#36. Convert Your Customers Into 2X Buyers Through Automated Email Sequences | Podcast

Vira  0:00 

Today we will be talking about nurturing your customers, and specifically nurturing your customers through email flows.

Alissa  0:30 

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Email Einstein, Vira and Alissa here, we are two email marketers at an email marketing agency called Flowium. We are so passionate about email marketing and because we love what we do, we want to share our insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. We specialize in providing a premium, full service e commerce email marketing experience for all of our clients. Our service is tailored specifically for your business and is designed to help increase your online retail revenue by 20 to 50% we deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment, and that’s what we’re all about here at Flowium and Vira take us away for today’s episode.

Vira  0:30 

Yeah, I’m so excited to be here today, not just because it’s a podcast and I’m always excited to be here, it’s because Alissa is back. My co host is back. In case it didn’t feel for you that she was away for a long time, because we have pre recorded so many episodes, but I haven’t talked to Alissa in almost four weeks, and she just had her perfect baby boy, like a month ago tomorrow, he’s turning one month and Alissa, we’re so happy to have you back.

Alissa  1:49 

I am very, very happy to be back. It’s been, it feels like it’s been an eternity since I’ve been here recording podcasts with you and working and everything. But yeah, we had a wonderful baby boy named Henry. He was born on February 9, so yeah, it was great. He’s awesome, and we’ve had a lot of fun, but I’m definitely excited to be back and working and recording more podcast episodes for all of you. So thank you, Vira. Very happy to be back, and I missed all of you.

Vira  2:19 

So guys, if you hear some like baby sounds on the background, it’s just Henry. He just, he’s very social, right? At least, he’s very like social part of the action all the time. And you brought him to the team call today, right?

Alissa  2:36 

Yeah, like a little test run today, just to see how he would do on conference calls and everything. And he hopped on our account manager call this morning, and yeah, he had a blast. He loves it. Anytime he hears lots of voices, he’s really quiet and looks around and listens and very, very social baby, that is for sure, just like his mom.

Vira  2:56 

Email marketer from day one.

Alissa  2:58 

Yeah, right.

Vira  2:59 

Would be like a cool t shirt or something that’s awesome. Well, guys, we do have a lot of exciting stuff today, actually. So we also prepared a really fun episode today. So today we will be talking about nurturing your customers, and specifically nurturing your customers through email flows.

Vira  3:37 

So let’s, let’s, let’s just get back to that moment when you’ve converted your customer, so you’ve done it, you’ve converted your customer, now it’s time to keep nurturing this customers of yours so you can have opportunities for future sales. And that’s actually where flows can help a lot, and our favorite way to do that is through automated email sequences. And you know that we are big believers in email marketing sequences and flows, and this automations, they are crucial component of building like a successful e commerce machine, right? You want to build something that is working while you are not working. And I feel like most of E commerce, businesses are not using this tool to its full potential, right? It’s probably like one of the commonly overlooked pieces of an overall marketing strategy for people are those like email marketing automations and flows, and we talked a lot about them in our previous episodes, but today we’ll focus specifically on those flows that are nurturing your customers. Now when I say the flows, I don’t mean that you have the automation. So now you can beat your people over the head with this like primitive, unsophisticated, repetitive emails. No flows are great because you can. Actually make them super, super targeted, super relevant, and you can deliver the highly relevant content and increase customer lifetime value through this flows. So today, that’s exactly what we’ll be talking today. But before we go there, Alissa, I know you prepared an awesome Pro Tip of the Week. So what? What is it?

