Most brands treat email like a side channel. A place to send discount codes and hope for the best.
Grazly did that too. Then they found out their real problem wasn’t strategy. It was infrastructure. Once they fixed it, email stopped being a side channel. It became the engine.
A Brand Built On Real Food, Not Trend Food
Grazly is a snack and skincare brand built by brothers Mike and Matt.
They make regenerative beef brisket slabs, organ crisps, and tallow based skincare. Real ancestral health products. Not trend pieces.
This is not an easy category to sell. Most people have never eaten organ meat on purpose. Most people have never put beef tallow on their face. Grazly had to teach their audience before they could sell to them.
That kind of brand needs more than ads. It needs trust.
Good Content, Quiet Failure
Grazly was doing everything a good brand is supposed to do.
Strong content. A clear niche. A real story to tell. But growth had stalled in the low six figures a month.
Their previous agency didn’t know the health space deeply enough to explain why organ meat and regenerative tallow beat the conventional stuff. So the education never landed.
Meanwhile, their emails were failing in a way nobody could see. Email revenue sat stuck at 18 to 20 percent of total sales. Sophisticated flows were built. Then they landed in the promotions tab. Or spam. Nobody ever opened them.
Grazly also had no way to know what was really working. They were watching clicks. Not customers.
Why did this feel fine for so long? Because the content looked good and the strategy sounded right. Nobody thought to check if the emails were reaching an inbox at all.
The Truth Behind the Numbers
Here’s what nobody tells you about email marketing. A perfect email that lands in spam is worthless.
Grazly wasn’t failing at strategy. They were failing at delivery. The best educational content in the world does nothing if no one ever sees it.
There was a second, quieter problem too. Grazly was measuring the wrong thing. They were chasing efficient marketing, the kind that only counts a click. What they needed was effective marketing, the kind that builds trust over months and turns a first time buyer into a lifelong customer.
You can’t fix what you’re not measuring. And you can’t measure what your customers never see.
Fix the Pipes Before You Fix the Message
3BM started with a technical reset, not a creative one.
They ran a full audit and found the real bottleneck: deliverability. They installed tools to bypass the promotions tab and recover anonymous site visitors, so Grazly’s message actually reached the inbox.
Then they rebuilt the audience around behavior. In market buyers got one path. Curious, out of market shoppers got another. A post purchase system nurtured first time buyers into lifestyle advocates, one educated step at a time.
Last, they changed the content mix. Long form, Op Ed style emails went out three to four times a week. Sales campaigns stayed, but education led. Grazly became the authority in their space. Not just another brand selling snacks.
The Results
Within a year, the numbers told the story.
- Annual revenue hit $4,209,042.62
- Revenue grew 200.4% year over year
- Email attributed revenue grew 181.2%, to $1,269,501.91
- Campaign revenue grew 299%
- Automated flow revenue grew 116.4%
- Email now drives 30.16% of total brand revenue
“We saw an 86% increase in email just by fixing technical issues,” said Mike, co-founder of Grazly. “We now have a streamlined system where 3BM is highly independent and understands our brand mission deeply.”
More Room to Grow
Grazly used to fight for attention. Now they set the agenda.
The brand sits consistently between $500K and $600K in monthly revenue. Their marketing system now runs 90% independently, freeing Mike and Matt to focus on what’s next: national retail expansion and new product lines.
The goal isn’t more clicks anymore. It’s more customers who trust the brand enough to follow it anywhere.
The Lesson
The best content in the world is worthless in a spam folder.
Is Your Message Actually Landing?
You might have great content right now. A real story. A real product. And still, flat numbers.
Before you write one more email, ask yourself where the last one went. Was it opened? Or was it buried?
If you’re not sure, that’s the answer.