Michael Gabriels: 947% order growth over Black Friday Cyber Monday - with fewer discounts, not more

Michael Gabriels designs and sells lab-grown diamond jewelry direct to consumer, pairing premium craftsmanship with ethical sourcing across rings, tennis bracelets, necklaces and pendants. The brand had built decades of deep customer loyalty, but its email and SMS programme wasn't remotely matching the quality of the product or the size of its rapidly growing list, and every major sale period leaned on heavy discount codes that ate straight into margin.

The challenge

Four things were holding the account back. Campaigns leaned on 25 to 30 percent discount codes, so margin came under pressure at every peak event even as revenue spiked. Campaign messaging and automation messaging weren't aligned, a Black Friday campaign might promote one offer while the flows behind it were still pushing something else. Attribution was poorly tracked, dropping as low as 18.5 percent on Valentine's Day. And despite growing ad spend feeding new traffic in, the email programme wasn't converting or growing that audience efficiently.

What In-box did

• Segmented the audience by buyers vs non-buyers as the default split, layered with engagement scoring so every send protected deliverability as volume scaled
• Rebuilt the entire flow stack for every seasonal event, including a second welcome series tailored to different entry offers, abandoned cart, abandoned checkout and post-purchase, so automation messaging always matched the live campaign offer
• Replaced discount codes with product-level price drops, starting with Valentine's Day
• Built out SMS as a fully integrated channel alongside email rather than an afterthought
• Took the BFCM framework and replicated it across Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Memorial Day and summer sale periods, using gift-focused framing, multi-day urgency sequences and education-led content

The results

Black Friday and Cyber Monday orders grew from 324 to 3,393, a 947 percent increase in order volume. Total attributed revenue across all replicated seasonal events increased 947 percent, with Valentine's Day attributed sales up 441 percent. Average open rates reached 57 percent, with email attribution rate maintained at roughly 30 percent even as the business scaled 8x. Discount code usage was cut by 67 percent, meaning the brand grew revenue while giving away less margin, not more. In-box remains an active partner, with Michael Gabriels now trading well into seven figures a month.

The takeaway for premium DTC brands: growing revenue during your biggest sale periods doesn't have to mean deeper discounts. Aligning campaigns and automations around segmented, price-drop-led offers can grow both orders and margin at once.