Audit your BFCM flows
Use flows to guide deal-driven leads through your marketing funnel and delight loyal customers with relevant content. As we approach BFCM, audit your flows to directly align with your holiday marketing strategy. Tailoring your flows for BFCM adds urgency and relevance. This can boost personalization and help drive more revenue during the holiday weekend..
Follow this checklist to get started:
- Decrease time delays for your abandoned cart and browse abandonment flows (from 2 hours to 30 minutes).
- 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.
- Confirm that you have personalized your flow messages (e.g., added first name and relevant dynamic blocks).
- When text subscribers (SMS, RCS, and WhatsApp) enter your flows, prioritize sending them quick and important information via mobile message. Treat these channels as fast, high-impact touchpoints for urgent, time-sensitive updates, and send longer or more detailed content via email.
- Add countdown timers to your emails to build excitement and urgency.
- 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.
- Prep new BFCM-specific flow content (more on this in the sections below).
- 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.
Pro tip: Keep track of every BFCM change you make to your flows, so you can revert content back after BFCM.
Determine what updates are needed
See how Nani, a natural skincare brand, prepared their key flows for BFCM. Follow these best practices to ensure that these flows are ready for your busy season with content that aligns with your holiday marketing strategy.
Welcome series
As you prepare for an influx of holiday site traffic, it’s time to perfect your welcome messaging ahead of BFCM:
- Update your welcome flow to match any changes to your sign-up forms (e.g., a new BFCM discount).
- Add a reminder message to subscribers who received your first welcome offer but did not use it.
- Consider adding a static product feed of best-selling items to this message or a special BFCM promotion to drive sales.
- If your sign-up form collects consent for SMS, RCS, or WhatsApp, confirm that your welcome flow acknowledges the subscriber’s preferred mobile channel. This ensures that early messages align with your customer’s channel affinity and regional preferences.
Abandoned cart
70% of shoppers on average will abandon their carts. Take these steps to prove the value of your products and holiday deals:
- Shorten the time delay before your first message to 30 minutes to convert high intent browsers as quickly as possible.
- Remove (or replace) any discounts that do not align with your BFCM sale.
- If you have consent for SMS, RCS, or WhatsApp, consider using a conditional split to add a fast mobile reminder before the first email. Use mobile messaging to highlight urgency or low inventory, and then follow with more detailed email content.
Include a dynamic product feed of related items, or a static product feed featuring your 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 to win them over before your competitors do:
- Shorten the time delay before your first message to 1-2 hours.
- Remove (or replace) any discounts that do not align with your BFCM sale.
- Include a dynamic product feed of related items, or a static product feed featuring your top recommendations this BFCM.
Bonus tip: Capture the attention of those browsing any area of your site by building a metric-triggered flow triggered by the Active on site metric. Then, share your 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 you can encourage them to shop again and spread the word, and supply any information that’s relevant to their order:
- Add cross-sell or upsell messaging in this flow that either advertises a relevant BFCM deal or similar products they may also want to buy.
- Encourage customers to refer their friends or leave a review of their order. Learn more about reviews.
Price drop
Price-drop flows let customers know when an item they’re interested in has dropped in price. While this often comes in handy, you may consider pausing it altogether or re-strategizing how you use it during BFCM. Let’s take a look at when and how to do this:
- If you typically promote your products through discounts and sales, set your price drop flow to Draft. Then, build hype around BFCM sales through a BFCM announcement campaign instead.
- 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.
Feel free to make changes to your other flows as well, such as:
- Adding BFCM deals to messages.
- Updating messaging to drive a sense of urgency.
- Increasing the inventory threshold on low inventory and back in stock flows.
Prep new BFCM-specific flow content
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.
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.
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:
- Change 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.
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.