Join us every Wednesday at 2pm EST in the Furlough Community Discord for our Mastermind session hosted by Joe Casanova & Ophir Gadot. Our guests change every week and range from experts, entrepreneurs and creatives to influencers, brands, nomads, investors and more!

 

In this session, Joe Casanova, Ophir Gadot, Roslyn Fawns and Kingsley Osei-Abrah explain all the email automations you need to have great campaigns for your eCommerce.

 

You can also watch the replay of the mastermind here:

 

Choose Your USP

Joe Casanova 

Before we could actually talk about the email automations most importantly, we do need to talk about choosing an ESP. We’re talking about eCommerce automations. And I think it’s going to be unanimous from the panel up here today. What is the best email service provider when it comes down to eCommerce is Klaviyo. Right? Do you agree?

 

Ophir Gadot 

Just um, just I think that all of the platforms are pretty much the same, as long as it’s not not MailChimp.

 

Joe Casanova 

Yeah.

 

Ophir Gadot 

 Cool with it.

 

Roslyn Fawns 

I agree.

 

Joe Casanova 

When in doubt, if you’re starting off, especially with something like Shopify, which is honestly …

 

Ophir Gadot 

I think that Shopify is the point to highlight here, because Klaviyo integrations with Shopify are enhanced compared to other platforms.

 

Joe Casanova 

There we go. And that was my train of thought entirely. So if you’re using something like WooCommerce, which I know some of you are, or your eCommerce service provider Klaviyo might not necessarily be the best choice. But honestly, just because of its intuitiveness, and how simple ease of use and with the integration with Shopify, the segmentation and all that, strongly recommend this. So now that you have your email service provider, let’s talk about what are email automations, also known as drip campaigns, who wants to take this one?

 

What are Email Automations?

Roslyn Fawns 

I kind of use email automations, to be getting the right email to the right person, at the right time in the most efficient way possible. Oh, if you imagine if you had to do these emails by hand, every single one to every single customer, that’s going to take up so much time, and you’re just going to be leaving money on the table? Basically, you absolutely 100% Need an automation or a few automations actually, or a good email strategy.

 

Ophir Gadot 

Wherever you can incorporate automation, you just improve performance, less labor, on point customer journey, and you just save money and get more done.

 

Joe Casanova 

Yeah, I agree. And the consistency of when you’re looking at a giant data set of information, you can then say, Oh, wow, this minor tweak and then actually really analyze the performance of what these key adjustments do and the impact they have on your marketing efforts. So automations are super powerful. And when you see this kind of seems a little complicated, but the reality is these email automations are made up of events, they’re made up of triggers, they’re made up of time delays, and are made up of conditional splits. Okay. And we’ll just start from the top right. And an event is basically something that happens that puts a characteristic on your persona, your customer, so a simple event would be placed in order, right. And now because they placed an order, this event can do something else. These events usually trigger an effect, let’s say an email sent, or could ultimately lead to what’s known as a time delay, where it says, wait an hour before sending this email. Last, definitely not least these conditional splits, or basically yeses, and noes, right? Did this customer place an order? Did this customer experience this event? Yes, they did. They placed an order, and sent them an email confirming the order. No, they didn’t. But they added the item to their cart, then sent them an abandoned cart, like, Hey, you forgot this item in your cart, okay. And these are really key things to understand. Because once you really understand them, and how they work, ultimately, you can really start building out these email automations. And, you know, it’s always best practice to keep it simple. But the reality is that you can get a lot of complex layers and effects and…

 

Ophir Gadot 

It all comes back to the customer journey. So I basically want the emails to be sent in a moment and to a segment that makes sense. So when I say okay, the event is when someone visits the website for the second time, it’s because I can learn from that visit of someone’s interest and where he is on the customer journey. So it all comes back to the customer journey and trying to map it up and engage with the customers effectively for automations.

