Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the e commerce impact podcast. Today back by popular demand. We have Mo Magdy, who is our lead email strategist at our agency Webtopia. He's going to run us through story of a client who has added 20 percent of revenue just through adding some really important flows 

so he's going to walk us through the exact set up that he uses, the process and the strategy.  Welcome, Mo.

  Hi, Jesse.

So why don't we kick off and why don't you give us a little bit of the background about this brand 

 So this brand is in the apparel industry they also do wholesale and have two retail locations

 so if you look back at. Like before working with them, there are  average monthly revenue was around like 30 K.

Only 10%, 10 percent of that was coming from email flows. So. Just to clarify, email flows is something that's automated based on a trigger that happens on maybe on the website. Maybe someone signed up to a form.

Maybe someone viewed a product browse the collection or even kind of been active on the website. Added to cart, abandoned checkout, or even placed an order. 

But yeah, it's an automated process that gets you money while you sleep. 

Cool. What did you set up for them and why was it so successful? 

This brand sends lots of campaigns on a monthly basis. So they send at least 20 campaigns per month. So but this brand is looking around the 40 to 50 percent kind of mark from Klaviyo.

 So you say they'll spend sending 20 campaigns a month , just for terminology, that means they were sending 20 emails a month to their whole list. In this case, so one email every weekday was going out, but there was, it was all being sent just to everyone.

No matter of where they are in the funnel with the book before, whether they're engaged with the opening, nothing. And yet the flows, the automations that are based on triggers, I had very basic set up and hadn't really optimized it at all.

Wow.

They were doing their own campaigns so well, but they were not doing segmentation.

So they were sending most of their emails to the entire list. So we did strategize with them how they would segment their lists better to send to the engaged most of their kind of emails. And. Came up with a strategy for their flow. So at this stage, they had three flows kind of set up super basic welcoming flow, an abandoned court, and a browser abandonment.

And the welcoming flow had only three emails. First email, just delivering the code. And the second email was just like a brand story. Very kind of Plain text, very simple. And the third email reminder about the discount. So technically they're the kind of flows that were going on only kind of telling people about discount codes.

That's it. So that's why they were making like only 10 percent of the total revenue. Yeah. So just, just to clarify here. So you say they'll spend sending 20 campaigns a month in terms of campaigns, that means they were sending 20 emails a month To the whole list  sent just to everyone, no matter of where they are in the funnel with the book before, whether they're engaged with the opening, nothing and yet the flows, the automations that are based on triggers, I had very basic set up and hadn't really optimized it at all.

Is that right?

Yes, that's exactly right. And when you think about it, those 20 campaigns that they were sending per month, at least like in some months they were sending 30 and 35. That was like the minimum 20. They were also generating revenue from those campaigns, but it's heavy work. You have to work on each campaign on a daily basis.

And once you send that campaign is just sent, so you can't reuse it. Maybe you can reuse that Some of this content in other flows, but they were not doing that at that time. So we're just, just the campaign sent and that's it. We forget about it. And we think about the next one each and every day with the work for any e commerce brand, but it was generating revenue.

So it was generating 39% of the total Shopify revenue was coming from email campaigns, but what we will kind of planning on is that transition most of this kind of revenue to be on the flow side to it. So they would need to send less campaigns and also hitting the revenue goals. That's the entire idea.

So less work, a better experience for the customer and more revenue overall for the brand and less damage to the brand because you're not constantly spamming people, which it sounds like they were a little bit doing.

Exactly. Exactly. So what we did,  we worked on the kind of the full strategy for the core flows that any e commerce brand today should have. And those flows are number one, a welcoming flow. Number two, a post purchase flow. Number three, an abandoned checkout flow.

Number four, abandoned card flow. Number five, browse abandonment flow. In some cases, this could be a site abandonment flow for some brands. Now the next one would be review request. The next one would be review complete. And the last one would be sunset flow. So if you are an end and you're, You're about to do email marketing.

Don't think about your email calendar. Think about at least starting getting like separating those flows into milestones that for you to create over the upcoming quarters. 

So if you want to kind of split those flows that I've talked about into milestones, of course, your first milestone would be setting up two flows.

And those two flows are the welcoming flow and the post purchase. Why? We see that the revenue, most of the revenues coming from those flows. like at least 50 to 60 percent of that impact that you want to have from the core flows come from those two only.

