#31. How to Send Emails That Drive Sales On Autopilot: Customer Lifecycle | Podcast

Vira  0:00 

Today, we will be talking about how to use automations as organically, as naturally as possible, basically as a natural touch point to lead your customer through their life cycle, resulting in more revenue for you.

Alissa  0:36 

Hey 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 55 0% we deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. That’s what we’re all about here at Flowium. And today’s episode is actually part one of a two part series that is going to bring you some money. So here we go.

Vira  1:27 

I like everything that brings me some money. So today we will be talking about the emails that drive sales on autopilot.

Vira  1:53 

Maybe you’ve heard it before. The term life cycle. When I first started working with email marketing, I was constantly calling them the life circle. And I was like, No, it’s not a life circle. It’s not a lion king for God’s sakes, it’s life cycle emails. I might sound a bit dramatic, but everything has a life cycle. Everything has the beginning, everything has a middle, and everything has an end. Your customer’s journey with your brand is no different. Some customers might only have find you, like somewhere and on Instagram or something, so you’re in that sweet, like honey, honeymoon phase with them. Some people place their first order with you. Maybe some are going through some sort of, like a breakup situation with your brand. Other are your diehard fans. They just are waiting for a little bit of nudge from you and from your brand, and some are about to say goodbye to your brand. So all these people, they are different. All these people, they are at the different stage of their sort of like a customer journey with your brand, that’s why you need to be treating them differently. And your job as an email marketer is to anticipate those like different stages in customer’s journey and address them as organically as possible. If you’ve been with us for a while, you know that we love good automation, that we love a good flow. We believe that this is like the core of your email marketing, not the campaigns. Even though campaigns are fun and awesome flows. Flows is something that you set up once and it keeps like working for you even when you don’t work. So today we will be talking about how to use automations as organically, as naturally as possible, basically as a natural touch point to lead your customer through their life cycle, resulting in more revenue for you. But before we go there, I know Alissa have a really, at least has a really, really good Pro Tip of the Week today, so Alissa share it with us.

Alissa  3:58 

So we’re going to be going through a whole list of different flows that we typically use in house, that we also recommend for our clients, that we would recommend for you as our listeners. But one of the things that we never really go through we talk about email marketing all the time is how to best strategize these kinds of flows, these kinds of ideas for your brands. And what we would strongly recommend doing is finding a way, if your work from home, kind of agency, everyone is working remotely, if you don’t have access to an actual whiteboard, we would strongly recommend using a digital whiteboard. Now, where you use that whiteboard that’s totally up to you. There are so many different platforms and so many different apps that are available to you. We used to use sort of form on Google where we could kind of create, almost like a flow chart looking document. Now we’ve actually migrated onto Miro board, which is a digital whiteboard, and it’s literally like a whiteboard. We’re not sponsored by Miro. This episode is not sponsored by Miro. This is just something that we’ve started working with in. House, and we absolutely love it. It’s so presentation friendly. It’s so client friendly. When we present campaign calendars and the flow strategies that we create for our clients, to our clients, they are always so impressed by how everything looks, and it’s so easy to navigate, so easy to make edits, add notes, add post, its whatever you can think of so strongly, strongly, strongly recommend when you’re strategizing your flows for your email marketing, make sure that you use some kind of digital whiteboard, because the visual aspect of it will just help you understand and see your customers journey as they kind of flow throughout your company when it comes to the email marketing that you’re providing. So again, the one that we use is Miro board. We’ll add a link in the description of this podcast episode, but it’s Miro M I R, O, I’m pretty sure it’s free for anyone who wants to use it, you just have to create an account. But again, super effective, super customer friendly, and, yeah, just a really great way to just visualize all your ideas in one place. So using that digital whiteboard, that’ll help.

Vira  6:03 

Life changing tool, yeah, and I think, I think they do have like a free version, but you’re limited to like three boards. And what we do at flow you and we have like a separate board for a separate client, but if you’re doing it only for your business, I think the free account can be more than enough for you. And my favorite thing about Miro is that you can have is it like an awesome collaboration tool, so you can be working simultaneously with the clients and with your co workers on the same board. And we usually have this like Miro parties every every Friday. It’s so fun, it’s so fun. We love it.

