Email Flows from Welcome to Winback with Jess Vassallo

Introduction to Profit-Driven Strategies

0:00As a brand, this is what you need to be thinking about. Profit, not just getting as many customers onto your database as possible. Protect those margins. With this strategy, each popup was thought about and time, served based on engagement and not by default. With this strategy, it wasn't just about incentives. It was about aligning the messaging with intent and driving up that AOV. With the right tech tools integrated into the ESP and visibility, you can automatically exclude low stock or low margin products. You can push profitable SKUs to firsttime buyers.

0:39Recommend those best sellers based on customers past behavior and dynamically adjust content based on realtime margin and performance. Thank you for the intro, Nick. I think Nick assumes that I only wear a suit and that's it. thank you everyone for having me. We have a lot to run through today on how to take your flows from basic to best in class. Now, I guess I better preface this because I am Australian that I speak the Queen's English. So, if you see a few S's in my slide where there should be zeds, well, I apologize.

1:28as well I want you to keep in mind

The Importance of Email Marketing

1:31that email marketing is, I think, one of the most underrated channels because it's not as sexy as Meta and Google. But when we have a look at what is important to a brand, the most valuable thing that you own as an e-commerce and retail brand is your database. And that is why what I'm about to go through with you is so important. So over the past 11 years, my agency has driven more than 800 million in tracked sales for e-commerce brands by leveraging tech like Clavio, Omnisense, Sendlane, and YPO.

2:22Now, what you're seeing on the screen is just a very small handful of some of the email campaigns and flows that we've sent out for our clients. And we work with some of the best brands globally in doing what we do. Now, these aren't just pretty emails, and I think that that is just what so many people assume. Let's just get the best looking email campaign and send it out and hope that it converts. But it is so much more than

Foundational Email Flows

2:53that. So let's talk about the flows. I want to talk about why foundational isn't basic. This is where it all starts. It's incredibly important to your brand. So most brands, they have flows live, but they're typ typically set and forget. And these flows are often incredibly generic. They're often mistimed and they lack a lot of personalization. But when optimized strategically, these flows can drive a hell of a lot of revenue for your brand. Now, one of the things that I love most about email marketing is that you control the entire customer experience from welcome through to win back. Every one of these touch points has a chance to drive serious revenue, but only if the flows are alive and only if they are doing their job.

3:58So, let's break it down. Let's talk take a look at the top five revenue driving email automations that every single brand should have live. I'm going to be covering the welcome, the browse abandonment, abandoned checkout, post purchase, and the customer win back. Now before we get started, the reason why flows are so important is because they allow you to fill the gaps in the customer life cycle. This is what fuels your flows and revenue from email. And it is so much more than just setting these flows up and sending campaigns out. Email growth starts with

Optimizing Data Capture

4:47intentional data capture. Now, I want to paint a picture for you. You go to site, you get served with a popup, first 10 seconds, 10% off. Probably sounds familiar because it is. Every single brand does it. With this strategy, it doesn't actually matter whether you're a firsttime visitor, a loyal and returning customer, or someone just passing by. the same generic popup is served. No segmentation, no consideration for your intent or behavior of the customer. And this approach, this blanket approach to giving 10% off to all of your customers. It attracts low intent leads, damages your profitability, and erodess your ability to build a sustainable email list.

5:48So let's talk about how we level up this strategy. Now to be clear, I am not saying don't discount. I am saying discount smarter. As an example, which you're seeing up on the screen, take a look at what we did for this home wares brand. Now we took a more intentional approach. Instead of showing everyone the same offer, like the blanket 10% off, we created popups that that were triggered by real behavior and discounts that protected profit margins. As a brand, this is what you need to be thinking about profit, not just getting as many customers onto your database as possible. Protect those margins with this strategy. Each popup was thought about and timed, served based on engagement and not by default. So with this strategy, it wasn't just about incentives. It was about aligning the messaging with intent and driving up that AOV. Now, what you're seeing on screen, this these are actually popups that we created. You can see it's not the basic square popup 10% off. We've created it based on the product color. We've made

7:13it engaging. But what's most important about this strategy? It's not about how it looks. It's about how we've implemented a three tiered approach to those incentives. Again, it's not about not discounting. It's about being smarter about how you inject those discounts to protect those margins. So, we did this by creating these three tiered offers for new visitors, returning visitors, and those that were showing exit intent. So, to give better clarity, here's how we break down each of those variants. Now, for firsttime visitors, they saw no discount, just valueled messaging.