Alissa  5:20 

So, Vira, this kind of goes back to what you were just talking about, and I love how you put it, like primitive, unsophisticated, repetitive emails. I love that. So our Pro Tip of the Week is don’t fall under the trap of set it and forget it. And what that means is, okay, awesome. You’ve got all these sophisticated emails in place on these really smart, targeted flows. So you’re delivering highly relevant content, and your revenue is great, and the lifetime value of customers is awesome. But the thing is, is those emails that you put in place, they do get old and outdated after a while. So a lot of people think, Hey, I put in automations in place. I’m setting them, I’m going to forget about them, because they’re going to do all the work for me. And then you have the same flows in place for six months, 12 months, two years, three years. And although those flows may still work for you to a certain degree, they will plateau over time, unless you’re constantly seeing brand new customers all the time, unlikely, and we’ve talked about that in the past, where we know that it costs you way more money to get a new customer versus just nurturing and getting a loyal customer from someone that already exists. So with regards to the set it and forget it, that’s something that you really have to focus on not doing and not becoming complacent when it comes to your automation. So yes, set those automations and forget about them, maybe for a month. Still wouldn’t recommend it, but you can forget about them for a very short amount of time, but you always need to go back and make sure that that content is relevant, always making sure that you’re going in and reviewing the metrics and the analytics and how well those flows are doing, because all those flows always have opt optimization opportunities, and also your content is not going to be the same forever. Your Brand develops and evolves over time. So make sure that your emails are reflecting the evolvement of your or the evolution of your company and of your brand. So do not fall under the trap of set it and forget it. Make sure that you’re looking at those flows. Make sure that you’re checking the content of the emails, making sure that they’re relevant, making sure that they’re generating the maximum potential revenue that you can get, and keep your keep your brand fans happy, so that way you’re not losing people because you’re sending out boring emails that they’ve seen over and over and over again. So there it is, your pro tip of the week.

Vira  7:36 

That’s actually an excellent Pro Tip of the Week, and that’s just something that I’ve been emphasizing to my clients constantly. So I just got this new account, and they came to me and one of their products were was like out of stock, and it will be out of stock for like, another month or so because they have some inventory issues. But if someone plays that out of stock product into the cart, they would still get the abandonment card. And people were getting, like, frustrated, like, Hey, why do you send me those like, emails about the products that you don’t even have in stock? So yeah, so you have to be like, super, super careful with it. And it’s, it’s even though we say that it’s something that you can, like, set up once, and then it’s generates you revenue, yes, but to some extent, you guys so don’t forget to go and check stuff and change stuff and play with it. It’s, like, really fun.

Alissa  8:29 

Yeah, yeah, no, yeah.