Alissa  6:38 

That’s what we need to start calling those meetings Miro parties.

Vira  6:41 

Yeah, let’s, let’s change the name on the calendar. I actually know the guy who works for Miro. Oh, really. So yeah, they have, they have offices, like in Amsterdam, or, like, somewhere in the Netherlands and in Russia as well. So I know the guy. So maybe we should become the your ambassadors or affiliates or something. Because, like, every time I start working with a new client, like this is something that I can’t wait to share with them. This is like a super cool tool.

Alissa  7:07 

I love that.

Vira  7:08 

Well. Anyways, Miro helps us a lot, and especially with the life cycle emails, because life cycle is basically the set of different emails for different stages of your customers journey. And as savvy as email marketer or business owner can be, you already probably know that sending like the same email to everyone on your list is like the worst thing that you can do, both to your client, both to your sender’s reputation, even to your customers relationship, right? So that’s where we highly recommend to use targeted lifecycle emails. So what are they? What are lifecycle emails? So lifecycle emails are data driven, automated flows or automations, and they are triggered by different actions on the customer’s end, and they consider the stage of your customer’s journey. So whether it’s like a prospect, a first time buyer, the repeat customer, maybe it’s your lapsed customer. So this emails are super, super highly targeted, and they are ultra relevant. And in fact, because flows are so relevant and so highly targeted, they outperform email campaigns like crazy. So they actually outperformed them in, believe it or not, all major categories. So we’ve seen actually, this is information from Klaviyo websites. That’s not that we came up with this numbers. So 165% higher open rates. Whoa, those like emails have Yes, this the second number, just like it sounds crazy, but 1500 58% higher conversion rates than, like, a regular campaign, and 1300 61% higher dollar per recipient.

Alissa  10:34 

Wow.

Vira  8:59 

Over over time. So yeah, those flows, they outperform email campaigns like crazy. Yeah, that’s why we, we are, like raving fans of flows, and we usually even recommend to start from flows, for many reasons, but the main reason being is that they are high relevant. They have super high open rates and click through rates. So in the eyes of like Google and Yahoo and platforms like that, it shows them that, hey, this guy is the good guy in the world of email marketing, so do not send him to the spam folder. Then the best part is, as I already mentioned, you set them up once. Of course, you need to go time to time and just like, change tweak things, maybe like, change the image or change the link or something like that. But on the most part, you set it up once and they work for you. So we sort of like divide those emails into three stages, the early stages, basically before someone purchased from you, the post purchase. Just after someone have purchased from you, and they’re still like, in those like, a sweet honeymoon relationship with your brand, and then late stages, and these are mostly for people who’ve been with your brand for a while, and maybe for some customers who even like, forgot about you. So three big stages on today’s episode. We’ll cover the first two and come back next week, because we will be talking about those, like late stages and how to keep the romance life. So Alissa, let’s start with a probably like the very, very main flow, the welcome flow.

Alissa  10:36 

So we’ll cover a couple of different flows, because the way that Vira and I have kind of structured this is based on the cus the client feedback that we’ve received in the past, where clients tend to confuse different flows together because they happen so closely together. So in the very, very early stage, you have that initial Hi, I’m a potential customer, and I’m interested in you, and I’m opting in because I want to hear more from you via email.

Vira  10:59 

Awesome.

