Core flows in Klaviyo are exactly as they sound—the core of your interactions and communications with your customers and potential customers. Getting these right can be the key to bringing in revenue on autopilot, and getting them wrong can make your marketing efforts feel like running through mud.
Here’s what you should know about auditing these important flows to engage your email subscribers on a daily basis, build stronger relationships, and keep them coming back for more.
Core flows are email automations triggered by specific customer actions or events. They play an important role in nurturing leads, driving conversions, and building customer loyalty.
Regular audits of your Klaviyo core flows helps you keep your email marketing strategy relevant, effective, and up-to-date. By examining flow metrics, content relevance, segmentation, and automation triggers, you can identify areas for improvement and make adjustments to your automation setup.
It’s important to streamline the process for your reader, reduce friction, and make it a pleasure to deal with your company.
Klaviyo offers several key email flows that are must-haves for customer engagement and retention. These flow emails help automate communication, nurture leads, recover lost sales, and boost customer satisfaction.
Find your flows in the left-hand menu in your Klaviyo account. Simply click on the flow you’d like to audit. Keep in mind that the information below is simply a guide; you can make changes within these frameworks to suit you.
The Welcome Series Flow greets new subscribers, introduces your brand, and nurtures them into loyal customers. These emails typically include an introduction to your brand, a welcome offer, and information about what to expect from future communications.
A welcome flow usually follows a specific sequence, ranging between 5 and 7 emails on average. This is a general idea of what should be included in a welcome flow, but it can be adjusted to suit you.
This flow targets customers who started the checkout process but didn’t complete it. Note that this flow is different to the cart abandonment flow (abandon cart flow), which is when customers added an item to their cart but left before starting the checkout process.
One of the biggest mistakes that many people make is failing to create separate checkout abandon flows for new customers and existing customers. Here’s what your checkout abandon strategy should look like.
People who’ve never bought from you before might be unsure of the quality or effectiveness of your products. Your messaging will need to cater to that—reassuring, encouraging, and with a good incentive for them to try your products for the first time.
A typical checkout abandonment flow for a first-time potential buyer might look like this:
Those who’ve bought from you before and are considering buying again obviously liked your products enough the first time around to come back for more. This is valuable knowledge for you, so you should be talking to them in a different way to how you speak to new potential customers.
A checkout abandonment flow for an existing customer could look like this:
This flow targets customers who browsed specific products or collections but left without adding items to their cart. The goal is to remind and entice them back if they forgot or got distracted. As the flow progresses, consider offering a discount to encourage purchase.
The Customer Thank-You flow is designed to express gratitude to customers after a purchase, reinforcing a positive relationship. This flow typically includes a thank you message and order details. It often moves straight into or even overlaps with the post-purchase flow.
Often, this flow moves from here straight into the post-purchase flow, which is designed to maintain engagement and provide nurturing information so the customer is prepared when their order arrives.
The Post-Purchase Follow-Up flow aims to maintain engagement with customers after a purchase, ensuring continued satisfaction and fostering loyalty. This flow may include cross-sell or upsell opportunities and requesting reviews, but may also include nurturing information, like how to use the product.
As your post-purchase flow can overlap with your customer thank-you flow, it’s hard to say how many emails it should be. You can structure your own flow based on which of the goals are relevant to you. Here are the goals of this core flow:
The Winback flow targets inactive customers to re-engage them and encourage them to make another purchase. They’re often sent after a period of inactivity, such as 30, 60, or 90 days. This flow usually includes special discounts or incentives to entice them back, and the timing of these emails depends on your business model.
Once you’ve clicked on a flow, find and click the “Show Analytics” button at the top right of the screen. This will give you an overview of email click rates and open rates.
Clicking on an email, finding the “Performance” heading and selecting “View Details” gives you a more in-depth overview including other metrics like bounce rate and unsubscribe rate. Click on “View More” for some insight into this data.
A high open rate suggests your subject lines are compelling and well-timed. Low open rates may indicate issues with subject lines, sender reputation, or the time emails are sent. Try these A/B tests to get insight on your open rates:
According to Klaviyo, using personalization leads to an increase in open rates in 60% of cases.
If users are opening your emails but not clicking, the problem most likely lies in your email content. When your click rates are low, consider testing the following:
Analyze unsubscribe rates to identify if certain emails cause recipients to leave your list soon after receiving a flow. A high unsubscribe rate after a particular flow can be a red flag for irrelevant content, too-frequent emails, or other issues. Monitor these rates closely to maintain a healthy and engaged email list.
To get the most accurate results, test ONLY ONE element at a time.
Double-check that the correct triggers are in place. This includes both the action that kicks off the flow and time delays of the subsequent emails in the flow.
Verify that your automation triggers are set correctly for each type of flow. Correctly set triggers make sure that emails are sent at the right moments to maximize engagement and effectiveness.
Conduct A/B tests on send times, message frequency, and time between each email to optimize engagement. It’s a good idea to avoid overwhelming new subscribers by letting them complete the welcome flow before adding them to your main campaign segment.
Optimize all emails for mobile devices. Remember, more than half of users use mobile! Use responsive design so your emails look great on any screen size. Consider these tips:
Between 50% and 70% of web traffic comes from mobile devices, and as many people read most of their emails on mobile.
Adding SMS to your marketing can boost success, because people are more likely to interact with an SMS immediately. Emails can sometimes sit in an overloaded inbox, so this is a valuable step.
Not every email needs a corresponding SMS. Consider where users might find an SMS valuable and where it may be unnecessary. Time-sensitive notifications and reminders are the ideal opportunities for SMS. Key opportunities include:
To achieve maximum impact, strategically coordinate these two communication methods. Here’s how to do it effectively:
This is a valuable step that should be used strategically. If users are going through your flows without buying, you need some insight on what’s stopping them from buying.
A/B tests can give you helpful data, but asking outright can be a much faster and more accurate process. Near the end of flows, include some carefully-thought-out questions and encourage your reader to give you their thoughts.
YOCTO specializes in optimizing your email marketing strategy through in-depth Klaviyo audits. We scrutinize every aspect of your Klaviyo account to make sure it’s performing optimally.
Our services encompass:
By choosing YOCTO, you gain a trusted Klaviyo Master Platinum Partner with a proven track record of successful growth strategies. Here’s what sets us apart:
We leave no stone unturned. Our detailed audits provide clear, actionable feedback to enhance your email marketing performance and boost your ecommerce business.
Ready to transform your email performance? Schedule your discovery call today and unlock superior email deliverability and a boosted ROI.
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