Most welcome sequences tell people about you. Kristin Lawton's welcome sequence lets people build something with you.

Kristin,Chief Brand Mixologist at District Brand Bar, with 20+ years in brand strategy across politics, PR, and nonprofit communications built a 60-email choose-your-own-adventure welcome series where new subscribers "enter the bar," pick a base spirit, flavour, cocktail style, and garnish, and land on a fully custom cocktail recipe by the end.

It sounds like a lot of email. It is a lot of email. But her overall click-through rate jumped to 6% after launch , nearly triple what most lists see without any increase in unsubscribes.

In this episode, she walks through exactly how it's built, what happens when subscribers don't want to play along, and how anyone (not just a cocktail-themed brand) can build something similar.

INSIDE THIS EPISODE

1. Why Kristin built her welcome sequence as an interactive "choose your own adventure" instead of a standard intro series

2.How subscribers' choices (base spirit, flavour, style, garnish) route them down different email paths

3.The "dealer's choice" fallback for subscribers who never make a choice and why it performs just as well

4. The tech stack behind it: Kit (ConvertKit), a Notion tracking database, and heavy use of tagging across dozens of small automations

5. Why she rebuilt her welcome series to "train her audience to click" from the very first email

7. The results: a 6% overall click-through rate post-launch, with open rates and unsubscribes unchanged

8. Her monthly "Mixologist Playbook" newsletter designed to look forward instead of recapping the past

9. An AI-personalised 6-month anniversary email that generates each subscriber a custom cocktail using their first name

10. The email marketing myth she wants to bust: sending just to send is not the same as staying consistent

GUEST RESOURCES

Guest: Kristin Lawton, Chief Brand Mixologist at District Brand Bar

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/districtbrandbar/

Website: districtbrandbar.com/hello

My Quiz: What's Your Signature Brand Marketing Style:

https://districtbrandbar.com/quiz

EPISODE TIMELINE ⏱️

[03:34] – Kristin's path from politics, PR, and nonprofit communications into brand strategy

[05:30] – Building an off-grid cabin during the pandemic (and why she's banned from driving the tractor)

[08:20] – Kristin's "job description" for email marketing: keep them ordering another round

[09:45] – Her biggest email marketing mistake: a typo in her own brand tagline, sent to her whole list

[12:50] – Inside the Choose Your Own Adventure welcome series and how it works

[15:48] – The tech behind it: Kit, Notion, and layers of tagging automations

[16:43] – How her DISC-based brand style quiz feeds into the sequence

[18:44] – Why she scrapped her standard 3–5 email welcome series for something more immersive

[22:10] – What happens when subscribers don't make a choice: the dealer's choice path

[25:55] – The results: click-through rates jumped to 6% overall after launch

[30:39] – How the dealer's choice sequence works on the backend for non-responders

[31:51] – Her advice for building a choose-your-own-adventure sequence, even without a themed brand

[35:42] – The monthly "Mixologist Playbook" newsletter and why it looks forward, not back

[40:55] – The AI-personalised 6-month anniversary email that builds a custom cocktail from a subscriber's name

[46:02] – A common mistake someone who's just starting out can make when using this strategy

[51:41] – The email marketing myth she wants to bust, and the sender-name mistake that's an instant unsubscribe

[53:51] – Rapid fire: long vs. short emails, open vs. click rates, branded vs. plain-text design

CONNECT WITH US

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dr.sapphire_/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ayebanoabenwari/

Threads: https://www.threads.com/@dr.sapphire_

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/school/sapphirelearninghub/

Website: https://sapphirelearninghub.com/

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** Hi listeners, welcome back to Email Marketing Experiments! Today, I have your favorite bartender on the show: the Chief Brand Mixologist behind District Brand Bar. She bottles business owners' brilliance into signature brands that make them the obvious choice in their industry. With over 20 years of experience in brand strategy, she built a signature framework to align credibility, personality, and expression into a cohesive system. A dash of AI powers her process, training custom tools on each client's unique voice so showing up feels consistent, confident, and unmistakably them.

Her ecosystem of offers—ranging from high-touch signature brand experiences to subscription services and AI tools—ensures brands don't just launch strong, they stay sharp. I signed up for her email list and got to see what we're talking about today play out firsthand. Email marketing has to be personal, but this was personal on a whole new level. I'm talking about Kristin Lawton! Kristin, welcome to the show.

**Kristin Lawton:** Thank you for having me!

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** We're going to dive right into how you created that experience. Today, we're talking about her signature "Cocktail Experience" inside email. But first, with over 20 years in marketing and communications, can you tell us a bit about your background?

**Kristin Lawton:** Communications and branding are in my blood—I'm a fifth-generation printer, so I grew up around the industry. Living in Washington, D.C., I've worked in politics, media, TV, and public relations, and I ran communications for a national non-profit where we executed a complete rebrand in a single day. That experience made me fall in love with brand strategy and the difference a signature brand makes for your overall marketing.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** During the pandemic, while many of us were stuck at home baking, you went ahead and built an off-grid cabin. How did that happen?