And when you think about it, actually, those are the first touch points for most of the customers. So if someone goes to your website and doesn't buy, But sign up on the sign up form and give their email and then receive some emails afterwards as flows and campaigns and then convert, then they may be good.

The post purchase flow. But if someone goes to the website and just buys before subscribing to the email list, the first touch point would be the post purchase flow. So it's basically setting up the stage for the first touch point for most of your customers through those two flows, the welcoming flow and the post purchase flow.

Okay, so maybe we can start by the welcoming flow. Now at the welcoming flow,  so normally you need to be sending the first email immediately, like no time delay at all, not like one minute delay or two minutes, non delay at all.

It will be like. Welcome the people to the brand. And we just like one paragraph about why this brand exists, like what differentiates your brand or what experience to expect after buying your product, just the one liner after welcoming them and immediately also deliver the offer that you promised that X percent discount that you promised either it was like 10 percent or 10%.

20 percent like deliver it as like as soon as possible in that first section after the one liner and make the discount code that people need to kind of copy. Super obvious to see maybe highlight the background of it. And also maybe a bullet points of like Subscribing to like benefits of subscribing to the newsletter, like exclusive sales, they will have access to new arrivals.

You also have the IP early access to events. Like if you have events going on site as well, and this is. Yeah. Email should have only one CTA and this CTA should be the goal of it is taking them back to the website to use the code. Do not include more content in this email. Don't think about, Hey, this is the email, the first email that they will receive.

And it's the most important. So let's give them everything. No, do not do that. It should be gradual. It should be a thing by thing. And the most important thing at this point, just deliver what you promised on, then giving them a little bit like background about your brand when you're welcoming them in that one liner.

A quick question is how you mentioned like a discount. That's not the only kind of way to get people to sign up to a list. What are some other options that people that brands use to get people on there? And do you have any tips again on the pop up or the way that you're capturing those emails in the first place?

Yeah. So the pop up needs like to be super obvious for people who land on the website, but you need to think back about the context of like, where did these people come from? So if you have like a Facebook ad running and in this Facebook ad, it's giving people like that 20 percent discount code. And let's see, like, this is the offer for an hour, giving them that 100 off when you spend more than 1, 000.

So in this case, you need your pop up to give them something different. So it's always about the context, but the main kind of goal is try to catch email subscribers as much as you can, maybe offer free delivering for Certain amount of time, like for the next like six months, if you we give this warranty to each new email subscriber, so you can come up with anything.

Maybe you can come up with a cat, like if you are in the art, maybe industry and stuff is categorized by rooms and people find it hard to find the art that they love based on the room that they are decorating, maybe you can create a God for them. And this guide can be the hook for. The first email and getting their emails like get this guy to decreate any room that we created over the past year and it look included and.

like make the offer super incentivize, incentivizing for people to kind of click through and give their email address. But yeah, mainly most kind of e commerce brands and most e commerce shoppers, even they expect when they land on the website to give their email address, they need to eat something. Kind of a discount back.

So that's why we kind of have this main example and we use this specific strategy for this brand and it's working super well, but yeah, for others, maybe it's not working and always you have to think the context of like where people are coming from, where is this traffic coming from? Is it coming from an ad?

Is it coming from Google? Is it coming from Facebook? Is it coming from organic stuff? Is it come from Tik TOK? What happens on that platform before they come? Are they, are they given a discount even before they come? And I guess that the message is it doesn't have to be a discount just because other brands do.

That doesn't mean you have to give a discount to get people on your list, but what you want to do is like test different offers and figure out which one gets you a good conversion rate from people landing on the site to actually you. Signing up to a list so that you can then put these flows in place and actually make some money.

Sure. Yeah. Now we go into email number two. So you set a time delay between those two emails to be one day in most cases. And this email number two is mainly about kind of educating subscribers. Email subscribers on the brand story. So mention things as like how it started your mission and where you are today.

Maybe think about that about us page. Maybe it's about the founder story at this point, but it's kind of. Always good when you're kind of in the welcoming flow after you deliver the kind of the offer in the first email and the second email, don't just kind of start selling stuff. The, the, the main goal here is to kind of answer.

