"I oversee many different marketing channels, so if I have to spend a lot of time on our email program, then other stuff falls through the cracks. Having a dedicated person on our team I can trust has made a big difference."
— Conner Cole, Director of Digital Marketing, Ode à la Rose
At a Glance
- Company: Ode à la Rose
- Industry: Premium DTC Floral Delivery
- Team size: <25 corporate employees
- Problem: Agency relationship producing diminishing returns
- Solution: 1 Growth Assistant (Luke) embedded full-time in email
- Tools: Klaviyo, Monday.com, Slack
The Company
Ode à la Rose is a premium French floral brand founded in New York City in 2012. Their artisans hand-tie every bouquet, package it in a signature pink box, and send the recipient a photo of the actual arrangement before it ships. Six ateliers. Same-day delivery in NYC, Chicago, LA, Austin, Miami, and DC. Next-day delivery nationwide.
The team is lean by design, as a brand that competes on quality & experience, not volume. No flash sales. No Cyber week.
The Problem
For a while, email ran through an outside agency. The agency brought eCommerce experience and handled execution, but over time, fit frayed.
A few things were working against them:
- The strategy wasn't on-brand. The agency's instincts were built on the broader DTC playbook: more sends, more promotions, bigger holiday pushes. But, that was the opposite of Ode à la Rose’s bespoke experience-centric strategy: "They were often pushing for more discounts, more promotions. We were constantly having to defend ourselves, as opposed to just having someone on the team who gets it."
- The process was slow. Every newsletter went through rounds of revisions. Approvals lagged. Turnaround on one-off requests was inconsistent & often took longer than it should, a real problem for a floral brand where product availability can change overnight.
- A new creative director changed the dynamic. When Ode à la Rose brought on someone to sharpen their visual identity, the agency model broke down. The new in-house creative director knew how the brand should look & sound, so building creative externally created friction instead of momentum. "There was a bunch of iterations, comments, and back and forth. Having our creative director lead the calendar, partner with a full-time Growth Assistant, and have more direct say on the creative actually ended up being better."
The agency was executing. They just weren't acting like an extension. For a premium brand with a lean team, that gap matters.
Why GrowthAssistant
When it was time to make a change, three options were on the table:
- Stay with the agency
- Hire a US-based generalist
- Try GrowthAssistant
The generalist hire was appealing but expensive and slow. A full US salary for a single channel on a team this lean was hard to justify. And the agency had already shown its ceiling.
GrowthAssistant was the practical choice: a dedicated, full-time resource who could own email execution completely, at a fraction of the cost, with almost no hiring overhead.
"It was basically going to replace what the agency was doing, and possibly provide additional ad-hoc support as well, for a similar or lower cost. Email is more execution-heavy than strategy-heavy. This was a cost-effective replacement that would function better for our team."
There was one hesitation: how much hand-holding would be needed?
"The only concern was: am I going to have to list out every single little thing, or will they know how to do this?"
What Changed
In October 2025, Luke was embedded directly into the email program. Working in Klaviyo daily, communicating via Slack, collaborating with the creative director through Monday.com on the newsletter calendar.
Within a couple of weeks of Luke fully owning production, the hand-holding question was answered fast.
"It was just smooth. A lot quicker. We had more of a dedicated resource than we'd ever had before."
A few things shifted right away:
- Luke worked independently. Luke flagged when he had bandwidth, handled open-ended research without needing step-by-step instructions, and produced reporting that plugged directly into Ode à la Rose's existing workflows, instead of living in a third-party agency tool. "I can say, hey, can you do a deep dive on last year's Valentine's Day newsletters, and he comes back with something useful."
- The send strategy got smarter. Under the agency, three versions of each newsletter went out, customer vs. prospect variations with minimal content differences. It looked like segmentation but it wasn't doing much. With Luke in-house, strategy simplified: fewer versions, tighter lists, more focus on engaged subscribers.
- Turnaround got faster. Last minute ad hoc requests happen immediately. During peak periods like Mother's Day, when product availability can shift overnight, having someone available and context-aware is the difference between smooth execution and a scramble.
The Results
+29% increase in newsletter and campaign revenue in Q1 2026 vs. Q1 2025, with no increase in the number of sends.
Newsletter quality went from a 7–8 to a 9. Graded by Conner. The work is more polished, more on-brand, and produced with less back-and-forth than before.
25–50% fewer rounds of feedback. The old agency model required constant revision cycles. That loop has compressed significantly, and turnaround on what revisions remain is faster.
Reporting that actually integrates. Under the agency, reporting lived in a third-party tool. Luke's reporting plugs directly into the team's existing workflows, making insights easier to act on.
Better brand consistency. Harder to measure, but real, especially for a brand that sells on experience. "Long-term, I think retention and average order value are probably a little better because everything is much more polished and buttoned up."
The Bottom Line
For Ode à la Rose, this wasn't about cutting costs or clocking hours saved. It was about improving output without increasing investment, and getting a full-time resource who actually knows the brand, moves fast when it matters, and makes the work better every time.
For lean eCommerce teams where a dedicated US-based channel specialist isn't in the budget yet, GrowthAssistant gets you there. And for anyone wondering if the model is worth trying: "The upside if it does work out is pretty significant. And because of the way it's set up with GrowthAssistant, there's very little risk if it doesn’t."
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