 

Ecommerce Automations | Welcome Series

Joe Casanova 

Beautiful. So we’re gonna go and start through the list of all the email automations that you need for eCommerce starting with the one and only probably the most popular and it’s honestly it’s the first thing that you should be implementing. And this applies outside of email, I’m sorry, eCommerce. This applies to just traditional service based gigs or a brick and mortar store anything in your welcome series. And this is the first email to Welcome new subscribers. Keyword there, it’s the new subscribers, okay? This is how you introduce your brand to them, build some trust, maybe even add a couple coupons here and there to incentivize purchases. The first thing that you see here, here, is an example. It just simply welcomes them. And maybe, this is all part of the email marketing strategy. You could be reaching out to them as the founder as a CEO, you can be reaching out to them as the brand and building trust. You can do it text based where there’s a higher probability of not landing in the promotional tab versus having a bunch of banners and images and GIFs. And this welcome series is by far the most important and it’s as simple as setting up your triggers one being first joined. Notice a keyword I said was when a subscriber joins your list, the trigger is not placed in order. This is someone who joined your list but has not bought yet. Alright, and now these email automations if you can see up top email one email two email three email four, this is simply a point of reference and example. I’ve seen welcome series be an eight part, a 10 Part, a 12 Part Welcome series before. I saw a welcome series that was just three emails, right. And there’s no black and white way to do this, they’re just finding references. But this all goes back into testing and seeing what works. If you know you’re getting high performance on your welcome series, maybe it makes sense to add another one at the tail end to that.

 

Ophir Gadot 

I just want to add something that is a little outside of eComm. What you need is a welcome series for whatever website that collects emails you have. The moment you get that email, follow up after you register. This is kind of a poll sign for me as an outsider, it says okay, they’re working, it’s active, it’s far more than driving sales is that stamp of I’m alive. The brand or company that I just registered to you can’t stress enough how important it is.

 

Joe Casanova 

For sure. This is actually one of the simple ways that you know, when I do an audit for a brand, I jump in and opt into their email series. And I see if they send me a welcome email immediately. And yet there have been studies that showed if you delayed your welcome email instead of being immediately to be an hour late, this shows it turns out to perform better. And the psychology of this decision of what they figured out when they ran this experiment was that immediately when you sign up your welcome email, people expect a welcome email. They’re like, Oh, okay, cool. And they just delete it versus it coming, you know, an hour two hours before honestly, it goes back to testing, try out you know, immediate, sign up with the initial welcome email, see how it performs, maybe do a split test and do a delay on it, see how that performs. Over time, look at the data experiment with a timestamp and the time between sent emails A/B test subject lines to determine which emails performed us.  

 

Ecommerce Automations | New Customer Series

So next up, big difference here, got your welcome series for new subscribers and you have your new customer series, because you’ve made a new customer. And this is to build loyalty and increase the chance of coming back and nurturing, right. Post purchase follow up type of things where, you know, you send a confirmation to them. And then maybe, let’s say it’s a supplement product, and you have a month supply, perfect. Follow up in two months if they haven’t purchased in the past month, right? These are automatic welcome series that you can do for your customers that could ultimately upsell them. Going back to the initial series, same exact flow automation, except the trigger is a change instead of a first time subscriber, it goes up to a first time purchase. 

 

Ecommerce Automations | Abandoned Cart

And probably one of the most popular email automations, which you guys have all experienced before, if you’ve been on any store, including Amazon, actually has started rolling out abandoned carts. According to research, 80% of online carts are abandoned. I mean, four out of every five people that go online and put items in their cart, they don’t actually complete the checkout. And if you run eComm, then, you know, that’s a lot of money left on the table. So I’m just curious what conversion rate you are averaging when you’re experimenting on your abandoned cart flows?

 

Ophir Gadot 

It comes back to attention spans, a lot of customers goes out of their purchase flow because of a call, message, whatever. They can go out and bounce out. And this is the best way to remind them and get them back. I mean, I’ve seen conversion ranging from 3%, all the way to 7%, 8%, which means more customers converted through the abandoned cart flow then directly on the website, to understand how impactful it is.