8:05Let them explore your brand. Educate first and sell second. So that's for the firsttime visitors. Now for returning visitors, which are those showing much higher purchase intent, they received a 10% discount. Again, it's not about not discounting, it's about doing it strategically. And then the third option there was for high exit intent visitors. Now we used a 15% discount as a trip wire. The final chance to win them over and to get them into the database.

8:49Now, we've covered more of a strategic approach to data capture, which is essentially the gateway that fuels all of these really incredible opportunities to drive engagement and more importantly revenue, your flows. So, moving into the flows, let's start with the welcome flow. Now, the welcome series is your

Welcome Flow Best Practices

9:14first impression. It sets the tone for the entire relationship with your customer. This is your opportunity to introduce customers to your brand and nurture them towards making a purchase. Now, where so many brands actually get this wrong is they send the same three generic emails to everyone. No segmentation, no shoppability, no education, and no strategic content. These are campaigns for a high-erforming fake tan brand. And these are only four of a wellbuilt out welcome series. So when brands take a very generic approach to building out their flow, they miss their chance to convert customers, especially if you have a brand that requires a lot more consideration before a purchase actually takes place. So how do we solve this problem? Progre progressive customer profiling. Now, instead of asking your customers for everything up front in that initial pop-up, we layer intelligence into the customer journey. Now, the more they engage, the more we learn. The more personalized their experience becomes with your brand. So, for example, a supplement brand, we might ask, "What's your health goal?" For a fashion brand,

10:53we might ask, "Are you shopping for men? Are you shopping for women? Or are you shopping for both?" Or for a skin care brand, we might ask, "What's your skin concern?" So instead of asking everything up front, we collect these insights as your customers engage. So, we capture this data through popups, through preference centers, through flows like the welcome flow, and we use it to power smarter segmentation and automation. So, here's a really good example of progressive profiling in action. For this skinincare brand, we had a three tiered popup where we collected skin concerns at signup to power a more personalized welcome series. Remember, it's not just about getting a welcome series in place. It's about being smarter about the way you actually do it. Now, this isn't just about standard data capture. It's about being hyperargeted in the way that you go about it. Very, very similar to the Homeares brand with the pillows that I just showed you, we have a new visitor verse returning visitor verse exit intent strategy in place.

12:14capturing a very very important data and question from their customers. What is their skin concern? Now, what we're doing here is capturing smart data from the start. Because without all of this data, we wouldn't be able to develop a hyperpersonalized welcome flow based on a customer's painoint and create edal educational content that actually converts. And here's what all of that looks out like. These are the flows that we were able to build out for the brand just purely because we were asking better questions as they were going into the database or through the preference centers or anywhere else where we were actually collecting that data. So each stream we were able to include a brand intro email, an AM routine for top products, PM routine, social proof, product recommendations, all of which were personalized based on each customer's skin concern where they whether they selected oily skin, aging skin, or dry skin. Now, when a when we audit a brand, nine out of 10 times, it's a onesizefits-all approach, much like what you're seeing on the left hand side of the screen,

13:37three basic emails. And let me be clear, if that actually works and converts for your brand, great. Don't change it. Because if it's working and converting, don't change or don't fix what's not broken. But if you have a brand with products that need more consideration, much like this skincare brand, then it's worth considering going beyond just basic. Now, let's look at the browse

Browse Abandonment Strategies

14:12abandonment series. Now, the Brailles abandonment series targets users that have looked at a product but didn't actually make a purchase. Now, these users are very much still in the consideration phase. So, they haven't actually made a purchase. So, they're exploring options, comparing products, and assessing whether it solves their pain point. Now, common mistakes that we see when brands set this up. They have a onesizefits-all approach. This flow looks a hell of a lot like the add to cart and the checkout flows. There's not enough emails in the flow, and there's absolutely no segmentation or personalized content.

