When strategizing your automated email marketing, designing a Klaviyo flow can be a great way to go. However, although this platform can be extremely powerful, it’s also extraordinarily complex. To get the most out of an automated email campaign, you’ll want to follow these best practices employed by industry experts with experience in Klaviyo.
In this blog, we’ll explore the basics and benefits of Klaviyo flows, as well as tips and tricks to help you get the best return on investment (ROI) for your email marketing. With that in mind, let’s get started!
What’s a Klaviyo Flow?
In the world of email marketing, automation is one of the strongest and most efficient strategies out there. To explain, “Klaviyo flow” is just the nickname for an automated email campaign created on this email and SMS marketing platform. Why waste time sending emails one at a time—especially when your company might have thousands of leads and customers—when you can instruct a program to send relevant messages at the most optimal times?
Automated emails can streamline communication and engagement with your audience, saving time and resources while maintaining a personalized touch. Additionally, they can help nurture relationships with your audience, provide timely information, and encourage continued engagement with your brand.
Types of Klaviyo Flows
Here are just a few of the wide variety of automated emails you can set up for your business.
- Welcome Emails: Introduce your brand to new subscribers or customers, set expectations, and provide initial information or offers.
- Onboarding Emails: Send a series of emails designed to guide new users through your offerings, helping them get started and understand key features.
- Transactional Emails: Abandoned cart, order confirmation, shipping and tracking notifications, post-purchase follow-up messages, and more… These messages are sent during key moments to keep the customer apprised of updates.
- Re-Engagement Emails: Don’t leave idle contacts hanging! Instead, automatically target inactive subscribers or customers with a Klaviyo flow that encourages them to re-engage with your brand through special offers or content.
- Milestone Emails: These personalized messages celebrate a customer’s birthday or anniversary with your brand, often including annual discounts or gifts. Additionally, notify recipients when they reach a specific spending threshold or become a VIP customer.
- Event Invitations and Reminders: Invite customers to events, webinars, or special occasions with your company. Then, send reminders as the date approaches.
- Feedback and Survey Emails: Request customer feedback or participation in surveys to gather insights and improve your offerings.
- Loyalty and Reward Program Emails: People love to be part of a community. To that end, inform reward program customers about their loyalty points, rewards, or special status at key intervals, encouraging continued engagement.
- Account Activity Emails: Alert customers about significant changes or activities in their account, such as password changes or logins from a new device.
- Upsell and Cross-Sell Emails: This is a great way to capitalize on customer data and your product or service’s lifecycle. Automatically suggest related or complementary offerings based on previous purchases or browsing behavior.
The Creativity & Complexity of Klaviyo Flows
While there are seemingly endless variations of potential Klaviyo flow strategies, it’s also a double-edged sword. Because these automated emails can get so specific, it can be a bit overwhelming when you first get started. It’s this combination of creativity and complexity that makes Klaviyo so powerful… and it also causes Klaviyo beginners to panic.
If this is you, don’t give up just yet. The instructions in this blog can help you get started, and there are a number of Klaviyo support resources to guide you.
However, if you’re new to Klaviyo—or email marketing in general—it’s usually better on your ROI to hire an experienced agency to handle it for you. Contracting a knowledgeable team like Email Broadcast will significantly reduce the time it takes for you to get your Klaviyo flow working efficiently. Plus, you’ll avoid the steep learning curve and save yourself a lot of time and resources. In fact, an agency can even be cheaper than hiring a full-time employee.
Make sure to consider all your options before you get started.
How to Build a Basic Klaviyo Flow
With that being said, designing a basic email automation in Klaviyo is simple enough for anyone with sufficient technology savvy. Log into your account and follow this step-by-step guide to get your Klaviyo flow going.
- Create a New Flow. Navigate to the “Flows” section in the left-hand menu, then click on the “Create Flow” button.
- Choose a Trigger. A trigger is simply the action that must take place to activate the program and send an email to a specific contact. For example, this could be subscribing to your email marketing list, making a purchase, or scheduling a service appointment. Select and set up your desired trigger here—and see below for more trigger options.
- Add a Time Delay. After the trigger, you can add a “Time Delay” option to space out the emails accordingly. For instance, if you want Klaviyo to wait a day before it sends the first email, set the delay to “1 day.” Alternatively, you can always set it to send the email instantly.
- Design Your Flow. Next, you’ll want to add your email module. Click on the “+” icon. Then, design your email with your desired messaging. This includes a subject line, a preview line, and the actual content of your message. You also have the option of selecting an email template you’ve previously designed.
- Add More Messages. Repeat the process by using the visual interface to add more triggers and messages to your Klaviyo flow chain. A simple series might include two to three emails spread out over the course of a week.