Alissa  11:00 

This is really, really exciting. So you have your welcome flow. And there is also another kind of mini, super mini welcome flow, which we consider the exit intent flow. And I’ll kind of go through what each is and what the main difference is between the two. So your welcome flow is your standard pre purchase series. This is where you are welcoming brand new subscribers to your brand. You’re providing a brand introduction, possibly a an initial new time customer offer. You’re providing social proof. You’re providing them with resources to get more involved with your brand. You’re providing them information about your product, who you guys are, what you stand for, et cetera. And so the way that you would typically approach this welcome flow, or how you would kind of get people triggered into this, is you have to have some kind of opt in method on your website, right? And it doesn’t always have to have to be on your website. It can be also on a landing page that’s connected to your website. But for the sake of simplicity, we’ll stick to the website opt in methods. So you can either set up some kind of homepage pop up, where someone goes onto your website for the first time and they’re visiting you, and a pop up appears, whether that’s 10 seconds after they’ve appeared on your homepage, or a minute after they’ve appeared on your homepage, or after they’ve scrolled down 60% of your homepage, whatever it is the pop up appears and you say, Hey, we’re so glad to meet you. We’re so glad you’re here. Welcome to our site. Welcome to our brand. Here’s an opportunity for you to get more information about us. Sales promotions, product launches, events, whatever it is, whatever offering you can provide this new potential customer that makes sense for your brand. And then in that pop up, you have a space for their first name, obviously you want to get to know who they are. And then also a space for their email. As soon as they plug in their email that gets registered on the back end of your subscriber list, and then they get triggered into the welcome flow. And again, as I mentioned, typically, the first email within that welcome flow is something along the lines of, Hey, welcome to our email list. We’re so happy to have you here, just so that you understand more of who we are and what our mission is, what we stand for, what our values are, etc. And then there are a series of emails that sort of follow afterwards. And again, this is focusing on social proof reviews from customers where they can find you on social media if you have a social media platform that you’re particularly engaging with, information about, products that you sell, any blog content that’s relevant or will add value to that new potential customer’s life. Those kinds of things are what you want to include in the welcome flow. Towards the end of the welcome flow is where you’re now shifting gears and going from, hey, we’re nurturing you into a new potential customer, and now we’re guiding you into becoming a customer. And so you provide an actual offer to them, whether it’s a percentage off of your best selling item, or a percentage off anything on the store, or $1 amount off the store, or buy one, get one, whatever it is you want, some kind of preliminary offer that’s going to really be attractive for this new customer. And so at the end of that flow, if, for whatever reason, this person has not converted and they have not purchased with you, then you kind of hit them with a little bit of a survey. Hey, we want to know more information. Why is it that you didn’t purchase with us? Not in those exact words, but along the same lines, the other kind of way that you can get someone to opt in is do that little footer subscribe button at the very bottom that you see on most websites. So at the very, very, very bottom, there’s usually a little space that’s available for emails. And what you can do is plug in there. Hey, sign up here below in order to get emails. And then when someone plugs in their email, they hit submit, they’ll also get triggered into this welcome flow. The other thing that you can offer in your homepage pop up. It’s not something that we typically do as a best practice in house, because we feel it’s a little too aggressive. But you can offer 10% off or 5% off first purchase as part of your homepage pop up. So then, that way it’s just more of an incentive for people to sign up. There are some clients that we work with who come in and they have an offer like that. Again, it’s not something that we typically recommend, but if it’s working extremely well for a client, then we just kind of leave it in place. Usually, what we’ll do is we’ll save that preliminary offer