 

Joe Casanova 

Absolutely. And when you see some of these automations right, the first email is sent two hours later, then another one 24 hours later. I always enjoyed email marketing, abandoned cart automations are sent from 24 hours. And when they put the product in their cart, just because there’s a probability they got the abandoned cart email at the same time that they’re already in that shopping, you know, mindset and mode. And another strategy is on your last email to do something of an offer, maybe free shipping, maybe a discount, they’re already you know, two emails went by, maybe this last little boost can get them to finally convert. 

 

Ecommerce Automations | Browse Abandonment

So let’s go to our next automation, the Browse Abandonment Flow. And these are automation email automations triggered by behaviors. And Ophir I know that with the abandoned cart, you actually put a trigger for when they viewed an item at the store. So it was kind of a combination of the abandoned cart in the browser abandonment. So if you could expand a little bit about your experience with the Browse abandonment flows.

 

Ophir Gadot 

Browse abandonment targets only people who already registered to your website and they’re not in the abandoned cart flow because you can’t be in the same flow at the same time. Right. I have someone that is in the abandoned cart. He added the product to the cart and didn’t buy, got an email didn’t buy but he came back to the website that reinforces his interest in the product. I want to push right now rather than wait until the automation shows the trigger. It is just designed to kind of nail in the head when the time meaning is meaningful. Now he’s on the website on strike, I want to remind him ASAP.

 

Joe Casanova 

So I want to emphasize a point here, okay? The browser bandwidth is a trigger based on behavior, okay. And this behavior is, let’s say, you know, when they’re on that site, and they view your product, they just showed even more interest, because they’ve seen it before they’re on the flow, they already put the item in their cart, and they left but then now they went back to look at it again, and hitting them while they’re in that, you know, kind of lower funnel decision point where they’re ready to convert because they’re back on your store. And immediately after, especially the power of sending them a discount, while they’re in the store viewing a specific product that they’ve looked at before but didn’t convert on. So these little tricks are what can ultimately increase your conversion rate on your store entirely by a 1, a 2% boost. And these 1 to 2% differences can be very, very big numbers. And the giant scheme of things, especially for eCommerce is doing volume. 

 

Ecommerce Automations | Post-Purchase Follow Up Flow

So next up on our email, eCommerce automations is the Post Purchase Follow up Flow, we kind of stated this, there’s ways that you can incorporate these flows together. And you know, in this case, the post purchase follow up can be separate, or can be part of the new customer welcome series. There we go. So in this post purchase follow up flow is as simple as you know, following up with notifications, shipping updates, or, Hey, it’s time to buy if you’ve run out of your product. So take a look at the triggers, right, the trigger is the purchase product. And it can be an email confirmation an hour, two hours later, but then the second email could follow up a whole entire month later. All right. So something to take into consideration. Do you need every one of these automations? No, which ones can you leverage that’s unique to your brand. So…

 

Roslyn Fawns 

Yeah, it’s surprising how many people will buy from you again, after they get the first email from the post purchase flow, I would say when you’re writing the copy for that flow, and really try and show that you’re appreciative of the customer, because they bought something from you. And when they buy like a second and a third time, up the ante on that appreciation, because it will stick with them. And they’ll feel like you really care about their support, it will just increase their loyalty to you and your brand.

 

Joe Casanova 

Amen. That is spot on. Because these people have already purchased, you aren’t trying to get them to convert, you’re trying to show them why you appreciate them. And this is why, you know, there’s companies out there that blushy product based companies that put an emphasis on packaging, they didn’t buy because of the package, but they already purchase the packaging as a way to incentivize them to be a recurring customer. So that’s exactly what this flow can do.

 

Ophir Gadot 

Purchase follow up also enables you basically to wrap up the customer experience. And now you are kind of capable of connecting them A) to your customer service, B) to your resources on the product, educate them about the product and send them video tutorials, I can enhance that connection between the brand and the customer for that flow. And also drive user generated content for review collection effort is being filtered on this automation.

 

Joe Casanova 

Absolutely. And you know, just a little pro tip on your post purchase email. The first one tries not to incorporate a discount, usually people do not want to be offered this immediately after buying. 

