#82. The Winback Flow Part 2: How to Segment your Email List for Flows and Campaigns | Podcast

Vira: 0:16

This episode actually going to be short and sweet. We’ll talk about segmenting your win back campaigns and flows to get the most out of your unengaged segments.

Alissa: 0:47

Hello. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Email Einstein. Vira and Alissa here. Episode 82. 82. We’re so close.

Vira: 0:56

That’s crazy.

Alissa: 0:57

I feel like I say this every week, but we are so close and we’re getting closer by the week to episode 100, which I’m personally really excited for. Very excited for.

Vira: 1:06

We’ll have something special for you guys. Yeah, we have for episode 100.

Alissa: 1:10

Yep. The big 1 0 0. Vira and Alissa here as always, thanks for coming back this week and joining us. A little bit about us. Vira and I, we are two email marketers at a place called Flowium, which is an email marketing agency. We are both mega email marketing nerds. And it’s funny because, Vira, I didn’t tell you this, but I was talking to, I think one of the candidates for the project manager position that we’re hiring for at the moment and I was like, they were like, what is your experience with Flowium? And I was like, you know, like I didn’t know anything about email marketing before I started and I was kind of like, okay, we’ll see how this goes and stuff. And one of my favorite things about working here is that I’ve become so passionate about email marketing. And I know this because on the weekends when I’m not working, when I get like an article from Klaviyo or I get something from like really good emails or anything like that, I am like nerding up on it and reading through that article and doing all this research outside of just normal work training and research that I have to do. And I was like, I was doing that a couple weekends ago and I was like, ah, this is how I know I am a real email marketing nerd. Like, really and truly.

Vira: 2:17

Yeah, I know. I feel like I’m one of those like MLM people. My friends will start like unfriending me soon. Like, hey, want to talk about email marketing? You know? Yeah, they will start unfriending me soon. That’s amazing. Talk about email marketing now SMS and email marketing.

Alissa: 2:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s the worst part. That’s the worst part. So because Vira and I are such nerds about email marketing, we figured we’d share some insights with you guys. So just a little bit about Flowium. We are one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world. And our specialty here, or our main focus here is to provide a premium full service e commerce email marketing experience for all of our clients. That’s like our biggest focus and we focus on that premium side of things. And our service is tailored specifically for each client’s business. So if you were to join us as a client, it would be tailored specifically for your business. And ultimately the idea here is to increase online retail revenue. We love this little saying here. It’s a bit of a cliche but we like to deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. And yes, a lot of people say this, but we love that term, that phrase. It’s, it’s cute, it’s fun and it’s true.

Vira: 3:23

It’s very true. Yeah.

Alissa: 3:24

Today is part two of not a saga but what’s a part two called?

Vira: 3:29

What’s a dude? I don’t know. Sequel. Prequel. No, no, it’s something. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it.

Alissa: 3:34

Vira.

Vira: 3:34

You got it. That’s the one. Yay. Look at me, I’m crushing this second language thing. Yay. This episode actually going to be short and sweet first of all because I mean we want to deliver just the valuable content to you. So this will be very short and sweet but also because Alissa is leaving for the email marketing conference really soon and she’s like running around the neighborhood borrowing winter stuff. Right, Alissa? I’m running.

Alissa: 4:03

I’m running around trying to prep.

Vira: 4:07

Oh, that’s hilarious. We’re just talking about Alissa not owning like winter stuff at all and like why would you living in beautiful Florida, right?

Alissa: 4:14

So that’s so funny.

Vira: 4:18

It will be short and sweet. So let’s talk about winback emails again because if you think about it, win back emails can be like entire email journey can be sort of like a relationship between you and the customer. And when it comes to relationship, we all have that one that got away kind of person, right? Well, you’ve probably experienced a number that is even more heartbreaking in the E commerce, right? You invest a ton of money, you put a lot of time, you put a lot of effort into building the list, into building the relationship with your customers only to see that some of those customers are lapsing over time. So that’s where like the winbeck emails as knights in shining armor come into the picture. If you get them right, they are perfect first step in like reigniting that spark in your relationship with your customers. Right? If you get them wrong, well, you can do yourself more harm than good. So today we will be talking about like the ways to segment your win back section or your win back emails. But before we go there, here are two good facts. We all love a good fact.