for an exit intent flow. So just to kind of explain what that is, that is another kind of initial potential customer or new subscriber flow that we put into place as well. So then, that way, you’re not limited to how many ways someone can opt in for the first time with your brand, the exit intent flow. The way that works is, if someone is on your website and they hop on and they get that homepage pop up, and they’re like, I hate popups, and they X out, and they’re like, Okay, I’m gonna just do some browsing for myself. I want myself. I want to see what this website is like. I want to see who this brand is. And then they happen upon a product page that they’re particularly interested and then at that point, they decide, You know what, I’ve had enough, I’m going to hop off. And then they move their mouse away from the browser to exit the actual browser page. What happens is a pop up comes up. And I know this is like magic, because when I first heard about it, I was like, there is no way this does this automatically, but I promise you, it’s a thing. So as you go to exit the page, the exit intent pop up comes up, and it’s something along the lines of like, Hey, are you sure you want to go? We’re willing to offer you X percent off or x dollar amount off. And then there’s a little space in there for the email so that someone can plug in their email, and then that first email that they’ll get back is the code for the discount that was promised in that pop up. Now, couple of things that I love and also hate about the exit intent flow, the welcome flow, is very nurturing. It provides a lot of information about your brand, and really helps to welcome hence the term welcome flow, welcome a new potential customer into your brand, into the fold, into the group, whatever you want to call yourselves, that’s really important, and that’s an opportunity that you don’t want to miss, as someone who’s getting to know who you are on the exit intent flow side of things. It’s great because it’s very short, it’s to the point it’s very, very high converting. And so we see a lot of great revenue results, specifically from this kind of a flow. However, within the exit intent flow, there isn’t really any kind of nurturing content whatsoever, because these people have only opted in for the sake of getting a discount. And now that they have the discount, they have X amount of time to make a purchase using that discount, and then that’s the extent of it. Now they will get nurtured later on down the line, obviously, because they’ve opted in for emails having given their email in the pop up, but that initial touch point where you can really connect with the customer and help them to really embrace your brand. It gets missed in the exit intent flow for the most part. Now, again, you can customize this exit intent flow, so then, that way, you’re providing more nurturing content, similar to the welcome flow, but you don’t really want to overdo it, because again, at the end of the day, these customers, they weren’t interested in being nurtured in the first place. They just want a discount. So rather than taking these people off, it makes more sense to just give them what they want so they can make a purchase and move on with their lives. I’m still my final decision on which one I prefer is still on the fence here, but I think both apply to their kind of customer. Welcome flow is a person who wants to understand more about the brand and the exit intent flow is for a person who wants to just wants to just get a discount so they can make their initial purchase. We do both for most of our clients, unless we have a client that’s really against the exit intent flow or it’s a client who does not provide any form of discount whatsoever. The other thing to note with the exit intent flow is you can have a content based exit intent flow where someone goes onto the blog portion of your website, and as they go to leave your website, you can offer them some kind of freebie content that will kind of engage them a little bit more. Whether it’s a free PDF or, like, if it’s a fitness website, you give them a free workout plan, or if it’s a nail polish website, you give them free manicure tips, or whatever it is, something that will just add value, so then that way they remember that later on down the line, and then come back and make a purchase. But again, you can get really creative with these. These are just two main options that we use for flows in the very, very early stages, and this is before someone even becomes a customer with you, or shows any legitimate, hardcore interest in purchasing a product from you like they would in the next flow. So those are your two kind of initial options.

