Case Study

Automating 41 Offers with Behavioural Targeting (Personalized Email Marketing Case Study)

by Brad Hussey

When a Power User Needs More Than Just Automation

Most creators come to us for help with email marketing. Adam Sobel of Cinnamon Snail came to us for advanced Kit personalization.

He already had 41+ cooking classes, liquid logic, and complex automations running on Kit. The problem wasn’t that his system didn’t work—it just couldn’t scale.

What he needed was true 1-to-1 personalization where every subscriber saw offers matched to their cooking style, dietary needs, and demonstrated interests—automatically.

Adam runs The Cinnamon Snail, a vegan cooking education business with multiple cookbooks, a membership program, and a constantly growing catalog. He wasn’t starting from scratch with Kit—he’d already built custom liquid logic, dynamic snippets, and carefully crafted automations.

Every new class meant manually updating dozens of email templates. Every offer required nested conditional logic to prevent showing it to people who’d already purchased. His personalization was limited to first names and maybe a custom field or two.

And he had a bigger vision: true 1-to-1 personalization where every subscriber saw offers matched to their cooking style, dietary needs, demonstrated interests, and purchase history—automatically.

The Challenge: Complexity Without Chaos

When Adam reached out, he described himself as “the most complicated, chaotic client anybody could have a nightmare of inheriting.”

He wasn’t wrong. Here’s what we were walking into:

The Product Ecosystem:

The Audience Complexity:

The Technical Reality:

Most agencies would’ve said: “Let’s simplify.”

We said: “Let’s systemize the complexity.”

The Strategic Foundation: Know Who You’re Talking To

Before writing a line of code or building a single automation, we spent time understanding Adam’s world.

The Personalization Sprint

We conducted a comprehensive strategy session—not a quick call, but a deep dive into:

Avatar Validation

Adam had hunches about his audience segments. We validated them with actual customer data and refined them into four clear personas:

These weren’t marketing fluff. These became the foundation for every piece of personalization we built.

The Critical Insight:

Adam’s audience wasn’t the “whole food plant-based health crowd.” They wanted to prove vegan food could beat non-vegan food. They were after award-winning donuts, restaurant-quality techniques, food that made carnivores jealous.

This shaped everything—testimonial selection, CTA wording, offer prioritization, content strategy.

Offer Ladder Mapping

We didn’t just list Adam’s products. We mapped them strategically:

Entry Points -> Tripwires -> Core Courses -> Bundles -> Membership

For each offer, we defined:

This wasn’t a spreadsheet exercise. This was building the logic that would power intelligent personalization for years to come.

The Solution: A Dynamic Offer Engine

The centrepiece of Adam’s new system is what we call the Creator Engine—a personalization system that makes every email adapt to the recipient automatically.

How It Thinks

When someone opens an email from Adam, the system evaluates offers in priority order:

1. Manual Override (Flash sales, campaigns)
“This week, everyone sees the Mexican cooking bundle offer.”

2. Behavioural Intelligence (RightMessage data)
“This person viewed the Japanese cooking class page 3 times this week but didn’t buy. Show them that.”

3. Strategic Rotation (Smart defaults)
“Show membership to non-members 15% of the time. Otherwise, rotate through eligible offers.”

At each level, the system asks:

Only then does it show the offer.

What Makes It Intelligent

Eligibility Filtering

The system automatically excludes offers when:

Behavioural Adaptation

Integration with RightMessage means the system learns from website behaviour:

This creates responsive personalization that adapts to current intent, not just historical data.

Content Personalization

The same offer presents differently based on who’s reading:

These aren’t variations. They’re fundamentally different value propositions for fundamentally different people.

The UI: Making Complexity Manageable

Here’s where most agencies fail: they build sophisticated systems that only they can maintain.

We built Adam a visual management interface where his team can:

Adding a new cooking class:

  1. Open the UI
  2. Enter class details, assign categories, set rules
  3. Export
  4. Paste one snippet into Kit
  5. Done

The system handles the rest—eligibility filtering, personalization, rotation, everything.

This matters because: In two years when Adam has 60+ classes, he doesn’t rebuild the system. He just keeps adding to it.

The Kit Automation Architecture: Systems That Think Ahead

Beyond the offer engine, we built comprehensive lifecycle automation:

Welcome Sequences That Adapt

New subscribers don’t get a generic welcome. They get:

All from one sequence that branches dynamically based on their survey responses.

Post-Purchase Intelligence

When someone buys a class, the system automatically:

And here’s the elegant part: we built it as a template. Add a new class? Duplicate the automation, update three fields, done.

High-Value Customer Recognition

The system identifies subscribers who’ve spent over a certain threshold but haven’t joined the membership. They automatically receive:

Without anyone manually segmenting or sending.

The Failsafe Philosophy

We didn’t just build for the happy path. We built for reality:

The principle: Systems should degrade elegantly, not catastrophically.

The Collaboration: Working With a Technical Client

What made this project work wasn’t just what we built—it was how we built it.

Adam isn’t a typical client. He understands Kit, liquid logic, and complex automations. He asks questions that make you think harder.

The Asana Back-and-Forth

Over 60+ messages showing real-time problem-solving:

Strategic thinking: “The way I’m setting up SendSpark, it will add the tag only once the video is rendered. That way on high volume days when rendering a ton of videos, no emails will go out before the processing is complete.”

Technical debugging: “Something seems off with the calculations here. A big chunk of my members are annual which is already above $300, and plenty of my monthly people have spent more than $300. Not sure why only 14 VU members are being segmented as having over a 300 LTV.”

Working through issues: “I dunno. I did what you said and most subscribers are still getting stuck in that entry point in the high LTV threshold automation.”

This wasn’t just implementation. It was collaborative problem-solving.

