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I collected 8+ months of emails from one of the largest sports retailers in the country to break down their lifecycle program.
Every year, I inevitably have to replace all my socks because they always get holes in them. As a result, I always end up buying new ones from the same place: Academy Sports & Outdoors. And this time, I decided to track what happens after the purchase, so for nearly a year, I’ve been storing every message they sent me.
While I expected a multi-billion-dollar brand to be running a super advanced lifecycle machine, what I actually found was a simple system built around consistency, volume, and discounts.
I just completed my largest journey breakdown ever: 218 emails. And I laid out all the key sends and learnings in Figma:
- How they think about audience enrollment (e.g., segmentation and targeting)
- How they leverage price to drive action and urgency
- The entire CRM calendar is mapped out
- The framework and structure behind every email (subject lines, preview text, CTAs, etc.)
- And trends across the entire program
These bullets just scratch the surface (and having the actual visuals always makes things come to life), so I highly recommend checking out the full FigJam board below to get all the takeaways.
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