That's keeping them from purchasing and once you answer those questions, they will purchase anyway. So this is Email specifically builds trusts with the brand, but it's not trust with reviews. It's trust with kind of setting the foundation and seeing the real story and what happened and then show you a real brand.

And it's super important in those days when  lots of kind of drop shippers are out there and people are kind of afraid of ordering online from brands that they do not know about. So if they are a first time customer, first time on the site, probably they do not trust you that well to make the first purchase.

at least most of the people. So that's why it's super important to do this at this point. And the CTAs here should be just kind of directing people to the kind of your top converting collection pages. So also one of the reasons you probably didn't purchase at this point, but we, you have a large catalog or kind of a large collection, They have a paralysis of choice and they want some direction.

So probably at this point, your CTS should be around bestsellers or maybe new arrivals. So don't just direct them back to the website, to your home page. No, try directing them to a page that, Maybe helping them also choose what best fits for them. And one of the, kind of the main kind of things that people kind of like to see on online stores or even kind of, or in stores is best sellers and new arrivals.

So this is the email number two email number three is also. After another one day. And this email has just one goal is just to increase omnichannel presence. So if you have other channels that you have some stuff going on on it, or even not that much going on like on Facebook or Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, whatever it is, TikTok, Try to funnel some of your email subscribers to those channels because not all subscribers will stay engaged with our emails.

So as, as, as soon as we can try to kind of give them other kind of sources to kind of keep up with the brand. And you can use angles such as here's how to stay in touch with us going forward, or let us feature you or take a peek behind the scenes and see what's new on those channels. So and. CTAs here should be like follow us on kind of two to three social channels.

Don't make it more than that. Like choose your top two to three or just choose your, but if you want to use more, just Like the maximum three. So you're so you're not asking too much. So yeah, this is, those are email two and three. 

 So now to email number four is also after one day and now it's kind of getting more serious. So people have received already three emails, one delivering the offer, which may be like Getting them over the, should be getting them over that kind of line of purchasing. Of course they didn't kind of until now, the second email we educated them about the brand of the third email, we tried to increase Omni channel.

So now we're trying to kind of push a little bit more. So in this email, we're going to be trying to handle the most common objections with reviews. So mainly building trust through social proof and common objections here should be things such as delivery time. product quality, customer service, or the entire shopping experience.

And these reviews should be recent reviews and have a star ratings along with a name included like to give more trust and the CTAs should be shop now or see more reviews. So mainly just. Reviews and the only links that you can use, like other than more reviews or shop now, maybe the products that people reviewed for those reviews, but try to keep those reviews like three to five and try to kind of make mix, try to mix and match a little bit, like two reviews about customer service to about the shopping experience one about the product quality or like and, Tests within this email multiple versions.

So you can tell by time why most people add more trust based on kind of certain factors. Is it because of the customer service? Is it because of the product quality? Is it because of the shopping experience and the delivery time? And then we have email number five. So email number five is actually the last email that we're going to be sending before kind of exiting people from this flow.

And this is our last hope kind of to get people to convert, but also we don't want to make it like long. We're going to be, want to make it like. Super snappy, but it adds some scarcity and urgency by informing customers that their discount code will expire in the next 24 hours. So the discount code that we delivered in the first email, now it will be, it's about to kind of expire and just three to four points.

Benefits of choosing this brand over others, not just choosing this brand, choosing this brand over others. So what differentiates you? So when you look about other competitors, maybe you see in the reviews that no one is mentioning customer support. And on your reviews, people are mentioning exceptional customer support.

So you really want to be kind of highlighting stuff like that in this email. Maybe you have free shipping on orders above like a certain tier, maybe like adding like stuff that, Describes the quality of your product like fabrics that make you feel amazing and maybe etc. So yeah, this is purely the welcoming flow, five emails.

And if anyone purchases at any point, they should be taken out of that flow. So if someone purchases after the first email, they should be immediately taken out of this flow because they will be entering other flow, which is the post purchase. So, yeah.

  Yeah. Awesome. So you implemented this strategy how much revenue was their flow doing before and after you implemented this? 

 Monthly email flows revenue percentage from the total Shopify So this previously would around 10 percent with this simple basic setup that they had So as I mentioned before they had before this only three flows and those three flows had no content at all about the brand or the social proof or anything regarding that, which is purely discount codes and to making that money.

