23 meeting-ready store owners in 43 sending days for Checkout Creatives

Checkout Creatives builds email flows and signup popups for online stores. The goal is simple: turn more of a store's email list into orders. They sell to store owners and marketing leads, for a one-time fee of $3,000 with a money-back guarantee.

We were hired to book meetings, and we measured ourselves on meetings booked.

Over 43 sending days, from Jul 20 to Sep 30, 2026, we sent 40,413 emails. They produced 23 meeting-ready leads and 3 booked calls, 2 of them held. The fastest went from first email to booked call in 2 hours 49 minutes.

This case study covers where Checkout Creatives started, the offer we built, the emails that worked, and the real reply threads behind the calls.

1. Challenges

A brand new offer

Checkout Creatives was a new offer, not an established e-commerce agency. The founders had weighed a creative offer for e-commerce against email flows. They picked email flows because they are easier to deliver, and the revenue a flow makes is easy to show.

No tested message

They were starting from scratch. There was no tested cold email offer yet. Nobody knew which flow, which promise or which subject line would make a store owner reply.

Old lists didn't fit

The team had moved fully into e-commerce email marketing. The old lists and offers from their earlier work no longer fit.

A crowded market

Store owners get pitched by email agencies all the time. A generic "we do Klaviyo" email gets ignored.

2. What they tried

Studying how others sold

Before we started, the founders studied how other e-commerce email agencies sold to cold traffic. The common model was a one-time build fee, with a monthly retainer pitched on the call.

LinkedIn outreach

Before we started, they were doing outreach on LinkedIn. It worked, and store owners did reply. But the volume was nowhere near enough to fill a sales calendar.

Cold email was the way to reach far more stores each day. Everything on this page is their first cold email run.

3. Our solution

Give one flow away for free

We built the offer around a free sample. In the first email we offered to build one email flow for free, for one specific problem, like people who start checkout and leave. If they liked it, the other 8 flows were one flat fee, built for them.

That turned "hire an agency" into "want me to send it over?" That is an easy yes.

Only stores worth emailing

We emailed active online stores that sell physical products, mostly apparel, home goods, furniture and sporting goods. Shopify helped us find them, but other platforms could qualify.

We checked each store by hand before paying to verify its email.

• Titles: founders, co-founders, owners, CEOs, CMOs, and heads or directors of marketing, e-commerce or growth. Managers in e-commerce, email, retention, lifecycle and brand.
• Countries: the UK and US first. France in its own campaign, in French. Then Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland.
• One list refill on Aug 10 gave 1,586 checked stores.

Private sending infrastructure

We sent from 102 Google inboxes across 34 domains, with warmup on. Each inbox sent up to 20 emails a day, a cap of 2,040 a day. Everything ran through EmailBison. Each contact got one email, and we tested several versions side by side.

A fast free-flow reply loop

When a store said yes, the reply followed the same steps every time:

1. "Making the flow as we speak. Look for the email within an hour."
2. Send the finished flow as a PDF, usually within one to two hours.
3. Offer two call times and a calendar link to walk through the other 8 flows.

The free flow did the selling. By the time they got on a call, they had already seen the work.

In the threads shown on this page, the first answer went out 2 to 19 minutes after the prospect said yes. The finished flow followed 1 to 2.5 hours after the yes.

4. Results

Bottom line

• 40,413 emails sent over 43 sending days, from Jul 20 to Sep 30, 2026.
• 171 human replies (0.42% of emails sent).
• 23 meeting-ready leads in 43 sending days, checked by hand.
• 3 booked calls, 2 held.
• Fastest booking: 2 hours 49 minutes from first email to booked call.

Source and limits

• All numbers come from EmailBison.
• "Human replies" leaves out auto-replies and out-of-office messages.
• "Meeting-ready" means we read the reply and it said yes to the free flow, asked for it, asked the price with clear interest, or led to a booked call. We counted each store once.
• "Interested" in the tables below is EmailBison's own label. It also catches some auto-replies and no's, so it is higher than the meeting-ready count.
• Sends are emails, not unique people. One campaign re-mailed earlier contacts with new flow ideas.
• 994 emails bounced (2.46%).

The five offers we tested

The free single flow won by a wide margin. The bigger offers later on (a paid one-time build, then a 9-flow package with a guarantee) asked for more commitment in the first email, and almost nobody replied yes.

Campaign leaderboard

Winner 1: The free abandoned-checkout flow

Evidence: 8 interested from 1,992 sends in one campaign. This is the email behind the 2 hour 49 minute booking.

Subject

{free flow for {COMPANY}|a flow, on me}

Body

Hey {first_name}, are you emailing your customers?

If so, I'll build you a flow for everyone who starts checkout and leaves. For free.

Want me to send it over?

P.S. Like it? The other 8 flows are one flat fee, built for you. No retainers, ever.

Winner 2: Second order

Evidence: 8 interested from 1,237 sends, the best rate of any single email.