Vira  8:32 

Cool. So let’s talk some fun customer nurturing flows. So my favorite one for the customer nurturing, it’s a win back flow. And that’s like one of those flows that everyone knows about, but yet not everyone like utilizes them, right? And let’s play the little scenario again. So say someone just like subscribe to your list. They just signed up to your store’s email list. Maybe they purchased something from you. Maybe they haven’t. They just, like, subscribe to receive your awesome newsletter. So this is your, like a honeymoon with your E commerce customer, right? So this is the time when your customer is the most engaged. So a lot of brands, they do have an awesome like welcome series and abandonment cards and stuff like that, but it’s like your honeymoon. And every honeymoon has to be done at some point. And after a while, some portion of your customers, after you went through this honeymoony stage of your relationship, after a while, some portion of your customers, and for some businesses, even like a big portion of their customers will stop engaging with your emails as much, no matter how good or bad your emails are, no matter how good your the shopping experience is that you may provide but I mean, there are a gazillion reasons why people stop interacting with your emails. Maybe your emails are not relevant to them anymore. Maybe this people, they have found a better option somewhere else. Maybe they like your competitors email and products more. Maybe their life circumstances change. Say they were subscribed to your awesome maternity apparel brand but, but they just gave birth to their kids, and they don’t need the promotions for maternity pants anymore. Although I think those maternity pants, they are super cute, I would totally wear them, even though I’m not even a bit pregnant, they just look so comfy. But you know what I mean? You guys like most of the time, however it happens, because subscribers feel like you are not targeting their specific needs, like you don’t understand them, and yeah, so at some point, unfortunately, a lot of customers just will stop paying attention to what you say. So you have to be really, really creative. So what to do with those people, and how to nurture those kind of people? Well, there are, like, two approaches in email marketing one. I call it the old school email marketers approach. And the old school email marketers would say that, hey, winning back your inactive email list subscribers and customers is like trying to squeeze water out of a stone. And to some extent, it might be true, but they would recommend you just like, cut your losses and move on. Well, we are not one of those people here in volume, especially giving that and yolisa just mentioned, it’s like, at least, like, five times more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one. So before, like suppressing those people, try to win them back. Try to win the back with some attractive email offers with some relevant content. And you can do that through win back emails. And a lot of brands setting up those win back emails as campaigns. So for example, every Saturday, they are sending some sort of campaign to people who haven’t purchased in a while. And while it’s a good idea, it’s better to have something that is like, highly, targeted, something that is very like, relevant to your customers. That’s why we prefer to do it through the flows. So what is the win back flow and how often, like, what should be the delay, basically. So before you even begin creating your win back flow, you should understand what’s your typical buying cycle for your customers, how often do they need to repurchase? I don’t know if it’s like a shampoo or sunscreen or something, maybe they need to repurchase it like every month or every two months or something. If it’s a mattress, obviously their life cycle will be different. So you need to understand that. What else do you need to understand? You need to understand that not all of your inactive subscribers are equal. So you can take it one step further, and instead of just like sending a bunch of different win back emails to, like, the same win back email to your entire list, you can split the list by people who have never purchased from you but they were active on your list, people who have purchased from you and never returned, or maybe people who are purchasing a lot from you in the past, but for some reason, they stopped. So you can be creating like, different sort of offers. What kind of emails can you send? Well, first email of the sequence can be something as simple as, hey, we miss you. Here is here we are. We are an ABC brand, and that’s what we do. And here’s what’s new and exciting with our brand, you wouldn’t believe how effective those emails are. I was actually surprised to see that this email converts better than, sometimes than either the discount offer. For some reason, it’s just like, it’s puts the human face on your brand. Just shows that, hey, we’re not just like about the discounts and promotions. We are real. We are here. You can come back, and we will not disappoint. Some brands are also asking their subscribers to update their email preferences in email. In this email number one, I’ve seen it, and I think it’s it might be a good strategy for some brands, if you have the email preference page, maybe those people, they still want to be on your list, but maybe they don’t want to be receiving as many emails from you. So in that first email, you can give them the option. You can change your email preferences. You can hear from us once every month or twice a month, or you can only receive the Promotions Now email number two and three, if you’re doing discounts with your brand, you can offer them some sort of promotion. Usually, we try to be, like, pretty aggressive with this discount, just because you are trying to win those people back. Now, just like I mentioned before, not all of the subscribers are created equal. Maybe for some subscribers, for people who have never purchased from you, maybe it’s worth making the discount a bit higher to them, right? Maybe instead of giving them, like, 10% give them 20% and to see, to see, like, how would they like, respond to that discount? And always, always, always remember to make that discount time sensitive, just like, do maybe, like, a 48 hours promotion or something like that. So email number three can be like a discount reminder. If you don’t do discounts, you can do. You some some other like incentives. Maybe you have, like, a freebie that you can include, maybe you have some exclusive content that you haven’t shared with your other customers, but you can, like, re engage those customers through the sense of like exclusivity. Yeah, and don’t, don’t be afraid to prompt anyone who’s uninterested in your content to unsubscribe and change their preferences. That’s a big one. You can do it in email. Number one, you can do it later, maybe even if nothing like worked, or if you want to take it even one step further, maybe, like in a few weeks, like a week or two weeks after that, you can do some sort of like a different offer. Maybe you can cross sell one of your best sellers with a bit of a higher discount. So the big goal of this series is basically, not necessarily even to make them purchase again, but to make them like, remember about your brand, just like to remind them about who you are, what you do, and why they subscribe to your list at the first place. So that was your win back win back series. And I love this flow, so I can be talking about it like endlessly, and maybe we’ll need to make like, a separate podcast about it, because there are so many, like, cool strategies that you can implement, and people just like, don’t understand how powerful this tool is, but Alissa I know that you have prepared, like, assertive win back, but it’s like a it’s, In a way, it’s similar to win back, but it’s even cooler.

Alissa  16:23 

It’s a little more targeted as well. I love the win back, though. I think we should consider doing that an episode strictly on win back, because there are so many different strategies and ways that you can kind of angle it. Maybe we could even do an episode where we talk about win back strategies based on the industry that you’re in or the kind of products that you sell but.

Vira  16:39 

Ooh, that’d be so cool.

