Klaviyo Abandoned Cart Flow For Massive Conversions in 2022

Klaviyo Abandoned Cart Flow For Massive Conversions in 2022

The abandoned cart automation (also called a flow, customer journey, or sequence depending on your email marketing provider) is among the three essential automations any brand needs to implement if you’re selling things online. Recently, someone asked me how long it takes to build one of my abandoned cart flows, but the real question is, how do I optimize my abandoned cart flow for conversion?

It starts with hyper-targeting segmentation, and Klaviyo makes this incredibly easy.

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Pro Email Copywriting Tips To Stay Out Of The Spam Folder (And Get More Email Opens)

Pro Email Copywriting Tips To Stay Out Of The Spam Folder (And Get More Email Opens)

You don’t have to be a professional copywriter to stay out of the spam folder (although it does help), but there are some things that are particularly important to pay attention to help you stay out of the SPAM folder. 

In the previous post we discussed email list hygiene and how your list could be sending you to the spam folder. But, this post is all about you, and I’ll be sharing some of my email copywriting tips that can improve your email open rates and get you in front of your audience.

Don’t want to be in the spam folder? Just ask

It’s becoming common practice to ask your subscribers or customers to ‘whitelist’ you in their inbox to avoid going to the spam folder. You don’t ask, you don’t get! The best places for you to position this are not always your emails themselves, but can be: 

  1. On ‘Thank You’ landing pages after someone has subscribed or signed up
  2. Messages at checkout 
  3. On social media

You can also use the ‘P.S.’ section of your first couple of emails in your sequence to remind your audience to whitelist you. The message, no matter where you add it, should be clear and simple, something along the lines of: 

“Thank you for your purchase/subscribing. An email is on the way to you now so keep an eye out in case it lands in your spam or junk folder. If it does, move it to your inbox and add us to your approved senders list so you don’t miss out on anything!”

And just like that, you’ve asked your audience to do it for you. This also has benefits for your reputation and credibility because the more people that do this, the more reputable you become to their email provider! 

Pro Tip: Ask your subscribers to move your emails from the “promotions” tab to the “primary” tab in Gmail so that you know they will be front and center when you send them. 

Gmail Promotions and Primary Tab email copywriting tips

Your subject line matters most

Your email’s subject line alone can mean the difference between an email open and the spam folder. In fact, 69% of email recipients reported an email as spam due to the subject line alone. So, with a lot riding on your subject line, how can you stack the odds in your favor?

Avoid spam trigger words

Certain words in your copy or subject line may make it more likely your email will be flagged as spam. This happens because these trigger words are used most often in phishing or spam emails so filters automatically classify you along with them.  

Some examples of these include:

  • For free
  • Get paid
  • Amazing offer
  • Save now
  • Limited time only
  • Work from home
  • Nigerian prince has money for you 

Also, even if you don’t use trigger words, incorrect punctuation and capitalization makes you look unprofessional and suspicious. A subject line that looks like this: “TH1S iS n0t sPaM!” won’t increase the chances of your email being opened.

Pro Tip: Here’s a more comprehensive list of spam trigger words for you to look at. Just be aware that this list is constantly evolving so make sure you stay up to date if you see a dip in rates. 

Using emojis can help (sometimes) 

You would think that using emojis would be a spam trigger, but it’s actually the opposite. Many companies have A/B tested emojis versus no emojis in their email marketing and found that emojis came out on top with their audiences. 

Emojis, when used sparingly, can make your email stand out in the inbox, easily convey emotions, and draw the attention of the person reading. 

Pro Caveat: Emoji success heavily depends on your audience, as well as your own branding. Is it in keeping with your brand voice to use an emoji? Will your audience understand, or even appreciate them? The answer to both of these questions needs to be yes for it to work as a strategy for you. 

Clickbait is dead

By now pretty much everyone should know what clickbait is, where you have an enticing subject line but the email content does not deliver. The long and the short of this is, don’t do it. Clickbait loses the trust of your audience, and the point of your email and nurture sequences is to build trust not break it! Plus, audiences are starting to become desensitized to clickbait which means it’s not going to be effective anyway!

