A great flow strategy should be built around nurturing relationships with your customers across key points in the customer lifecycle. In your flows, make sure to:
- Customize your messages
- Optimize the number and timing of message
- Personalize content with splits
Check out how real brands used these 3 flow fundamentals to provide clear and strategic messaging to customers at all phases of the customer lifecycle.
Welcome series:Provide upfront value
Bola's Baked Goods set up a welcome series to reflect their brand and draw customers to a first purchase.
1. Customize messages:
Bola's added in their own copy, images, and branding to a pre-built welcome series. They took care to make sure it sounds human by using conversational copy, and they included a clear CTA to drive customers to their website.
2. Optimize number and timing:
Ideally, customers should complete a welcome series within 1 week, and there should be at least a 1 day time delay between messages. Bola's decided that they only needed 1 message to welcome customers to the Bola's family.
3. Personalize with splits:
Bola's included a conditional split to split brand new customers from those who have purchased before. That way, they can send personalized messages to these 2 different customer groups, enticing new customers to convert and welcoming existing customers to the newsletter.
Increase sales
SWAK's abandoned cart flow reminds shoppers to purchase after they added items to their shopping cart, but never completed their purchase. Abandoned cart flows are the most profitable of all Klaviyo flows.
1. Customize messages:
SWAK started from a pre-built abandoned cart flow. They edited the copy, added their branding, and chose the subject line You've left something behind, which has been proven to perform well. They used dynamic product blocks to show the exact items someone left in their cart.
2. Optimize number and timing:
According to best practices, an abandoned cart flow includes 2 - 3 emails. There are also some additional regulations on text message abandoned cart flows:
- 1 text per recipient
- The message must be sent within 48 hours of the triggering event
SWAK decided to send an email 3 hours after customers start their checkouts, and then send a second email 1 - 2 days later based on the trends in Klaviyo's abandoned cart benchmark report.
3. Personalize with splits:
SWAK wasn't sure what the optimal second time delay is - should they wait 1 day or 2 days before sending a 2nd email? They decided to A/B test time delays to test whether a 1 or 2 day time delay performed better.
Re-engage customers
Beantown coffee set up a winback flow to remind lapsed shoppers to return to the site. Their winback flow is triggered by the Placed Order event and contains a time delay equal to their customers' average buying cycle.
1. Customize messages:
Beantown used their subject line and preview text to remind customers of their brand's value. They used the direct subject line “It’s been a while,” which on average results in about a 27% open rate. They customized their messaging to really show their customers that Beantown cares about them.
2. Optimize number and timing:
Winback flows have long time delays, which depend on the customer's typical buying cycle. Beantown used predictive analytics to calculate that customers wait 30 days on average between coffee bean orders, and 80 days on average between ordering all other products.
3. Personalize with splits:
Based on the different buying cycles for coffee beans and other products, Beantown instated a trigger split that moves customers down different paths based on whether they ordered coffee beans or not. They include the appropriate time delay based on the type of product they ordered.