KIKI World
Lifecycle email for a beauty platform backed by Estée Lauder
An a16z and Estée Lauder-backed beauty platform, preparing to launch with email built for one-off sends. A new lifecycle system took its welcome click rate from 3.3% to 6.1% and set the whole journey up to scale.
Email Marketing & Automation
IndustryBeauty & Cosmetics
TimelineLaunch phase · 2025
The Challenge
Email built for one-off sends, and a launch that needed a lifecycle.
KIKI World had just raised $7m from Andreessen Horowitz and The Estée Lauder Companies, landed press in Forbes and TechCrunch, and new subscribers were arriving through its Ulta Beauty partnership. Its email was set up to send one-off campaigns, and a launch at that pace needs a lifecycle: onboarding for three kinds of user (new, existing and creators), flows that activate and retain, and list health that holds as the audience grows.
The Results
Welcome click rates up 85%, from 3.3% to 6.1%.
KIKI's first welcome email went from a 3.3% click rate to 6.1% for new sign-ups, an 85% uplift, backed by 12 lifecycle flows and a 25-test programme built to keep improving.
The Solution
We built the lifecycle, and a system to keep improving it.
We mapped and wireframed 12 lifecycle flows across onboarding, conversion, retention and winback, with the triggers and logic to build on as the platform grows. The welcome series was the priority, so we built three separate journeys, one each for new users, existing users and creators, because a shopper arriving from Ulta and a creator onboarding need different introductions. Then a testing programme to improve it over time: 25 A/B tests, a framework to record what each one taught, and an audit of past sends to find the quick wins. We also ran a strategy workshop to line the lifecycle up with where the business was heading.
The welcome series
Three journeys, one for each kind of user
The Outcome
Welcome emails that nearly doubled their click rate.
The first welcome email's click rate went from 3.3% to 6.1% for new sign-ups, an 85% uplift, and the second from 0.9% to 2.9%. The 25 A/B tests gave KIKI a way to keep improving instead of guessing, and the lifecycle now covers onboarding, conversion, retention and winback, ready to scale as the platform grows. Conversion was not the KPI at this stage; the focus was activation and engagement ahead of launch, and that is where the numbers moved.