Poor spelling and grammar can make you look like a bot

Automated bots, hackers, they all have one thing in common. Their spelling, grammar, and formatting is a dead giveaway. The problem with this is, the more mistakes and wonky your email is, the more likely you’ll be labeled a spammer or be hit with complaint reports as well.

So, if you’re not a natural writer and often make mistakes, use an email builder that allows you to format your emails properly and create templates to save time and effort in the future.

Pro Tip: Use a tool like Grammarly which can help with spelling and grammar across a variety of platforms and even offers suggestions to improve your writing and tone if it’s not your forte.

Test and compare what works best for your audience

While I can give you a lot of email copywriting tips, and make this a much longer blog post, the truth is, you also have to figure out what works best specifically for your business and your audience. That’s where A/B testing comes in.

Normally this involves having different subject lines to improve open rates, or different layouts and content in the body of the email to see which one makes more sales. It’s then a matter of tweaking what works, and what doesn’t, to get the best results.

Email copywriting really is an art form and takes practice, patience, and often a lot of testing, particularly when it comes to email opens and staying out of the spam folder, but hopefully, this post has given you an excellent place to start.

If you need email copywriting tips specifically for your business or help optimizing your email campaigns, drop me a message and see how we can work together. As a MailChimp Expert and Klaviyo Master with over 8 years of experience and countless happy clients, this is what I do! 

Ready to get started?

David Sandel, Founder

David Sandel, Founder

Low Gravity Solutions

LGS provides full-service automated digital marketing for seven-figure businesses, including strategy, technology management, copy, and design. Your passion is your business. Ours is marketing and automation.

Email List Hygiene: Is Your Audience Causing Your Emails To Go Into The Spam Folder?

Email List Hygiene: Is Your Audience Causing Your Emails To Go Into The Spam Folder?

In my last article, I shared how to make sure your domain is set up properly so that your contacts’ email providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook, AOL etc.) recognize your email as valid and safe. But, it’s not just your DNS settings and emails that can get you sent to the spam folder, it also has to do with the quality of your list. 

In the case of email list hygiene, bigger lists are not always better! Having a huge contact list that gets you sent to the spam folder is much more damaging to your brand than a very small, engaged list. After all, it’s not about size, it’s what you do with it. 

What makes for poor email list hygiene? 

Audiences with: 

  • A lot of old/out-of-date email addresses
  • High abuse/spam complaints
  • High bounce rates
  • High unsubscribe rates
  • Lack of engagement like low open rates and click rates
  • Blacklisted emails/IPs

Will get noticed by reputable email providers for all the wrong reasons. This can get your account removed, paused, or simply just won’t let your emails through, rendering your email marketing efforts pointless. To avoid this, you need to improve the quality of your email list. Here’s how: 

Start With Permission 

There’s nothing worse than having unsolicited emails in your inbox, and it turns people off if they suddenly start hearing from you if they haven’t given you permission to email them. In fact, a survey by Cisco in 2019 found that 32% of people would switch companies over data sharing or privacy concerns. 

This means that anytime someone ends up on your email list, they should have decided to be there. Not only is it now a law for EU citizens under GDPR, and Californian consumers under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) but consent (or lack of) plays a huge role in abuse complaints.  

Pro Tip: Both MailChimp and Klaviyo use a double opt-in method so that you have proof that they gave their permission for you to email them. It also helps your mailing list to be free of inactive or fraudulent emails. 

