Full Breakdown: Gruns $1B Email Strategy: Best in Class or Broken?
TL;DR: I recently spent 23 days auditing Grüns’ email strategy. And honestly… I don’t think their biggest problem is their email design. In fact, their emails look great. Their copy is solid. Their team is clearly talented. But after going through their customer journey from the perspective of a new subscriber, I found several retention mistakes that I believe are costing them hundreds of thousands of dollars every month.
Everyone seems to be praising Grüns’ email marketing.
The designs are beautiful.
The copy is polished.
The branding is world-class.
And clearly, they’re doing something right.
They’ve built one of the fastest-growing supplement brands in the world and recently announced an acquisition by Unilever.
But here’s the problem:
Most marketers look at email programs the wrong way.
They judge them based on how pretty the emails look.
I judge them based on how customers experience them.
Those are two completely different things.
After spending 23 days subscribed to Grüns’ email and SMS program, I discovered something surprising:
Their biggest opportunity isn’t better design.
It’s fixing the customer journey.
Now before we dive in, let me be clear.
This isn’t an attack on Grüns.
Their team is clearly talented.
Their growth speaks for itself.
Their creative execution is strong.
But one thing I’ve learned from working with 9 and 10-figure ecommerce brands is this:
The larger a company becomes, the easier it is to lose touch with the customer experience that helped build the business in the first place.
When brands scale rapidly, they tend to add more software.
More automations.
More agencies.
More channels.
More campaigns.
More complexity.
Over time, nobody is responsible for orchestrating the entire customer journey.
Instead, individual teams optimize individual systems.
The email team optimizes email.
The SMS team optimizes SMS.
The paid media team optimizes ads.
The lifecycle team optimizes flows.
The problem?
Customers don’t experience channels.
Customers experience brands.
And that’s where I believe Grüns has an opportunity.
Let’s break down the four biggest issues I found.
Mistake #1: They Collect Customer Data But Don’t Use It
The first thing that stood out happened before I even received my first email.
When I signed up for the Grüns email list, I was asked a simple question:
“What do you need help with?”
I selected:
Gut Health Support.
This should have been gold.
Why?
Because this is first-party customer data.
The customer is literally telling you why they’re interested in your brand.
Most marketers spend millions trying to infer customer intent through analytics, tracking pixels, surveys, and behavioral data.
Grüns simply asked me.
And then ignored the answer.
Over the next 23 days, I received 32 emails.
Not one mentioned gut health.
Not one.
No educational content.
No benefits.
No customer stories.
No product positioning related to gut health.
Nothing.
Instead, I received generic promotional content that could have been sent to anyone.
This is a massive missed opportunity.
The beginning of every customer relationship should feel personalized.
The customer should feel understood.
The moment someone tells you what they care about, your marketing should reflect that.
Instead, Grüns immediately shifted into broadcast mode.
And that’s where engagement starts to decline.
The lesson here isn’t just about Grüns.
It’s about every ecommerce brand.
If you’re collecting customer data but not using it to shape the customer journey, you’re creating friction where trust should be built.
Mistake #2: They’re Sending Too Many Emails
The second issue is volume.
In my first 23 days as a subscriber, I received 32 emails.
Read that again.
Thirty-two emails.
Twenty-three days.
Some days I received two emails.
Other days I received three.
At one point I received four emails within a short period.
Now here’s where most retention marketers will disagree with me.
They’ll point to attribution reports and say:
“More sends create more revenue.”
Maybe.
But that’s not the full picture.
Because revenue and profitability are not the same thing.
Every email has a cost.
Platform costs.
Creative costs.
Management costs.
Deliverability costs.
Customer fatigue costs.
Then consider that Grüns is already offering discounts as high as 52% off for first-time buyers.
Add SMS costs.
Add paid retargeting costs.
Add acquisition costs.
At some point you have to ask:
How much profit is actually left?
The real goal isn’t sending more emails.
The goal is creating more profitable customer relationships.
Sometimes sending fewer emails with better intent creates a significantly better customer experience while increasing long-term value.
Most brands optimize for immediate revenue.
The best brands optimize for customer lifetime value.
Those are not always the same thing.
Mistake #3: Their Customer Journey Isn’t Orchestrated
This was perhaps the most concerning issue.
To test their lifecycle marketing, I intentionally added a product to my cart.
I wanted to see how their abandonment experience worked.
What happened next surprised me.
I received:
A site abandonment email.
Then a cart abandonment email.
Then another site abandonment email.
All within the same general timeframe.
The problem?
These messages represent different stages of intent.
A site abandonment email is for someone casually browsing.
A cart abandonment email is for someone actively considering a purchase.
Those are completely different customer states.
Once someone has placed an item in their cart, every message should focus on helping them complete the purchase.
Instead, Grüns was sending competing messages simultaneously.
The result?
Noise.
Confusion.
Distraction.
Imagine walking into a retail store.
You pick up a product.
Walk to checkout.
And a salesperson suddenly starts talking to you about an entirely different department.
That’s essentially what’s happening here.
The highest-intent customer should receive the most relevant message.
Instead, the customer journey appears fragmented.
Mistake #4: The Technology Stack Is Running The Experience
Then I found what I believe is the root cause.
My cart abandonment email arrived before my welcome email.
Think about that.
Before the brand properly welcomed me.
Before the relationship was established.
Before I received foundational information.
I was already receiving recovery messaging.
That should never happen.
When I see experiences like this, the culprit is usually the same:
Too much technology.
Too many systems.
Too many automations.
Too many disconnected workflows.
One platform triggers one email.
Another platform triggers another.
A third platform triggers something else.
Nobody owns the complete experience.
This is common among larger brands.
As organizations grow, they accumulate software.
Each new platform solves a specific problem.
But eventually the customer journey becomes fragmented because nobody is orchestrating the entire ecosystem.
The customer doesn’t care which platform sent the message.
The customer only sees the experience.
And the experience feels disconnected.
What I Would Change If I Were VP of Retention
If I were brought into Grüns tomorrow, I wouldn’t start by redesigning emails.
I wouldn’t rewrite subject lines.
I wouldn’t obsess over click-through rates.
Instead, I’d focus on four things:
1. Personalize Every Early Touchpoint
Use customer preferences immediately.
If someone says they care about gut health, start there.
2. Send Better Emails, Not More Emails
Optimize for relevance instead of volume.
3. Rebuild The Customer Journey
Create a hierarchy of intent so customers receive the right message at the right time.
4. Audit The Entire Tech Stack
Remove redundant systems and create one unified customer experience.
Final Thoughts
Most ecommerce brands don’t have an email problem.
They have an orchestration problem.
They’re obsessed with more:
More campaigns.
More flows.
More automations.
More channels.
More technology.
Meanwhile customers are asking for something much simpler:
Relevance.
The future of retention won’t belong to brands sending the most messages.
It will belong to brands sending the right messages.
At the right time.
To the right customer.
That’s how you create loyalty.
That’s how you increase lifetime value.
And that’s how you turn one-time buyers into customers for life.
👉 Need help implementing a smarter email strategy?
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