Alissa  16:40 

That’s a story for another day. So the second flow that we would kind of implement in order to continue to nurture your customers is a replenishment flow, also known as a kind of refill reminder. So a flow like this is ideal for all of you e commerce Store owners out there that have a product or multiple products that require multiple uses in order to achieve the desired results that a customer is looking for. So whether it’s a supplement or it’s some kind of makeup or it’s like a hair growth product, or something that they have to buy multiple versions of, you don’t necessarily sell subscription products, but it’s something that would ideally be on subscription that they need a reminder to purchase. So that’s kind of what this flow is targeting. So kind of, again, the purpose of the flow, or of a flow like this, the idea behind this flow, is to get your customers to continue purchasing the product that they purchased once before with you. And it’s, again, not necessarily on subscription. Usually with subscription products, the customer is on some kind of auto pay system where they’re automatically billed and automatically sent the product on a monthly or weekly or whatever it is, kind of timeframe basis. So subscription product wouldn’t necessarily fall under the refill order flow, or, excuse me, a replenishment flow. It would be for a product that could be on subscription. You don’t have subscription set up in your company, and so you’re basically using the flow to provide that subscription element. So for example, and this is an example that I personally would benefit from, but we’ll, we’ll use this, and I’m just using this because it’s kind of top of mind right now. So there’s an E commerce makeup brand called Thrive Cosmetics. Not 100% sure if they sell in any stores, any stores, any brick and mortar stores, but from what I understand, they only sell their products online. I am so obsessed and addicted to their mascara, it’s amazing. So if anyone’s looking for a good mascara, Thrive Cosmetics, check it out. But anyways, once I make a purchase of their mascara, it would be super ideal for me as the customer, but also for them. It would benefit them too to automatically send me an email in about 30 or 60 days. 30 to 60 days, reminding me to buy a brand new mascara for them, usually, the life cycle on a mascara is about two to three or like, a month to three months, depending on how frequently you use it. I’m a very frequent user of my mascara, so it’s usually about a month that it lasts me. So it would be great if they could send me an email reminding me to make another purchase of that mascara. By that point, I’m running out and I need more. And when they send me that email of the purchase that I inevitably need to make, it just shows to me as the consumer, that the company actually recognizes me, recognizes my constant need for this particular mascara and is encouraging me to remake that purchase without being weird or pushy about it. So thus, in a scenario like that, your need for replenishment flow is born automatically. Reminding your customers that aren’t on subscription, or if you don’t offer a subscription on your products, is a great way to not only show your customers that you’re aware of them and their purchasing habits, and that you care enough about them to make sure that they never run out. But it also benefits your brand, specifically by semi guaranteeing that you’re going to have return customers, which is going to increase your revenue in that moment of the sale, but then also the lifetime value of your customers, which is huge. And again, that’s what we’re always trying to do, because, as Vira mentioned. Mentioned that statistic, it’s five times more expensive for you to get a brand new customer. So it’s five times more expensive for thrive to try and convert someone to make the purchase of that mascara first time around, than it is for me, for them to just convert me to buy that mascara again, which I’ve bought multiple times in the past, and so inevitably, again, I’m going to remake that purchase. These replenishment flows are fuego fire for those that don’t speak any Spanish. I’ve used them for clients in the past, and I have to say that the ROI the return on investment on these emails is literally phenomenal, because you’re targeting people that are just going to make that purchase over again anyways, or they need to in order to achieve the desired result. So making a flow like this is just, it’s kind of a no brainer. So one of the clients that I did this for, we don’t work with them anymore, but they were selling a supplement for women that are going through menopause, and so it was like a menopause kind of assistance supplement. And so the supplement tub came with like, 80 pills, and you have to take two a day. So basically a tub lasts you for 40 days. So what we did is we set up a flow so then that way it would automate the email to go out after the person had purchased and received because we also had a way to track when the purchase got delivered. So what we would do is we would basically target for that initial email to go out on like day 30, from when they received it. So then, that way they have time to order in advance and then receive their next hub so they never run out. Whereas sending on day 40 is kind of like you kind of missed the boat there, because now they’re going to go through three to five business days minimum of not having the product. So what you want to do is, you want to do it in advance, so you’re kind of jumping the gun a little bit and making sure that you’re on top of it more than your customer would be. So then that way they’re not purchasing it, and then your thought to send out that email is coming way after the fact that the customer already had the thought themselves. You want to be preemptive and proactive about the whole thing. So then that way you’re catching customers. You’re making sure that they’re making a purchase, not only from that email, but you’re showing like, hey, we know you and we love you and we think about you, and we want to make sure that you never run out of this product. So make sure that you buy it now, so that you don’t run out. So the way that I would typically set up the flow is just so you understand, like, how the emails would kind of work. So that first email would go out, and it would be that initial reminder, like, hey, you’ll be running out an X amount of days, and then the following email would be another reminder for make that to make that purchase before it’s too late. You could, in essence, add more emails in there for after the fact, after they’ve run out, if they still haven’t made the purchase, like, hey, we noticed that you you ran out of the supplement. Make sure that you make the purchase so you don’t go too long without it. And then you can talk about the benefits of consistently taking that supplement, and the not benefits of the disadvantages of not taking that supplement on a regular basis, that kind of thing. Another company that does this really, really well is actually Walmart for their contact lenses. So I wear contact lenses and I buy the packs in 90 days. And so what they always do is day 60, they send me an email and say, Hey, listen, in about a month, you’re going to run out of your contact lenses. Make sure that you make another purchase. Now I have to buy my contact lenses, because if I don’t, then I can’t see, and glasses give me anything. I sometimes wear them, but I try not to. So Walmart, whether they send me that email or not, I have to buy the contacts. But it’s nice to know that they’re keeping track of when I’m going to run out of my contacts, because I don’t sit there counting every day, like, oh, I have 28 days left of my contacts. Walmart lets me know. And it’s awesome, because I see the email and I’m like, Oh, great. I have a month. Okay, awesome. I’m either going to buy them right now or I’ll buy them in a couple weeks, because it takes about three days to arrive, that kind of thing. So that’s super, super helpful for consumers, especially if the product that you’re providing that customer is that customer is dependent on it. So, like the mascara, I’m not dependent on it. You could argue that I might be because I wear it so much, but it’s not a life or death kind of thing. Whereas my contacts, if I don’t have them, I can’t do anything, so I have to purchase them. And then the other thing that you could do to add into this flow is add in some kind of special offer if they didn’t take advantage of the reminders that you provided before they ran out. So going back to that menopause supplement, for example, if by day 40, the person still hasn’t purchased, you could wait a week and then offer some kind of special offer. Hey, we really want to make sure that you don’t go without this supplement. We’re offering 10% if you purchase it right now, that kind of thing. But again, this kind of goes back to that pro tip that we mentioned earlier in this episode of the set it and forget it. I would add a filter in there on that special offer email that limits the offer to first time, to the first time that a customer is going through that flow. And then after that, I wouldn’t continue to offer that special offer over and over and over again, because it just gets old. People will learn that they need to wait for them to run out in order to make a purchase, so they get a discount, that kind of thing. It’s just not the kind of thing that you want to create the habit for your customers. So again, making sure that you’re not setting and forgetting things, but a replenishment flow if you have the product that makes sense. For it. It’s definitely super helpful. So our mattress, example, that we always use, I wouldn’t set up a replenishment flow for a mattress. Not the kind of thing win back for sure in like 10 years. But replenishment flow not so relevant. But when it comes to supplements or things that people are going to be using on the regular the replenishment flow definitely makes a lot of sense for you. So definitely another way to nurture your customers via automation.

