Case Studies → Driving Retention-Led Growth for DY Nutrition: How eComOne Turned a Customer Base into a Fan Base

Driving Retention-Led Growth for DY Nutrition: How eComOne Turned a Customer Base into a Fan Base

How a retention-first email strategy transformed Klaviyo into DY Nutrition’s highest-performing revenue channel.

Executive Summary

DY Nutrition is a UK sports supplements brand built around the legacy of Dorian Yates, six-time  Mr. Olympia. With a product range spanning protein, creatine, pre-workout, amino acids, and  the flagship Blood & Guts line, the brand occupies a credible and distinctive position in a fiercely  competitive UK sports nutrition market.  

When eComOne came on board, DY Nutrition had a loyal, engaged customer base and a  product range with strong natural repeat purchase potential, but no structured retention strategy to capitalise on it. The Klaviyo account had significant architectural gaps and revenue from owned channels was falling well short of the brand’s loyalty potential.  

eComOne conducted a full account audit, redesigned the customer lifecycle from the ground up,  and built an automation suite aligned to every stage of the customer journey; from abandoned cart recovery through to long-term stack building and value-led content from Dorian himself.  

The results speak for themselves:  

● 47% growth in Klaviyo attributed revenue year on year  

● 62.4% overall online revenue growth in the same period  

● Klaviyo now responsible for 45.18% of total website revenue  

● Unsubscribe rate down 50.3% year on year

DY Nutrition is a sports supplements brand built around the legacy of Dorian Yates, six-time Mr. Olympia and one of the most decorated bodybuilders in the history of the sport. The brand translates Dorian’s philosophy of extreme discipline and results-driven training into a product  range spanning protein powders, amino acids, creatine, pre-workouts, and the flagship Blood &  Guts line. Their customer base is  performance-focused: serious gym-goers, competitive athletes, and bodybuilding enthusiasts  who respond to credibility and intensity over lifestyle branding. On the eComOne side, we work  closely with their team of marketing specialists and CEO.  

Market Context  

The UK sports nutrition market is fiercely competitive, with DY Nutrition sitting alongside established mass-market players and a growing number of challenger brands competing heavily on price and paid social. Consumer behaviour in the sector has shifted towards higher scrutiny of ingredients and value, particularly as cost-of-living pressures have pushed customers to be more deliberate with discretionary spending on supplements.  

Against this backdrop, DY Nutrition faced two compounding challenges. Intermittent stock availability had disrupted the customer experience and eroded repeat purchase momentum at key points. At the same time, email had been underinvested in as retention channels, leaving significant revenue on the table from a customer base that, by nature of the product, had strong  repeat purchase potential. With acquisition costs rising and owned-channel performance  lagging, the case for a more strategic approach to retention marketing was clear.

DY Nutrition had built a brand with genuine authority; a legendary figurehead, a loyal following,  and a product range with strong repeat purchase potential. But that potential wasn’t being  realised. Revenue from owned channels was underperforming relative to the size and quality of  the customer base and the brand had no structured retention strategy in place to capitalise on  it.  

Without a consistent framework for re-engaging customers after their first purchase, DY  Nutrition was effectively leaving money on the table with every order that went out the door. In a  market where paid acquisition costs continue to rise and brand switching is rife, relying on new  customer acquisition alone is a costly and fragile growth model. The absence of a retention  engine meant that hard-won customers were going quiet, repeat purchase rates were not where  they needed to be and lifetime value was falling short of what the brand’s loyalty potential  should have commanded.  

Additionally, intermittent stock availability had already disrupted the customer journey at key  moments, creating gaps in trust and continuity that a stronger owned-channel strategy could  help bridge and recover from. 

The brief from DY Nutrition was clear: turn their customer base into a fan base. That meant improving retention, increasing repeat purchase frequency, growing average order value, and building the kind of relationship with customers that transcends a single transaction. With no hard KPI targets imposed, eComOne had the mandate, and the responsibility, to define what good looked like and go after it.

Data and Discovery

We began with a comprehensive Klaviyo account audit, assessing every active and draft flow against core commercial metrics: open rate, click rate, conversion rate, revenue per recipient, and attributed revenue. 

The findings were consistent. Open rates across the account were strong, confirming healthy deliverability and an engaged list. But conversion rates told a different story. High-volume post-purchase flows were functioning as courtesy sends rather than commercial touchpoints, multiple flows had trigger failures generating zero send data, and SMS was absent from the retention mix entirely. The diagnosis was clear: this was a copy and strategy problem, not a reach problem.

Strategy

We built a prioritised optimisation roadmap sequenced by commercial impact, anchored around a single strategic principle: DY Nutrition’s biggest untapped lever was not acquisition, it was the monetisation of existing customer relationships. 

This meant designing a deliberate customer journey and building an automation suite to support it at every stage. Each flow was conceived as part of a connected lifecycle ecosystem rather than an isolated trigger – post-purchase cross-sells guiding customers toward building a complete supplement stack, repurchase reminders timed to individual product replenishment cycles, and value-led content drawing on Dorian’s training philosophy to build brand authority between purchase moments. 

Alongside the flow architecture, we developed a campaign workbook providing a structured content programme to educate and empower customers, creating consistent inbox presence that strengthened commercial sends when they landed. 

SMS was integrated with a deliberately credit-efficient approach, concentrating spend on high-intent triggered flows with audience gating to restrict sends to SMS-consented profiles only.

