The Portland email marketing agency
that owns the whole funnel.
Ad-Apt is a Portland email marketing agency building lifecycle programs, CRM automation, and SMS sequences on Klaviyo, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Customer.io, Iterable, and Zoho Campaigns. We write the copy, design the templates, build the flows, pipe the server-side data, and own deliverability — for Circle K car-wash brands, Boss PDX, True Blue, Teton Gravity Research, and 50+ others since 2011.
Six flows do most of the work.
A campaign calendar is not a program. A program is the always-on machinery that runs while you sleep. For most brands, six core flows generate the majority of email revenue. Build those first, well, then layer campaigns on top.
Welcome series
First impression sequence triggered on list subscribe. Three to five emails over ten days. Brand story, social proof, first-purchase incentive, expectation setting. The single highest-ROI flow in most accounts.
Service detail →Abandoned cart and browse
Server-side event capture, dynamic product blocks, and a three-stage cadence with SMS layered at hour 4 for opted-in subscribers. Klaviyo predictive AOV powers the discount logic so we discount only when we have to.
Service detail →Post-purchase
Order confirmation, shipping, delivery, review request, replenishment. Cross-sell logic ties to first-purchase category so the next-product offer is actually relevant. Review-platform handoff to Junip, Okendo, or Yotpo.
Service detail →Win-back and anniversary
30, 60, 90-day lapsed-customer sequences with progressive incentive. Birthday and signup anniversary moments. Sunset flow for unengaged contacts to protect sender reputation before they hurt deliverability.
Read the playbook →Seven platforms, one team.
Most Portland email marketing agencies are single-platform shops. We are not. The right platform depends on your business model, data model, and SMS strategy — not on which certification the agency happens to hold. Here is where each one earns its keep.
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KL
Klaviyo.DTC and Shopify default. Predictive analytics, native SMS, deepest product-feed integration. We run Klaviyo for Teton Gravity Research and any e-commerce client over $1M GMV.
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MC
Mailchimp Customer Journeys.Mid-market workhorse. Lower send cost at scale, journey branching logic, native landing pages. We build production journeys on Mailchimp every week — including the 12 game-tag-routed configs feeding the Diamondbacks Free Wash promo for CleanFreak Car Wash.
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HS
HubSpot.B2B sales handoff, lifecycle stages tied to CRM, sequences from sales reps inside the same workflow as marketing email. Right answer when sales and marketing share a pipeline.
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CI
Customer.io.SaaS and product-led companies. Event-driven, code-friendly, fast for engineering teams. Triggers from your own event API rather than ESP-side list logic.
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IT
Iterable.Cross-channel orchestration at scale. Push, in-app, email, SMS, and direct mail in one journey. Right answer above 5M sends per month.
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ZH
Zoho Campaigns.When the rest of the stack is Zoho One. Tight CRM and Books integration. Cheap and capable for SMB brands inside the Zoho ecosystem.
Journeys are not broadcasts.
We have spent enough time inside Mailchimp Customer Journeys to know where the platform helps and where it lies to you. A paused journey silently drops trigger events. A trigger filter on a hidden form field needs the field cleared before the action runs. A merge-field validation failure rejects the entire submission without surfacing an error. These are not edge cases — they are Tuesday afternoons.
For CleanFreak Car Wash, we run a single Ninja Forms entry point fed by 12 game-date-tagged Customer Journeys for the Arizona Diamondbacks Free Wash promo. A daily cron updates the hidden game_date field at 1 AM Pacific so the right journey fires for the right home game, with the SMSPHONE field deliberately unmapped because Mailchimp validates SMS phone numbers strict E.164 and would drop every submission otherwise. Boring infrastructure. It runs untouched.
For HubSpot and Salesforce shops, the work moves up the stack: lifecycle stage transitions, lead scoring decay, sales-handoff hold periods, and re-marketing nurture for closed-lost. The platform matters less than the data model. Read our playbook on four CRM automations that pay for themselves.
Where most email programs quietly leak.
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01
AI-driven personalization that is not a gimmick.LLM-generated subject lines tested against a control. Dynamic content blocks that swap based on predicted CLV bracket. Send-time optimization to subscriber timezone rather than a single 10 AM Pacific blast. We use Anthropic Claude for copy generation in production — not because it sounds modern, but because the open rate is two points higher than the human-only control.
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02
Deliverability infrastructure.SPF, DKIM, DMARC alignment to p=reject, BIMI with a Verified Mark Certificate so your logo shows in Gmail and Apple Mail. Dedicated IP warming when volume justifies it. Engagement-based suppression and sunset policy so unengaged contacts do not drag your sender reputation. Google Postmaster, Yahoo Sender Hub, and Microsoft SNDS monitoring.
