290: How Chubbies Makes 8 Figures With Email Marketing Featuring Erich Hellstrom

Podcast: Download (Duration: 49:14 — 56.6MB)

Chubbies runs a weekly cadence of three product emails plus a Friday newsletter, holding a roughly 16% open rate across everything they have sent through Klaviyo. Email drives about 18% to 20% of their online revenue, and the reason it works is that every send is written to be genuinely funny rather than merely promotional.

Erich Hellstrom is a digital marketing strategist at Chubbies, the short shorts brand with a large cult following, and writes copy for their social, email, product, and events.

This episode covers how they structure the weekly send, how they test four variations before the main send, what makes a subject line open, and the copy rules that keep their emails readable.

Key takeaways

• Three product emails plus a Friday newsletter every week, at a company-wide 16% open rate.
• The active list is anyone who ordered or opened in 90 days. Everyone else is held for big campaigns.
• Test 2 to 4 variations on 25% of the list for a few hours, then send the winner to the remaining 75%.
• The key test metric is product-page views and add-to-carts, not click-through rate alone.
• Fake sender names work. An email from the abominable snowman saying “I’m real” was one of the year’s best.
• Three sentences per paragraph maximum, since many readers spend under three seconds on an email.
• Quarterly surveys go to about 100,000 people and feed the merchandising team’s product decisions.
• Emails to non-openers average 9%, which is strong for that segment.

Why Chubbies works as a clothing brand

The founding premise is that you should not take yourself too seriously.

The founders started making shorter shorts in a 1970s and 80s style because they liked wearing them and could not find them, and noticed they had better weekends when they did.

That became the through-line of the whole brand. Things are supposed to be fun and lighthearted, and laughing is good.

Erich’s own path illustrates how the culture works. He was a political science major who worked in Yellowstone, then AmeriCorps, then a tech education company, and happened to know the person opening a Chubbies pop-up in the same building from their days as bike taxi drivers.

He picked up three shifts, became the first store manager outside the San Francisco flagship, and worked up through retail training into the marketing team as retail grew to 14 stores.

What the weekly email cadence looks like

Three product emails a week covering new products, restocks, a re-messaging of an existing product, or a sale.

Then the Weekender, sent Friday morning, which is the newsletter and is largely not product focused.

The Weekender covers whatever they are excited about heading into the weekend. Sometimes that means featuring the veterans who work at the company before Veterans Day, and sometimes it means invented bear facts where the first fact is simply that they like bears.

Other versions recap the week, highlight something funny that happened, or feature a customer who tagged them on social.

How product email timing gets planned

Clothing forces long lead times, since you design a year out.

The design and inventory planning teams choose what lands in each season, and marketing and merchandising work out when each item can be messaged and from what angle.

Frequent product drops are exactly why the send volume is high.

The planning horizon has been moving from same-week decisions toward two months out as the team grows.

What conversion rate to expect from a product email

It depends heavily on price point. A $100-plus outerwear piece converts lower than a sale on $30 shorts.

Attribution is where it gets complicated. Last-click revenue in Google Analytics is one number, and 24-hour open revenue is another.

Erich’s preferred metric is 24-hour open revenue, which starts a clock when someone opens an email and attributes any purchase within 24 hours, even without a click.

That number is always higher than last-click, and he treats it as a signal about marketing as a whole rather than about the email alone.

What open rates Chubbies actually gets

The company-wide average across everything sent through Klaviyo is about 16%.

The KPI for a product email is 17%, and 18% is a good result.

Anything above 20% is a strong outcome on a list of their size. A trucker jacket email from sender “the trucker jacket” with the subject line “480 horsepower” and preview text “5.7 liter turbocharged” hit roughly 23% to 24%.

Emails targeted specifically at people who did not open average 9% on the year, which is the number worth benchmarking that segment against.

Falling below 15% starts to hurt deliverability, which is why the active segment matters.

How Chubbies segments their list

The active list is anyone who has either ordered or opened an email within 90 days.

Those people receive the three-times-weekly cadence.

People outside that window sit in a separate segment used only when a message is genuinely strong or when the moment justifies it, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

Erich is realistic about why those open rates are poor. Most people have four or five email addresses and rarely check several of them, including addresses linked years ago.

Sending to everyone unsuppressed would push overall open rates below 10%, which is why they do not.

How to manage unsubscribes at high send volume

Three product emails a week is a lot, and there is a cliff where people who are not fans unsubscribe, roughly around the 90-day mark.

January is a large unsubscribe month.

Erich’s plan is analyzing when people unsubscribe relative to joining, then building a flow around it.

The specific idea is monitoring the first two weeks. Someone not opening in that window gets moved into a segment receiving one email a week or one every two weeks instead of three.

How Chubbies collects email addresses

Pop-ups are the baseline, offering a coupon in exchange for signing up before a first purchase, using Klaviyo’s Shopify integration.

Erich’s framing is that someone is on your site right now, you could have their email, and you should.

The bigger lever is campaigns. Their Man Model campaign, in its third year, invites regular people to send photos in odd clothes and strange videos for a chance at a modeling contract, which means flights to photo shoots and free Chubbies for ten years.

Voting drives the engagement, and the traffic and signups follow from people coming to the site to participate.

How Chubbies writes a product email

In an ideal week, a brainstorm happens about two weeks ahead with as much of the marketing team as is available.

That session generates headlines and link copy as raw material.

Headlines are built in Photoshop and run large, so opening the email tells you instantly what it is about.

The house style leans on wordplay. The Khakinator is backInator, for a short called the Khakinator, is representative.

The Weekender is written far more loosely, closer to sitting down and writing it in one pass.

How Chubbies tests email variations

Two to four versions of an email go out to 25% of the active list, divided among the variations, and run for a few hours.