Execution

Flow copy was rewritten using a problem-led framework built around the DY brand voice,  surfacing the consequence of inaction before presenting the product as the solution. The  abandoned cart sequence was rebuilt end to end: Email 1 reframed around training intent and Dorian’s philosophy rather than a generic cart reminder, preserving the discount mechanic for  Email 2 and protecting margin on customers who would have converted without it. SMS was  added as a final-stage nudge for consented profiles, extending sequence reach without  duplicating the email message.  

Trigger integrity was treated as a prerequisite for every copy optimisation. Where flows showed  send volumes inconsistent with the size of the qualifying audience, trigger and filter audits were  completed first – strong copy on a broken trigger produces nothing. 

Innovation & Creativity

Every creative decision was rooted in the DY brand identity. Dorian Yates is not a mascot — he is a six-time Mr. Olympia with a specific, well-documented philosophy on training and discipline. Copy was written to reflect that: direct, stripped back, and built around credibility rather than  hype. The tone challenges the reader to meet the brand’s standard rather than flattering them  into a purchase, which is both more authentic to DY and more effective with their audience.

No project runs without friction, and transparency about how challenges are handled is as important as the results themselves.  

Stock availability was a challenge throughout the project. For a  DTC supplements brand, out-of-stock products create a direct conflict with retention marketing –  you cannot drive repeat purchase of a product a customer cannot buy. Rather than pausing activity during stock gaps, we adapted in real time, redirecting flow and campaign messaging toward available products and leaning on cross-sell logic to guide customers toward complementary alternatives within the range. This kept the list active, revenue moving, and  avoided the harder problem of a disengaged audience that had gone cold by the time stock  recovered.  

Taking ownership of an inherited Klaviyo account with a large number of flows in varying states –  live, draft, broken, and duplicated – meant that bringing structure and clarity to the account architecture was a prerequisite before any meaningful optimisation could begin. Skipping that  step would have meant building on unstable foundations. The audit process we conducted at the outset was not just a diagnostic exercise; it was the structural work that made everything  downstream possible.  

Working with a client team based in Bucharest introduced a natural layer of complexity around approvals and feedback cycles. We managed this proactively through clear, consolidated briefing documents, defined approval windows, and building sufficient lead time into the  workflow to absorb delays without impacting delivery. 

  • 47% increase in Klaviyo attributed revenue over the last 12 months compared to the previous 12  months  
  • 62.4% increase in overall revenue growth for DY Nutrition online web sales in the last 12 months versus previous period  
  • Unsubscribe rate dropped by -50.3% in the last 12 months versus previous period
  • Klaviyo responsible for 45.18% of website revenue in the last 12 month

DY Nutrition first encountered eComOne at eCommerce Expo, the UK’s leading event for online retail professionals. It was the right context for the conversation, a brand looking to professionalise their retention marketing, meeting a team with a demonstrable track record of doing exactly that for scaling DTC brands.  

Several factors made eComOne the right fit. As a Klaviyo partner with deep platform expertise, eComOne could hit the ground running without a learning curve on the tools DY Nutrition were already using.  

Familiarity with the sector was equally important. eComOne’s prior work with supplements and  health brands meant they understood the product category, the customer mindset, and the retention dynamics specific to consumable products with natural replenishment cycles. That context cannot be replicated quickly. 

Sophie Penny, Senior Account Manager, eComOne

DY Nutrition was a brilliant account to work on. The brand has real substance behind it with a  genuine story, a loyal customer base, and a product range that gives you plenty to work with  strategically. The Klaviyo account needed serious groundwork before we could get to the exciting stuff, but that is often where the biggest gains come from. Getting the architecture right, fixing what was broken, and then building a content programme that actually felt like DY, that is the work we are proud of. Seeing email go from an underutilised channel to driving nearly half of their online revenue is exactly the kind of outcome that makes this worth doing.

The work with DY Nutrition is far from finished. The next chapter represents one of the most strategically interesting challenges of the partnership: the launch of DY Life, a new wellness range sitting alongside the core performance product line. 

DY Life is a meaningful brand extension, a collection of natural supplements formulated around essential fatty acids, botanical oils, and functional nutrients including Omega-3, Krill Oil, CoQ10, and adaptogenic extracts, designed to support everyday health rather than elite athletic performance. The product range is broad, accessible, and priced for regular purchase – characteristics that make it well suited to email as a primary revenue driver. 

The challenge, and the opportunity, is that DY Life speaks to a different customer. Where the core DY range attracts performance-focused athletes motivated by intensity and results, the DY Life customer is likely health-conscious, wellness-oriented, and potentially new to the DY brand entirely. Retaining and monetising that audience requires a fundamentally different content approach, educational rather than challenging, benefit-led rather than philosophy-driven. 

For the existing DY customer base, the task is introducing DY Life as a natural complement to their current stack, positioning products like Omega-3 and CoQ10 as the foundation that supports everything they are already doing in training. For new customers who discover the brand through DY Life, the task is building a retention infrastructure from scratch: a dedicated welcome journey, a tailored post-purchase sequence, and a content programme that earns trust and drives repeat purchase from an audience with no prior relationship with Dorian Yates or the DY identity.

Facing the same challenges? Let's chat!

Awesome Group

Find out more →

6

In-depth Technical Reports

MPG Group

Find out more →

78%

Increase in Revenue YoY

Heinnie Haynes

Find out more →

511%

Ads growth

To top