Matias Perelli - ecom email

The Plan to Get 100 Brands Making More From Email Without Touching Klaviyo or Overpaying an Agency I’ve spent the last six years running an email agency. One thing I don’t like about the model: the less work we do for a retainer, the more money we keep. It’s an incentive problem. Sending more emails means more copy and more design, more human labor. So we agree on a fixed number of emails, and anything extra costs more. Meanwhile, most founders I talk to want three things from email: - Get it done... - Know it’s making money... - Never open Klaviyo again, and spend that time on ads and product. The agency model makes all three harder than they should be. AI made me want to try a different model. Could AI help brands send more (good) emails without paying an agency more for every one? I’ve been working on that for the past few months. Spent most of my free time building what I’m calling the AI Email Department. The goal is to have 100 brands running their Klaviyo through it by the end of 2027. It handles strategy, copy, design, self-optimization and reporting. Brands manage it through Slack, without having to chase an agency for updates. We have 7 brands in the beta and have generated about $100,000 for them so far (disgustingly low). It’s early. I want to get that number into the millions, but there’s plenty left to build and improve. Here’s The Plan: 1. Focus on what we do well. Klaviyo is building its own AI. They have access to more data than I ever will, so I’m not trying to compete on that. Our focus is direct response, emails that sell. Long sales-page-like designed emails. Text-based emails. Storytelling emails. Klaviyo has shareholders, lawyers and a public-company reputation to protect. Meaning they have every reason to play it safe. We don’t. We’ve worked with 50+ brands and generated over $52M through Klaviyo and developed our own strategies and tactics along the way. I want every brand using AIED to benefit from what we’ve already figured out. 2. Give each brand a department with undivided attention. When you hire an email agency, you share its team with every other brand on its roster. Sometimes another 8 brands. Sometimes 40. Your copywriter owes five clients campaigns by Friday, so they’re not going to spend time researching your audience for the next copy batch. You get the emails in your package. And you get improvements only when you ask for them. Eventually, you realize you’re still managing email. You’re just paying someone else to make it. I want every brand to get the attention an agency gives its biggest client, without having to be its biggest client. 3. Calibrate it for each brand. Our senior team sets the initial voice, design and marketing direction, then reviews the first campaigns and corrects the AI’s decisions before it works on its own. Even a tailor with all your measurements needs a first fitting. 4. Stop charging by the email. Going from three campaigns a week to five shouldn’t mean renegotiating an agency retainer. I want brands to be able to send daily when it makes sense, without buying a bigger package every time they want to send more. 5. Partner with ad agencies. There are some seriously good Meta and Google ads killers on here. I’d bet most have a few clients they’ve been telling to sort out their email for months. I want to get to know those guys, get this working for a few of their clients and do a good enough job that they recommend it to the rest. 6. Partner with the ecom demons. Simple really. They’ve built an audience of founders who trust their judgment. I want to get AIED in their hands. Have them try it, see the results, and recommend it if they think it’s good. 7. Charge for setup, then cover the running costs. I’ll charge upfront for the setup and calibration, then a monthly fee to keep it running. These emails are expensive to produce. The monthly fee covers that, and it’s still 1/10th of what an agency normally charges. 8. Share the progress here. I’ll post the numbers, what’s working and what we’re still fixing. You can follow along as we go from 7 brands to 100. Six years in email gave me a pretty clear list of shit I won’t send and clients I won’t take. So a few rules: 1. No AI slop. No “elevate your everyday.” Don't need to explain. 2. No weekly discounts. We’ll use promotions when there’s a reason to. Not just to compensate for weak marketing. 3. Make Autopilot optional. If one wants to review every email before it goes out, they get to approve it through Slack. If they want it handled without waiting for approval they get to enable Autopilot. They decide. 4. Work with killers I’m building this with one guy in mind: The Killer. He scaled his brand to a few hundred grand a month and runs a lean team. Still makes the calls himself. There’s no committee approving subject lines. There’s him, with 20 other things to do. He wants email done, wants to know it’s making money, and wants to get on with his day. That’s the plan for the end of 2026 and 2027. I’ll keep sharing updates as we build it. If you’re the Killer, get three emails designed for your brand at AIEmailDepartment.com. If you run an ads agency and have clients who need email sorted, DM me. -Matias Perelli