Vira  11:00 

Yeah, another thing that I was doing for exit in 10 flow for one of my clients. So the client is selling supplements, and they have this, like a vegan supplement. So obviously this is a very specific audience, right? So on that vegan supplement, the homepage, or not the homepage page we have created, like a different pop up for a bit of a different welcome series. So we sort of like used the same logic, the same structure, but the content was a bit different. So you can use this like exit and done flow for different customer personas as well. So that’s, that’s a that’s a really good flow to have, yeah, for lots of my clients, is just actually one of the best performing in terms of dollar per customer. So don’t ignore it, that’s for sure.

Alissa  11:20 

And I’ve seen a customer use it also as a survey, as like a leeway into a survey flow before, where you can kind of get the person, it’s it’s set up as an exit intent pop up, and then what they’ll do is, when they’re on a particular product page, they’ll get that pop up asking them to take a survey. Well, it’s a mini survey where it’s like, Does this happen to you? Yes or No. If you click yes, the subscriber will be added into a particular segment, which will trigger a specific flow that’s related to the product that they were just reviewing, so they can get more information, so you can get really, really creative with it. Yeah, for sur.

Vira  20:48 

Yeah, one thing that I would recommend. But again, you do you, I personally don’t like the welcome pop ups, you know, one of those pop ups that you see, like, right after you get into the website, it just might seem like you are a bit pushy, so we prefer exit intent pop ups, just so person can go through your website without any like distractions or anything. But again, you do you test it out. AB, test it and then decide what works for you. Okay, so another important flow for the early stages. Relationship with your customers is obviously an abandonment card flow, and I feel like we talked a lot about it, yet it’s such a crucial, crucial, important flow that let’s just cover it again here really, really briefly. So I think we’ve all been there. When you’re spending, like, a ton of money. You’re spending a ton of hard earned dollars on driving more visitors to your site, to your shop, only to see that the revenue, like the conversion is not happening. It’s basically like a leaky butt bucket. Leaky butt, oh my goodness. It’s like a leaky bucket no matter how much water, aka money, you put into it, it is not retaining enough of it, because there is like an issue somewhere, because it’s like leaking somewhere, believe it or not, for most of E commerce businesses, this is one of the biggest struggles. This is one of the biggest leaks in their bucket when it comes to sales. Study shows that, in fact, 75.6% of people, that’s a lot, put items in their online shopping cart only to leave it without completing their purchase. So that’s like 75.6% of customers. It’s a lot of potential revenue lost, if you ask me, and the cost of money that online retailers are losing every year is approximately, well, last year, it was around 260 billion in lost revenue a year. That’s an insane amount of money. But that doesn’t mean that you have to, like, admit your defeat. The good news is that even though we can’t eliminate those like card abandonment issue completely, we can at least address all of the main reasons why people are abandoning their cards. So like a welcome series, your abandonment card strategy can include not just like one email, not two emails, but we sometimes do like as many as, like six emails per flow. So yes, it’s an abandonment card flow, but who said that you cannot do some customer nurturing here? Or who said that you can’t share content here? So here is our typical sort of abandonment card flow. So the first email we’re sending is just like a reminder email like two hours after the customer have placed something into their cart, or four hours. By the way, you can totally AB test this time delay and the results that we’ve seen, they were so different, honestly, between like two and four hours. So definitely do the AB testing in that first reminder email. We usually try not to give any discounts whatsoever, because, believe it or not, this is like the highest converting email out of the entire like, out of the entire flow. So don’t like sacrifice your margin in that first email, because you can convert a lot of people here. If Person haven’t purchased anything from you after email number one, we will then send them some sort of like a discount, 5% 10% depending on your margins, depending on your business model. Email number three, again, if they haven’t purchased anything, send them quick, like a reminder, discount reminder, or something in email. Number four, we are trying to do some sort of like a relevant content, something not too, too salesy, and something relevant to the product, ideally, that you will be cross selling later. So that’s of course, if you have the products to cross sell, if you are just having one product, maybe the strategy should be different. So email, number four, some sort of relevant content, blog, maybe just if you’re selling, I don’t know if you’re selling, the key the. At like the detox tea, maybe you can do like a five best detox strategies, or something like that, and then in email number five and six, you can cross sell that specific product with like a discount. And usually the discount that we offer for that like specific product is a bit higher than the discount that we offered at the beginning those six emails. It doesn’t mean that you have to send them like one by one every day you have to be sending something no you can do like a few days delays so people have can have some space, right? But again, it’s all based on your business model. It’s all based on your customer’s life cycle. You know it better. It’s just something that we recommend to do. Don’t limit yourself to one or two emails to be creative, try to provide some sort of value to your customers. Try to give first and then ask them for something, then ask them to buy something from you.