 But once we had those flows optimized with the right emails, the right timing with a content that's related to the brand, not just a basic email template it increased to 17 percent and here we're just comparing over two months.

So if you calculate this, this will be around 60 K based on the 10%, but if you calculate it based on the 17%. If you calculated based on the 17 percent it's around 105 K So more than 40, 45 K increase on a yearly kind of basis was something that you did like in six weeks. 

  Yeah. And it's not six weeks of someone working full time on this. This is like, it took six weeks from having the idea to actually 

launching it. 

  Exactly. Amazing. That's such a big impact on, you know, this is quite a small brand that's kind of, as there are bricks and morse a brand more so than a DTC brand and they're really pushing into DTC and this is a big unlock for them to be able to add that much revenue from, you know, quite a small investment. 

  Yes, and, and this also applies for bigger brands. So the idea is that when you think about this percentage the bigger the revenue, the bigger the value of that percentage. So if you do not have these core basic flows set up already on your Klaviyo. You're leaving money on the table.

So let's say that we are talking about a 3 million brand, not a 300 kind of thousand brand. That means this kind of 10% revenue of email flows from the total would be around 590K. So if you do not have any flows in place, you are missing on at least half a million. 

 But if you're doing it also just to get the kind of the starting point, which is the 10%, but if you improve, improve it more, you can get like to 15, 20 percent and this million, this half million will be a million. You're missing on an entire million. per year. So

  Yeah. In the interest of time, should we move on to the other flow? 

  sure. So let's go to the post purchase flow. So also five emails, but this postage post purchase flow is split by the type of customers. So we don't want to be treating first time customers the same way we're treating second time customers.  So the goal here is for the post purchase flow is to do a couple of things is first to kind of eliminate buyer's remorse as soon as possible.

Give a little bit, more details about the product so that people can use it well, which is the best retention tool, is the product used, best use of the product. If people use it kind of well and the product is actually good, then probably they're going to come back and buy more. But at least 75 percent will do their first purchase and never come back for a second purchase.

So that's where you're coming in the post purchase flow. You Want to make sure that you also give them something to kind of incentivize them to come back while you're kind of making sure that they are going through a super good buying experience from the point they placed their order until it was shipped until they It was delivered to their doorstep and then the review thing and then giving them an offer to come back.

So let's talk about those five emails. Three emails of those will be to the first time customers and two emails will be that for a second time customers. So first time customer email number one. So here's what you need to include in this email. Thank the customer for their purchase and welcome them to the brand.

Also one liner, same as we did in the welcoming flow, and then eliminate your, their concerns about shipping and return policy at this point. Like maybe make it in the form of Qs and As, like when will I receive my order? And then. Put the answer. Maybe another question would be, can I return my order? And then the answer and maybe add CTS to the shipping policy and the refund policy.

And at this point, if you are, if you have a loyalty program, it would be really beneficial. If you add create awareness about the loyalty program in this email, also, you can add it in the form of Qs and As, like how can I earn rewards?

And then offer help through email for any issues with their order through this email. First email is mainly about eliminating buyer's remorse and just making sure that they understand where to kind of reach and that kind of the most important FAQs 

when do you send this email? After one hour of placing an order. Why? Because Shopify Usually is set up to send a transactional email of order confirmation, which happens immediately after someone's by someone buys. So you want to be keeping this email at least one hour away from that email because this order confirmation just It acts as an online receipt of your order, but this one is just more on brand.

Now comes to the second email,  for first time customers. Should be sent around two to three days afterwards and should be in this email mainly. If you have a loyalty program, this email will be talking about the entire loyalty program, like how to earn points and how to redeem them, like examples of ways to earn, like signing up to the program, placing an order, separating a birthday, signing up for text, or maybe referring a friend.

So all of these are ways to earn. So it's really kind of I've been, it's, it's super important to kind of highlight those ways to earn this second email. So as you notice, we're trying as much as we can to give value in those two emails, the first one and the second one, not asking for anything. 

 And then in the third email, we're going to be asking for something, but this third email should be timed so that it, it should, it receives their inbox like one.

or two days before they actually received their first order to their doorstep. Why? Because we noticed for this brand that their kind of buying cycle for some customers is seven days, for some is 10, for some is 14. So the least one was 10. So we timed our kind of post purchase flow to be after four, four days.

