Q4 2024's approach was simple: send to recently engaged subscribers. 30-day engaged. Very engaged. MPP-engaged. Five exclusion segments for basic hygiene. Audiences ranged from 290 to 1,656 recipients per campaign.

It worked—49.9% open rates, clean deliverability—but it left revenue on the table. Thousands of customers who'd bought CBD products, purchased during Prime Day, or shown interest in specific product categories never saw campaigns because they hadn't opened an email in the last 30 days.

We rebuilt the segmentation around behavior, not just engagement:

Product interest segments:

• CBD purchasers (people who'd bought CBD topicals)
  
• Lotion purchasers and interest (customers who engage with lotion content)
  
• Large CBD product purchasers ($300 64oz buyers—high AOV targets)
  

Purchase history segments:

• 2024 BFCM purchasers (proven Black Friday buyers)
  
• 2024 Prime Day purchasers (proven promotional buyers)
  
• General interest groups L90 (engaged across 90 days, not just 30)

Suppression expanded from 5 to 12 segments:


• Bot suppression, invalid emails, false emails, hard bounces
  
• Marked as spam 3+ times
  
• Never engaged profiles
  
• Old profiles who never purchased
  
  The result: audience sizes grew from an average of 887 recipients to 7,434 recipients—an 8.4x increase—while open rates improved from 49.9% to 59.0% and spam complaints per campaign dropped 15%.
  
  The breakthrough: When you target people based on what they've bought or shown interest in, not just whether they opened last week, you can send to dramatically larger audiences while maintaining (or improving) relevance.

Q4 2024 BFCM strategy: 8 campaigns over the promotional window. Small, safe audiences (290-647 recipients per send). Total BFCM revenue: $10,721.

Q4 2025 BFCM strategy: 4 campaigns. Audiences 40-85x larger (14,336-24,553 recipients). Same core offer—40% off sitewide—but executed with confidence that the segmentation could handle scale.

BFCM 2025 campaigns:

• Launch (Nov 24): $9,655 revenue, 117 conversions, 24,553 recipients
  
• Mid-Week Push (Nov 26): $4,706 revenue, 54 conversions, 17,896 recipients
  
• Weekend Reminder (Nov 28): $5,969 revenue, 72 conversions, 17,219 recipients
  
• Final Day (Nov 30): $4,954 revenue, 71 conversions, 14,336 recipients
  
  Total BFCM 2025 revenue: $25,284—a +136% increase over 2024, with half the campaigns. Revenue per BFCM campaign went from $1,340 to $6,321—a +372% improvement. The client's own words: "That was the best year we've had for Black Friday."

ShiKai's CBD Advanced Lotion—64oz bottles priced at $300—generated $66,000 in sales on shikai.com in 2025. Email played a major role.

We built campaigns targeting CBD purchasers and large CBD product purchasers. 

Combined, CBD-focused campaigns generated thousands in revenue in Q4 2025—all by targeting people who'd already shown interest in or purchased CBD products. These weren't broadcast to the entire list. They went to people who actually wanted them.

The client confirmed the impact: "Gallon sizes are up 50% in sales."

Q4 2024 had zero October campaigns. The quarter started in November. Q4 2025 activated October with 6 campaigns generating $8,796.

That's not incremental optimization—it's adding an entire revenue month that didn't exist the prior year. By the time November hit, ShiKai had already generated nearly $9K in email revenue. Q4 2024 had $0 by that point.

• CBD Advanced Lotion: $66,000 in total sales on shikai.com
  
• Gallon sizes: +50% YoY sales growth

• Online business: +22% YoY (2024 → 2025)
  
• Email revenue: +135% YoY (Q4 vs Q4)
  
• Best Black Friday ever (client-confirmed)
  
• Email: Only external program to survive budget cuts

Despite Q1 being a traditionally slower period:

• Avg conversions per campaign: 19.7 (Q4) → 21.2 (Q1) (+7.4%)
  
• Weighted avg open rate: 42% (Q4, diluted by BFCM broad sends) → 70.1% (Q1)
  
• Spam complaints: 76 over 38 campaigns (Q4) → 24 over 20 campaigns (Q1) (-47% per campaign)

ShiKai proves that maximizing a channel that's already working requires strategic sophistication, not just doing more of the same.

The email program was already generating revenue in Q4 2024. Open rates were healthy. Deliverability was clean. Customers were engaged. But ShiKai knew there was more potential—they just needed the right strategy to unlock it.

The breakthrough wasn't sending more campaigns. It was smarter segmentation. Moving from "send to people who opened recently" to "send to people who've bought CBD, shown interest in lotions, or purchased during BFCM last year" unlocked the ability to scale audiences 8x while improving open rates 18% and reducing spam complaints 15%.

BFCM 2025 became the proof point: half the campaigns, 40x larger audiences, +136% more revenue, +372% revenue per send. The client's own testimony: "That was the best year we've had for Black Friday."

By Q4 2025, email had generated $62,088—a +135% increase from Q4 2024—while sending 10% fewer campaigns. Revenue per campaign went from $771 to $2,527. October, which generated $0 in 2024, generated $8,796 in 2025. The welcome series revenue grew +181%. Browse abandonment revenue grew +627%.

When the client said "Online business is up 22% from 2024 to 2025" and "Arcady Media's program was the only one not cut," they were confirming what the data already showed: email wasn't just working—it was the highest-ROI channel they had.

For a 55-year-old family brand built on science and customer relationships, maximizing email meant recognizing those relationships have measurable, scalable value. The question was never whether email worked. It was how much better it could work. Q4 2025 answered that question: 135% better.