 

Ecommerce Automations | Birthday, Milestone & Just Because

 

So keep it going. And of course birthday, milestones, just because, this nurtures the customers, builds those trusts, these can be one year anniversary emails, this can be happy, whatever Thanksgiving, hey, we missed you.

 

Kingsley Osei-Abrah 

Or just we’re just checking, you know, “Hey, it’s been a while. How have you been?”

 

Ecommerce Automations | Predicted to Churn

Joe Casanova 

Now “Predicted to Churn” is a flow, which is basically predicting that your customers are going to leave. And it’s this could be based off inactivity, this could be based off not opening emails can be based off the fact that they haven’t been on the site. So doing these reengagement or these winback campaigns are a way to bring them back to you. And you can do as you can see here by NPI X, they did a very aggressive discount 25% off of their entire order, which is you know, maybe your company only does like 10% off on the welcome email 25% At this point, they’re out the door. So going aggressive with that promotion is not that bad of an idea. And you can see from the numbers a string F5Uh that is a unique code generated for this specific person. And these predicted return flows are such a great way to re-engage them right. So that they have an open emails and X amount of days. Notice the time difference right Wait 60 days, wait 30 days, wait 30 days and as you wait longer, longer, you get more aggressive because they’re out the door. And this is a simple way to go ahead and bring them back, incentivize them to come back and back to what actually Kingsley shared. It’s this in tangent with these. You know, just because emails with these milestones email are a fantastic way to help them from not churning out. 

 

Ecommerce Automations | VIP/Ambassador/Affiliate Flow

So this is what I refer to as the VIP/ Ambassador Affiliate Flow and of course You can turn this into, you know, turn your best customers into a salesforce by offering them maybe a commission or an affiliate rate. But most importantly, these are the people that have actually purchased from you multiple times, chances are they enjoy your brand. So of course, they’re going to show some love to you. And but most importantly, this isn’t really focused on building the reviews. This is focusing on turning your best customers into your best sales team, your best representatives, and giving them potentially a part of the pie, right? They bought in from you X amount of times. So why not offer them an incentive to go ahead and push this to the people in their network because they already believe in it. This is also a way to show appreciation. In this VIP Ambassador flow, you can send post purchase follow ups for someone who bought one time like wow, welcome to the brand army, you can send two times like wow, you bought from us two times, we appreciate you so much. And then third time a third time’s a charm and sending these confirmation emails specifically on what part of the journey that they’re in. And this customization and personalization within these emails tend to perform very well.

 

Ophir Gadot 

For me, beauty is spending so much money and effort on user generated content that we did a test with our VIP customers to view 5% or 10% exclusive discount on a picture or video with the product, not review just video view or picture of the product that they can use in our marketing efforts. It’s something that if you try to produce with influencers would cause 100k, easy, and we just got that like that. Because a lot of people like to affiliate this route that is not relevant for all people like not every person is going to start sharing links and stuff like that. This is something definitely meaningful. The second is like the VIP customers, you want them invited to your rewards program from an analytical standpoint, only 10% of customers actually opt in and uses rewards. These are these people who opt in and just make more money and increase the customer value.

 

 

Ecommerce Automations | Feedback & Review Flow

Joe Casanova 

Now let’s say I love it. Thank you Ophir for that. And of course, last but definitely not least, it’s the feedback in the review flow. This deserved its own special automation, just because of how important it is. Garnering reviews, especially in the beginning of an eCommerce business can ultimately affect the store’s conversion rates significantly. So why would you ask every single person that comes into your store for a review, especially if you aren’t sure if their experience went right early on. So in this type of flow, going back to the insights and input that Ophir shared, it’s, you know, asking your best customers is a great way to do it, or most importantly, asking internally using that to kind of get them into the next step. So this is something of what a simple, Chewy, as you guys know, the big pet brand, what they do to garner reviews, and it’s kind of built in within there. The email itself, I wanted to point out the trigger, which we kind of already spoke about, which is purchase two times because chances are if they purchased once, and then they purchased again, they probably liked your brand enough to come back to it. So

 

Ophir Gadot 

A lot of times before you send someone to leave a review, you want to make sure that they will leave a positive review. You can do one email with an internal “rate your experience”. And then the people that let’s say rated you four stars and up, they get into the “ask for review” automation. And this way you kind of dominate, which people are going to submit the reviews to be published.