Hey {first_name}, I'll build you a flow that brings first-time buyers back for order number two. Free.

Want me to send it over?

P.S. If it works, we can build the other 8 flows for one flat fee. Fully done for you, no retainer.

Winner 3: Klaviyo question

Evidence: 4 interested from 1,191 sends.

Hey {first_name}, are you using Klaviyo?

If so, I'll build you a flow for everyone on your list who never bought. For free.

Want me to send it over?

P.S. If it works, there are 8 more flows you can grab for a single one-time fee. Fully done for you, no retainers.

Winner 4: Your email list and unused codes

Evidence: 3 interested each, from 1,220 and 1,239 sends.

Hey {first_name}, you've already paid to get people onto your email list.

I'll build one flow that turns more of that list into orders. Free.

Want me to send you the first one?

Hey {first_name}, do people take your welcome discount, then leave without buying?

I'll build a flow to bring them back. Free.

Want me to send it over?

Every winner named one problem the store already had, offered to fix it for free, and asked one yes-or-no question.

What store owners said

Real response pair 1: From first email to booked call in 2 hours 49 minutes

Prospect (online store):

Sure, I am actually looking at that right now.

Our reply:

Awesome. Making the flow as we speak. Look for the email within an hour from now.

Prospect:

We have just realized we have a huge dropoff after people add to cart, but don't checkout. We suspect it's a broken and complicated process because we make them go to their email to find the 15% off code, and they never come back.

The flow arrived as a PDF less than two hours later.

Prospect:

I like it. Can I pick a time today?

The call was held a week later.

Real response pair 2: "It looks freaking awesome"

Prospect (store owner):

I am not but I have been thinking about it. can you help and what is the cost?

Our reply:

Yes for sure. I'd be happy to build an email flow completely free just to show you how it would look. As per the pricing - it really is heavily based on your current store volume. One thing I can 100% say that any of our pricing models either have a money back guarantee or are only on a performance basis.

Prospect:

noon tomorrow CST works for me

After seeing the example email before the call:

so that would be what the email that customers/potential customers get. it looks freaking awesome...

Real response pair 3: The generic code question

Prospect (co-founder, UK store):

Ok, but the code is generic… will it still work? Whats the logic?

Our reply:

Great question. And yes it will work with your current 15% off code. It's called a never-bought flow.

Real response pair 4: The price question

Prospect (co-founder, UK store):

How much would the fee be for those 8 flows?

Our reply:

The price for the other 8 flows is a one-time fee of 3000$. We do have a money-back guarantee for this.

Real response pair 5: "Send pricing too"

Prospect (store owner):

I would be happy to take a look but can you send pricing too so I make sure it's something I can afford?

Our reply, 2 minutes later:

Awesome. Making the flow as we speak. Will send the pricing inside the PDF. Look for the email within an hour from now.

The PDF arrived 77 minutes later, with the pricing and the money-back guarantee at the end. When she went quiet, the follow-ups tried a different angle each time: first a performance-based option (a share of the extra revenue, nothing upfront), then a short video.

Real response pair 6: "There was no attachment"

Prospect (store owner):

Sure why not! I have an abandoned cart already but it isn't converting that well

Our reply:

Awesome. Will make you one optimized for conversions. Stay tuned, will send it over shortly!

We sent the flow two hours later and followed up four days after that. The answer:

there was no attachement

A good lesson. When the free work is the whole pitch, check that it actually arrives.

Real response pair 7: The one that didn't show

Prospect (store owner):

That looks great. Let's have a chat to go through it tomorrow

The next day:

Traffic was bad only just arrived Can rearrange this afternoon or next week

Not every booked call happens. We count this one as booked, not held.

Timeline

What we learned

Free work beats a pitch

The free single flow got the replies. Paid offers in the first email (a one-time build, then 9 flows with a guarantee) almost never did. Let the prospect see the work first, then talk price.

One problem per email

The best emails named one problem: people who leave at checkout, first-time buyers who never come back, unused welcome codes. Specific beats general.

Speed wins the call

The fastest booking happened because the flow arrived the same morning the prospect said yes. "Making it as we speak" plus a PDF within two hours kept the prospect warm.

Re-mailing with a new angle works

The best campaign by meeting-ready leads was a second pass on earlier contacts, with new flow ideas. People who ignored one flow often said yes to a different one.

One French test wasn't enough

The French campaign, written in French for French Shopify stores, got 7 human replies from 1,183 emails but no meeting-ready leads. One small test isn't enough to judge a market. We kept the volume on English-speaking stores, where the offer was already working.

Split by inbox provider

In September we split each campaign by the prospect's email provider: Gmail, Outlook and everything else. That way each group could be tracked on its own.

Some prospects need the basics

A few prospects weren't emailing their customers at all. A short, plain answer ("we'll build one free so you can see it") moved them along better than jargon.