So in total for Two days and then one day in the beginning, it was six days. So even before that seven days mark, just to kind of try to get that repeat, repeat purchase as soon as possible. Once you get that second purchase, it's way easier to get the third and the fourth and the fifth.

That's the entire idea. But we do it in an amazing way for this brand in the third email, which is a mystery sale. So we're not actually mentioning anything about, is it a discount code? Is it a free shipping? Is it kind of maybe more loyalty programs? We're not mentioning anything. We're just mentioning it's a mystery sale and the curiosity type of offers tends to do super well in this niche as well.

So yeah, this email is mainly asking for that repeat purchase from first time customers, and it should be sent one to two days before the order is  shipped to their doorstep, right before they receive it. 

 Mm. That's so interesting. The fact that the post-purchase flow is more about kind of bringing them into the family and getting them really to like know, like, and trust the brand versus like trying to push sales upon them straight away. I think that's a really important key thing to remember. You're wanting to build a long-term customer, and so the way you do that is by building a great relationship with them, not by trying to just make them buy more stuff straight away. 

  Yeah. And one more kind of bonus point for people . So whenever you have a content campaign that got good results, you can start adding this To your post purchase flow, but added to the emails before you ask for the second purchase.

So we did this with multiple brands before. So whenever we see like a high click through rate for this email campaign, we save it.

And then We kind of come back after the, at the end of the quarter and say, Hey, those couple of campaigns performed really well. We want to be reusing that effort that we made over those campaigns. So let's try to  restructure that content so that it gives like constant value of people who are in the post purchase flow.

And lastly. We have the two emails for the second time customers . So the main difference here is that for second time buyers, it's way easier to get them to the next purchase. You don't have, you don't have to give that much value, but you need to at least customize your copy. So it's not like, thanks for choosing us.

It's like, it's like thanks for choosing us again, stuff like that. Like and maybe you can at this point, give them more details about how to redeem, not how to earn, like show that you really. care about them redeeming their points that they kind of claimed with their purchases. So talk about more about that in that email.

And the CTA should be only one in this email, which directs the website to use their points. So maybe the CTA, you use your loyalty points or use your points or use your, whatever the name of the program that you're using that's attached to your brand. And. In the second email for those people, then you can make your kind of offer and this offer should like you can make any offer at this point, and it would be way easier to convert them to the third purchase.

But yeah, this is like a very basic structure that we usually when we work with. Brands, we usually kind of suggest this structure for the welcoming flow and the post purchase flow, specifically in that parallel kind of niche. A second bonus that we did for this brand for the welcoming flow is that we set up two pop ups on their website, one for people who just scrolling.

And one for people who are who tried to exit and the two pop ups has the same offer. So let's give an example. If it's like 20 percent off the both of the forms have the same offer, but the one on the exit intent just has a time or code and both direct people to the same flow. The same emails, the same content, but we just duplicated that same flow to see the effect of like people coming from different resources from an exit intent pop up versus a browsing pop up.

And what's interesting is that the browsing pop up was kind of captured. more people and converted revenue, but the exit intent captured like 4x less people and converted revenue. That's more. But this is a split test that we did, which you can implement those kinds of split tests to your flow by your flows by time.

So you can make big changes to your flows from each quarter to kind of make sure that you're uprising that. Whatever percentage you have, either it's the 10%, 20, you can reach even 30 percent by time from your flows. This is just the core basic setup. But there are too many things that you can do with, with, with other flows.

I can do back in stock. You can do a price drop. You can do add to wishlist. You can do milestones for the loyalty program. Like when someone hits like 3000 points, you can be setting up a flow specifically for that saying, Hey, Now we've got 3000 points and you're eligible for maybe the 50 off coupon code and here's your coupon and it expires in 30 days and just wanted to remind you before it expires and you can have stuff like that going on.

So that's all we've got time for today. But if anyone is interested in looking into this with Webtopia, we offer a free mini audit. Just give you some quick pointers on your account and what could be done and whether there's an option for us to improve things. And we have a lot of different kind of tiers and ways of working with us 

so definitely worth reaching out and getting in touch with Webtopia if you want to explore this further. for coming along though. 

  thanks, Jesse. All the pressure.