**Kristin Lawton:** My husband and I live in a converted warehouse downtown with zero outdoor space. A few years prior, we bought 15 acres in the mountains thinking we'd eventually put a tiny house there. When the pandemic hit, we realized we needed an outdoor escape fast. We ordered a cabin kit from Vermont that arrived as a massive pile of lumber. We hired a local contractor we met through Craigslist, and the three of us built the off-grid cabin by hand. It has no running water, operates on a generator, and serves as our weekend retreat.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** If you gave email marketing a job description in your business, what would it be?

**Kristin Lawton:** Its job is to keep people coming back to order a second, third, and fourth round. In bar terms, once you get someone in the door and seated, you want them to enjoy the vibe, feel welcome, and keep ordering. Email marketing drives retention, engagement, and trust.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** We have a tradition called *Open Rate Confession*. What is the biggest email marketing mistake you've ever made?

**Kristin Lawton:** When I launched my business during COVID, I sent an announcement email to my entire contact list proudly introducing my brand and logo. It had gone through multiple reviews, yet no one noticed that the tagline inside the logo image contained a spelling error until after it was broadcast to everyone! I tell that story to remind entrepreneurs that things will be messy at launch—don't let perfectionism hold you back.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** Tell us about your "Choose Your Own Adventure" cocktail experience welcome series and how it works.

**Kristin Lawton:** It’s an interactive welcome series built around a cocktail bar theme. When subscribers opt in, they enter my virtual bar and choose how they want to sit. Throughout the sequence, every few emails present a choice—selecting a base spirit (gin, mezcal, bourbon, rum), flavor profiles (sweet, sour, bitter), glass styles, and garnishes.

At the top of each email, a dynamic progress box updates with their specific selections. By the end, they receive a customized cocktail recipe based on their choices, along with a link to a custom GPT to experiment further.

If a subscriber chooses not to click or select an option, they smoothly transition into a "Dealer's Choice" fallback sequence so they still receive valuable nurture content.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** What does the backend setup look like for an automation this detailed?

**Kristin Lawton:** I host everything inside Kit (formerly ConvertKit) and track the architecture using a Notion database. Initially, I tried building it as one giant automation, but quickly realized it works better as a web of smaller automations and sequences tied together with strict tagging rules. When someone finishes a step, they are tagged with their choice and routed to the corresponding sequence.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** How does your *Signature Brand Marketing Style* quiz tie into this sequence?

**Kristin Lawton:** The quiz assesses your brand style based on four cocktail-themed profiles (On the Rocks, Shaken, Stirred, or Neat). It serves as a major entry point: subscribers can enter through the quiz first and transition into the adventure series, or opt into the adventure directly and get routed to the quiz later.

Before building this, I had a standard 3-to-5 email welcome series. I decided to build the interactive version after email expert Allison Hardy pointed out the importance of training your audience to click early on. It took about 3 to 4 months to map out and launch.

When I broadcasted the new series to my list, overall click-through rates jumped to 6% (compared to standard industry baselines of 1.5%–2.5%). Even when subscribers opt for the "Dealer's Choice" path, open and engagement rates remain consistently strong.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** You also send a monthly *Mixologist Playbook* and anniversary milestones. Can you share how those fit into your strategy?

**Kristin Lawton:** On the first of every month, I send the *Mixologist Playbook*. Unlike traditional roundups that look back at past content, this email focuses forward—setting the tone for the upcoming month, spotlighting current offers, sharing a "vibe check," and highlighting upcoming events. It consistently achieves my highest open rates.

For subscriber anniversaries, I previously sent a text email asking for feedback at the 6-month mark. Recently, I upgraded it using an automation via Make.com and OpenAI: it generates a personalized cocktail recipe based on the subscriber's first name, accompanied by a photo of me cheering to their 6-month anniversary. The response rate increased dramatically compared to the plain text version.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** What is one mistake people should avoid when attempting a strategy like this?

**Kristin Lawton:** Don't overcomplicate it right out of the gate, and don't let perfectionism stop you. Start with a simpler interactive framework and layer in complexity over time. Also, keep a detailed tracker or spreadsheet of your tags, rules, and sequence links so you can update product links or offers easily without combing through dozens of emails.

At the recent Kit Craft & Commerce conference, my biggest takeaway was leveraging AI Model Context Protocol (MCP) connections to analyze email data in tools like Claude. This helps automate audits of open times, deliverability, and subject line performance across complex sequences.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** Sender names: First name only, or Full Name / Brand?

**Kristin Lawton:** Please do not use just a first name unless you're Beyonce or Oprah! Include your last name or brand name so subscribers immediately recognize who is emailing them.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** Long or short emails?

**Kristin Lawton:** Short emails for quick reading, though I write both!

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** Open rates or click rates?

**Kristin Lawton:** Click rates.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** Lead magnet delivery: On the thank-you page or in the first email?

**Kristin Lawton:** In the first email—the goal is to train subscribers to open and click your emails right away.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** Plain text or branded emails?

**Kristin Lawton:** Branded! Be an authentic brand and show off your visual identity.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** Kristin, where can our listeners find you?

**Kristin Lawton:** You can find me at **@districtbrandbar** across Instagram, Threads, YouTube, and at **districtbrandbar.com**.

**Dr. Ayebanoa Benwari:** Thank you so much for joining us, Kristin!