Automatic Pre-Sale Email Flow
(discover the importance of presale email streams in your online marketing strategy)

Automatic Email Flows

Automatic email flows can generate up to 45% of your total billing: it is a very important and valuable part of your marketing strategy and, above all, the only one that does not require constant work.

In fact, unlike email campaigns, which you have to prepare every time and depending on the type of list you decide to deliver them to, flows are only prepared once and then work forever. Exactly! If we look at it this way, from the point of view of time invested and financial return, it is without doubt the most economically profitable medium at our disposal.

If this information alone is not enough for you (that would be rather strange), I will add one more thing: it is incredibly easy to set up and requires very little initial work. Clearly, and as we always repeat in our courses, it is important to monitor the results every month to see if improvements can be made to increase the return, but only that and nothing more.

When we talk about automatic flows, we have four different families:

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• Pre-sale

• Abandoned checkout and navigation

• Up-selling

• Cross-selling

 

PRE-SALE FLOW + POPUP

Automatic pre-sale flows (newsletter subscription + discount) are the most profitable flows we have because they can generate up to 30-35% of the total turnover.

This is a very useful flow to increase the conversion rate of those people who come to our website for the first time (via organic traffic from Google, blogs, social and via paid traffic from ads) and who do not yet know our product (usually between 10 and 20% of those who enter this flow end up buying). Similarly, it is important that with this stream we increase our total email list, which we can later use for our email campaigns.

It is characterised by the presence of a popup integrated into the website (if you use the Klaviyo platform, we will teach you how to configure it, so that it has the highest probability of success) and a series of emails (we recommend 4) that have the sole purpose of increasing the chances of the person buying at that precise moment without having to wait later. In other words, it is a way through which we can try to directly convert cold traffic to our website.

To know what we are talking about, remember the following:

• Cold traffic: this is made up of those people who are coming to our website for the first time and who still do not know whether they like our product, but for some reason have decided to visit us 🡪 At this stage of the funnel it is essential to increase the awareness of these people, i.e. identify what their problem is and offer them a solution.

• Tepid-hot traffic: this is made up of people who already know us or who have previously visited our website without purchasing and who are potentially waiting for the right moment to complete their order. Depending on the type of product we sell or the market we are in, they are usually divided into warm (lukewarm) and hot (hot), to differentiate the level of propensity to buy they have; it is a kind of distinction that works especially for shops that have a long sales funnel and where people move from one state to another less quickly 🡪 At this stage of the funnel it is essential to generate interest and trust, showing the person that we are the best in the product/service offered.

• Customers/retargeting: this is made up of those people who have already purchased our service or product at least once and have offered us their trust and represent the most profitable part of the funnel, because we will have already paid for them to get to know us and make the purchase, i.e. from now on, everything we sell to that customer will be pure profit 🡪 At this stage of the funnel we have to show that our work continues even after the purchase. HOW? By offering an impeccable after-sales service and maintaining direct contact with them, through exclusive offers and emails (see part of the automatic UP-SELLING flow)

 

Now we will see how to create a popup in Klaviyo and what features it must have in order to convert as much as possible.

The first thing you have to do is go to the menu and select Lists & Segments. Once selected, you must click on the Create List / Segment button in the top right-hand corner, select List, assign a name (e.g. "Popup list") and finish by clicking on the Create List >> button.

 

Once the Popup List has been created, click on it and select where it says Setting above and a page like the one in the image above will open.

All you have to do now is go down to the Opt-in Process part and select "Single Opt-in" and "Update List Settings".

 

This way, all contacts who leave their email in your pop-up (the one we are going to create now), will end up directly in this list.

So, we have to create the popup for our website and we always do this in Klaviyo.

 

In the menu on the left-hand side, go to Signup Forms and then in the top right-hand corner click the Create Signup Form button.

On the next page you will see a number of layouts already prepared by Klaviyo: it is important to select a layout from the "Collect Email" categories and then choose a template from those that have the POPUP icon in the bottom right-hand corner with a drawing of a computer and a mobile phone; this means that you are choosing a template that will also automatically adapt to the mobile version so that it will appear to all your users (remember that more than 80% of traffic today is mobile). 

 

Once you have selected the template of your choice, Klaviyo will ask you what name you want to give the popup (e.g. you can call it "Popup pre-sale") and in which list you want the contacts of this popup to arrive; here you have to select the list you created earlier "Popup list".

 

Now comes the creative moment, where we have to customise our popup so that it is unique and identifies us, both in terms of colour, style and text.

All this customisation is configurable from the STYLES button (we can change the photo, decide its position, size, text font and many other things).

But the most important thing is to check these two options: POPUP in form type and SHOW ON ALL DEVICES; otherwise, it will not be displayed as a popup and/or will not be displayed on mobile phones.

 

 

Once we have a popup that we are happy with, we need to configure the rules for its correct configuration. To do this, we must go to the second TARGETING & BEHAVIOR button.

You must select "Show base on rules" and in the second line select after how many seconds you want the popup to appear. We recommend between 40 and 60 seconds, so that the user has a chance to see at least part of our website (and therefore we are sure that he or she is an interested user, because if not, he or she would not stay a minute). Of course it all depends on the business, i.e. if you have a single-product shop you can reduce this time.

 

Then it is also important to select what you want to appear on both desktop and mobile, and that it should not appear to people who are already registered in our list.