Turn On MailChimp Double Opt-In 

To make sure your double opt-in is active in MailChimp

  1. lick on ‘Audience’ from the tab on the left side of the screen, then > ‘All contacts’.
  2. Once on that screen, click the ‘Settings’ drop-down menu in the navbar in the middle of the screen and select ‘Audience name and campaign defaults’.
  3. Scroll down a bit to “Form settings” and select ‘Enable double opt-in’.
MailChimp Double Opt In Settings

Turn On Klaviyo Double Opt-In

  1. Navigate to the list you want to enable double opt-in
  2. Go to ‘Settings’
  3. Scroll down to ‘Opt-In Process’ > Confirm you’ve got double opt-in selected
  4. Scroll down further to save and update your settings.  
Klaviyo Double Opt In Settings

Pay Attention To Your Bounce Rate

Even though ISPs and email providers don’t publicly publish their bounce limits, what we do know is that high bounce rates are a factor that can flag and cause you to go into the SPAM folder. 

Soft bounces should be ignored for the time being because these can be temporary issues like a technical connection problem, email size issues, full inboxes, and other things that tend to resolve themselves. But hard bounces are what I’m talking about. This is when the email is completely undeliverable because the address cannot be identified. 

The most common reasons for hard email bounces include: 

  • Spelling errors in emails
  • Non-existent emails (email accounts that have been closed or fake accounts that were submitted by bots) 
  • Expired email addresses (e.g. very common in B2B if an employee moves on and their email is closed) 

Go through your last email campaigns and take a look at the hard bounce statistics and remove any email addresses that you find. If you’re looking to benchmark what your bounce rate should be, as of April 2021, the average bounce rate across all industries was around 10.28%, however you should be aiming for as small a bounce rate as possible.

Pro Tip: MailChimp and Klaviyo automatically remove hard bounces for you, so you shouldn’t have to do this manually.

Scrub old lists before you upload to your platform 

If you have a large list from another platform like a CRM, changing email platforms, or you haven’t integrated yet and you have an excel spreadsheet, consider using a list scrubber like ZeroBounce to make sure the emails are still valid before uploading. This saves you time and effort later when your emails don’t seem to be going through!

ZeroBounce Email Verification

Pro Tip: Make sure to maintain your current list and scrub it every 2 – 3 months, or more frequently if you send a lot of emails. This makes sure your campaigns are likely to get the most engagement.

Don’t purchase email lists 

Purchasing email lists was a big craze years ago, particularly before we had legalities in place to protect people’s right to consent to marketing and privacy. But, aside from the dubious practices that most firms use to mine these emails, there’s a more pressing problem with paid lists. 

Most paid lists aren’t your target customer, and these people aren’t interested in your products. They’ve never heard from you before, and even if they are active emails (which a lot of them are not), they aren’t going to buy from you. So why waste time having them on the list and hurting your list health and stats? It’s pretty much a waste of money. 

Reduce Complaints

Complaints are raised when users report your email as spam. This is one of the biggest issues because it’s coming straight from the consumer which is directly affecting your brand.

Types of things that commonly result in complaint reports, and things you should avoid are:  

  • Misleading subject titles (clickbait)
  • Changing the “From” information when you resend campaigns
  • Using spam trigger words
  • Not having consent
  • Old audiences/lists
  • Hiding opt-out/unsubscribe buttons

Ultimately, proper email list hygiene is about ongoing maintenance. It’s something that you’ll have to do regularly rather than just once. So before you start sending out more campaigns, go through and improve your current audience lists today.

If you need a hand with your contact lists, or to boost engagement with your email campaigns, drop me a message. As a MailChimp Expert and Klaviyo Master I’ve got over 8 years of experience helping countless businesses with their eCommerce email marketing and making sure their emails hit the inbox. 

Ready to get started?

David Sandel, Founder

David Sandel, Founder

Low Gravity Solutions

LGS provides full-service automated digital marketing for seven-figure businesses, including strategy, technology management, copy, and design. Your passion is your business. Ours is marketing and automation.

3 Essential Email Automations to Start with for Your Brand

3 Essential Email Automations to Start with for Your Brand

I recently wrote an article on the different automations that you should ultimately have as part of your marketing strategy.
You can read that here: https://lowgravitysolutions.com/ecommerce-email-marketing-automations/

But what if you don’t have the time or budget (or both) to set these up?

