Package & List Growth + Template Add-Ons

Meet Wicks Fur Change

Chelsea and Jake Sarauer hand-pour every candle themselves in Wisconsin. Pet-safe soy wax, small batches, and when a scent sells out, it's gone - no restock, no backorder, and no rain check.

The brand started the way the best ones do: out of something real. Chelsea and Jake built their family a different way - adopting Nika, then Coco, fostering dog after dog, and eventually keeping Nash permanently. Wicks Fur Change grew out of that life - a way to give back to the rescue community that had given them so much. Every purchase supports rescue.

They sell in limited seasonal drops, participate in farmers markets - they show up in person, tell their story at the table, and build genuine connection with every customer they meet.

What they didn't have: any of that translated into email.

The Challenge

Email for a drop-model brand isn't the same as email for a standard e-commerce store.

📭 You can't set up a generic "back in stock" reminder when nothing comes back in stock, and you can't lean on evergreen promotions when scarcity is literally built into the product. Also, you can't treat a subscriber who met Chelsea at the Oshkosh Farmers Market the same way you treat someone who found the brand through a Google search.

🔀 Wicks Fur Change came in with a real audience - people who genuinely loved the brand - and no way to stay in touch with them between drops. A one-email welcome flow, no strategic abandonment recovery, and a signup offer that was too narrow to capture anyone primarily interested in candles.

📊 The challenge wasn't just building infrastructure - it was building infrastructure that fit how this brand actually operates.

The Solution

Built for a brand that does things differently.

Wicks Fur Change isn't a typical e-commerce store. Limited drops, a rescue mission at the center, and a deeply personal origin story meant the email strategy had to match the brand - warm, specific, and never desperate.

A welcome flow that honors the relationship.

Chelsea and Jake's customers aren't anonymous shoppers - they're people who connected with the mission, so the welcome flow was built to reflect that. Subscribers who had already purchased got a different opening email than new subscribers - because someone who already bought doesn't need a pitch, they need to feel like they made the right choice. The non-purchaser path focused on education and story first, with a soft sell that followed naturally rather than led immediately.

A conversion suite built around real scarcity.

Limited drops mean the urgency in abandonment emails is genuine - "this scent won't come back" isn't a line, it's the truth. Browse abandonment leaned into that quietly, with curiosity rather than pressure, cart abandonment used the drop model as the natural reason to come back, and checkout abandonment used no discount at all - the people who made it to checkout were already the most motivated buyers. A coupon at that moment trains future abandoners to wait for one - a clear, frictionless path back works better. Returning buyers never saw a discount in recovery flows - that's a margin protection decision, and it's a deliberate one.

A list growth strategy built around where the brand actually lives.

Chelsea and Jake's strongest acquisition channel isn't a Facebook ad. It's the farmers market table - the moment someone smells the candle, hears the story, and wants to stay connected. Our add-on strategy built around that: a dedicated in-person event signup flow (including a specific version for the Oshkosh Farmers Market, one of the top-ranked markets in the country), a popup updated from a wax-melts-only offer to 20% off any first order, and a Klaviyo migration from Omnisend that gave them a platform built to grow with them.

The Results

Numbers that speak for themselves!

Here's what eight weeks of the right infrastructure looks like:

3.72%

Placed Order Rate

Industry average is only 1-2%

5.95%

Click Rate

Industry average is only 1.5-2.5%

63.6%

List Growth

In 8 weeks since launch of new email system

9.06%

Website Pop-up Submit Rate

Industry average is only 2-3%

So, why did this work?

Most email programs are built for a standard e-commerce model - evergreen catalog, ongoing promotions, restock reminders. Wicks Fur Change doesn't fit that model, and building email like it did would have produced the wrong results.

The strategy worked because it was built around how this brand actually operates.

Scarcity was treated as a brand truth, not a tactic. The drop model gave every abandonment email a reason to come back that was real - not a countdown timer, not a manufactured deadline. That authenticity shows up in the numbers.

The welcome flow met subscribers where they were.

The no-discount checkout decision protected margin on the most motivated buyers. People who made it to checkout didn't need a coupon - they needed a clear path back. Not discounting that segment keeps conversion rates honest and margin intact.

List growth was built around the brand's real acquisition strength.

The copy matched the brand. Warm, specific, never desperate. A closing email that says "whenever you're ready, the candles will be here" works for Wicks Fur Change in a way that a hard sell never would.