Before You Go Live…
If at any time you need to go back and make adjustments, you can use the flow editor to make changes to your email content. Click on the email card to open the editor for whichever message you want.
Furthermore, it’s always a good idea to verify that everything is set up correctly before you press the “Go Live” button. For example, set your Smart Sending preferences to avoid overwhelming subscribers who may already receive other communications from you.
When you’re happy with your settings, test the flow by adding a test email address to trigger the message proofs. Walk through each test email to ensure they appear as expected.
Once you’re satisfied that everything is correct, toggle the flow status from “Draft” to “Live.” Then, monitor its performance by checking Klaviyo’s analytics. Pay attention to open rates, click-through rates, and conversions. Use this data to tweak the timing, content, and design of your emails for better results.
By following these steps, you can set up a basic Klaviyo flow that will keep your subscribers engaged and active.
Klaviyo Flow Extended Options
Once you’ve mastered the basics, it’s time to dig into the details to see what else you can create with Klaviyo. Undoubtedly, you’ve got a ton of options to choose from.
Here are the primary trigger types you can employ in your Klaviyo flows.
List Trigger
This triggers a flow when a subscriber is added to a specific list. For example, most businesses design a welcome email or a series of emails that send as soon as someone subscribes to their email marketing. Other options include double opt-in confirmations and list-specific promotions.
Segment Trigger
When you start applying segments to your list, you open up new worlds of opportunities for targeted email marketing. Thus, a segment trigger will launch a flow when a subscriber is added to a specific segment. For instance, a targeted campaign might send emails based on user behavior or attributes like VIP customer reward status. Alternatively, a re-engagement message might use a segment trigger when a list member is inactive for a certain amount of time.
Metric Trigger
On the other hand, you can use a metric trigger to start a flow based on specific events or actions tracked within Klaviyo, such as a purchase, site visit, or form submission. This works well for transactional emails like abandoned cart, post-purchase, and product review requests.
Date Property Trigger
Typically, this trigger applies for any Klaviyo flow based on mileposts, like subscription renewal dates or birthdays. Depending on your industry, you might have other date-based events when your email subscribers may benefit from a message.
Price Drop Trigger
Because Klaviyo has a wide variety of powerful ecommerce integrations and capabilities, this platform truly shines when it comes to connectivity with your online store. To that end, this trigger will send notification emails to certain subscribers who have shown an interest in a specific product when its price goes down for whatever reasons. These price drop alerts encourage purchases from cost-conscious customers looking to get the best deals.
Location-Based Trigger
Does your business operate in certain locales? Do you have customers from different time zones? There are plenty of use cases for a location-based trigger, which launches different emails based on a recipient’s geographic location. For example, they might receive a sale notification from only their local store, or for an event that’s near their hometown.
Predictive Analytics Trigger
Let Klaviyo do the analysis for you. Use predictive analytics to trigger flows based on anticipated behaviors like next purchase date or churn risk. This can preemptively re-engage, win back, or upsell your subscribers.
Custom Trigger
Can’t find exactly what you need in terms of a trigger? Create your own! Klaviyo flows allow you to design a trigger based on specific custom properties. This gives you the chance to create highly-tailored flows for niche applications based on unique behaviors, actions, and events. The possibilities are endless.
Best Practices for Your Klaviyo Flow Emails
Now that you’ve seen all the programming possibilities of a Klaviyo flow, all that’s left is for you to design the emails that go with it. Although there’s plenty to learn about email marketing in general before you start your flow, you can use these tips to guide you.
- Use standard email marketing best practices. There are plenty of places to learn more about producing great email marketing content, including blogs like this. Do your research—or employ an expert or agency to help you get the most out of your efforts.
- Know your audience and your product lifecycle. Always be the expert on your customers. Learn what demographics mark your best leads and your highest-paying patrons. Plus, understand your products and offerings and take note of their rhythm.
- Tweak, test, and repeat. The first idea is rarely the best idea. Keep a mindset of continual growth, and you’ll see continual improvement. Test different key phrases, graphics, strategies, and more. Then, use the analytics you receive to strategize ways to capitalize on the best-scoring versions of each Klaviyo flow.
With all this in mind, your email marketing with Klaviyo can be an even more powerful tool for your business.
Convert More Customers with a Strong Klaviyo Flow
Designing a Klaviyo flow might seem overwhelming at first, but with the right approach, you can harness the full potential of email marketing on this robust platform. By following the steps and tips outlined in this blog, you’ll be well on your way to creating impactful email campaigns that engage your audience and drive results. Just remember to continually monitor and adjust your flows based on performance metrics to optimize your strategy.
Whether you’re just starting or looking to refine your approach, you can always leverage Klaviyo’s capabilities to build stronger relationships with your subscribers and achieve your business goals.
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