In 2024, effective email marketing flows have become crucial for Shopify merchants looking to grow and maintain customer relationships. With automation and personalisation advancing each year, it’s essential to understand and implement the right flows to capture potential customers at every stage of their journey. Here, we’ll dive into the key email flows critical to your Shopify store's success and how you can use them to elevate your eCommerce strategy.
The Importance of Email Flows in 2024
Email flows aren’t just about sending automated messages; they’re a powerful way to drive engagement, increase retention, and boost conversions. With trends shifting toward hyper-personalisation and data-driven messaging, implementing these flows is essential for a competitive edge. In 2024, email flows have evolved to be more customer-centric and segmented, helping brands build lasting relationships through meaningful interactions.
What Are the Benefits of Klaviyo Flows?
Implementing Klaviyo email flows offers several advantages that go beyond traditional email campaigns. Here are some of the most significant benefits:
- Personalised Customer Experience: Flows allow you to tailor emails to individual behaviours and preferences, resulting in a more relevant experience for each recipient.
- Increased Engagement: By sending timely, automated emails, you can keep your brand in mind and encourage customers to engage with your store.
- Higher Conversion Rates: Automated flows, like abandoned cart reminders, are proven to recover lost sales and convert hesitant shoppers.
- Time Efficiency: Once set up, flows run automatically, saving you the time and effort of sending individual emails.
- Improved Customer Retention: Flows such as post-purchase emails help nurture relationships, encouraging repeat purchases and fostering loyalty.
These benefits improve your customers’ experience and help increase revenue with less manual effort.
What is the Difference Between Klaviyo Flows and Campaigns?
While both Klaviyo email flows and campaigns are essential parts of an email marketing strategy, they serve different purposes.
- Flows are automated, behavior-triggered email sequences that are sent based on a customer’s actions. For example, if someone abandons their cart or makes a purchase, a flow is triggered to send relevant emails.
- Campaigns, on the other hand, are one-off emails sent to a specific group of subscribers at a specific time. These are typically used for announcements, promotions, or newsletters.
Top 7 Klaviyo Flows for Your Shopify Store
Once you have your Klaviyo Setup completed, there are several key Klaviyo email flows can make a significant difference in your Shopify store’s revenue. Here are some of the most important flows to implement:Welcome Flow
Why It’s Important
Welcome emails have some of the highest open rates, often exceeding 80%, making them a prime opportunity to capture attention. It also ‘warms’ new subscribers to your email marketing so that they don’t mark you as spam later down the line. If you don’t have a Welcome Flow, customers may forget that they subscribed to your emails and get confused when receiving your marketing emails later.
Content Ideas for 2024
- Email 1: Friendly greeting and brand introduction: This is where you welcome the new subscriber and, if applicable, provide them with their sign-up discount.
- Email 2: Overview of key product offerings, highlighting benefits: This email is where you introduce your product line. While many brands provide a brand background story, not many email marketing subscribers are too interested—they want to know what’s in it for them.
- Email 3: Share social proof (customer testimonials or media mentions) and an exclusive discount to encourage the first purchase: This is especially important for subscribers who have never purchased from your brand before. They want to know whether they can trust you. After all, they’ll be entering their payment details on your site.
Pro Tip
Use customer data to tailor the emails based on where they signed up or their browsing behaviour, making the message more relevant to their interests.
Abandoned Cart Flow
The Abandoned Cart Flow is one of the most powerful tools for recovering potential lost sales. When customers add items to their cart but don’t complete the purchase, Klaviyo can automatically send a reminder email prompting them to finish checking out. Cart abandonment is a common challenge, but an Abandoned Cart flow can help recover potentially lost sales by reminding shoppers of the items they left behind. You’ll also want to tailor your marketing based on a customer’s interaction with your brand—are they brand new, or have they purchased from you in the past?
Why It’s Important
This flow targets customers who are already interested in your products, making it one of the highest-converting emails you can send. Without an Abandoned Cart Flow, you’ll miss out on revenue that is as close as possible to guaranteed. It also helps to form an off-site relationship with your customers that keeps them informed of your products and your brand.
Best Practices for 2024:
- Timing: Send the first reminder shortly after cart abandonment, followed by a second email around a day later. It’s important to A/B test your timing of these emails which can be done easily in Klaviyo.
- Personalisation: Include the customer’s name, dynamic product images and information, and perhaps related recommendations to encourage checkout. Klaviyo provides you with all the dynamic variables to show the customer the exact product in their cart that they left behind, including the name and price of the product.
- Incentives: In the final reminder email, offer a small discount or free shipping. However, do not offer this incentive to every customer, perhaps only to brand new customers. While this isn’t a requirement, it’s a good way to get potential customers over the purchasing finish line.
Post Purchase Flow
After a customer makes a purchase, the Post-Purchase Flow kicks in to keep the conversation going. This flow can include order confirmation, product recommendations, and invitations to leave a review or share their purchase on social media. Engaging customers after their purchase helps build trust and encourages repeat purchases. It’s crucial in enhancing the customer experience and reinforcing brand loyalty. It’s also a great place to encourage restocking based on a cohort analysis of your Shopify store by easily providing them with a reorder link right after their last purchase.
Why It’s Important
It helps you build a deeper customer relationship and encourages repeat business. It keeps your customers informed and allows you to personalise your email marketing based on their most recent activity with your Shopify brand.
Content Suggestions for 2024
- Order Confirmation: Send a personalised order confirmation with clear shipping details. This isn’t always necessary, as Shopify provides its own. However, if you want to add additional add-on recommendations or personalised messaging based on customer purchase history, this is a great place to do so.