Since email marketing still delivers a huge return on investment (ROI) compared to other forms of marketing at around $38 for every $1 spent (3,800%), it deserves some of your focus. 

So I wanted to talk about the most essential automations you should start with first, especially if you’re an eCommerce brand making direct sales. I’ve also included some tips and strategies on what to include in each automation. These all come pre-built if you’re using a platform like Klaviyo or MailChimp, but you’ll need to do some customization and personalization if you truly want to make them effective.

Added Bonus: These automations are the highest opened and clicked emails you can send. This helps increase your domain score and avoid your contacts’ SPAM folders. 

1. Abandoned Cart Sequence

On average, 69.80% of carts are abandoned across all industries before checkout and rising to a whopping 85.65% on mobile. So being able to reach out to these potential customers is essential for recovering some of this revenue you missed out on. 

This is where I would start with your eCommerce store email automations and the one most-likely to result in sales quickly. After all, if they’ve added to the cart, they’re already one foot in the door to a purchase.

What to include in your abandoned cart sequences: 

Start with a 3-4 email sequence, and keep it simple while adding value and pictures of some (or all) of the cart products in every email as a reminder. 

You could try a flow like:  

  • Email 1: (1-3 hours after abandonment) Remind them that they still have an order in their cart and give them a clear singular button that will take them back to check out. 
  • Email 2: (24 hours after abandonment) Start a discussion, for example, is there something I can help you with? Do you have a question or difficulty placing the order yourself?
  • Email 3: (24 – 48 hours after previous) Depending on your exact email marketing provider and e-commerce store platforms (WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, etc.), you may be able to offer a time-sensitive incentive for completing the purchase. For example, free shipping, or loyalty points. I try to avoid offering a discount but this is a last resort for high-value carts.
  • Email 4: (24 hours after previous) By the time we’re here there is less of a chance you’ll get a sale from an abandoned cart. However, you can aim for a different kind of conversion. Like offering value with an opt-in/lead magnet or to stay connected on social media.

Pro Tip: Run A/B testing on subject lines and preview text right from the beginning to find out what will get you the best open rates. Then, run A/B testing on different elements of the content and delivery intervals to see which results in someone picking their cart back up for a sale. 

Klaviyo Abandoned Cart Flow

Klaviyo abandoned cart flow with personalization and multiple A/B tests.

2. Abandoned Browser Sequence

Customers window shop all the time and it’s no different for eCommerce. According to Barilliance statistics, abandoned browser emails have the best conversion rates across all types of campaigns. Even with customers who didn’t put any items in their cart previously.

That’s why it’s part of my essential email automations. 

How to make the most of abandoned browser sequences: 

Entice these potential customers back by: 

  • Showcasing the latest product releases related to their searches or pages they landed on
  • Showing your deals and special offer categories
  • Providing recommendations of similar but less costly products based on their browsing pattern
  • Offer incentives for specific categories or purchases over a certain amount

3. Lead Magnet/Opt-in 

Growing your email list (i.e. your potential customers) can lead to more brand recognition and sales. (That’s what marketing is all about, right?)

Using a lead magnet – a valuable freebie or incentive you provide in exchange for someone’s email address – can help you streamline the process and target a very specific customer. Then, your automated follow-up emails are designed to build on top of what you’ve offered for free – offering more value, cementing yourself as an authority, and making an upsell offer they can’t refuse. 

Ideas for opt-ins can include: 

  • Discount codes and subscriber incentives
  • Freebies and testers
  • Guides on ‘how-to’ solve an issue (that links to your products or services)
  • Information on a particular issue
  • Templates or pre-made digital products for subscribers
  • Reports or statistics if you’re focused on a B2B market

Pro Tip: Make sure you tailor your opt-in to your ideal customer AND the page they are opting-in from. There’s no point creating a report if potential customers won’t read it or if you’re offering a free whale noises album on a page about email marketing. Instead look at who you want to buy your products or services and create something that is high value to them. This will make your sequences much more defined and successful.