Vira  25:26 

And that’s interesting that you’ve mentioned the mascara example, because that’s exactly what I’ve been working on for the past two weeks. I set up one mascara flow for one of my customers. The replenishment flow for the mascara and replenishment period is like 45 days actually, because they run out of it every like 60 ish days, 60 to 65 days, approximately. So, yeah, so we did the 45 days delay, and I was actually surprised how well it performs. We just launched it like last week, and it already generated 2% of all of their online revenue. Can you imagine, like, it’s been a week, so I don’t know it’s like, safe to say that this flow alone will be generating like, eight ish percent over the month. So, and it just for one product too. So I was surprised how well it worked. And actually, one fun thing that I learned listening one of the podcasts, one cosmetic company they were selling, like a blush. Is that the name, like the pink thing that you get from your cheeks? Yeah, so they said that they are customer basically, like, repurchasing period got longer. So, like, before quarantine, people were purchasing this product more often probably because they were like, working outside and doing makeup and everything, and during the quarantine and after the quarantine, that period got longer. So that’s just shows you how important it is to keep, like, reviewing all of the data. It’s not it’s not like set and forget. So no, that’s not the case even like pandemic can, oh, I said like even pandemic, yeah, of course it’s a big deal. But I mean, even like those, like different economical cycles and different like political and social cycles, they can affect the way your customers Act and the way they buy from you. So be very, very attentive to those little things.

Alissa  27:20 

That’s wild. I didn’t even think of that, but it’s true. I mean, just based on what society is doing as a whole, like, I’m sure lipstick sales are down because everyone has to wear masks out. So no one’s bothering to wear lipstick anymore because their mouth is covered all the time. You know, so interesting.

Vira  27:36 

It’s just you Alissa, keep their keeping their mascara sales high.