Alissa: 5:45

We love the facts, we love the stats.

Vira: 5:47

We do love numbers. Facts. Bring them to us. So here are a few facts to start off our podcast, right? So I found this study by Adobe Digital. They have this like adopt a digital index report every year on their return on investment generated from marketing to existing online customers. So actually in the United States, 40% of revenue for e commerce businesses actually came from returning customers last year. 40%. So these are obviously the people who made more than one purchase. So 40% of that revenue is coming from returning customers or repeat customers who have made multiple purchases. Yet this customers represent only 8% of the website visitors. So these numbers are very refreshing. Right. And another number that I want to share with you today, and you’ve probably heard it before, but think about it this way. Us marketers must bring in five shoppers. So five people who have made no previous purchases to equal the revenue generated by one repeat customer.

Alissa: 6:49

That’s hard.

Vira: 6:51

I know, right? So if you’re still not sure about doing or not doing the win back series, the short answer, yes, do them. Yet not all unengaged customers are created equal. And in this episode we will prove it to you. We’ll talk about segmenting your win back campaigns and flows to get the most out of your unengaged segments. So welcome to part two of our mini saga of our sequel prequel, whatever, I don’t know whatever the name is about the perfect win back email sequence. Alisa, what’s the first segmentation strategy? Sort of like a no brainer segmentation strategy our listeners can use.

Alissa: 7:28

So number one, number one, I prefer number two, I think it’s a lot better. But Vira will go into that and then I get to listen, which is nice. So number one segment based on how long your customers have been inactive. So rather than just blasting your email list with the same win back messages and promotions over and over and over again. This tip encourages you to try segmenting it instead. So with this strategy, you’ll be able to improve the metrics that you’re looking at and you’ll also be able to deliver more relevant content that will ultimately convert better. Right, because this is something we’ve talked about a lot, a lot, a lot in the past. I even back to episode number one, which is relevance. You want to make sure that all of your content is relevant no matter what stage in the customer journey a customer is at and no matter what you’re trying to get out of the customer. So for you to start, what you should do is look into the amount of time someone has been inactive with your brand and that can help you decide on the content of your win back emails. So when we say inactive, we mean mainly that they haven’t made a purchase. And it’s likely that because we’re, we’re talking about the email marketing channel, you want to also look at how long this person and hasn’t really been engaging with your emails. You possibly even want to take into account like how long has it been since that person’s been on your site as well. Which all of these things are obviously metrics that you can track in Klaviyo or for the most part other ESPs as well. So for example, if you’re selling socks, which I mean obviously what else would we be selling here? There’s a customer who’s been inactive for three months. What you might do is consider sending them a small incentive like a coupon code for free shipping or something like that. And what you could also do is maybe even consider including it later in your series case your customer doesn’t need to be persuaded into purchasing. So for example, you look at that customer, they’ve been inactive for three months and what you do, rather than just sending them a discount code right away, you’d basically send them a reminder. Yep. Actually one of the things that I recently just put into place for a client is something called a predictive win back. So this is a feature primarily in Klaviyo, but in Klaviyo they have this predicted date of next order analytic that their AI system is able to create. And so this is usually only applicable for more customers who have purchased two, three, four, five times in their lifetime. And it works better in that stage, which is where the focus is for this particular client that we’re working with. But it’s interesting because what you can do is you have the flow trigger based on what that expected date of next purchases. But then the emails that are within that flow are treated similarly to what I’m talking about here. And the other thing that we kind of did is we don’t just send out the first email on the expected next date of purchase, we send it out 7, 14, maybe even sometimes like a month after we had anticipated that they would purchase. Which sometimes is a little more accurate than just saying like, okay, in 30 days we’re going to send this out to them. So that’s definitely something that you can also look into as well. Just as like a side note for your customers who have been inactive for six months or more, on the other hand, you’ll probably need to convince them a bit more to come back just because so much time has lapsed. So what you can do is you can be a bit more generous with the offer or the incentive that you’re giving them right up front. So hey, it’s been a year come back, we’ll give you 15% off. At that point you probably want to be a little more aggressive because they have purchased with you in the past. And then the other thing just to note too is for these customers, for example, who have lapsed for six months and then you’re reaching out to them, one of the things that you definitely want to figure out, and this is just more of like a business strategy, high level, is if a flow like that is not converting, even though you’re giving an incentive to those lapsed customers, what you probably want to do is get an idea of what’s wrong with maybe your product or the customer experience once they receive the product or in while they’re waiting to receive the product. Because I think for business owners in general, and I’m guilty of this too, even though I’m not necessarily a business owner, one of the things that’s really hard for us as humans is to look at the hard, ugly truth right in the face, right? And so we assume like, oh, we just have a problem with converting customers from one time to two time buyers or oh, we just have a problem with customers lapsing for a really long time period. That’s the customer’s issue, it’s not really our issue, we’re doing everything right. And one of the things that you really want to look at, once you start putting these win back strategies in place with different levels of segmentation, if you’re still not able to convert these customers, it’s probably likely that there’s something wrong with either the product or the customer’s overall experience with your brand, which that is a hard, ugly truth to admit face and then also do something about it. So just keep an eye out for these win back strategies cause they’re super helpful and for the most part they help keep your brand top of mind and help with these repeat scenarios. But if it’s still not converting and there’s still an issue there for your business, you probably want to look back into the basics and think, okay, what are we doing wrong as a business overall, not just within the context of a win back strategy.