15:01Now the way that we actually level up the abandonment strategy is by moving beyond the basic. We split the flow by new verse returning. We include product education, benefits, and trust building content. We include social proof, reviews, and content that actually helps customers compare. and we avoid unnecessary discounting. Each email nurtures customers with relevant recommendations and reinforces product value that actually drives action. So, here's an example of how we le leveraged social proof to encourage a purchase. This is especially important in the consideration phase. Here's another example of how we actually show those best sellers. And why do we show best sellers in the browse abandonment flow? Because your best sellers are the entry product to the brand. When you're building out these flows, you need to be strategic. You need to be strategic about what product feeds you show at different parts in the customer life cycle.

Checkout Abandonment Optimization

16:23Next up, we've got the checkout abandonment. Now, this flow targets users who made it to the checkout but didn't actually complete a purchase. This is arguably one of the highest intent flows. Now, common mistakes that we see brands make with this flow is they're batch blasting emails to absolutely everyone. They're not splitting out by firsttime verse returning customers and there's no consideration of cart value. The strategy typically looks a lot like the basic flow matrix that you're seeing on the right hand side. So let's take a look at how we level up this strategy and drive greater engagement and greater revenue because ultimately that's what it's all about.

17:14So, we're splitting the flow out by first time versus repeat customers. Our emails adapt based on cart value and behavior. And we create ultra personalized content for every segment. Now, for example, this is an Australian active wear brand that we work with. We included info on sizing, shipping, returns, payment to actually help customers when they check out. Now, only those with higher cart values, and this is really important, only those with higher cart values got incentives. We tested a $20 discount verse a 10% off discount to see what actually converts better.

18:07and no discounts were given to those with low cart values. We pushed them to sign up to the loyalty program. Now, when you move beyond a basic one-sizefits-all strategy, you get results like this. For that same active wear brand, the cart recovery increased by 2 and 33%. That's a lot, guys. This is why it's incredibly important to be strategic and not just set these up using Claio's default. Now, let's move on to the post

Post-Purchase Flow Essentials

18:47post purchase flow. This has to be one of the most underrated and undervalued flows of them all. Just because the sale was made, it doesn't mean your job is done. The sale is not the finish line. What happens next is the most important thing for your brand. This is why the post-purchase flow is so foundational. But every brand overlooks this because it is not typically the highest revenue driver. It doesn't do what the welcome does. It doesn't do what the abandoned checkout does. But let me tell you, it does a hell of a good job at creating brand loyalists. And that's what this is all about, building with purpose. And you can do a lot of that through these flow. Now, the post purchase is all about building customer loyalty and retention and not just an order confirmation. Which leads me to my next slide. What you're seeing on the screen right here, this is not a post purchase series. It has absolutely no engagement, no repeat purchase strategy, and no education. This is a

20:13basic order confirmation email. Let me say this again so it's really, really, really clear. This is not a post-purchase flow. This is a post-purchase flow. This is an example of a fully fleshed out post purchase flow for a supplement brand. It goes well beyond a single order confirmation. So, here's a closer look at what that looks like. Now, in that first email, we're thanking the customer for their purchase and we provide an order sum summary. We're incorporating product education and we encourage product adoption. That's incredibly important.

21:01If you have a customer that buys your product and then doesn't know how to use it or doesn't know how to wash it, they're not going to come back and make another purchase. So that's why this flow is so important to every single brand. We're also cross-selling products based on what the customer purchased. We're using this flow as an opportunity to introduce loyalty. And we're treating those repeat customers differently because you don't want customers to receive the same email over and over and over again. So, if they've purchased three plus times, then you want to make sure that they're actually getting different messaging. Treat your VIPs like VIPs. And then lastly, you want to capitalize on customer engagement and encourage them to connect with you cross channel. And lastly, we've got the win

Winning Back Lapsed Customers

22:02back flow. Now, the win back flow is your opportunity to win back your lapsed customers. But where we see so many brands get this win back flow wrong is that they either send it too early or way too late. What we like to do is we like to use point of sale data and e-commerce data to identify the true lapsed point. So for this beauty brand, we leveled up their strategy by analyzing actual point of sale data, e-commerce data, so we could pinpoint the actual ideal window for triggering this flow, not just basing it off assumptions. And nine out of 10 brands that we audit and we we work with some of the biggest brands in our market and globally. and nine out of ten of them don't set it up the right way.