The Accidental Full-Scale Test

During testing, something went sideways—an automation deployed to all 170 active members before we could catch it.

By the time we realized what happened, all the videos had been generated, personalized to each member’s segment, and sent.

The result: The system worked flawlessly. Every video rendered correctly. Every personalization fired properly. Every automation step executed as designed.

The takeaway: We built something resilient enough to survive being accidentally deployed at full scale.

What Adam Said During the Build

“I am in absolute awe. The finesse you put on this. Little things like that nurture pause stuck subscriber automation. Everything you have done here is such a wild art.”

“Man, if I didn’t have a mega-full-time job of my own, I’d be kicking down your door to work as the person you are hiring for.”

“In case there was ANY question in your mind, I 100% want to book you for phase 2!”

These aren’t polished testimonials. They’re messages from Asana while we were building.

The Systems Thinking Behind It

Good personalization systems aren’t just clever—they’re sustainable. Here’s how we approached it:

1. Build for the Next 100 Products, Not Just Today’s 41

The offer engine isn’t sized for Adam’s current catalog. It handles unlimited offers with automatic optimization.

Why this matters: In two years, Adam won’t rebuild. He’ll just keep adding.

2. Automate Everything That Can Be Automated

Every decision asked: “Can this happen automatically?”

3. Make Maintenance Optional

Most systems: Every new product requires updating multiple templates and segments.

This system: Add to UI once, export once, everything else adapts.

The test: If Adam adds 5 new classes while on vacation, does anything break?

Answer: No.

4. Build Systems That Explain Themselves

We didn’t just build it and hand over a manual. We built systems that make sense:

Six months from now, anyone can understand and modify it.

The Results: From Static to Dynamic

Before This Build:

After This Build:

The First Week in Production

“First nurture email went out this morning! So cool to see the offer engine at work.”

Adam’s weekly newsletter—which used to require manually selecting an offer—now:

One email. Hundreds of personalized variations. Zero manual work.

The Bigger Impact

We can’t share specific conversion metrics yet (the system just launched), but advanced Kit personalization at this level typically increases conversion rates by 15-40% based on our work with other creators.

What we can say definitively:

Adam went from:

To:

His business was already successful. Now it’s systemize for exponential growth.

Why This Matters

The Problem Most Creators Face

Most creators are doing one of three things with email:

1. Sending the same email to everyone
Easy to maintain. Leaves money on the table.

2. Manual segmentation
“Gluten-free list gets email A, everyone else gets email B.”
Doesn’t scale. Breaks when someone fits multiple segments.

3. Complex automation they can’t maintain
Built once. Impossible to update. Breaks constantly.

What Actually Works

Real personalization means:

This requires strategic thinking, technical architecture, and systems design working together.

Most people have one or two of these. Rarely all three.

The Technical Side (For Those Who Want to Know)

For readers who care about how this actually works:

The Priority System

Offer selection happens in this order:

  1. Manual override (for campaigns)
  2. Behavioural suggestion (from RightMessage)
  3. Strategic promotion (membership frequency)
  4. Smart rotation (from eligible offers)

Each level checks eligibility before proceeding.

The Eligibility Checks

Before showing any offer, the system verifies:

This happens in real-time when the email renders. No pre-segmentation needed.

The Behavioural Loop

Website: Visitor browses Japanese classes
    ?
RightMessage: Detects pattern, sets custom field
    ?
Kit: Reads field, prioritizes Japanese offers
    ?
15 days later: Resets unless new interest shown

This creates personalization that adapts to current intent using RightMessage and Kit together.

The Platform Integration

We connected:

All working as one system.

What Makes This Different

It’s Not Just the Technology

Anyone can install RightMessage. Anyone can learn liquid syntax. Anyone can build basic Kit automations.

What makes advanced Kit personalization different is our systems-thinking:

Adam called it “art.” He’s right.

Engineering is choosing the right tools and implementing them correctly.

Art is seeing the problem beneath the problem and building systems that just work.

It’s Infrastructure, Not Just a Project

We didn’t just build Adam a personalization system. We built him infrastructure:

Like electricity or plumbing… once you have it, you wonder how you worked without it.

Who This Is For

If you have:

You need personalization infrastructure.

Not necessarily this exact system, but the thinking behind it:

  1. Know your segments intimately
  2. Map your offers strategically
  3. Build behavioural intelligence
  4. Automate eligibility and personalization
  5. Make maintenance optional
  6. Document everything
  7. Plan for scale

This is how modern creator businesses compete.

If you’re ready to explore advanced Kit personalization for your business, let’s talk.

Beyond Adam’s Business

This build represents a blueprint for creator personalization:

For Coaching/Education:

For Product Catalogs:

For Membership Models:

The common thread: Personalization that scales without chaos.

What’s Next

Adam already booked Phase Two.

Now that we’ve dominated Kit’s capabilities as an email automation tool, we’re expanding into:

Because this isn’t a project. It’s infrastructure.

And like any infrastructure, you maintain it, expand it, and grow with it.

Final Thoughts

The internet doesn’t need more generic email blasts.

What works now is understanding your audience, responding to what they care about, and speaking to individuals—at scale.

This is what that looks like in practice.

Not personalization as a buzzword. Personalization as infrastructure.

Not automation that just saves time. Automation that increases revenue.

Not technology that impresses. Technology that performs.

If you’re ready to stop sending the same message to everyone and start building relationships at scale, let’s talk.

Want to explore what advanced Kit personalization could look like for your business?

Get in touch

Project completed January 2026 for Adam Sobel (The Cinnamon Snail). Custom Authority Engine build combining Kit, RightMessage, behavioural targeting, and dynamic recommended offer personalization. Case Study written with the assistance of Claude AI by Anthropic.