Email marketing has become a powerful tool for businesses to connect with their customers, and if done correctly, it can provide a great return on investment (ROI). However, many companies struggle to get desirable results because they don’t have the right email flows in place. This means they miss out on opportunities to engage with their audience and build relationships.
Let’s take a look at why email flows are important and ten ideas to inspire your email marketing strategy!
What is an Email Flow?
An email flow is a series of automated emails that are triggered based on the subscriber’s actions. This helps businesses generate leads, promote their services, or sell their products. It’s vital that email flows are smooth and provide value to the subscriber in order to instill brand trust and form a relationship. Focus on crafting email flows that seamlessly move recipients along your customer journey.
10 Ideas to Inspire Your Email Flows
Automation features are crucial for email flows. You can send out automated emails or text messages to customers based on their activity, saving you lots of time because you don’t need to manually check if someone placed an order or looked at your product page. Here are ten ideas to help you create effective email flows:
Welcome series
A welcome series is an email sequence that’s automatically sent to people after they sign up for your email list. Think of it as a friendly introduction to share your brand story and highlight your values.
Abandonment
Send your subscribers a gentle reminder of the items they showed interest in, but don’t distract them with cross-selling or CTAs. Use dynamic content, like images of the products that were visited or added, to create stronger “browse abandonment” or “abandoned cart” emails.
Brands that sell higher ticket items might benefit from a longer time delay before sending out the first abandoned cart email, as buyers have more time to consider whether or not they want to buy those items. Brands that sell lower-priced items might benefit from a shorter time delay before sending out the first email.
Thank you
Thank you emails are messages that are sent after a customer has performed an action, such as a purchase or newsletter signup. Showing appreciation to your recipient will boost your brand’s image and opportunities for further engagement.
Instructional
Email your customers instructional content on how to use, clean, or assemble the product they bought. Not only will they value the information, but it will also cut down your customer service inquiries and reduce poor product adoption.
Product review
Customers want to buy online, but they usually can’t try out the products in person. Reviews are more important than ever to give consumers the confidence to buy the product. Use a time delay to let enough time pass before you ask your customers for product reviews.
When someone leaves a negative review about a product or service, listen to the customer’s needs and address the problem. This is your chance to turn them from an unhappy customer into a brand ambassador.
Cross-sell/up-sell
Generate more revenue while assisting customers with helpful suggestions by cross-selling or up-selling products that are related to what they’ve purchased. Implement time delays to wait until someone buys an item before sending a message to them to purchase a complementary item.
Replenishment
For brands that sell products that customers purchase repeatedly within a certain timeframe, a replenishment email can be a welcomed reminder. It informs customers that their supplies might be running low, and it’s time to get a refill. For example, if you sold daily supplements that typically last six weeks, set a replenishment email for every five weeks after the sale.
Back in stock
Create a back-in-stock email flow so customers get the product they want and you don’t lose money. Set minimum inventory limits to control the threshold for telling customers about new products. You don’t want to tell hundreds of customers a popular product is back in stock when only ten are available.
Also, don’t tell every customer who buys that product that it’s back in stock before other shoppers know. You can also send back-in-stock emails to VIP customers so they can buy first.
Birthday or anniversary
Make your customers feel special by wishing them a happy birthday with discounts, free shipping, free gifts, etc. There are other occasions you can celebrate based on customer data. For instance, tags on user purchases allow you to send anniversary emails.
Build Relationships with Your Email Flows
Automation is invaluable for creating email flows based on customer behavior. Apply these email flow ideas to your strategy to ensure your emails are relevant and timely, providing personalized experiences that deepen customer relationships.
Schedule a consultation with Mavericks Marketing to increase engagement and drive revenue with email flows!
