The Winning Hand: Why Oats Overnight Bets on Data

Hey everyone,

Welcome back for another bite to chew on.

If you watch closely, DTC can sometimes be like a slot machine. 

Some founders pull the lever on a new creative, cross their fingers, and hope the algorithm rewards them with a jackpot.

That’s a losing game.

When Brian Tate launched Oats Overnight, he didn’t bring a marketing playbook. He brought 12 years of professional poker experience. 

In poker, you don't bet on feelings. Edging out a win is about probability, risk mitigation, and compounding small advantages over thousands of hands.

Today, Oats Overnight is a nine-figure beast that dominates both the digital shelf and retail giants like Walmart, Costco, and Target. 

But they didn't get there by being lucky. They build a data engine that treats oatmeal like a high-stakes laboratory.

Let’s get into it.

On the menu:

Meshki, HigherDOSE, Buck Mason. The fastest-growing brands aren’t scaling because they “send more emails”, they’re scaling because their retention flows are built like a revenue engine.

When their email revenue didn’t keep up with their growth goals, they put Instant’s AI-powered flows on trial. We’ve been deep in the data with these brands, and the numbers speak for themselves:

Then the hardest test: a top DTC underwear brand measured Instant with a brutal 24-hour open and click attribution. Instant still scaled at 30x ROI.

Here’s what their Senior Director of Retention & Growth Marketing had to say:

“Instant’s capabilities are the best we’ve seen and we’ve tried them all. What impressed us was how quickly we started seeing results, and how knowledgeable and committed their Customer Success team was.”

So what changed? They stopped sending “one flow for everyone” and started running personalized retention like a performance channel:

What makes this a no-brainer:

If you're serious about retention in 2026, don’t overthink it. Get this live now. They’re giving anyone who reads this 50% off your first 60 days if you book a demo by the end of next week.

Most founders treat their product like a one-off event. They spend $50 to acquire a customer, sell a $40 product, and pray that the customer remembers to come back in three weeks.

But from Brian’s perspective, DTC doesn’t work today without a subscription model.

3 strategies that have been the key to Oats Overnight’s subscription success:

Brian argues that DTC only scales sustainably for products customers use often enough that subscription feels natural rather than forced. 

Oatmeal fits that pattern: it’s a daily routine, not an occasional purchase, which makes subscription essential to keep up with a healthy lifestyle.

Improving payback periods pushed Oats Overnight toward a more subscription-first model, with first-time subscription rate as a core metric. 

One-time purchases (especially sample offers) created too much friction, since even customers who liked the product often didn’t return to reorder. The real goal was getting customers to subscribe on their first purchase. 

Risk-reduction tactics like money-back guarantees helped make that leap feel safer, but large upfront discounts were a key driver in successfully converting first-time subscribers.

Despite rising CACs, removing the sample offering was one of the most impactful decisions they made. 

While lower-priced sample products seem like an easier way to acquire customers, they consistently drove very low first-time subscription rates. The added friction of asking customers to try and then return made conversion unreliable. 

By removing samples, increasing first-time AOV, and offering a subscription-first discount, Oats Overnight significantly improved payback periods, LTV, and retention.

Can 60+ SKUs transform into a retention weapon? Efficiency experts will say it kills your margins, confuses your customers, and bloats your inventory. 

But for Oats Overnight is the opposite.

They currently boast a roster of over 60 different flavors. And that’s because they run a test that showed 8% more conversions at 35 products vs 20.

They were able to disprove the decision paralysis fear that a lot of brands have by relying purely on their own data.

Now, to develop these flavors, they also run a high-frequency feedback loop that relies on both qualitative and quantitative data.

For the team at Oats, a new SKU is a data-gathering mission. Every flavor is an opportunity to learn more about what makes a customer sticky.

While Brian started Oats Overnight with a digital-first approach, he knew they would eventually need to move into retail. 

Right now, 90% of their oatmeal is bought in-store vs online. 

But for this channel to work, a few things need to be addressed first:

The fastest way to frustrate retail partners and cannibalize your own site is to sell the exact same SKU in both places. Brian’s rule: Obscure the offering. 

The strategy: If you cannot change the physical format of the product, change the bundle, the case pack, or the pricing structure.

To make subscription work, Brian removed the sample offering from their website. However, retail is a great channel to use it. 

A customer who won’t commit to a $60 bundle online will happily pay $3.00 at the store to try Oats Overnight.

Don't fight the customer's habits. Some people want a $60 box delivered to their door; others want to add a single pouch to their weekly grocery list at Costco or Whole Foods.