 

We can also create a filter so that the pop-up only appears in certain countries by removing or selecting those where you want it to appear. 
 

 

 

In addition, we must remember that, depending on the popup template we have chosen, we may have to delete part of the process, as in the case below, so that after the Email Opt-in, Success remains directly. Otherwise, upon completion of the first popup, a second popup may appear (normally it is like a second confirmation message that appears to the user when he leaves his email and where we can tell him, for example, to look at his email, also checking SPAM because there you will find our email with the promised discount code).

 

Finally, once you have everything ready, simply change the status of your pop-up from DRAFT to LIVE and press the Publish Changes button. Try entering your website to see if everything works perfectly and if your email is saved in the correct list.

 

 

And whenever you have something prepared (either in emails or popups), remember to do a couple of tests to make sure everything works as you imagined, because this will save you many 'stupid' mistakes you might make.

 

The popup features to convert more are as follows:

• Little text and very clear (Get 10% on your first order - Get the most out of a 10% discount)

• Must have an attractive offer: 10% discount (not more because we need to appear as a strong shop and we will also need more discounts in some future email campaigns)

• We will ask for as little data as possible: we recommend the name and email (the name because it allows you to personalise the email); but if you also need the phone for your business, it is worth asking for it

• It must have an image that characterises you, or your logo (the user must know that it is a pop-up on your site and not an external banner)

 

Now that we have the pop-up, select Flows from the menu on the left and then, at the top right, the Create Flow button and then the Create from Scratch button.

 

 

 

To make the creation of the flow as simple as possible, I will copy the entire flow directly to show you how you should set it up in practice.

 

How the flow works (logic)

So that you can understand how a flow works, it is based on the creation of a rule/condition whose fulfilment causes an action. For example, as an initial condition we will say that someone subscribes to the presale popup list and then an action is produced which is the sending of an email.

Then we put a time condition (for example, that 1 day has passed since the first email was sent) and add a condition, which is NEVER HAVE YOU MADE A PURCHASE. And if the condition is met, there comes another action, which is the sending of a second email. And this process is repeated until a fourth and final email is reached.

I realise that 4 pre-sales emails may seem like a lot, but look at the statistics within the same flow and you will see that all the emails generated sales (clearly each email generates less than the previous one on average, because some of the people have already made a purchase with the previous email and so the flow stops).

 

 

 

 

EXTRA TRUCK*: One of the things we recommend is to see how a fifth email from the same stream works, which is triggered one week after the fourth email received. This is done because the first 4 emails are all sent within a 3-day time frame, which is usually when the flow works the most, since we don't want much time to pass between when we offer the discount and when the customer completes the purchase. However, in recent years we have also noticed that some people sometimes start to get so busy that they completely forget about the purchase and sometimes do not have time for the next 3 days, so a last reminder after 7 days could have a positive effect and could also be seen as a last resort (because if after 3+7 days the customer does not dare to buy, it will be almost impossible for them to do so later; and at the same time, it is better to communicate to the potential customer that we have decided to give them another chance to buy, rather than remain without a purchase).

Just add a small part to the previous flow and copy the last email (the fourth), making some changes (which we will see later, in the email part).

Remember what we always say: the best thing in marketing is to test and measure results to make effective decisions. 

So try to see if the open rate of this fifth email does not lower your average rate too much and see if you get more conversions. 

 

 

So far so good, we have only configured the Pupup list, the popup itself and the automatic flow, but we need to do the most important thing, which is to write the emails that will be sent automatically with the flow.

 

At this stage of customising the email, you must be clear about the same principles as in a normal email campaign, i.e. the most important thing is that you have a very good open rate, so that your potential customers can read what you are going to offer them (in this case a discount on their first purchase). Remember that to have a good open rate you have to work on the subject line of the email. A good email subject line = a good open rate = a good chance that the customer will end up buying (in the document Email Campaigns I leave you with tested email subject lines with an open rate of between 40-60%).

In addition, you must create a feeling of increasing urgency in the emails, so that with each email they feel they have no more excuses; in the emails the potential customer must understand two things:

• Why should he buy your product now (because now he can have it at a discount and save money)

• Because he should hurry up (because this discount you give him only lasts 72 hours) (which could then become 10 days if you decide to opt for the fifth email too, but you won't tell him until the end)

• Why your product and not one of your competitors (because you are the best at what you do or sell and you can prove it to him 🡪 see the Conversion Rate module).

 

EXTRA TRUCK: Although we tell our customer in the email that they only have 72 hours to use the discount, in reality we will always keep this discount code active for several reasons: first, we don't want a potential customer to open the email on the 4th day by mistake, try to use the discount code, and then, seeing that it no longer works, abandon the purchase; second, if a customer contacts us saying that they didn't see the code, we can always tell them not to worry and that we will activate it for them (this way we will start to build trust).

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So, with regard to this issue, remember to remove any discounts from your products (if you have discounted products, put them at the normal price and offer the discount via the popup, because it works better and, in addition, you can use the discounted price directly on the site in other promotions such as Black Friday). And also remember to create a short and easy discount code on your web platform and with the only condition that it can only be used once per customer.

Also remember to include several CTA buttons so that if the customer clicks on any part of the e-mail, they will always be directed to the same landing page (product page of your website). And also explain how to use the discount code.