How OluKai Recovered $55K+ in Missed Revenue with Tie’s Promo Tab Protection
If you’ve followed every email deliverability best practice—clean lists, optimized templates, strong sender reputation—but your campaigns still land in Gmail’s Promotions tab, you’re not alone.
That’s exactly what happened to OluKai, a premium DTC footwear brand.
Despite running a polished retention program, their emails weren’t getting seen, especially on Gmail and Apple Mail. This meant lower open rates, missed clicks, and lost revenue.
Then they tested Tie’s Promo Tab Protection. And in just nine A/B test campaigns, OluKai saw an immediate, measurable lift:
- 42% higher click-through rate
- 55% more revenue per send
- $55,000+ in revenue from just 9 campaigns
“We were doing everything right—clean lists, great creative, strong segmentation—but still landing in the Promotions tab. We saw this with Roark (another brand in their portfolio), too. With Tie, we saw a 60% increase in revenue and a 55% increase in orders. If we had used it across all sends, we would’ve paid for the annual plan in just 9 email blasts.”
Paul Maloney, Retention Manager
About the brand
OluKai is a premium footwear brand inspired by the Hawaiian islands, blending handcrafted design with island-rooted values of Aloha and Ohana. Founded in 2005, it crafts sandals, shoes, and boots that combine comfort, durability, and timeless style.
Challenges: Strong email strategy but weak visibility and high revenue risk
OluKai followed a disciplined approach to email marketing, with clean, validated email lists, optimized image-to-text ratios, verified sender reputation, strong segmentation, and engaging creatives.
With major launches, product drops, and sales announcements failing to reach Primary inboxes, OluKai noticed clear dips in open rates and click-through rates.
“We were list cleaning... optimizing our image-to-text ratio... making sure subject lines were all set up... best practices across the board. And yet, somehow, our emails were still landing in the Promotions tab.”
What made it worse was the lack of clarity. There were no technical issues to fix, nor any broken segments to rework. The team worked closely with Klaviyo and followed all the right practices, but none of it moved the needle.
Since the brand's marketing team operated across four brands within the Tradewind portfolio (like Melin, Roark, and Kaenon), there wasn't enough bandwidth to overhaul email strategy or test unproven solutions with uncertain outcomes.
“There are so many moving parts… and just being able to kind of hand the keys over to Tie—without interrupting creative or needing major lift—was huge for us.”
This wasn’t just an aesthetic issue. It meant missed revenue, especially during high-impact sends like product drops or seasonal sales.
Solution: Improving inbox visibility without changing creatives
OluKai turned to Tie’s Promo Tab Protection, which uses proprietary techniques to improve inbox placement without changing the body of your email. Here’s how OluKai improved inbox placement with this feature:
Step 1: Quick setup with no creative changes
Tie’s team accessed the brand’s Klaviyo account and created a universal content block—a small snippet that gets added to the footer. This required no changes to design, segmentation, or cadence.
“We provided the Tie team with access to Klaviyo, and they created a plugin we could drop into the bottom footer of our emails—no major lift on our end. It was pretty turnkey.”
Step 2: A/B tests across 9 campaigns
The team tested across 9 campaigns, sending:
- Version A: Original campaign with no content block
- Version B: Same campaign with Tie’s Promo Tab Protection in the footer
All the other variables (list, timing, and creative) remained the same. This made it easy to isolate the impact of the results.
By the second or third campaign, the results were clear: emails with Promo Tab Protection consistently landed in Primary inboxes.
“At OluKai, we saw a 60% lift in click-through rate and nearly 60% more revenue per send. It was pretty instantaneous.”
Step 3: Monitoring deliverability metrics
To ensure there were no downstream issues, OluKai tracked spam rates, unsubscribes, open rates, clicks, and revenue.
All backend performance stayed healthy, with unsubscribe and spam rates staying flat. The only major change was inbox placement.
“It really powered our retargeting efforts. The days we used Promo Tab Protection, traffic spiked, and the rest of the retention engine kicked in.”
Results: 55% more revenue and 42% higher CTR
By adding just one content block to existing campaigns, inbox placement shifted from Promotions to Primary, resulting in improved visibility, higher engagement, and increased conversions.
Through A/B tests across 9 campaigns, OluKai’s team saw:
- 55% increase in revenue per send
- 42% increase in click-through rate
- $55,000+ in incremental revenue
“It was pretty instantaneous. By the second or third send, the version using Tie was consistently higher across the board.”
Beyond revenue, improved inbox placement created a ripple effect throughout the retention funnel. Site traffic increased on days with Tie-enabled campaigns, resulting in more product views, fewer browse abandonment events, and improved downstream retargeting performance.
“The days we used Promo Tab Protection, traffic spiked. That fed our whole lifecycle engine—abandon flows, retargeting, everything.”
Land in Primary inboxes every time and capture more revenue!
If you’re investing in email marketing but still land in Promotions, you’re missing out on reaching high-intent shoppers and capturing more purchases. Tie’s Promo Tab Protection helps ecommerce brands like OluKai fix inbox placement, drive more clicks, and unlock missed revenue, without changing your email content.
With Tie’s Promo Tab Protection, you can:
- Fix inbox placement with one lightweight content block
- Run safe, controlled A/B tests
- Drive more revenue from the emails you’re already sending
Want to see how it works? Book a demo with Tie to learn how to improve inbox placement and increase visibility.
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