Alissa  25:51 

Yeah, that’s really good to highlight as well, because that’s a major strategy that we use across the board with most of our flows, with the exception of a couple, for the most part, we try to provide value and gain trust from this new customer before we actually ask them to do anything. So that’s why, when we plug surveys into into any of our flows, we always ask that as pretty much the very last email within the flow, because asking something out of people, they’re more willing to do it for you once they realize that you’re a friend of their person, or trying to be their friend. So yeah. And the same applies with making a purchase as well. You know, like when you meet someone, you’re not going to ask them to do you all these favors. You’re going to befriend them first, you’re going to gain their trust, and then you’re going to ask them to do these favors for you, like buy from your brand or fill out a survey, whatever it is. So yeah. And the abandonment card is, it’s an interesting one, because it’s one that everyone is obsessed with, but then people also get so tired with and then it also gets confused so much for whatever reason with the Browse abandonment flow, which is the other flow that kind of takes place in the earlier stages. So the thing I want to talk about, I’ll talk a little bit about how it works, but also what the main difference is between browse between browse abandonment and card abandonment, because even though they both have something to do with abandonment issues, they’re both very different. They’re both issues. Yeah, right, they’re both very, very different. So with the cart abandonment, you’re abandoning your cart, and whether you’re a new subscriber or an old subscriber, you can potentially go through that flow. With regards to the Browse abandonment, it’s it takes place only if or it triggers only if you are a current subscriber in Klaviyo. That’s like the first big thing to understand when you’re putting or implementing this flow, because people assume that it’s just gonna work. I’m gonna turn it on, and it’s just gonna work. It’s not this one is actually very logic heavy in the sense that you have to have tracking enabled on the back end of your website, and these subscribers have to exist for this flow to trigger. So that’s the first thing. The other thing to note is there has to be some kind of traffic on your website for this flow to take place. So this isn’t a flow that just kind of happens. You have to have customers that are actually legitimately interested in products, and have shown interest in products before, and are opted into your list. So the way that the browser management works is, I go on your website and I go to a specific product page, and I’m looking at that product, and then I leave the website, and then what happens is, depending on the time delay that you’ve put in place, either two to four hours later, I will receive an email, and it can come across as a little bit creepy, I will admit, however, I don’t think it is at all, because this is one of our top revenue generating flows that we put into place for most of our clients. And so the way it works is, I’m viewing a product, I hop off two to four hours later, I’ll get an email saying, Hey, we saw that you had some interest in this product. Did you have any questions? And so the way that you can kind of approach this flow is similar to an abandonment cart, but you don’t have any what’s like, the best way to put this, you don’t have any concrete proof that the person actually had interest in purchasing the product. They were just interested in looking at the product. And so you can kind of approach this similarly, but it’s different. Obviously, the wording has to be different. The content has to be a little different, where you can remind them that they were looking at this product, you can ask them if they had any questions about the product. Specifically, you can provide some relevant content about the product if you want to, and then you can also provide a discount on the product, again, if you have the ability to, or that’s something that your brand is willing to do. Browse abandonment is again, one of those top revenue generating flows. It’s super, super useful. It’s a great little nudge, a little tap on the shoulder. It’s kind of like, if you think about it in brick and mortar terms. When you’re looking at something in the store, and you pull it off the hanger, and you’re looking and analyzing and looking and analyzing, and you’re about to put the item down, and the salesperson comes up to you and says, Oh, I love those pants that you picked up. Did you have any questions on them? Or is there a size that you’re looking for in particular, or is there a color that you’re looking for? Are like, How can I help you? Same kind of concept there, but it’s a little bit slower because it’s via email and it’s all in the digital space. So just think of it in terms of that. That’s what the Browse abandonment flow is supposed to accomplish when it comes to a real life retail store. So again, one of those really useful flows that you just have to know how to put into place properly. But once you do, and you started to generate the relevant traffic to your website, it will, for sure bring you some money. You just turn it on, and then you’ll see the numbers start to grow. And it’s actually impressive. I always get so impressed with these flows. We turn them on, and I’m always like, I really hope they work, but they always do, and I’m like, how this is amazing. So yeah, browse abandonment, don’t be afraid of it, but definitely do your research before you implement it.

Vira  30:48 

Yeah, something that we just talked with you, Alissa, before the podcast, I basically was saying that I feel like people are getting tired of good old abandonment card. But the Browse abandonment, it seems like it’s less less pushy. It doesn’t feel like like they are trying to aggressively sell you something. That’s why I’ve seen even the higher conversion rate for browse abandonment than for abandonment card like lately. It doesn’t mean that you don’t need to have the abandonment card one, obviously you need to have them both, but you will be surprised how well this browse abandonment, flow works. This is, like, one of the highest earners for us. always, yeah, always.

Alissa  31:26 

Yeah. There’s one client that I work with that off the top of my head, I can see their flow performance so far. And in order of most successful to least for the top three, it’s browse abandonment, post purchase and card abandonment, which I saw, and I was like, what?