23:06So, we want to make sure that we had discounts working online in store and by click and collect, allowing customers to choose the way that they prefer to shop. And then we used dynamic blocks to adapt to each customer's purchase and browsing history. Now, all of the flows, those top five revenue driving and engagement driving email automations, they're incredibly

Addressing Common Email Marketing Issues

23:35foundational to every brand. But even the best flows and the best strategies won't work if you don't have the fundamentals in place. Now, these are the three silent killers that are very likely road blocking your growth. Number one, missing tracking because your ESP, your email platform or channel, can't track all site traffic. Two, not knowing your numbers or reporting on the wrong numbers. and three email designs that don't actually convert. So, let's walk through each. Let's start by talking about the data most brands are missing. If you're relying on your ESP and their tracking pixel alone, like Clavio's native script, you're likely only identifying around 20 to 30% of total site traffic.

24:43This means that up to 80% of your shoppers you can't actually target with email. Now, these are people that are viewing your products, adding to cart, starting the checkout, and they're never being tracked. And if you can't track them, then you can't trigger a flow. So, what's the the fix? Now, we're seeing massive success with brands who are bridging the data gap by using thirdparty tools like Instant, Profit Peak, Elevar, and Triple Well. Now, I really want to preface this whole next section that I am not an affiliate for any of these, and I I couldn't care less whether or not you signed up or not.

25:32What I care about for brands is cash in bank. And I can tell you that I'm only going to talk about tech if it actually works. And these Pretty much these four are the top most used for the brands that we work with. Now, these tools don't actually replace your ESP. They enhance it. They help track intent more accurately. They capture anonymous visitors. They unlock automation opportunity that your ESP otherwise couldn't. And on the screen you're seeing here an example from one of our clients using instant. Now by layering this into their tech, we increased profile match rate from 18% to 47%. Which is pretty insane. That's nearly three times more the profiles that we could now actually send flows to, which means more revenue opportunity.

26:37So the biggest kicker to all of this is that with absolutely no changes to content, no changes to flows, this simple shift in tracking generated this client 298,000. that ain't nothing. So that's why it's really important to bridge that data gap and use third-party tools to help you do it. On the screen, you'll also see a direct comparison between revenue generated from Clavio and their native flows versus the duplicated flows powered by Instant. Same emails, same logic, but with Instant, we're actually capturing more profiles. We're able to trigger more sends and recover significantly more revenue just by integrating. As I said, not an affiliate, but this is incredibly important if it means you're going to be getting more revenue from a third party tech. No new content, no rebuild, just better data that actually fuels your flows. So, let's talk about something that is quietly killing profitability for so many brands, and it is not knowing your numbers. And you would be surprised how many brands I have sat across from that have no idea about the

28:12numbers that I'm going to run through with you. Now, most email strategies at surface level, they're looking at open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. But what about profit? What actually drives that repeat revenue? Because growth means absolutely nothing if you're discounting your way into the red. If the foundation is broken, even the best strategy will not convert. So, you can't actually optimize if you don't know which products are your most profitable. You can't see which discount codes are eating into your margins, and you have no visibility over aging or slowm moving inventory.

29:07You're not tracking SKUs and you're not looking at what is driving those repeat purchases. And if you don't know this, you can't build profitable flows. You can't optimize your feeds properly and you can't make strategic decisions about fueling real growth for the brand. So this is what we see all the time. Low margin SKs promoted by default. High return items pushed in emails without the brand actually knowing, no converting or out of stock products being shown in the feeds. Why? Because that's the way your ESP or Cladio. That's the way their product feeds are built for convenience. They're not built for profit profitability. They don't factor in skew level margins, inventory age or availability or return rates. So what's the fix? Again, with the right tech tools integrated into the ESP and visibility, you can automatically exclude low stock or low margin products. You can push profitable SKUs to firsttime buyers, recommend those best sellers based on customers past behavior, and dynamically adjust content based on realtime margin and performance. So, what's the bottom line? If you want more profitable email

