How Quarks Turned Email and SMS Into a Growth Engine with Klaviyo
Quarks has been putting Canadians in the right pair of shoes since 1977. Today, The Quark Group is the largest privately-owned footwear retailer in Western Canada, operating two banners, Quarks and Urban Trail, with shelves featuring names like Blundstone, Birkenstock, and Clarks. For nearly five decades, its stores earned customer loyalty the in-person way. The company's owned digital channels told a different story, with email and SMS bringing in a small share of online revenue. When The Quark Group came to Northern, the ask was direct: double our email list. Delivering it, uncovered opportunities that would grow Klaviyo-attributed revenue more than fivefold. So how does a retail-first institution turn email and SMS into a real revenue channel without losing what makes it a retail-first institution?
+535%
Klaviyo attributed revenue growth vs. the previous nine-month period
3% → 15%
email and SMS share of online revenue
2x
email list growth, exactly what the client asked for
Enter Northern.
The Quark Group had moved to Klaviyo from their previous email platform, Mailchimp, at the start of 2025, but a platform is only as good as what's built on it. When Northern took over the account, the first priority was the client's own ask: grow the list.
Doubling the List, the Right Way
Every opt-in point across both brands was rebuilt. Northern optimized the multi-step email and SMS pop-up forms for Quarks and Urban Trail, launched a new SMS-only pop-up retargeting existing email subscribers, added opt-in embed forms for each banner on their corresponding sites, and built a dedicated email and SMS digital catalogue landing page. Paid social pulled its weight too: a Meta lead generation campaign, connected directly to Klaviyo through the Meta integration, turned ad spend into consented subscribers rather than one-time clicks.
The client asked for the email list to double. That's exactly what they got. Consented email subscribers grew 100% in nine months, and SMS subscribers nearly tripled over the same period.
From One Automation to a Full Lifecycle
With the list compounding, the focus shifted to what happens after the sign-up. The existing welcome series for both brands were rebuilt and optimized. Next came new flows: cart abandon and browse abandon with branded follow-ups, both extended to SMS, a birthday flow, a post-purchase thank you flow, and a brand-new SMS welcome series, a flow that had never existed.
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The complete build, section by section, with the reasoning behind each decision. Inside the case study
"Most Klaviyo accounts we look at are built for sending, not for earning. The distance between one welcome flow and a full lifecycle is usually the largest revenue opportunity a retailer has sitting in front of them."
"We asked Northern to double our email list, and they did exactly that. What we didn't expect was everything else: the flows, the SMS program, the strategy behind it all."
Ryan Krahn, Vice President, The Quark Group
quarkshoes.com