- Follow-Up: Depending on your shipping times, you can create conditional splits in Klaviyo to follow up with customers and ensure they’re happy with their products.
- Review Request: Encourage the customer to leave a review or share feedback.
- Restock: Encourage customers to restock by reordering at the right time or trying something new. The timing of this email will depend on your industry and cohort analysis.
Pro Tip
Segment customers based on their purchased products and send tailored recommendations for future purchases. You can also use Octane AI to personalise your Post Purchase Flow based on their interests.
Browse Abandonment Flow
When visitors browse your store but don’t add anything to their cart, the Browse Abandonment Flow can re-engage them. This flow reminds them of the products they viewed, encouraging them to return to your site.
Why It’s Important
Many potential customers leave without making a purchase. This flow draws them back to your store, increasing your chances of converting them. Keep in mind that this is a light-touch email flow, but it allows you to keep in contact with your customers when they’re interested in your brand by browsing your site.
Content Suggestions for 2024
- Dynamic Product Block: Display the product they were browsing and provide them with more information on it, such as its benefits and price, within the email.
- CTA: Ensure the CTA takes them back to the specific product, not just your homepage or a collection page. This will lessen friction.
- Cross-Sell Recommendations: Based on the item or collection they viewed, you can upsell or cross-sell within these flows in case what they looked at isn’t what they were looking for.
- Incentive: Encourage first-time customers to purchase with a limited-time discount or free shipping.
Pro Tip
Include social proof, such as reviews or testimonials, in the email to build trust and encourage a purchase, specifically with customers who have never purchased from your brand.
Winback Flow
The Winback Flow is designed to help you manage disengaged subscribers. This flow targets customers who haven’t opened or clicked on your emails in a while, giving them one last chance to re-engage before you remove them from your list. Over time, some customers will become inactive. The re-engagement or winback flow is designed to bring these dormant customers back, often by sparking interest in new products or offers. If no engagement is found after this, it’s a good time to suppress these customers to ensure your Deliverability score doesn’t drop, which will cause you to head into customers' spam folders.
Why It’s Important
Keeping your email list clean improves deliverability rates and ensures that you only send emails to engaged customers. This flow also removes some forms of acquisition costs as it brings back churning customers and improves retention.
Winback Strategies for 2024
- Personalised Offers: Tailor discounts or special offers based on past purchases.
- Content Refresh: Showcase new product launches or exciting updates in your brand.
- Clear CTA: Prompt them to take immediate action, like exploring new arrivals or taking advantage of an exclusive discount.
Pro Tip
Offer a compelling incentive, like a special discount, to entice inactive subscribers to re-engage with your brand.
Cross-Sell & Upsell Flow
Cross-selling and upselling effectively increase the average order value by recommending complementary products. This flow uses purchase data to suggest relevant products that align with the customer’s previous purchases.
Why it’s important
This flow provides a personalised experience with your customers and provides them with products that will interest them instead of simply placing a dynamic product block or displaying best sellers. Not all customers are the same, and providing them with recommendations related to their interests and activity will increase the likelihood of email conversion.
How to Use Cross-Selling in 2024
- Personalised Product Suggestions: Feature items that match the customer's purchase history.
- Exclusive Offers for Next Purchase: Offer a limited-time discount on related items to encourage immediate action.
Loyalty/VIP Flow
Implementing a Loyalty or VIP Flow with a Klaviyo integrated tool like LoyaltyLion is a great way to recognise and reward your most loyal customers' ongoing support. These emails make VIPs feel valued, creating a sense of exclusivity and fostering brand loyalty.
Why it’s important
If you have a loyalty program, loyalty flows are crucial to keeping your loyalty members informed on their options, encourage increased retention by incentivising with points and discounts, and
Ideas for Loyalty Flow Emails
- Exclusive Discounts: Offer a special discount reserved for VIPs.
- Early Access: Grant early access to new product launches or sales.
- Personalised Birthday or Anniversary Emails: Show appreciation with a personalised note and exclusive offer during significant times in the customer’s lifecycle.
Pro Tip
Use loyalty conditional splits throughout your flows to inform non-loyalty members about your loyalty program and encourage them to sign up to increase your retention rate.
How to Implement These Flows in Klaviyo
Setting up these flows in Klaviyo for your Shopify store is straightforward. Klaviyo’s user-friendly flow builder lets you easily create and customise these essential email flows, and integrating them with your third-party apps is an excellent way to personalise the experiences. If you need Klaviyo Management, Blend is always here to help. But here’s a quick guide to getting started:
- Welcome Flow: Create a basic automation sequence triggered when a new subscriber joins your list.
- Abandoned Cart Flow: Use Shopify’s integration to automatically detect cart abandonment and send tailored reminders.
- Re-engagement Flow: Set up custom segmentation based on activity levels, allowing you to target customers who haven’t interacted with your brand recently.
Transform Your Email Strategy with These Essential Flows
Building a strong email flow strategy is one of the best ways to drive engagement, build customer loyalty, and increase conversions in 2024. These flows uniquely contribute to nurturing your audience and fostering long-term customer relationships. Using these flows effectively for Shopify merchants can create a personalised experience that keeps customers returning.
Ready to optimise your Klaviyo email flows? At Blend Commerce, we specialise in building email strategies tailored to your brand’s needs. Grab your Klaviyo Flow Strategy for all the core flows for free right here.
Published: December 22, 2023
Last updated: December 02, 2024
