How Ella & Jo turned consent collection into a €852K growth engine

In a crowded market, owning the customer relationship is everything

Ella & Jo is a Dublin-born skincare brand built on founder expertise and award-winning formulations. Founded by skincare experts Charlene Flanagan and Niamh Ryan, the brand has cultivated a loyal following of customers who don’t just buy once — they build routines around the products and come back consistently.

That purchasing behavior makes retention the center of gravity for the business. Ella & Jo invests heavily in email marketing — segmented flows, automated sequences, educational content — all designed to keep customers engaged and repurchasing. The brand sells through multiple marketplaces, but marketplace customers belong to the marketplace, not the brand.

Helena Dingley, Ecommerce Director, understood that the most valuable asset in that equation is a customer’s email address. Before Dataships, Ella & Jo was collecting email consent through the standard Shopify checkout and a footer signup on the website. Operating under Ireland’s opt-in rules — where customers must explicitly tick a box — the brand was converting just 51% of checkout customers into marketable email contacts.

For a brand that puts significant effort into its email marketing — and sees clear results when customers are in the funnel — losing half of all buyers at the point of purchase was a gap worth closing.

“Your email database is your most valuable asset. We sell on many marketplaces, but we don’t own that customer. Dataships helps us make sure we’re capturing every customer that lands on our website.”

Set it, trust it, and focus on what matters

Ella & Jo first onboarded with Dataships in November 2024 and recently upgraded to the latest checkout integration after moving to Shopify Plus. The implementation was straightforward both times — no developer resources required, minimal setup time, and critically, no ongoing maintenance burden.

That last point matters more than it might seem. Helena manages a broad ecommerce operation spanning bundles, subscriptions, a loyalty program, marketplace relationships, and a newly launched WhatsApp channel. Dataships needed to be the kind of tool that runs reliably in the background without adding to an already full plate.

“Once I onboarded and got it set up, it really does run itself. There are many different products where there’s lots of follow-ups and tweaks and it’s a constant piece of your role. But Dataships is literally set it and forget it.”

The compliance layer was equally important. Operating across Ireland, the UK, and the EU means navigating different consent rules for each jurisdiction — Ireland requires explicit opt-in, the UK operates under soft opt-in. For a lean ecommerce team without dedicated legal resources, that compliance infrastructure removes real risk.

€852K in predicted lifetime value from 13,558 contacts

Since implementing Dataships, Ella & Jo has driven 31,867 verified contacts through optimized checkout consent, with 13,558 of those representing net new marketable contacts the brand would not have captured otherwise.

The results speak clearly:

• Marketable rate: Increased from 51% to 80% at checkout.
• Net new contacts: 13,558 incremental marketable contacts captured through checkout optimization.
• Repeat purchases: 8,651 of those contacts have already made repeat purchases.
• Predicted lifetime value: €852,853 in total predicted LTV from incremental subscribers.

One driving factor behind these stats was a significant repurchase rate from the Dataships audience, which was high even for a skincare brand with strong product-market fit. Helena’s team doesn’t treat Dataships-driven contacts as a separate segment — they flow into the same carefully built email program.

The near-zero unsubscribe rate reinforces the quality argument. These aren’t reluctant subscribers who were tricked into a list. They’re customers who purchased, received relevant marketing, and stayed engaged.

The revenue impact compounds over time. Ella & Jo’s customers buy routines, not single products. Every additional subscriber who enters the email program has multiple future purchases ahead of them.

“The repeat purchase rate and revenue that came from customers initially being onboarded via Dataships really showed how valuable the product was. It really does run itself — and it’s helped our business.”