Christian Nocera admits he struggled with email marketing for his business, Dapper Yankee. That’s why he trusted a marketing agency that promised to accelerate email-driven sales.
“Their pitch was on point and I signed up,” he says, reluctantly agreeing to the terms that he would have to leave Seguno for Klaviyo. “But after working with them — and realizing that I was doing more work by hiring them — I was pretty eager to cut them loose.”
The agency never delivered on its guarantee. After six months, he reclaimed control and returned to Seguno.
The decision is paying off beyond revenue gains. Nocera is back to using an ESP he loves that’s easy to navigate and — more importantly — connecting with customers through a brand voice that no one knows better than him.
From Seguno to Klaviyo and back
When launching Dapper Yankee in 2021, Nocera used Sendinblue to promote his soap, hair, and beard care products because it was familiar. Once it became too expensive due to subscriber growth, he switched to Seguno.
Nocera handles all Dapper Yankee operations except production, meaning there’s little room for email strategy. He activated a few automations and limited newsletters to once per month because he thought anything more would be bothersome.
The marketing agency would change that course. Nocera hired them to create newsletters and expand automations.
In exchange, they promised that emails would generate 30% of Dapper Yankee’s revenue — a worthy pursuit since direct-to-consumer sales make up more than 90% of the business.
The work led to gains. But sales fell short of the contract agreement and the relationship frustrated Nocera.
“They didn't get to know my brand. Their email copy was horrible and I had to rewrite it,” Nocera says, recalling the overuse of “dapper” and incorrectly referring to customers as “Yankees.”
“The images they used were so generic and boring,” he adds. He often created new images and jumped into the platform to make draft tweaks.
The agency insisted on Klaviyo for commission tracking purposes. Working within the platform wasn’t easy for Nocera, an IT manager for 30 years before he started Dapper Yankee. “I spent my whole life reading technical documentation, and I really didn’t want to do it again.”
The entire experience sparked a revelation for Nocera: Seguno’s integration inside Shopify is “brilliant.”
“Why reinvent the wheel?” he elaborates. Seguno “doesn't need to be an overly giant, robust application. It connects to Shopify Flow, so it has everything I need.”
Boosting revenue with a deeper knowledge of best practices
Nocera’s time with the agency evolved his marketing know-how in a few respects.
- Sending newsletters once a month is not enough. The agency's approach of three to four emails per week is too frequent for his liking, but he’s comfortable with a weekly or twice-weekly cadence.
- Automations increase conversions. With help from Seguno, he added several automations and expanded others into a meatier series.
More newsletters and strategy-driven automations have bolstered Dapper Yankee sales. Six months after leaving the agency, email revenue increased by 41%.
Emails now generate between 30% and 35% of the business’s total sales.
“Repeat customers are the lifeblood of Dapper Yankee,” Nocera says, explaining he has a 53% return customer rate. “I want my customers to come back to me. So keeping them engaged with emails is vital to my business.”
Lastly, Nocera recognizes that email shouldn’t be one size fits all. “If people are only interested in soap, I should not send them information about beard oil.”
Segmentation guides the newsletter strategy. Most emails don’t go to the entire list but target segments according to buying or browsing habits.
Improving email outcomes by regaining creative control
Several factors have catalyzed Dapper Yankee’s improved email marketing figures, starting with email automations. Eight automations — from a welcome series to a repeat-purchaser thank you — account for 38% of email-generated revenue.
A few optimizations stand out specifically:
- Changes to the welcome automation delivered a 44% revenue gain
- Converting an abandoned checkout automation into a series increased revenue by 64%
Nocera notes other improvements since leaving Klaviyo:
- Open rates increased from an average of 20% to typically 30% or above
- The unsubscribe rate is consistently 0.3% or lower; it was nearly always over 1% while using Klaviyo, which Nocera attributes to the too-frequent sending cadence
- Not only are bounce rates lower, but Nocera doesn’t have to unsubscribe bounced addresses since Seguno automatically does the cleaning
“It’s just so hard to believe how a few changes can have such a huge and positive impact on a business,” Nocera says. “And I had no idea when starting that email would be such an important tool in this business.”
Reaping growth and saving time with extra Seguno apps
Nocera’s second engagement with Seguno goes beyond email. He has embraced two other apps from the suite.
Increasing the subscriber list with Popups & Forms
Dapper Yankee’s first email capture tool was a free third-party app that did the job but lacked mobile optimization.
The second was Klaviyo’s popup application. The solution forced people to enter an email and cell phone number, which Nocera presumes turned away would-be subscribers.
Now, they use Seguno popups. He also leverages the Postscript connection for SMS collection so adding a phone number is optional. The email list grew 42% from January 2024 to February 2025.
Streamlining processes with Shopify Connect for Canva
Shopify Connect for Canva is proving to be a substantial time saver. Nocera was already a big fan of Canva and its integration with Seguno’s email editor. The bridge Seguno created between Shopify and Canva gives him immediate access to his Shopify images within his favorite design software.
It’s particularly beneficial for updating website photography whenever limited-edition products debut. The app eliminates entering alt text, uploading, downloading, and saving files to a PC.
“I love it so much,” he says. The app cuts out an hour to two hours of work every month, “which is huge for me. Fifteen minutes is huge when I have 70 orders awaiting fulfillment.”
A Seguno ‘customer for life’
As Dapper Yankee approaches its fourth year, Nocera doesn’t harbor aggressive growth plans. He shares the same mentality as his manufacturing partner: steadiness is the way forward.
He’s content with maintaining 50% year-over-year growth. Sustainability is the goal, and Seguno is essential in achieving it.
“Seguno is my primary communication tool for customers, and it will be into the future,” Nocera says. “You have a customer for life.”
