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This Friday on AKNF we're handing over the feed for a special preview of The World's Best Email and Retention Podcast.

Your email account doesn't break all at once. It rots. Open rates slide, a quarter of your sends quietly route to spam, your list keeps growing while the people who actually click disappear. Jordan Gordon calls that a pooched account, and in this episode he lays out the full ten-step recovery his team runs when a brand hands them one.

If you own a DTC brand or run its email and retention, this is the playbook for the moment results go sluggish and your first instinct is to send more, the exact move that dug the hole.

What's inside:

• How to tell whether you're in spam or your audience has simply checked out
• Why opens are the weakest predictor of a future visit, and what to segment on instead
• The rewarm vs. soft rewarm decision, and how 5,000 addresses beat 150,000
• Why two campaigns a week plus real flows beats 22 sends a month
• The email-only promotion that rebuilds engagement and deliverability at once
• Treating SMS like a paid channel with a real cost per click
• The stale-repeat-buyer metric that tells you recovery is working

Who this is for: DTC founders, operators, and email marketers inheriting or rescuing an underperforming Klaviyo account.

What to steal: the open-rate floor, the two-campaigns-a-week cadence, and the stale-repeat-buyer segment you can build in Klaviyo this afternoon.

Liked the preview? Subscribe to The World's Best Email and Retention Podcast.

Timestamps:

00:00 Fixing a Pooched Email Account

03:02 Set Realistic Expectations for Recovery

07:43 When to Rewarm Your Email List

11:47 Why Opens Are a Bad Metric

18:36 Email-Only Promotions to Boost Engagement

24:25 The Stale Repeat Buyer Metric

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Recorded live at True Classic HQ in Calabasas the day before the Whalies, this episode brings together two of the leaders most aggressively reshaping how ecommerce gets built.

Ben Diamond is the CEO and co-founder of True Classic, the apparel brand that went from zero to over a billion in revenue in seven years and now ships to 190 countries. Maxx Blank is the co-founder and COO of Triple Whale, the AI operating system for ecommerce that he started with co-founder AJ Orbach, now running parts of media buying, creative, and conversion testing for over 60,000 brands.

The conversation gets into the move that's reshaping the category: True Classic now runs 100 percent of its Meta spend through an autonomous media buyer, Moby 2, with AI agents acting as a CMO and creative strategist, reallocating budget daily based on whether the brand needs profit, inventory clearance, or launch defense.

Maxx walks through what changed between Moby 1 and Moby 2, why the SaaS apocalypse doesn't touch infrastructure businesses, and the bigger industry shift from Software as a Service to Results as a Service. Ben talks about cutting millions in production costs by replacing in-office product photography with AI, the cultural mandate at True Classic to embrace AI, and where human judgment still belongs.

If you're an operator wondering how far to push agentic into your business, or a founder wondering what the next decade of ecommerce actually looks like, this is the conversation for you.

Find more about Triple Whale: https://www.triplewhale.com/?utm_source=dtc-newsletter&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=mkt-whaliesdtc-affiliate-426&utm_content=dtc

Timestamps:

00:00 AI Is Transforming Ecommerce Faster Than Ever

02:14 What Moby 2 Actually Does for Brands

11:20 Why True Classic Went All-In on AI

16:10 Cutting Millions in Creative Production Costs

24:38 The Future of One-to-One Marketing at Scale

43:20 Predictions for the Future of Ecommerce and AI

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Neuro didn't fight for checkout shelf space first. They built a nine-figure online business through TikTok Shop, creator marketing, Amazon, and DTC, then used that momentum to walk into Walmart, Costco, CVS, and 7-Eleven with demand already proven.

In this episode of the DTC Podcast, Eric talks with Brian Evangelista, Chief Commercial Officer at Neuro, about creating a category that didn't exist, running an affiliate program with tens of thousands of creators, and what actually changes when a digitally native brand wakes up as a real retail business.

Built for DTC founders scaling from $5M–$100M who are trying to turn ecom momentum into retail distribution.

We also get into:

• Why TikTok Shop worked so well early on, and what changed when it got pay-to-play
• How creator incentives shifted once GMV Max rolled out
• The retail launch strategy behind Walmart, Costco, CVS, and 7-Eleven
• Why retail completely reshapes your P&L, ops, and marketing stack
• The hidden operational tax of moving from DTC into omnichannel
• How Neuro frames category creation vs stealing share
• The strategy behind the "Your Gum Is Dumb" sloth campaign
• Why brand marketing started making sense only after retail expansion

Who this episode is for: DTC founders, retail operators, consumer brand marketers, TikTok Shop teams, and brands considering omnichannel expansion.

What to steal:

• Build demand digitally before asking retail to believe in your category
• Use creator momentum as proof for retail buyers
• Treat retail launches like media moments, not inventory placement

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