How OluKai Hit Primary Inbox in 24hrs, growing sales by $55k+

Strong email strategy but weak visibility

Despite OluKai’s disciplined approach to email marketing, their team encountered a persistent issue. Inbox placement remained a challenge across Gmail, Yahoo, and Apple Mail. Even after implementing every known best practice—clean lists, BIMI authentication, and optimized subject lines—their campaigns continued to land in the Promotions tab. 

“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.”

Revenue risk from reduced visibility

With major launches, product drops, and sales announcements failing to reach Primary inboxes, OluKai noticed clear dips in open rates and click-through rates. What made it worse was the lack of clarity. There were no technical issues to fix, nor any broken segments to rework.

“When you get hit with the executive team asking, ‘Why are we landing in junk or Promotions tab?’... You start questioning it yourself.”

The team relied on Klaviyo, maintained a high sender reputation, and followed deliverability best practices. But none of it moved the needle. Even Klaviyo’s Customer Success Managers were unable to offer new solutions. It became clear that the problem wasn’t content or segmentation—it seemed to simply be placement.

Operational constraints and brand risk

OluKai's marketing team operates across four brands within the Tradewind portfolio (like Melin, Roark, and Kaenon), managing multiple go-to-market plans and retention funnels in parallel. 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.”

At the same time, introducing a new tool was a risk in itself. A misstep could damage a hard-earned sender reputation or trigger spam filters, especially since there is no precedent for inbox placement optimization tools that work.

Turning email credibility into conversions without changing creative

A/B testing new subject lines, optimizing images, and cleaning lists—OluKai had tried it all. The one thing they hadn’t been able to control was inbox placement. This changed with Tie’s Promo Tab Protection.

Setup took less than a day. Tie’s experts were given access to Klaviyo and created a universal content block that could be dropped into any campaign. It didn’t interfere with existing creative, segmentation, or scheduling, making it easy to test in a real-world, high-volume environment.

“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.”

The team ran A/B tests across nine different campaigns. Variation A was the original email. Variation B included the Promo Tab Protection block. Everything else remained the same (same lists, timing, and offers), allowing them to isolate the impact.

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.”

Additionally, there was no disruption to backend performance—unsubscribe and spam rates stayed flat. Since campaigns reached more inboxes, OluKai saw a significant increase in site traffic, which in turn drove browse abandonment, cart abandonment, and other retargeting flows.

“It really powered our retargeting efforts. The days we used Promo Tab Protection, traffic spiked, and the rest of the retention engine kicked in.”

55% more revenue and 42% higher CTR—all from one simple change

The impact of Promo Tab Protection was immediate. Across nine A/B tests, OluKai saw a 55% lift in revenue per send and a 42% increase in click-through rates without any changes to creative, segmentation, or cadence.

In total, the team added over $55,000 in incremental revenue during the test period alone.

“It was pretty instantaneous. By the second or third send, the version using Tie was consistently higher across the board.”

What made the results even more meaningful was the minimal internal effort required. 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.

“If we had run this at 100% sending via Tie the past 4 days, we’d already pay for the annual subscription in just 9 email blasts.”

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.”

OluKai quickly grew sales by $55K+ as a result of landing in the primary inbox across 9 email campaigns with Tie’s Promo Tab Protection.

With a 24-hour setup, zero disruption to your existing workflows, and proven results across high-volume brands, Promo Tab Protection is the easiest win for your email marketing efforts.

Book a demo and start converting more of the traffic you already have.