Lolo Sticks came to us ahead of launch with a patent-pending product, a finished website and no customers. Six weeks later it had nine automated journeys, 28 emails, 7 SMS and four capture experiences designed, written, built and tested, and every event on its headless Shopify site mapped for Klaviyo. This is how we build a new brand’s lifecycle program before launch, from the first call to the warm-up.
Facts
Client: Lolo Sticks
Industry: Beauty (customizable makeup, DTC)
List Size: Pre-launch
Partners: Shopify (headless)
ESP: Klaviyo (email + SMS)
Focus area: Pre-launch lifecycle foundation
Results
- 9 journeys, 28 emails, 7 SMS built and tested ahead of launch
- 4 capture experiences two audiences, desktop and mobile each, built to collect email first and SMS second
- 6 weeks from kickoff to a complete, founder-approved flow library
- Full event tracking designed for a headless site, down to every shade a customer will pick inside Build Your Stick
Client Insights
Lolo Sticks is a new makeup brand built around one idea: three full products in one stick. Customers will pick a bronzer, a blush and a highlighter from 18 shades, or take a preset, and every stick will be made to order. Three spots and 18 shades make 5,832 combinations, so almost every stick that ships will be one of a kind. The three-in-one design is patent pending, and the product is vegan, fragrance-free and Leaping Bunny certified.
The brand had a finished site and a launch plan built to bring in traffic from day one. What it didn’t have was anything to catch that traffic.
The Challenge
Every pre-launch brand faces the same question: build the lifecycle program now, or launch first and build it once demand is proven? Our answer is that paying to send people to a site that can’t capture them isn’t a test, it’s a write-off.
There was nothing to audit. No list, no flows, no sending history, no Klaviyo account. The usual first step of our work, reading what’s there, didn’t exist, so the engagement had to start with a roadmap instead. Four things made that roadmap harder than a normal build:
- A product that needs explaining. Three-in-one, made to order, a shade builder and a Shade Finder: the concept has to land in the first email or the first order never happens
- A headless Shopify site. No Liquid theme means no standard Klaviyo integration, so product views, cart events, checkout starts and the shade selections inside Build Your Stick all had to be tracked by hand
- A brand voice still taking shape. Voice, naming and claims were being finalized while the emails were being written
- A chain of deadlines that couldn’t move. SMS carrier verification, the site going live and the launch plan all depended on each other, and all of them had to resolve before launch
Our Process
1. What a pre-launch build has to cover
If you’re weighing pre-launch proposals, three questions matter more than the price.
First, count journeys, not emails. Email totals hide where the coverage is. We built the abandonment set (checkout, cart, browse and site, each its own flow) plus three post-purchase journeys, transactional, pre-delivery and post-delivery, because what happens between the order and the review is where a first-time buyer becomes a repeat one. Second, ask whether pop-ups are designed for desktop and mobile separately. It looks minor on a proposal and it decides most of the sign-up rate. Third, ask who owns the technical layer: sending domain, authentication, event tracking, SMS compliance. On a headless site that’s the part most likely to go wrong, and it needs an owner before launch, not after.
We planned six weeks for the build rather than four, because four was too short to do the scope well. The final scope was nine journeys, 28 emails, 7 SMS and eight segments.
2. Roadmap first, then weekly
The build ran August 10 to September 18, every email with a due date in ClickUp, a weekly call, and a simple rule for feedback: one person on the brand side consolidates it and sends it in one pass. The first assets were the welcome flow, and we asked the brand to be as picky as it liked on those, because the first round is where the rules get set and everything after it moves faster. They were picky. It worked.
3. The creative process: from references to a rulebook
The brand sent seven emails it admired and a website with the branding already settled. The direction was clean and minimal with a playful edge: a well-known skincare brand’s restraint, a well-known beauty brand’s sense of fun. We went through each reference and asked what, specifically, had earned its place: the product cutouts, the storytelling, the two-font rhythm, the Polaroid frames. Then we built the welcome flow and sent it over.
