Audit your BFCM flows
You already know how important it is to set up flows in Klaviyo to drive that incremental revenue, and how well they work in a typical week. But if you've been around the block in the world of e-commerce, you know that BFCM is not a typical week.
In this guide, we will share some proactive steps you can take to get the most out of your BFCM flows. Because we all know, whether you're driving traffic as a brand or scrambling to buy gifts yourself, proactive moments during this season are rare.
Your timeline will look different for BFCM. Add urgency to your flows through timing and personalization.
This is where you highlight the good stuff. Adjust your flows to show off your amazing deals.
Here's where you go make those changes. Before you get too overwhelmed, we'll share a quick crawl, walk, run framework so you can do the most with the time you have.
Bonus tip: Track every BFCM flow change. This makes it easy to revert content after the holiday season.
First, Add urgency
'Tis the season for sales, and if you aren't driving that urgency, your customers will miss out. Luckily, Klaviyo has a few best practices for building urgency without having to redo your entire flow.
Step 1 | Decrease time delays for your abandoned cart and browse abandonment flows (from 2 hours to 30 minutes). |
Step 2 | Update your subject lines to call out BFCM deals. If you need inspiration, use our subject line assistant to generate some great BFCM-specific subject lines. |
Step 3 | Confirm that you have personalized your flow messages (e.g., added first name and relevant dynamic blocks). |
Step 4 | Add countdown timers to your emails to build excitement and urgency. |
Step 5 | Turn off smart sending on key flows (e.g., welcome series, abandoned cart, post-purchase, etc.) so customers continue to receive timely alerts even if they’re also receiving BFCM sale announcements. |
Schedule your flow statuses to update so that any new BFCM flows turn live just before your sale starts, and any existing flows you don't want to use over BFCM switch to manual.
Then, plan your content changes
See how Nani, a natural skincare brand, prepared their key flows for BFCM. Follow these best practices so flows are ready for busy season, with content aligned to your holiday strategy.
Welcome series
As Nani prepared for an influx of holiday site traffic, they perfected their welcome messaging ahead of BFCM. Nani:
- Updated their welcome flow to match any changes to their sign-up forms (e.g., a new BFCM discount).
- Added a reminder message to subscribers who received their first welcome offer but did not use it.
- Added a static product feed of best-selling items to their message
- Nani collected SMS, RCS, and WhatsApp consent, then matched the welcome flow to each subscriber's preferred channel, aligning early messages with channel affinity and regional preferences.
Abandoned cart
70% of shoppers on average will abandon their carts. Nani took these steps to prove the value of their products and holiday deals:
- Nani replaced any discounts that did not align with their BFCM sale.
- If a customer gave consent for SMS, RCS, or WhatsApp, Nani used a conditional split to add a fast mobile reminder before the first email, highlighting urgency or low inventory. Then Nani followed up with more detailed email content.
Lastly, Nani included a dynamic product feed of related items featuring their top recommendations this BFCM.
Browse abandonment
Someone browsing your store is likely interested in buying, but may need an added incentive or reminder to convert. Here are some action steps Nani used to win them over before their competitors did:
- Nani shortened the time delay before their first message to 1-2 hours instead of the typical 4 hours they followed during non-BFCM seasons.
- Nani Included a dynamic product feed of related items, or a static product feed featuring their top recommendations this BFCM.
Bonus tip: To capture the attention of those browsing any area of Nani’s site, their marketing team built a metric-triggered flow triggered by the Active on site metric. Then, Nani shared their top BFCM promotions and best-selling items.
Post-purchase
Ensure that new and returning customers have a stellar post-purchase experience. Here are a few ways Nani encouraged their customers to shop again and spread the word, and supply any information that’s relevant to their order:
- Nani added cross-sell or upsell messaging in this flow that either advertises a relevant BFCM deal or similar products that their customers may also want to buy.
- Nani encouraged customers to refer their friends or leave a review of their order. Learn more about reviews.
Price drop
Even though price drop was typically a top performing flow, Nani was on the fence as to whether they should consider pausing this flow altogether.
Because they typically promoted their products through discounts and sales, Nani set their price drop flow to Draft. Then, they built hype around BFCM sales through a BFCM announcement campaign instead.