Vira: 12:17

That’s a good one.

Alissa: 12:17

So definitely something that you want to include there. And just to kind of finish off the flow to making sure that you’re reminding people that you’re still there, keeping yourself top of mind, offering an incentive and then giving them kind of like a last chance or this may even be a good opportunity to get a survey in there. Hey, I’d love to know more about your experience and like why it is that you don’t want to purchase with us anymore. Or if your lapsed customer rate is pretty low, what you can do at that point is just give them a chance to unsubscribe to, hey, if our brand’s not for you, it’s fine, it’s for most people, but apparently it’s not for for you. Thanks for coming. You don’t need to engage with us and we won’t try to engage with you anymore too. So a lot of different options there when it just comes to segmenting based on how long customers have been inactive, but also just some moving parts that you want to think about before you start doing taking really drastic measures and you get so desperate that in your win back flow you’re offering like 75% off just to get someone to buy again. At that point it’s like, okay, we’ve got a problem here, Houston. So yeah, that is number one of two. Segment based on how long your customers have been inactive.

Vira: 13:46

Yeah, yep, that’s a good one. That’s a good one. And I really like the idea of segmenting the win back emails. That’s not something that people generally do. They usually have the one size fits all solution, yet the size does not actually fit. All right, the second approach that we want to talk about is called segment based on rfm. I love throwing around this like random letters, you know, but I’ll explain what it means in a second. So in addition to how long customer has been inactive on your site, examples of like other simple segmentation strategies could include like how much money they spent, how often they buy, like how much time they have passed since their last order. Average order value, was it like the low order value, the medium order value or the high order value? So based on that, based on that data, using just your sales data, you can sort of put together the RFM matrix. And honestly we took this idea from one other blog about email marketing and the guy called Mike Baxter, the author of the checkout optimization guide, so similar ideas. We talked about it in our previous episodes as well. But basically you can segment based on our recency, how much time have passed since they are last order F frequency number of orders they’ve placed in the last say 12 months. Obviously this number can be different depending on what industry you’re from, where you’re working in and the third one, monetary value, average order value, low, medium or high. You can easily segment people based on where they fall in the main matrix. So based on that like matrix and I wish I could show you the how it looks that would be like so much easier to explain. But I’ll just briefly explain you the three main groups so you can think about your list, your email list and like win back list in three main groups. The first group, we call it the lapsing masses. So basically like the lapsing, the biggest lapsing group. So these are the people with low order value and low engagement. So these are the people who have maybe placed one order with you in the past, maximum two orders in the past. But they haven’t like engaged even with your emails for a while. So they are not opening your emails, they are not clicking on your emails, they are not there. But it’s probably a good idea to still try to win them back to maybe like reach out and connect with them. And this people usually respond well to an incentive to return and buy a coupon code, maybe like a discount, a promo, free gift even or like a free shipping coupon. They are not your most loyal customers so you’ll have to give them the discount code up front. Right, because these are not your biggest fans. They haven’t engaged with you for a while. They may be placed one or two orders. Honestly there are like so many groups like this. We can go very, very like deep into like segmenting. We can like literally create like 10 segments based on RFM but we sort of like group them in three. Three biggest, biggest group. The second group is your so called lapsing heroes. So this are your best customers, your heroes if you want who are unfortunately lapsing, you can call them whatever you want. But basically these are the people with high average order value or frequency depending like what business you are in again. So do not let them slip away. These people. You, you must re engage, you must win them back because this are your like big dogs of your list or big fish or whatever. Why are we using this like animal phrases so much? I don’t know English.