30:43and a more profitable email channel, it starts by knowing your numbers. It's not all about open rates and click rates. It's it's about what's actually going to move the needle. And you as a brand need to know this. Again, not an affiliate. A really great tool is Profit Peak. They do a great job at helping you to get a greater line of sight on what this looks like. And lastly, here's how to design

Designing Emails That Convert

31:12emails that actually convert. Can I get a show of hands for from everyone in the room who actually has dark mode optimized? Okay. All right. Hands. Yes. A few. Okay. Well, over 40% of users actually use dark mode. So, if your email design isn't optimized for it, your content might actually look broken, unreadable, or worse, absolutely invisible. Now, more than 60% of emails are actually opened on mobile. This is not new stuff, guys. So, if your designs aren't mobile responsive, it'll hurt your engagement rate, your click rate, and no matter how pretty your email designs look on desktop, it doesn't mean anything for mobile. Now, sending a test to your Gmail inbox isn't enough. If you send a test, you build out a beautiful email in Clavio, you send it to yourself, and then you send it to your colleague and you both agree that it looks really great and then you send it out to over 500,000 people, which let me tell you, this happens all the time with a lot of enterprise brands.

32:38it doesn't render on other platforms which means it could be a broken email, broken links, it might not be visible. These are things that you need to take into consideration and why it's really really important to use a third party tool like Litmus which allows you to check how your emails actually render. Because what so many people don't realize is that there are 90 different placements that this email is showing up. But if you're only checking one, I guarantee you there's going to be issues on other plat placements and platforms. So check out Litmus. Emails on acid is also a really really good tool. Now, emails made entirely out of images won't render for everyone, especially in Outlook. Plus, they actually hurt deliverability. So, make sure you lo you lo you use live text and HTML. Not new. You literally only have seconds to grab attention. So, make sure your call to action is visible without scrolling.

33:53And to boost your click-through rate, we want to see that above the fold. Again, weak or vague headers lose attention fast. So, your sub subject lines and headers need to actually capture curiosity, deliver value, and drive action immediately. And then emails that are too heavy get clipped. Again, if you actually used an external thirdparty tool to check your emails like lit litmus or emails on acid, you can actually check check if your email is going to clip on Gmail or Outlook.

34:28So, if it clips, it's going to kill your content, what you've spent all of this time and resources in building. So, keep your designs lightweight and avoid them getting clipped. and design with building blocks that are modular and mobile friendly. Stackable layouts make your emails easier to edit, easy to test, and repurpose across campaigns and flows. So, key

Conclusion and Key Takeaways

34:58takeaways, treat flows as living, revenue driving assets. Two, segment with purpose and personalization. And three, this is really, really important. If you take one thing away, think about profitability. Replace blanket discounts with smarter strategies. And four, use design and tech to convert more of what you already have. If you would like to get access to our highest converting flows and campaigns, scan this QR code. This was nice. Actually, this was a lot of heavy design. What I didn't anticipate you going through was how much design that you guys had because I think a lot of it's a lot it's a lot of design. Well, people people get this wrong is like everything has to be overly designed all the time and I don't think that's true. But I think for some of the brands that are in that higher enterprise level design is important.

35:58You can't just run plain tech stuff. How do you balance a little bit the the difference between yes, I want heavy design, but I also know I want a little bit of conversion testing. This is the thing about email marketing is that you could have the most aesthetically pleasing email campaign design. But if it's not built to convert, then what's the purpose? Just because it's beautiful doesn't mean it's going to convert. What we know is that we could have someone that builds out an beautiful campaign and tests it against a plain text and the plain text wins.

36:38And if you're not following best practice and some of the things that I showed you, it's very very easy for that beautiful email design to be clipped to have, you know, issues even being viewed. Whereas plain text actually gets a lot of that cut through and it creates a lot more personalization or at least the idea of perception of personalization. Jess, thank you very much. Nick, thank you.