Flows or as some call them automations are the most basic infrastructure you could and should have when you start building your email strategy because of two reasons: First, because they help you set up a system that covers the full life cycle of a customer.
Second, because they are great for your deliverability and your Sending Reputation.  The goal is to always have flows that cover the full life cycle of the customer. Before buying, after buying and before they disengage and disappear forever from your list. 

In this post, I’ll cover the 5 most basic Klaviyo email flows you could set up for your store and how to optimize them. 

But first, how to have a strong email list

But before we get to the email flows, we need to figure how to have a good number of emails to make these work.

So the first question to ask is “How do we get new people on the list, and have we made it as easy as possible for them to sign up?”  Usually, the easiest way to get people to sign up on your list is through a pop-up. It is an exchange,  you ask for their email and in return, you give them something, a discount, you promise them great content, a free ebook, etc. I know some people are reserved when it comes to pop-ups, they think it would annoy, scare and push their customers away, so instead, they just have a footer on their website, for people that voluntarily would want to give their email addresses.  Pop-ups are great tools for building your email list, there’s just a misunderstanding about what makes a successful pop-up (that isn’t annoying). The truth is if you do not ask someone for their email address, they will rarely give it to you voluntarily. Here’s a whole post on other unique and effective ways to grow your email list. 

So now that we know how to have an email list. Let’s get down to the flows you as an ecommerce store need to set up in your Klaviyo or other email marketing platform.

1. Welcome Flow

The best way to introduce your store to a potential customer is through a series of Welcome emails. All new people that sign up for your email list should go through the welcome series. 

In email marketing, the welcome flow is one of the most important flows you should have. These emails make sure that the person who has just provided their email through your popup, immediately gets a communication from you while the name is still fresh in their mind.

The welcome flow could be a simple and casual greeting to introduce the customer to your store and let them know what to expect. You can also provide a small discount in this email if that’s what was promised in your email pop-up.

Here’s an example of what the email welcome flow could look like:

2. Checkout Abandoned Flow 

If you run an #ecommerceStore, you probably know that around 25% of people that get to checkout, actually end up not placing an order. Here’s how to bring these customers back with an automated email flow: The Checkout Abandoned flow. For most ecomm stores, the Checkout Abandoned flow is the flow that makes the most revenue. Along with the Welcome flow series, these two flows are the most important that any store could have, solely generating around 20-50% of the total flow revenue. 

Each email in the flow could focus on different conversion assets, or more of these could be combined in one email, here are a few for inspiration: 

• Unique selling points of the brand/products,
• Owner benefits
• Trust builders
• Social proof
• Discount incentive
• Scarcity

Here’s our exclusive deeply-researched paper on the “Abandoned Flows And What They Mean For Your Business”.

3. Post Purchase Flow 

Most marketers make the mistake that the marketing funnel is closed the customer has made a sale! But actually that’s when the relationship with a customer actually starts. Even if stores implement the post purchase flow, they use it to just send tracking and shipping information. Trust building parts like the brand mission, founding story, manufacturing process, relatable customer stories and your own team/family stories  connected to your mission, are usually missing. 

Second, this flow is a great opportunity to cross-sell another product to your customers while they are in the buying mood. A lot of store owners don’t try to cross-sell another product through this flow because they are scared that this might annoy their customers. It might be true if you don’t craft the emails carefully, there is a subtle line between an annoying and an engaging email.
However from my experience, when done correctly including a cross-sell email will significantly increase your revenue as opposed to not having it. 

Another thing that is great about the Post-Purchase flow is that you can have multiple splits within the flow, one for new buyers, one for repeat buyers, you could even have one for 3 or more time buyers. 

It makes sense to do this if you have a lot of repeat buyers, because it is a different journey when someone buys for the 1st time VS someone that buys for the second or third time. That is why it is important to craft these emails carefully because  you’re talking to two different kinds of people. I believe that those experiences make a bigger difference in the customer’s mind, which is why you should want to make each one better than the last one. 

If possible give bigger discount incentives to those who bought more times to train them to buy more by showing them that the offers get better as they buy more and show loyalty. You could also have a special VIP flow for them, but that is a discussion for another time. Let’s now focus on the remaining 2 basic flows you should have, or even if you have them you might find they are not optimized.  

4. Browse Abandonment Flow

The browse abandonment flow is triggered when someone views a product, but they don’t start checkout and they don’t place an order. 

You might have this flow, but double-check if it is working correctly, because in some cases I have noticed that for a lot of stores this flow was not set up correctly. In order for this flow to work correctly, first you have to install a snippet on your store. 

I have received a lot of generic Browse Abandonment emails and it is usually 1 or 2 emails at most, they just state the fact that I have viewed a product before and immediately introduce the call to action. This is not enough, these people viewed the product but something stopped them from buying, that is why these emails are a great opportunity to tackle their concerns, add some reviews so they can see what other people say about your products, talk about your refund policy, build more trust and authority, introduce an incentive in the second or the third email. 

Definitely have more than one or two emails, or at least A/B test things, create a second split and see what happens if people receive a third email from this flow VS a control group that won’t receive a 3rd email. 

Here’s how to do it, add a 50% random sample split in the flow after the 2nd email, so that 50% of the people receive a 3rd Browse abandonment email, while for the other 50% won’t receive it, for them just create a Profile Property Tag and name it X and obviously compare the results. 

5. Add-to-Cart Flow

You might have heard about it, but actually not many people are using this flow. You either don’t know that it is possible to build a flow like this one, or you think that there is no need to have one, since it is something in between the Browse Abandonment and the Cart Abandonment, actually a lot of people even think that the Cart Abandonment and the Add to Cart flow are one and the same thing. 

They are not! 

The Add to Cart flow is triggered when someone adds something to their cart but they don’t start checkout. 

The reasoning behind why some people wouldn’t want to have this flow might be because they think that the Browse Abandonment flow would still do the job, since they practically viewed the product by adding it to their carts. 

But, I believe that people that added something to their cart but didn’t start checkout should be treated differently rather than putting all the people that viewed a product and added something to their cart in the same slot and not differentiating them. 

You would talk differently to someone that adds something to their cart than to someone who just views a product. 

Also this raises the question, how do you prevent someone from joining multiple flows at the same time. If they do join multiple flows at the same time this is not a good thing, even if you have smart sending on, to prevent this you would have to learn how to use the Profile Property Tags in Klaviyo, stay tuned, I’ll tell you exactly how to do this in my next post. 

Side note: in order for the Add to Cart flow to work correctly you would need to install a snippet on your store. 

Setting up, analysing, designing and managing these flows looks like too much work and you’d rather let the experts handle this highly critical activity as part of your email strategy? Relax, we’ve got you covered! Building complex, scalable and constantly optimised flows that convert into actual revenue is our forte at Hustler Marketing. Give us a call and we’ll set up your flows, and more!