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03
SMS plus email as one program.Klaviyo SMS, Attentive, Mailchimp SMS, Twilio for custom. Shared suppression, shared segmentation, shared reporting. Abandoned-cart sequence becomes email at hour 1, SMS at hour 4, email at hour 24. One conversation, two channels.
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04
Server-side data piping.Most email programs trigger off browser events that get blocked by Safari ITP, ad blockers, and Apple Mail Privacy Protection. We pipe purchase, signup, and engagement events server-side. For Meta Conversions API specifically, our Carcin Connector v0.4 plugin ships verified server-side Lead and Purchase events back to Meta with the same email identifiers your ESP uses — closing the loop between email click, on-site conversion, and ad attribution.
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05
List hygiene that is automated.Kickbox or NeverBounce on form submit. Engagement-based suppression at 90, 180, 365 days. Quarterly hard-bounce purge. Sunset flow before suppression so subscribers have one chance to opt back in. Done quietly, every month, without anyone asking.
Programs that print revenue.
Four engagements where the numbers moved.
CleanFreak & Rainstorm (Circle K)
Mailchimp Customer Journey for the Arizona Diamondbacks Free Wash promo. One Ninja Forms entry routed to 12 game-tag-keyed configs via a daily 1 AM cron updating the hidden game_date field. Shared template, twelve outcomes, zero manual sends.
Read case study →True Blue Car Wash
Multi-location franchise lifecycle. Per-location welcome series, location-keyed promotional campaigns, and a shared loyalty journey that tracks across 50+ wash sites. Mailchimp with custom audience segmentation by home wash.
Read case study →Boss PDX
Local Portland service business. $0 to $1M in two years on paid plus SEO plus a six-flow lifecycle program. Email contributed 22% of attributed revenue by month 18. Mailchimp into HubSpot for sales handoff.
Read case study →Teton Gravity Research
DTC lifecycle on Shopify and Klaviyo. Browse-abandon, cart-abandon, post-purchase, and a film-release campaign cadence tied to Shopify product launches. Klaviyo SMS layered for premium subscriber tier.
Read case study →Questions Portland buyers actually ask.
How is email marketing pricing structured at Ad-Apt?+
Every engagement is scoped to send volume, platform complexity, flow count, and whether SMS is bundled. Lifecycle builds and ongoing campaigns are usually phased differently. Talk to a strategist for a tailored proposal.
What email platforms do you support?+
Klaviyo, Mailchimp, HubSpot, Customer.io, Iterable, Zoho Campaigns, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Braze, and ActiveCampaign. Our deepest production work is on Klaviyo (e-commerce) and Mailchimp Customer Journeys (mid-market). We also build the server-side data piping that feeds these platforms from your site, POS, or CRM.
Should we use Klaviyo or Mailchimp?+
For Shopify or BigCommerce e-commerce, Klaviyo wins on product feed depth, predictive analytics, and SMS in the same account. For multi-channel mid-market brands with audience-based segmentation and Customer Journeys, Mailchimp is faster to deploy and cheaper at scale. For B2B with a sales handoff, neither is right and we move you to HubSpot or Customer.io.
Do you also do SMS?+
Yes. We run blended email plus SMS programs through Klaviyo SMS, Attentive, and Mailchimp SMS. SMS shares the same segmentation, suppression, and reporting layer as email, so abandoned-cart and post-purchase work as a single sequence across channels rather than two siloed programs.
How long to launch a lifecycle email program?+
A six-flow core lifecycle program (welcome, browse abandon, abandoned cart, post-purchase, win-back, anniversary) typically goes live in 30 to 45 days. The first two weeks are audit, data piping, and segmentation. Weeks three and four are flow build, copy, and design. Weeks five and six are QA, deliverability warm-up if needed, and turn-on.
Can you fix our deliverability?+
Yes. We audit and fix SPF, DKIM, DMARC alignment, BIMI for logo display in Gmail and Apple Mail, dedicated IP warming when volume justifies it, list hygiene with engagement-based suppression, and sender reputation across Google Postmaster, Yahoo, and Microsoft SNDS. Most inbox-placement problems trace back to authentication or list quality, not content. Start with our small-business email strategies guide for a self-audit.
Do you integrate with CRM tools like HubSpot or Zoho?+
Yes. We integrate email platforms with HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, and custom data warehouses. The hard part is usually not the connector but the data model. We map fields, dedupe, define source-of-truth precedence, and pipe events server-side so that ESP behavior matches CRM stage in real time.
Tell us what your email program
is leaving on the table.
Ten-minute intro call. We will tell you honestly whether Ad-Apt is the right Portland email team for the job — or whether your current platform and program need a tune-up before any agency belongs in the picture.
Talk to a strategist