Vira  31:42 

Yeah, but sort of like, I would expect that the adandonment card would be like the highest performing one, but usually it’s like the third or even the fourth, yeah, depending on the depending on the business. Yeah, that’s, that’s super interesting. That’s super interesting. Cool. Okay, let’s go to that sweet post purchase stage. So what happens after someone they placed, someone placed an order. So basically, just so you understand how the logic works, every time someone places the order, they will exit their previous flow, say they came to you through abandonment card or browse amendment or welcome flow. Every time they place an order, they will go into the post purchase one. They will stop receiving emails from their old flow, and they will go into the post purchase flow. So post purchase flow for new customers is basically your way to show appreciation for customers and let them know that, hey, you’re you value their business. You’re here for them in case they have any questions. And here are some products that might be interesting to you. So the popular mistake that a lot of people are doing, that a lot of brands are doing, actually, is neglecting this flow. Their big goal is to get that conversion, is to make that conversion happen, and then they just like, abandon that customer. So we might as well call this flow like an abandoned customer flow, or something like that. So once shoppers have made a purchase from your brand, why not keep them engaged? Why not create some sort of like a brand the loyalty or turn them into their repeat shoppers? I really like this quote from HubSpot, like we literally talked about it a few episodes ago. But they they call the post purchase flow, the Harry Potter of email marketing, often neglected, given barely any attention, and forced to live under a staircase of E commerce, email marketing. I really, really, really love this comparison. So what can you put into your post, purchase flow? Well, first thing, first in email, number one, obviously it’s an email, is the order confirmation. Thank them for their order. And also you can make it fun. You can make it you can brand it. You can make it like witty. You can make it funny. You can offer some sort of support to them in case they have any questions. Or you can have like, a separate email just for the frequently asked questions. So in that email, number two, usually we send it like, right after the right after the order confirmation one in email number two, you can build an excitement for the arrival of the product and answer some of the most frequently asked questions about the product. For example, you are selling, I don’t know, like a mattress. So you can do something like, how to take care of my mattress, or, like, what is the best place to put my mattress? Even though, no, I think that wouldn’t be a good one. But you know, you know what I mean. So you’re trying to to basically build an excitement for the arrival of the product, and at the same time, you’re trying to make the customer feel that, in case they need any support, you are here for them. If you have an FAQ page, great. You can link this email to your frequently asked questions page, and it will make both your customer and search engines very, very happy. Email number three, if you have social media, and if you don’t, by the way, you have to have them some sort of like a social media platform. If you have Facebook community or Instagram, or you have Tiktok or whatever, talk about it. Talk about it in email number three, and try to make people go from email to social media. And just like we talked before with you, Alissa, even when customers are like unsubscribing from your emails, it doesn’t mean that you’ve lost them forever, right? If they have unsubscribed from your list, but you still have them somewhere on like Instagram or Facebook, you can still communicate with them. Yeah. So yeah, make sure to like, move people from email to some sort of, like a social media just as a backup plan. Okay. Email, number four, number five, you can do some sort of like a relevant content about the product. Or you can even do the relevant content about the products that you plan to upsell later in the flow. Yeah, just like with the going back to our mattress example, why are we always using the mattress as an example? Alissa, I know you use it quite often. Yeah, no, I’m the same. Like, it’s like we are selling we’re working with mattress companies. We don’t.

Alissa  36:08 

It’s because we’re tired. We’re so tired.

Vira  36:10 

Yeah, so going back to that, like, mattress, example, say you have sold them the mattress. They have received their mattress. They are happy as clam. Is that the expression, Alissa?

Alissa  36:21 

Happy, happy as a clam. Yeah.

Vira  36:23 

Happy as a clam doesn’t make sense. This expression, like.

Alissa  36:27 

Yeah, I’ve never.

Vira  36:28 

Why clams are happy?

Alissa  36:30 

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I’m like, I don’t know if clams are actually happy.

Vira  36:34 

Whatever English second language. So I’m learning something new every time every episode come to Flowium podcast and see Vira learn English. Okay, so going back to that mattress example, you have sold them. Mattress good for you. Now you can upsell some sort of, I don’t know, like pillows, or maybe like a mattress cover, or silver infused bedsheets. By the way, that’s like the real thing. I’m looking to buy myself one. So, yeah, so just like, prepare the customer for the upsell that is coming later this week. So if you’re selling the pillows, you can do, like, three types of pillows, and like, how to pick one, or something like that. Or you’ve got an idea, and don’t, don’t try to sell anything. Don’t try to sell obviously, have some sort of, like call to action link to the product you’re talking about. But don’t, don’t give any discounts, nothing, something that we’ve also experimented with. We had like, a teaser of tomorrow’s promotion in that email. So basically, as a last sentence of the email, you can say something, but don’t buy anything today, tomorrow, we will send you a really good discount. So it’s, it sounds almost like a counterintuitive, right? But this way, you’re building like an excitement, and you’re making sure that someone will open your email number six and seven tomorrow, right, and also you’re building trust with your customer, because it shows them that you’re very transparent, that you care about them. So there’s a nice little technique that you can test, yeah, and email number six and seven, cross sell, upsell different products with a discount. So a lot of brands are doing upsell, cross sell early in the flow. But we actually don’t like to do it early in the flow. We try to give some sort of like discount later in the flow. It does not like devalue your brand in the eyes of the customer. Try not to give those like discounts every time. Every communication should not be you trying to push them to buy something. You trying to give them some sort of discount. But you should also understand, also understand that when one of your like, first interactions with the customer after they’ve purchased, is an incentive. Like, you run the risk of immediately, like, almost like, turning people away from your brand. So anyways, email number six and seven is a good place for you to cross sell some relevant products for the customers, and if you if they haven’t purchased anything from you, if they like, ignore you. They don’t open your emails, they don’t like, buy anything from you. Then in the later stages, you can try to win them back with Winback flow, or sunset flow, or flow like that. But that’s something that we will be talking about in the next episode, so definitely come back next week.