Alissa: 17:34

No, no big cheese.

Vira: 17:35

Yeah, it should be big cheese.

Alissa: 17:36

No, no, big. Big cheese is what you call your boss. Is it big dogs? I think it’s big dogs.

Vira: 17:40

Big dogs are big dogs. It’s like big players, right?

Alissa: 17:44

Yes, there you go.

Vira: 17:45

Like the big big fish is another good one.

Alissa: 17:48

Yeah, whatever.

Vira: 17:49

English is so confusing you guys. Oh my. Anyways, win back your big fish or big cheese or big do like they want to feel recognized, they want to feel appreciated. After all they’ve spent like so much time and energy and money on your brand. Right. So something very like personal maybe like a message from CEO or like we miss you email. They’re like personal email, right? Or something cute and personable as actually a good fit here. And that was actually like really surprising to me to learn when I first started working with email marketing is how actually those like personable no discount emails, how well they work if they are sent in like the right moment to the right person. Because like in my head like discount or incentive was the only way to go when you’re sending the win back. The win back email. Right. But turned out there are like so much more those like people, those like lapsing hero, they might only need like we miss you email to get re engaged. Right. Sometimes can be, it can be obviously followed with a discount code as a last resort. But don’t rush to convert them with discount code because like they purchased like so many times from you in the past without the discount code. Right. So you don’t even want to like giving them the idea that you discount codes all the time. You don’t want to like train them to expect the discount code. Right. Which I think a lot of brands are very like guilty of. So yeah, so the lapsing heroes, the another big group that you cannot ignore and the third group. And these are the people who you absolutely, absolutely must win back called the lapsed heroes. So there are the lapsing heroes. So people who are in the process of lapsing, leaving your brand and they are the people who already lapsed and this are your best customers. And because of they are very high value. It’s definitely worth like re engaging with them at least one more time perhaps with like A last impossible to resist offer to come back. And like in this case, it’s worth doing your best offer. Go big or go home. Maybe like even a personal letter, like a physical letter, note from, from a team or may even like a personal package. Physical gift can be a good idea. These are your biggest fans. These are the people with the highest value for your brand. Right? And remember that number. When we first started this podcast, we said that 40% of revenue in the United States is actually coming from the repeat customers, from the multiple customers. They are Only usually the 8% of all the website visitors of all the brands. Fans, right? So definitely try to win them back. Go big or go home. Home. Send the last resort offer. Send the impossible to resist offer. These are the people worth fighting for. So yeah, here you have it. This is like a simple way to think about your list in general. Not just for the win back campaigns, but if you can tailor your strategy to this, like different groups of customers. So you don’t like train your customers to expect discount codes from you all the time.

Alissa: 21:04

Those fish are worth fighting for.

Vira: 21:06

Yep. Those dogs are like that cheese.

Alissa: 21:11

That cheese is worth fighting for.

Vira: 21:13

I like it. Alissa, you’re the best ESL teacher ever.

Alissa: 21:19

I had to mute my mic because I kept laughing afterwards where you’re like, so win back those big dogs, the big fish, the big cheese, whatever, whatever animal it is, just win them back.

Vira: 21:30

Yeah, yeah, win them back.