However, If you primarily use coupons or other key incentives to promote your products, keep this flow live but update the messaging to align with your BFCM content strategy.
Other changes that Nani made were to
- Add BFCM deals to messages.
- Update messaging to drive a sense of urgency.
- Increase the inventory threshold on low inventory and back in stock flows.
Lastly, execute your strategy
Now that you know what content to change for BFCM, let’s dive into how to properly edit your flows for BFCM. Depending on how much content you wish to change for this seasonal messaging, you may choose between the following 3 options for how to edit.
Crawl: Make minor changes to multiple flows
When:
You’re short on time and just want to make a few minor changes to your flows.
What:
Create reusable content blocks featuring key BFCM deals, top holiday items, or sale countdown timers. These blocks can be applied across multiple flows to streamline your efforts.
How:
- Customize a new block or section in Klaviyo’s drag-and-drop template editor.
- Save this block as universal content. Use a descriptive name so the content is easy to find (e.g., BFCM 20% off sale banner).
- Add this content to any future campaigns and flows related to BFCM.
Key steps after BFCM
Don't forget to tidy up by removing BFCM-specific blocks from all templates. They'll still be saved in Klaviyo for future use and updates next year.
Walk: Swap between BFCM and regular flow content
When:
You want to edit a series of messages in a flow but don't want to create an entirely new flow. This will make it easy for you to quickly swap back to the original messages once BFCM is over.
What:
Use your existing flow and create a new flow pathway specific to BFCM. You can easily clone the messages from your typical path to your new BFCM variation to save time building out content.
How:
- Navigate to the flow you would like to add a BFCM path to and drag a conditional split to where you would like the new path to start.
- Configure your conditional split to send a Random sample of 0 % down the Yes path. This will ensure that all folks move through your BFCM pathway (the No path) instead.
- Duplicate your messages within the original flow path and move them under your BFCM version.
- Edit the messages within your BFCM path to include any BFCM-specific content and blocks to your BFCM messages.
- Set your new BFCM path messages to Live and the old ones to Manual during your sale periods. For anyone who has already started going down your normal path, they will appear as Needs Review. You can manually send them messages they are queued up to receive.
Key steps after BFCM
Once your BFCM sale period is over, you can:
- Remove your conditional split so that 100% of your recipients to go down your original path instead of your BFCM one. Then, set your normal flow path to Live and your BFCM one to Draft.
- Analyze your performance. Click Show Analytics in the flow builder to see message-level data across both paths and compare.
Learn more about how to use conditional splits to test things like timing, discounts, and number of emails within a flow in our reference guide on how to A/B test flow branches.
Run: Create new BFCM flows
When:
You want to create a full BFCM version of your flow, and gain increased analytics to compare how it performs in relation to your standard version.
What:
Clone your existing flow (or start from scratch), and then apply your BFCM changes. If you have multiple Klaviyo accounts for different brands or regions, you can clone flows across accounts to decrease the amount of time spent on creative work.
How:
- Clone your flow and use a descriptive name for your new BFCM flow (e.g., BFCM abandoned cart flow)
- In the new flow, swap out all content, subject lines, and offers to be BFCM-specific.
- Add the profile filter Received email 0 times where flow equals [the other flow] to your BFCM version to remove anyone queued up who has already received your original version of this content.
- Schedule your original flow's status to update to Manual and your new flow's status to update to Live right before your BFCM sales starts. Note that anyone who has already started going through your original flow will appear as needs review for subsequent messages. You can manually send them any messages they are queued up to receive.
- Schedule your BFCM flows to switch back to Manual and your existing flows to switch back to Live immediately after your sale has ended.
Key steps after BFCM
Once your BFCM sale period is over, you can:
- Switch the original flow back to Live (if not scheduled to do so) and archive your BFCM version. Archiving a flow means that it won't take up space on your flow page, but you can recover it later if you plan to use it again.
- Analyze your performance. By creating a net new BFCM flow, you’ll be able to easily build reports that compare your BFCM flow performance to your typical flow performance.
- You may want to review and clear out any email addresses that were added to the Needs Review queue of your main flow after you set your BFCM content live. These folks were added to your flow while it was in Manual mode, and who received your BFCM version instead.
Learn more about building a flow from scratch.