Email flows are the lifeblood of your passive eCommerce revenue. Set them up well, forget them, and they can still generate pockets of profitable wins for you. Even when you’re on holiday or away from your usual promo activity, these flows are the worker bees that keep revenue coming in and maintain engagement, so you don’t have to chase up every customer one at a time (now, wouldn’t that be exhausting?).
However, because they are such strong, independent pillars in your email strategy, they can easily be forgotten when it’s time for your campaigns to do some heavy lifting. What we mean by this is that they can easily become outdated when you have a discount, sale or promotion running.
With the EOFY just around the corner, and your sale likely about to start, we have to ask… Have you adjusted your flows to ensure your discount messaging is loud and clear throughout all key customer touch points?
If you haven’t, you’re not alone… But we don’t recommend ignoring this simple, yet effective, tweak.
Why Is Changing Your Flow Messaging Critical During Promos?
E-commerce can be quite confusing as it doesn’t provide the same in-store, ‘what you see is what you get’ experience as a bricks and mortar store would. However, we can still envision it. For example, imagine walking into a store and straight away, they offer you 10% off as a thank you for entering. However, the deeper into the store you get, the more different offers, promotions and deals appear to be running at once. Think 50% off, 20% off and 10% off, all being provided at the same time.
It can get confusing, and while the offers may seem amazing, it can also cause hesitation in customers, as they do not know which offer to believe.
The only thing that makes this different in your email marketing is that customers are not walking through your doors. Instead, they are receiving a welcome offer that provides them 10% off, a potential browse abandon offer, and then another separate storewide discount, all at the same time.
Confusing. Right?
So confusing that it can cause doubt in customers about your business’s ability to deliver, especially with all the scams going around nowadays.
Having promo versions of your emails in your flows (and sign-up form) ready, for this reason, allows customers to receive a streamlined, clear and concise message that also increases the professionalism of your branding. It reinforces your offer, making it unmissable and desirable enough that even the hardest to persuade customers may purchase.
How Do You Set Up Promo-Specific Flows
Setting up flows is time-consuming. There is no way around it. Even the most meticulous email marketers need time and energy to set up high-performing flows in any ecosystem. So, we understand the hesitation now that we’ve told you that you need to do double the work.
Fortunately, promo emails in your flows don’t need to be overly large or overly different from your existing flows.
We typically recommend duplicating each email in your flow (and setting them to draft until it’s time for the sale to go live). Then, remove any mention of previous discounts and add your new offer in. We also recommend adding in a banner to your header with sales focused messaging.
Which Flows Should You Be Editing?
If you have a flow ecosystem made up of high-performing flows, we understand you can be reluctant to make a change. It takes a lot of time, and there is always a fear of poor results.
It’s important, however, as we mentioned, to keep things clear, at least throughout critical touchpoints along a customer’s journey.
For this reason, we typically recommend having sales versions of emails in the following flows:
Welcome series - This allows customers signing up to email marketing to know that they’ve come at the right time, and that there is an exciting offer on.
Browse abandonment - Customers look, but don’t always notice that a sale is happening. Promoting your offer clearly in your browse abandonment flow and creating urgency gives customers a reason to come back quickly.
Abandoned added to cart - Like the browse abandonment flow, customers who have added to cart may not realise that a storewide sale is going on. In a high sales period, where all brands are competing for clicks, it can also be confusing about which brand is offering which deal. Reinforcing this in your added to cart flow helps them pick up where they left off confidently.
Abandoned checkout - Customers who reach this point know your sale is on but might need extra convincing to shop from you rather than a competitor. Adding in blocks that show customers how much they are saving and even a timer until the sale end pushes them to make a more hasty and confident decision.
Site abandonment - Those who visit your site but do not look at products may bounce due to a number of reasons, including loss of interest, change of mind or even website loading speeds. Pulling them back online with a clear banner that describes your offer can give them all the more reason to shop.
It’s important in these emails to also discuss scarcity and the limited time availability of any offers. This way, customers are more inclined to make a quick decision. We also don’t recommend duplicating your flows, but just your emails within them, then just switching to draft and live as needed. This way, customers who are still travelling through your flows during your changeover don’t miss out on your emails.
We Can Help Prepare Sale-Ready Templates
While it may seem like a long setup process, sale-ready templates for flows make a big impact. Need help setting some up for the upcoming EOFY or for your next promo?