The variables tested are copy and creative: new graphics against photos, lifestyle photography against lay-down product shots, and GIFs against static images.

Analysis happens in Google Analytics through specific UTM links per variation.

The metrics that matter are session volume first, to confirm the sample is large enough, then the percentage of visitors who reached a product page, then the percentage of those who added to cart.

Click-through rate is checked afterward as a sanity check rather than as the primary signal.

Add-to-cart is the strongest indicator, because reaching a product page only shows interest while adding to cart shows genuine purchase intent.

Subject lines get tested in the same round, so the winning email goes to the remaining 75% with the winning subject line attached.

What makes a subject line get opened

Erich’s honest assessment is that most subject lines and preview lines are boring, so anything unusual helps.

Custom sender names are their signature move. One of the year’s best came from “the abominable snowman at chubbies.com” with the subject line “I’m real,” which was timely because it was cold and doubled as a message about a product.

Spam complaints have not been a problem, since the audience expects that from the brand.

One-word subject lines work well now. For a handkerchief store, Erich’s off-the-cuff suggestion was sender “handkerchief at yourdomain.com,” subject line “Hey,” preview text “put me in your pocket.”

Pop culture references perform. A Law and Order reference, styled as “Law and Email” opening with “these are the stories of,” generated direct replies from readers.

Repetitiveness also works as a device, and rhyming lands.

What copy rules keep emails readable

Three sentences is Erich’s maximum for a paragraph.

The reason is measurement. Software they have used shows a large share of readers spending under three seconds on an email, and most read on mobile.

The line to walk is not drowning people in words while still being relevant and funny for those who do read.

Avoid the technical route. Detailed material composition and construction copy is boring, so they find an angle instead.

His example is a sale email written as walking around the office, finding a big red button labeled sale, being told not to press it, and pressing it anyway because he is a rebel. The point conveyed is that there is a sale.

What imagery works in ecommerce email

Products need to be seen, particularly with unusual fabrics and prints.

Beyond the product, imagery is how the brand shows itself. Someone laughing, having fun, or doing something mischievous is more interesting than a clean product shot.

The differentiation test is whether it could belong to anyone else. An underwear email should not look like a Hanes email.

GIFs have not shown a resounding advantage over static images.

The overall email design stays deliberately plain: white backgrounds, black text, large headlines. It could almost pass for an office email with pictures in it.

Erich’s reasoning about elaborate full-graphic emails is the right question to ask of any beautiful design. Did people click it, or did they just enjoy looking at it? The assets should be part of the email rather than the email being an asset.

How Chubbies uses email surveys for product decisions

Surveys go to roughly 100,000 people per quarter.

The purpose is merchandising. The design team generates far more print and product ideas than can be produced, and customer input narrows it.

The people receiving those surveys are the most active email openers and loyal customers, which is exactly whose opinion should shape next year’s product.

How Chubbies builds loyal customers

The internal saying is customer over company over self.

Customer service is based in Missoula, Montana, so emailing, chatting, or calling reaches a person there.

The operating assumption carried over from four people in an apartment is that customers are not trying to get one over on them, so the default is doing the best thing for the person.

They have also cold-called customers, including around a Scottsdale store opening. Getting a call that begins with someone saying they are from Chubbies produces genuine surprise.

What works on social for Chubbies

Facebook organic collapsed when the platform changed how it treats publishers, after a period of multi-million view videos.

Paid social is now the engine, and the approach mirrors email: make the ad different from everyone else’s.

Erich’s ad copy rule is brevity. Three-sentence ads make him nervous, because too many words on social makes people scroll past.

His example of a winning ad is a trucker jacket described as the official jacket saying “All right, all right, all right.” It is a joke, interesting, and different at once.

Instagram is the main organic platform, running user-generated photos with funny captions plus sketch videos, much of it making fun of office culture, since the workweek is the anti-weekend.

YouTube is back on the roadmap because its algorithm favors sustained organic viewing, and they were experimenting with TikTok, where the constraint is that the joke has to arrive almost instantly.

Why attribution is treated holistically

The typical path runs through several channels. Someone follows on Instagram, sees an ad, visits the site, hits the new customer signup, joins the email list, and converts from email.

That makes single-channel attribution unreliable, so Erich looks for recurring themes across the data rather than crediting one source.

For new products they do isolate one variable. Ads run first and email is held back until the ad data is meaningful, which cleans up ad attribution.

Frequently asked questions

How often should an ecommerce brand send email?

Chubbies sends three product emails plus one newsletter per week to an active segment, holding a roughly 16% open rate. The right frequency depends on your list’s tolerance and how often you launch products.

What is a good ecommerce email open rate?

Chubbies targets 17% on product emails, treats 18% as good, and considers over 20% strong. Falling below 15% starts to affect deliverability.

How do you define an active email segment?

Chubbies counts anyone who has ordered or opened an email within 90 days. Everyone else is reserved for major campaigns like Black Friday.

How do you A/B test an ecommerce email?

Send two to four variations to 25% of the active list for a few hours, compare product-page views and add-to-cart rates through UTM links, then send the winner to the remaining 75%.

What metric matters most when testing email creative?

Add-to-cart rate. Reaching a product page shows interest, while adding to cart shows purchase intent, and click-through rate is a secondary sanity check.

How long should email copy be?

Three sentences per paragraph maximum. Many readers spend under three seconds on an email and most read on mobile, so anything longer goes unread.

Do funny subject lines work?

For Chubbies, yes. Custom sender names, one-word subject lines, and pop culture references outperform, without generating spam complaints because the audience expects it.

How do you decide what products to make?

Survey your most engaged customers. Chubbies sends surveys to roughly 100,000 email subscribers quarterly and uses the results to narrow the design team’s product ideas.