Alissa: 21:33

You guys, that’s great. That’s so great. So obviously, as you guys can tell, we have a lot of fun recording this podcast and we hope that you guys have equally as much fun listening. So make sure that you subscribe, share this podcast with your friends. Please come back next week because we love hearing from you guys and knowing that people are listening and engaging with the content that we have. Again, as Vira mentioned at the start of this podcast, our goal here is to make sure that we’re providing you guys with relevant content in the same way that you should be with your emails. But relevant content that’s not just nice to listen to, but actionable steps that you can take to improve your email marketing for yourselves or your brands. So thank you guys very much. Again, like I mentioned, don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. If you like what we do, please leave us a review and you will get your very own pair of Flowium Socks. flowium.com/socks is where you would go. Once you leave your review, you’ll plug in your information so we can actually mail the socks to you and then you just need to add in a screenshot of your review. And the other thing is, as I mentioned at the start of this podcast, we are hiring for project managers here at Flowium. Our team is growing, we have lots of clients coming in and we need team members to work with those amazing clients. So if you are interested, make sure that you check out flowium.com/career the project manager role. It will give you information about what that role looks like. Just high level. Cause I know we have a lot of international listeners for project managers. We specifically look for someone who is based in Canada or the U.S. just primarily because of time zoning stuff. So anyone who’s between EST and pst just because that’s where most of our clients are at and it’s just, it’s easier accessibility for our clients. So if you are in Egypt, for example, unfortunately, project manager role probably is not for you. But we do have other roles that we’re hiring for. So check us out. Out again flowium.com/career our team is ever growing and we’d love to have you on our team.

Vira: 23:20

So check us out. Yeah, yeah, join the team. It’s a really fun team to work with. By the way, Alissa, about that socks that you just mentioned, the Flowium socks. Today I woke up to like an Instagram post tagged of me wearing the socks and holding my friend’s cat.

Alissa: 23:36

The cat dog.

Vira: 23:36

Which animal? The cat dog. Gosh, that’s. I didn’t know you guys were about to post it. You know, if I knew you’re gonna post it.

Alissa: 23:44

Oh my gosh. I don’t know anything about what someone posted.

Vira: 23:49

Someone. Someone did. Someone did post it. So if you want to see how our socks look or how the cat dog look.

Alissa: 23:56

Oh my gosh.

Vira: 23:57

Go ahead. Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Alissa: 23:59

There you are. It’s like a post post. Vira. That’s so cute.

Vira: 24:02

Yeah. And the cat, just like the size of the cat is insane. He’s more like a lion than the cat. Honestly. He’s like so huge. Yeah, okay, enough about the cat.

Alissa: 24:12

The cat looks like a bobcat. If you don’t know what we’re talking about and you’re on Instagram. Instagram. Our handle is at Flowium. Pretty straightforward. F L O W I U M. And if you check it out, the very last post is Vira wearing the socks holding literally a wild animal. Which is crazy.

Vira: 24:29

She’s like, he’s like 20 pounds or even more probably.

Alissa: 24:32

He looks like he’s a million pounds.

Vira: 24:35

He’s like so beautiful, but so, so dumb, but I mean, who cares? He’s like so pretty. Oh, cats. I’m the dog person, so I might be biased.

Alissa: 24:46

Same. That’s why we chase the big do. Not the big cats.

Vira: 24:49

Not the big cats.

Alissa: 24:52

Just the big dogs.

Vira: 24:53

Big dogs and big cheese, right?

Alissa: 24:55

Yeah, Big dogs and big cheese. And fish.

Vira: 24:58

Can’t forget. It’s a weird selection. You guys, come back next Tuesday because next Tuesday we will be talking about again, about the big dog, big cheese. But also we’ll be talking about deliverability, the word I still can’t pronounce. Next week we will be repurposing the episode with one of our all time favorite guests, Francis Baker from Klaviyo. Um, so we will be talking about why aren’t my emails working? And this honestly has been one of the most requested topics ever on our podcast. So definitely come back next Tuesday and listen. Listen to that A hundred percent.

Alissa: 25:34

Nice. I need to listen to that again because a lot of deliverability questions are coming up for some clients and I’m like, didn’t we do a podcast on this? So this is perfect timing.

Vira: 25:43

Yep, perfect timing. Thank you so much for listening, you guys.

Alissa: 25:46

See you guys next week.