If you’re new to the world of email marketing, you may be stuck between understanding the difference between a campaign and a flow. And that is 100% okay.
The lingo can be confusing, especially if you haven’t explored this world much before. We understand that it can all become overwhelming, especially when you want to build a good ecosystem for your email marketing but don’t know where to start.
At Email By Design, we work with brands at all different stages of their email marketing journeys. We are proud to help break down the boundaries and obstacles, including knowledge gaps, that oftentimes limit people from reaching their full email potential.
That’s why in this blog, we have carefully broken down one of the most common questions people ask us: What is the difference between email campaigns vs email flows?
Firstly: What Is An Email Campaign?
An email campaign is a one-time send out that you schedule for an allocated time and date. It may be promotion based, such as a mid-year sale or a special event. Campaigns are often aligned with your marketing calendars, focusing on the day-to-day activities of your brand.
Essentially, anything you want to say to your customers at a set time is sent in a campaign.
While they’re not always time sensitive, they are typically more ‘time’ or ‘seasonality’ driven due to your ability to control when they are sent. At a base level, all of your customers will receive campaigns simultaneously. It’s like mass messaging to inspire loyalty and purchases.
Secondly: What Is An Email Flow?
A flow is where the email marketing ecosystem becomes a little more complicated. These are emails that are sent based on a customer's actions with your brand. These emails always exist in your email marketing platform, but they will be sent at different times for every customer.
A welcome series is an example of a flow. This is triggered when customers sign up to your email marketing database. The first email typically greets a customer, thanks them for signing up and offers an incentive. As such, you wouldn’t mass send this email to your database, because each customer has joined at a different time. It would be strange to welcome a customer who has been in your database for three years, for example. Instead, you use a sign-up form on your website as a trigger. Once a customer meets this criterion, they receive the welcome flow emails.
The idea of a flow, as such, is to target customers at different points of their buying journey to inspire purchases. So, it’s important to avoid seasonal language that may soon become outdated.
Why Do You Need Both Email Campaigns And Email Flows?
Email campaigns are effective because they are sent frequently to your customers. They may be less ‘purchase journey specific’, but they maintain engagement and continue to build brand loyalty amongst your database, even when they’re not ready to commit to purchase.
Flows, alternatively, are powerful as they meet customers exactly where they are. For example, if they left items in a cart, a flow will trigger to remind them to return to your website. These behaviour-specific emails are great for nurturing customer relationships automatically without needing to manage each customer individually.
However, there is not an endless list of flows to create, meaning the emails they will receive from your flow setups can be limited. This means there are not nearly enough emails in a flow series to foster good, long-term loyalty from the onset.
Let's put it into a timeline perspective. A customer signs up to your database and receives a welcome email. They aren’t ready to purchase yet and are still thinking about whether they need your products.
They then receive some campaigns and are more interested in purchasing, which leads them back to your website, where they add some products to their cart before exiting once more. An abandoned cart flow email can then be sent to remind them of their order, followed by a post-purchase flow email once their order goes through.
Until they’re ready to shop again, campaigns continue to educate and inspire them. While every customer’s journey will differ, this example demonstrates how campaigns and flows are interwoven to improve purchase volume and customer retention.
The Email By Design Team Is Here To Help
One of the trickiest things about starting your email marketing journey is deciding where to begin. Not sure how to turn your email visions into a reality? We’re here to help. Get in touch to find out what we can do for you.