 

Joe Casanova 

Absolutely. That was spot-on Ophir. I love that that is gold and doing an internal review before going into the live review systems like a Trustpilot or Google reviews. And what’s the probability right you might have a drop off right, even though you’re kind of gating the negative reviews from coming into your store or coming into those Trustpilot or Google reviews, it does require some work. But it also guarantees the results. In this flow, it is a little bit more streamlined. But you’re open to the possibility that maybe the second order that their purchase ended up having a default and they couldn’t get a hold of the customer service and actually leaving a bad experience. And there are apps out there like when you submit a photo to use for marketing resources for the company automatically generates a coupon for you. So these types of plugins and tools can be incorporated within these flows, I can pretty much guarantee that Chewy itself. This is not natively done within the app that they have some sort of software that supports this.

 

Give it 60 Days 

Ophir Gadot 

… of your syndication for sure. This syndication, just to clarify as a platform where you manage all the reviews you’re getting so you can make a decision about what’s being published and what’s not.

 

Joe Casanova 

Beautiful. So give it 60 days. And what we say by that is because you know, at least when it came down to our approach, if you’ve never sent emails before, just starting to blast emails out and started doing this on a weekly or bi weekly, can get a little out of hand especially when your customers aren’t used to it. So setting up these automations and letting them do the nurturing letting them get the comfort of actually receiving these emails and most importantly is warming up your domain.

 

Ophir Gadot 

The email tools and I’m not sure about the exact term so forgive me for that. But the email tools are basically analyzing your email deliverability giving you a ranking accordingly. So if you’re sending let’s say a mass email now Black Friday to All your recipients and get a 10% open rate, this impacts your deliverability. Afterwards, you want to keep a high number, your open rates and click rate. So the platform will see you as a very relevant source of emails, and not to follow on spams and promotion tabs, you want to be very mindful of that, I would say that the rule of thumb would be, every time you see less than 20%, open rate, try to focus on warming up your IP, with automations as focused as they can be, and then start campaigns also more segmented, try to push that email open rate as much as you can, this will impact your performance throughout.

 

Joe Casanova 

Yeah, you know, spot on. And I gotta add that because you did say, warming up your IP. And when you look at email service providers like Klaviyo, you’re on what’s known as a shared IP. So your IP is being shared with certain businesses and brands and your deliverability is affected by someone else’s. And a simple migration, especially when you destroy your domain’s reputation, is actually jumping off from a shared IP to a dedicated IP. And by doing that, you actually figure out your best customers, the ones that are very likely to open up emails, and you start at a very small segment, I’m talking about maybe 50, people just get that open rate and then you start at 100 to 200 to 500 to 1000. And then eventually you start introducing the bigger vast of your audience and this is a … Sometimes these reputations get impacted very negatively especially when you’re acquiring bliss from others, you know, people that sold it to you. I don’t recommend that actually, when we started with furlough started a different domain furloughmedia.com, and we use that one to do cold outreach, so we didn’t affect the reputation of our domain. That being said, I can’t believe it’s already one o’clock. Got to stick. So yeah, there are email services, email cleaners, there is email oversight, there’s tons of services out there where you can grab your list, throw it in, and there’s spam traps. There’s literally emails that are dedicated to catching emails as spam and hurting your domain and things like that. So avoid cold email on your domain, especially if it’s a very important domain and nurture your list and nurture your audience. So this has been all the email automations you need for your eCommerce Store. So Roslyn, Kingsley, Ophir, I appreciate you guys coming in, dropping some wisdom. So let’s show some love to these wonderful panelists in today’s mastermind session. Look at these beautiful people love to see it love to hear it. With that said the discord is open. We will be kicking it in the lounge. So appreciate you guys tuning in to this awesome session. All your questions and getting active. So go crush your weekly goals. We’re here to support and appreciate you guys signing off. Much love everybody. Take care. Have a great week.