CASE STUDY / HEATONIST
Rebuilding retention for the internet’s hottest hot sauce brand
Heatonist is a Brooklyn hot sauce retailer founded in 2013, known for curating small-batch, all-natural sauces from independent makers and for producing the official hot sauces of Hot Ones. Their retention ran on a set of flows they'd outgrown, and the Heatonist name had blurred into the Hot Ones brand it helped make famous. FlowCandy rebuilt the flow system from the ground up, then handed it back for their team to run.
8
Flows rebuilt and relaunched
1 ➔ 5
Emails in the post-purchase flow,
from a single thank-you to a full sequence
$0 ➔ live
Winback and post-purchase flows, revived from dead
INDUSTRY
Hot sauce & specialty food retail
TIMEFRAME
90 days, start to handover
FLOWS BUILT & REWORKED
8
FLOWCANDY ' S ROLE
“[Placeholder — two to three sentences from the client on what the rebuild changed and what it's like running the system in- house.]”
Niki Sawyer
[Title], Edie Parker
THE CHALLENGE
A trusted brand running on flows it had outgrown
Lost in its own hit show
Heatonist makes the official Hot Ones sauces, and over time its own name had blurred into the show it helped make famous. The emails leaned on Hot Ones, and the Heatonist story, a curated premium retailer with its own voice, had faded into the background.
Flows that leaked revenue
The flows were full of holes that had been quietly costing them. Issues like SMS subscribers in the abandon cart flow not getting emails at all, a winback subject line promising 15% off when the code only gave 10%, abandon checkout stuck on a two-hour delay, quiz emails pointing to sauces no longer on the site, and both winback and post-purchase barely built.
SMS treated as an afterthought
SMS was an add-on to email rather than its own channel, even though it was already outperforming email in the flows that used it. Nobody was building around that, so the strongest-converting channel was the least developed.
THE GOALS
Build a system they could run themselves
GOAL #1
Rework the existing flows and build the missing ones, mapped to how customers actually move through the journey.
GOAL #2
Give SMS its own strategy as a channel that already converted, and re-engage the cold, suppressed list instead of leaving it to decay.
GOAL #3
Put a scalable framework in place, a custom Email Design System, a clear journey map, and standard reporting, so Heatonist's team could run and grow it after handover.
THE APPROACH
Rebuilt around the buyer, then handed over
We started by mapping the full customer journey, then rebuilt the flows against it. The core flows were reworked, welcome, both abandonment flows, browse, quiz results, winback, and post-purchase, and the gaps were filled with new ones. Each flow was split by where the customer actually was, prospect versus returning buyer, so the message matched the moment instead of treating everyone the same. SMS was built in as its own channel rather than bolted onto email, and the cold, suppressed list was warmed back up with a mix of informative sends and limited-time offers.
Every flow was built on a new Email Design System, so each send stays on Heatonist's brand, and the team can build the next one without starting over. On top of that, we set up a journey map and weekly reporting, ran a full deliverability check, then trained Heatonist's team on the whole system so they could keep running and scaling it in-house.
Emails Built
A few of the flows as subscribers received them, built on Heatonist's Email Design System.
THE RESULTS
90 days later
8 flows rebuilt and relaunched
every core flow reworked and the missing ones built.
Two dead flows brought back
winback and post-purchase were generating nothing, now live.
A custom Email Design System
built and handed over for the team to run in-house.
Post-purchase went from 1 email to 5
a single thank-you turned into a full retention sequence.
SMS built as its own channel
the strongest-converting channel, finally developed instead of bolted on.
RESOURCES
Level Up
Heatonist came to us at Level 2, with the basic revenue systems running but no real optimization layer on top. They left with a reworked flow system, a re-engaged list, and a team trained to run it. See where your account stands.
Journey Map
Every flow we built for Heatonist maps back to a real customer behaviour, laid out in one place so the next opportunity is always clear. See how a journey map makes the next move obvious.
Email Design System
Heatonist's Email Design System keeps every send on-brand and lets their team build new flows and campaigns without starting from scratch. See how an EDS makes retention faster to run.
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