Alissa  39:27 

Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. And the post purchase is that Harry Potter quote cracks me up every time, because it’s so true. It’s like, it’s one of those overlooked ones where we we try to drive that hard with clients, and they’re like, well, it’s not we can do that later. It’s not a big deal. And I’m like, No, we are doing this now. So.

Vira  39:46 

Isn’t it surprising how much revenue you can actually generate from that little flow? Again, it feels almost counterintuitive, because, like, person just bought something from you. Why would they come back and buy something else?

Alissa  39:59 

Right.

Vira  39:59 

Usually what we are seeing and correct me if I’m wrong, if it’s the same with your clients, those like, first emails right after the purchase, some of them are even received before the customer receive an actual product. Those first emails, they have, like, the highest conversion rate out of the entire flow. And that’s like, shocks me every time.

Alissa  40:19 

Yeah, same. No, it’s It’s true. And what I mean, we talk about this a lot internally, in our meetings with account with other account managers and everything, where the likelihood of someone converting into a second time buyer is so much higher the closer it is to their first purchase than it is further away.

Vira  40:36 

Yeah.

Alissa  40:36 

So, and there are other flows that we’ll talk about on the next episode on part two of sending your emails that drive sales on autopilot, that will talk about that kind of reiterate that point, or the idea that as soon as someone makes a purchase, they are more likely to make a purchase right then and there than they are again in three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, six weeks, seven months, you know. So you want to get them while they’re still fresh and excited about your brand, that’s really ultimately where it’s at. So, yeah, good episode today. Lots of interesting flows, very, very, very interesting.

Vira  41:11 

Yeah, even if you just set up those four flows, believe me, your revenue will grow like crazy.

Alissa  41:17 

Yeah, for sure, and especially because those are the top, those are the tend to be the top jumper, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s great.

Vira  41:25 

Cool. Well, you guys don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends, and if you’re interested in getting some more information, or if you’re interested in getting some advice on how to establish, like, a good email marketing strategy for your e commerce store, visit flowium.com/contact, and sign up for a free consultation. So we’ll be really happy to help you with your brand. We believe in email marketing. We are email marketing nerds and yeah, so just just like come, come to us, and we’d be happy, happy to help, yeah, happy as a clam.

Alissa  42:04 

I don’t, I don’t know if it would apply for that. Happy as a clam is, like a weird one. It’s like a gosh, no offense anyone listening, but it’s like an older person, term, I would say, or phrase.

Vira  42:15 

That’s what I’m struggling with, like a lot.

Alissa  42:18 

He’s happy as a clam.

Vira  42:19 

I don’t see the difference, you know, with like the speaking like an old person and just speaking like a normal person. That’s why you can see me. You can hear me using all kinds of different like phrases. And now I just watch this, like Bridgerton, Netflix TV show where, like, English royalty basically talking. So if you start hearing me speak in that posh British accent. Don’t be surprised. That’s how I learn.

Alissa  42:47 

I won’t hold it against you. I definitely won’t hold, that’s so funny.

Vira  42:52 

That’s how I learned language through Netflix.

Alissa  42:57 

Guys, thank you so much for listening today. Make sure that you come back for next week’s episode again, it’ll be part two of what we talked about today on how to start sending emails that drive your sales on autopilot. We want to help you make the most money possible with you doing the least work possible. So yeah, just stick around and make sure that you’re listening in taking notes, take advantage of that digital whiteboard that we had mentioned. And, yeah, tell your friends. Make sure you come back next week so that you can get the full extent of all the emails that will drive your sales on autopilot. And yeah, thank you guys again for listening, and we’ll see you next week.

Vira  43:38  

See you next week.