The feedback came back as Canva mock-ups, and from that round the rules were written down. Lowercase headers. Montserrat for text, the handwritten Vervain only as an accent. Images sit in rounded containers on white, never as backgrounds except in a hero. Polka dots fill space, not layered product shots. Headings smaller than ours, so the images speak. Less copy than we’d normally write, because the pictures do the work, but never so little that a three-in-one product goes unexplained. No animation. The brand’s own lines, “stick to you” and “made for you by you”, everywhere they fit.
Product language got the same treatment. The single stick isn’t a “mini”: it’s the same fill as any stick on the market. A custom stick won’t take longer to ship, because the brand assembles it in under a minute, so nothing in the emails could imply a wait. The line “your combination will never run out” was cut, because a trio is three single sticks and one shade can sell out.
The rulebook that came out of this stage goes with the brand, so whoever writes for it next starts from the same place.
4. Nine journeys, each with one job
| Journey | Assets | Objective |
|---|---|---|
| On-site capture | 4 experiences | Build the launch list from the first visit, email first, SMS second |
| Welcome | 6 emails, 2 SMS | Explain the product and earn the first order |
| Checkout abandonment | 4 emails, 2 SMS | Recover the highest-intent drop-off |
| Cart abandonment | 4 emails, 2 SMS | Bring a configured stick back to checkout |
| Browse abandonment | 3 emails | Move product-page visitors toward a first build |
| Site abandonment | 2 emails | Re-engage general visitors before product intent |
| Transactional | 3 emails | Order, shipping and delivery emails as brand assets |
| Pre-delivery | 2 emails | Keep confidence high between purchase and arrival |
| Post-delivery | 4 emails, 1 SMS | Product success, routine building and the review ask |
The welcome flow is fast, two touches on day one, because it’s the warmest pre-purchase moment the brand will ever have with that person. The delays stretch out after purchase. Flows know about each other: start a checkout and you leave the welcome flow, place an order and you leave everything. Checkout abandonment can’t re-enter for seven days, browse and site abandonment for fourteen, so a customer who wanders back to the builder twice in a week gets one email, not two.
5. The technical layer on a headless site
No Liquid theme meant we wrote the tracking specification for the brand’s developer to implement: every browse, cart and checkout event, plus the three shade slots inside Build Your Stick carried into Klaviyo as properties, so the cart email can name the exact trio someone configured. The one thing a headless store couldn’t give us was a product image for a stick that doesn’t exist until it’s ordered, so Build Your Stick carts fall back to a generic stick image while the shade names stay dynamic. Transactional emails stayed in Shopify, which the brand’s plan allowed, and we restyled them there.
Deliverability was set up as if the list were already large: a dedicated sending subdomain, authentication records, Google Postmaster for the spam-rate data inbox providers don’t share. SMS went on a toll-free number rather than a short code, because the short code costs more, takes weeks to approve and doesn’t travel if the brand ever changes platform. Texas, one of the largest US beauty markets, stayed in, with its consent rules and quiet hours enforced.
Warm-up ran on real people: a 21-person pilot across the brand’s team and friends, each assigned one flow, throttled to a few dozen emails a day and asked to open, click and reply, with the replies landing in the inbox the brand will monitor at launch.
The Results
The entire lifecycle program was built and tested ahead of launch. The numbers below are what was built; performance results will follow in an update.
- 28 emails, 7 SMS and 9 journeys: every automated touchpoint from first visit to post-delivery, designed, written, built and tested before launch
- 4 capture experiences across two audiences, desktop and mobile, email before SMS, ready before launch
- Full event tracking designed for a headless Shopify site, with shade-level cart data ready to power the dynamic emails
- 6 weeks from kickoff to an approved library, with a copy and design rulebook the brand can hand to anyone who writes for it next
Where To From Here?
Next comes launch and optimization: the launch campaign calendar, daily deliverability monitoring, and tests against real behavior, from where customers hesitate in the builder to which combinations dominate. The Shade Finder’s results will feed segmentation from the first order.