Alissa  27:40 

Yeah, right.

Vira  27:41 

Because if people like you, this company still exists. Thank you so much. Yeah, another flow that I really, really like, and that’s that’s a very overlooked flow as well, the anniversary flow, or should I say anniversary flows, because there are like, a gazillion different versions. So what is anniversary flow? So basically, you can send an anniversary email to subscriber to celebrate a special like occasion, like birthday. Or you can send those flows when you’re celebrating their anniversary with the company. Say you can send something like a year ago you have purchased your first socks with us, or something like that. Or newsletter anniversaries, you have subscribed to our list a year ago, so stuff like that. And you can automate those anniversary emails, and you can actually trigger them on the day, on the month or on the week of the anniversary date, and even like before the date. So for example, if someone has the birthdays, someone has a birthday on like April 10, and you need, like, five days to deliver the present to them. You can maybe send a quick email, like a week before the birthday, or something like that. And all those emails, they feel very like personal. They feel very like targeted and very relevant. And actually, I worked with one really cool business. They are based in LA, and they deliver roses, like fresh roses. They deliver in like LA and the area, and we had created, like, custom properties for their customers when we knew when it was their like wedding anniversary or their spouse birthday, or something like that. And we had this automations, one automation we’re calling like, your your anniversary is coming. And then we had like an email a few days after that, hey, like your anniversary is coming in, like three days. Here are the options for the gift. You can like order today, and we’ll deliver it on your special day and stuff like that. And this was actually this were one of our best performing flows as well, just because, again, they were like, super relevant and super super like to the point so alternatively, you can consider even like, extending a deal that maybe you don’t normally offer. Offer, saying, like a free gift or freebie, free freebie. Of course, it’s free. Or like a freebie with purchase. Or maybe you can create some sort of, like a special event for them. Or maybe you can do, like a short Happy birthday video from your team, something like that. It does not have to be a discount. It’s not always about the discount. Sometimes it’s just about the way you are acknowledging your customer and the way you like make this entire experience as relevant as personal to them as possible. So that’s an interesting, fun flow to have. Definitely look into it.

Alissa  30:38 

Yeah, I love the anniversary ones are a lot of fun, lot of fun. Yeah, you can get goofy and creative with them. And yeah, they’re they’re really good. And actually, for one of our clients, what we’ve tried to do is basically flip it so then that way, where if someone purchases a gift on the website for someone else, what we do is, rather than sending the anniversary email to the person who received the gift. We sent it to the person who sent the gift, and we remind them like, Hey, you purchased this for this person’s birthday last year, and it was an awesome gift. Make sure that you purchase it again this year. And here are some variations of what you can purchase so that it’s not the same as last year. So that kind of thing is just it’s helpful. And I love the the anniversary with the flowers and stuff, because it’s like, I hear that, and I think that’s perfect for men who are like, guys have I forgot my anniversaries tomorrow, and they get the email, they just purchase and done.

Vira  31:33 

Yeah, it’s like, for this kind of businesses, it makes like perfect sense to have something like anniversary flow in place.

