How Buffy Lifted Inbox Placement to 75% and Unlocked $60,000 in Incremental Revenue with Tie

A spotty deliverability history that limited confidence

Buffy had dealt with uneven email engagement and inbox placement over the years. Each transition between ESPs created small dips in performance, making it hard to trust their domain reputation. Even though the brand wasn’t facing a crisis, the inconsistency made them cautious about sending to larger segments of their list.

“It’s been a spotty past… the numbers always looked different after migrations.”

This made the team hesitant to expand beyond their most recently active subscribers. Emailing their full seven-year list without strong safeguards risked damaging long-term deliverability at the scale they needed to send.

“We started emailing our entire list, and domain warming felt like the thing that made it safe to do.”

Revenue trapped in the Promotions tab

Before testing Tie, a large share of Buffy’s emails were landing in Gmail’s Promotions tab. This meant fewer people saw their lifecycle flows, despite the content and timing being strong.

Visibility was the real issue. Flows were performing below their potential simply because inbox placement wasn’t stable.

Their early deliverability checks showed over 41% of Buffy’s emails were being routed to Promotions, while only 33% made it to the inbox. That gap represented meaningful revenue they couldn’t access.

Limited revenue from SMS due to anonymous subscribers

Buffy had built a strong SMS channel, but a portion of subscribed shoppers appeared anonymous onsite.

That meant they couldn’t be consistently recognized or targeted, even after opting in.

As a result, SMS performance was capped, leaving revenue untapped despite steady subscriber growth.

Domain warming to safely scale sending

The team was already using Tie to identify more visitors and push them into existing lifecycle flows. 

To safely increase sending volume, Buffy implemented Tie’s Domain Warming to stabilize sender reputation and eliminate the risk that comes with emailing larger segments. 

Tie’s warming logic automatically adjusted send rates in the background, allowing the team to expand outreach without manual throttling or fear of reputation damage.

This made it possible to confidently email broader audiences (including older subscribers) while maintaining consistent inbox placement.

Shifting Promotions-tab emails into the inbox

To address visibility issues in Gmail, Buffy deployed Tie’s Promo Tab Protection across their lifecycle flows. Emails that had previously landed in the Promotions tab began appearing in the primary inbox.

This shift boosted both visibility and engagement without requiring any changes to content, timing, or flow strategy, unlocking additional performance from campaigns that were already well optimized.

“Promo tab protection has given us measurable and certain improvement in deliverability and revenue outcomes.”

The combination of stronger identification (via Web ID) and improved deliverability gave the team new confidence in how shoppers were entering and moving through their lifecycle program.

“It quickly proved itself… It justified testing and became part of our stack.”

Extending SMS performance with Postscript

Buffy’s SMS program, powered by Postscript, was already a high-ROI channel. But like most SMS programs, it relied on cookies, logged-in sessions, and consistent device usage to identify shoppers.

That created a blind spot.

Many subscribers were eligible to receive SMS messages, but appeared anonymous due to expired cookies, logged-out sessions, or device changes. As a result, high-intent shoppers were missing from browse and cart abandonment SMS flows.

By integrating Tie with Postscript, Buffy was able to reconnect these shoppers to their existing SMS consent and re-route them into key abandonment flows without changing their SMS strategy or cadence.

This closed a gap between site behavior and SMS reach, increasing the number of eligible sends and unlocking incremental revenue from a channel that was already performing well.

Stronger inbox placement that unlocked real revenue

The shift from the Promotions tab to the inbox created an immediate impact across Buffy’s lifecycle program. With higher visibility, flows that previously underperformed began contributing meaningful revenue. Within the first month of testing, the uplift was clear:

• $60,000 in incremental revenue.
• 45% higher revenue in flows protected by Promo Tab Protection.
• Stronger flow performance without any creative or structural changes.

“Promo tab protection has given us measurable and certain improvement in deliverability and revenue outcomes.”

Higher engagement across key lifecycle flows

With inbox placement stabilized, Buffy saw consistent improvements in the metrics that signal intent:

• 19% uplift in open rates.
• 18% uplift in click rates.
• More shoppers entering, seeing, and interacting with lifecycle journeys that had been constrained by placement issues.

These gains provided a stronger foundation for both short-term revenue and long-term retention.

Expanded reach across SMS, not just email

As email inbox placement stabilized, Buffy was also able to message more existing SMS subscribers who had previously gone unidentified.

By reconnecting known SMS subscribers who appeared anonymous due to expired cookies, logged-out sessions, or device changes, Buffy routed more shoppers into browse- and cart-abandonment SMS flows without changing strategy or cadence.

The result was a measurable expansion in SMS reach and revenue:

• 30.3% increase in browse and cart abandonment SMS sends
  
  • 32% from browse abandonment
  • 23.5% from cart abandonment
• 11.2% increase in revenue from SMS abandonment flows
  
  • 10.8% from browse
  • 12.8% from cart

For Buffy, this confirmed that Tie’s impact extended beyond email deliverability. The same identification layer that improved inbox placement also expanded SMS eligibility, capturing incremental revenue from shoppers who would otherwise have gone unseen.

Increase inbox visibility to drive more sales

Buffy lifted inbox placement to 75%, unlocked incremental revenue from its core flows, and gained the confidence to scale sends to its full audience through a deliverability foundation built with Tie.

Besides increasing inbox visibility and keeping emails out of the Promotions tab, brands also use Tie to:

• Strengthen sender reputation with continuous domain warming
• Identify more high-intent site visitors and route them into existing flows
• Enrich profiles with reliable attributes to improve targeting and lifecycle relevance

Ready to improve inbox placement and uncover revenue your flows are already positioned to earn?

Get started today!