Alissa  31:41 

It totally does. So the very last flow is one that you’ve heard us talking about in the past, and it’s the sunset flow. So obviously, this episode’s topic is all about nurturing your customers through automated emails. And when you think sunset flow, you think, isn’t that a list hygiene flow? And isn’t that all about cleaning and clearing out your list? So how on earth does this flow fall under that category of nurturing your customers? So you’ve heard us saying time and time again, and we say it at the start of every episode. We deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. And guess what? This also applies to those customers that don’t want to hear any messages from you, which means that the sunset flow is crucial to your success as an E commerce business. When it comes to nurturing your customers as well as nurturing your non customers, you’re not necessarily nurturing them, but you’re you’re fulfilling their needs, or you’re meeting their needs or their requests. So with the sunset flow, again, the way that this is kind of set up, and we’ve explained this kind of briefly in the past, if someone has not opened or clicked any of your emails in the last 90 days, then they get triggered into this sunset flow, and typically we have three emails that go into play. The first email is a request for the customer to update their preferences. The second is a special offer to win these customers back via email, and the third is a final reminder offer of that email. If the customer doesn’t open any three of those emails, then they will be suppressed and they won’t be sent anything further from your brand, which is kind of a bummer, but also, again, in the grand scheme of keeping your list hygienic and clean, this is really helpful and beneficial for you as a company. But the big thing that we want to highlight here, and I know that we talked about it a little bit earlier in this episode about the win back flow, and you can do this in a win back now, it’s not always successful, and customers don’t always listen to what we want them to do, so that’s okay. Asking them to do something more than once is not not a huge deal. So when we request that customers actually update their preferences, what we’re doing is we’re providing them a resource that shows that we care about what they want from us and that we are willing and wanting to give them what they want. And to me, really, this is kind of the ultimate act of nurturing. Is making it known that you’re aware that they have a need, and making it known to them that you’re willing to fulfill it. So obviously, suppressing these customers is the last thing that we want to do, so we do everything that we can to give that final shot at nurturing them and keeping them on board with your emails. So again, that preference page side of things, and if you don’t have this set up, we do have an episode all about preference pages that you should definitely check out. It is a service that we offer as well at Flowium, which is setting up a preference page for you, but it’s strongly recommended that you have something set up in that kind of realm, so that way, you can find out from your customers directly what it is that they’re looking for from you, and how it is that you can cater to those needs specifically. So if you are just sending all these emails to a customer and they have zero interest in anything that you’re sending them, you want to be aware of that as a brand, because you don’t want to waste your time, and you also don’t want to take that customer off. Because even though some customers will be suppressed because they’re not opening your emails, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not engaging with your brand, either on Instagram or on Facebook, or they’re not just shopping online with you without actually wanting to receive any emails. I do that with a lot of brands myself. There are lots of brands that I shop with online, but I don’t give them my email because I don’t want to hear from them. I just. To buy whenever I’m ready to buy, and that’s okay too, because they’re still customers, they’re still adding to your revenue, and they’re still adding to your brand. So it’s not a bad thing because we’re so email marketing focused. It’s not great for us, because we love emails, and we want people to see all the cool emails that we sent out for our brands. But it’s okay if someone doesn’t want to hear from Yeah, 100% but we want to give them that opportunity to tell us that they don’t want to hear from us, versus ignoring it kind of covering our ears and saying, la, la, la, la, we’re just going to keep sending emails until you spam us. Not what we want.

Vira  35:31 

Old Navy. Old Navy. Please hear me out.

Alissa  35:35 

Yeah, I know there are some brands where I consistently unsubscribe every time I get an email and they still send me stuff. And I’m like, How is this happening, right?

Vira  35:43 

How is it even possible? Are using like, different maybe, like systems, like sending emails from Klaviyo and then from MailChimp, and even though it’s like, illegal.

Alissa  35:53 

Yeah, not, not ideal, not the most ideal, but yeah, it’s still, it’s still possible, but in either case, making sure that you have a sunset flow and preference page set up for your brand as part of the automations. And kind of that entire aspect or realm of nurturing your customers is super, super important, because, again, you want to understand who your customers are and what they want from you, and whether that’s something or nothing. It’s okay, but you just need to know as a brand, so then that way, you can kind of move forward in a functional way and with your dignity head held high. So making sure that you’re having those getting those flows incorporated again, nurturing your customers. Don’t set these things and forget about them, and just make sure that you’re again what we always say, relevant. Be relevant. Be consistent. Understand who your customers are and what they want, and you should have no problem with your customer base. So that’s all for today’s episode. Make sure that you don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. We always want to make sure that the content that we’re sharing on these episodes is getting out to everyone and helping people as much as possible in their email marketing journeys. And if you’re interested in getting some more advice on how to establish a solid email marketing strategy for your own e commerce store, make sure that you visit us at flowium.com/contact and sign up for a free consultation. You’ll be able to chat with someone from our company. They’ll basically do like a miniature review of everything that you have in place, and then provide some feedback around how you can just improve things overall. So whether that’s lacking on your end, with regards to the flows that are going to be nurturing your customers, we may go ahead and tell you to implement some of these flows that we’ve talked about today. So definitely a useful, free service. We recommend everyone take advantage of.

Vira  37:39 

And come back next week, because next week we will be talking about abandonment card again. Yes, we will be talking about the abandonment card flows again. But this time, we will be talking about how to, like, optimize your abandonment card flow so you can get the most out of this amazing sequence. And yeah, we’ll be sharing some really cool strategies that we have tested on our accounts, and some will be sharing what worked and what didn’t work, all the juicy stuff. So come back next Tuesday, and thanks for listening.

Alissa  38:14  

Thank you guys so much. Until next time.