Pro Tip on that Pro Tip: Make sure that the first email they receive after opting in is not only specific to the lead-magnet, but also specific to the page they came from.
For example: Your lead magnet may be applicable to Klaviyo and WordPress at the same time, but they are two separate systems and two separate topics. You should still offer it on both pages, but if they were reading something about Klaviyo when they opted in, make sure the follow-up includes something about Klaviyo (and vice versa). The moral of the story is to have two separate auto-responders that accomplish the same thing – 1 for Klaviyo and 1 for WordPress.

What happens when someone makes a purchase during my email automations?

It’s important that if someone makes a purchase in automations like abandoned carts or browsers, that they are kicked out of that automation. You don’t want to ruin all your hard work convincing them to purchase by sending them emails that are no longer relevant and putting them off. 

In most email platforms, particularly MailChimp and Klavyio, they have built-in filters that recognize when a contact has received an email and then made a subsequent purchase. When that is detected, the user is simply taken out of the relevant automation. Caution: That may or may not automatically be included when you build the automation. You have to double-check to make sure it’s there, and if it’s not, add it yourself…..but they do exist. I promise.

The only exception is for lead magnet/opt-in sequences because from here you can create a ‘split’ that filters users into ‘those that purchased offer XYZ’ and ‘those that didn’t’. You can build separate content for both of these audiences without having to put them in different automations. 

Ok, but what if no one purchases from my email sequences? 

After you’ve sent the last email in the automation, you’ll have a chance to entice them further, but first, you may need to build more brand awareness and authority. So, you’ll need to pop the user into your nurture sequence, which brings me on to: 

Bonus Essential Email Automation: The Nurture Sequence

Create a sequence to keep in touch and stay front-of-mind for your target audience. A nurture sequence could be anything from 3 emails to 30 emails, but it’s important to find the right balance between sales/promotion and value. This allows you to build brand awareness and loyalty – all while making some sales too (but that’s not the only reason you should use them!).

This is the automation that will need work and fine-tuning as your potential customers are likely very early in the buying process or haven’t purchased from you before. Some may not even be considering a purchase yet and are just looking for advice. 

Some ideas to include in your nurture sequence: 

  • Introducing yourself (or your brand) and why and how you got started
  • Sharing where they can find you and build a better relationship with you, e.g. social media, YouTube, or your own blog 
  • Addressing their biggest problem (this could relate to the opt-in subject you chose or something else)
  • Discussing how you can solve their biggest issue
  • Talking about products you have available that offer them value

Ultimately it’s worth your time to adopt email marketing into your strategy, but if you can’t do anything else, set up these essential email automations before any others! 

If you need help setting up your email automations, or need help with what to put in them, drop me a messageI lead Low Gravity Solutions as a MailChimp Expert and Klaviyo Master with over 8 years of experience and countless happy clients. 

Learn more here: https://lowgravitysolutions.com/email-marketing/ 

Ready to get started?

David Sandel, Founder

David Sandel, Founder

Low Gravity Solutions

LGS provides full-service automated digital marketing for seven-figure businesses, including strategy, technology management, copy, and design. Your passion is your business. Ours is marketing and automation.

Should You Resend Unopened Emails in Mailchimp? (+ How To Do It)

Should You Resend Unopened Emails in Mailchimp? (+ How To Do It)

With over 3.064 billion emails sent per day in 2020, it’s easy for yours to be left unopened. But the big question for your email marketing strategy is – should you really resend it?

Retargeting unopened emails means only resending the email to recipients who didn’t open the original one. After all, maybe some of your audience were busy, and didn’t see it the first time?

But the truth is, there’s a time and a place for retargeting unopened emails, and it’s not always for the better. 

Is resending worth it? 

The short answer is no. 

Even though MailChimp statistics showed open rates for the original campaign increased by 8.7% when it was re-sent, It’s not worth it for content like newsletters.

The hard truth is that sometimes people aren’t interested in that particular content, and if you keep resending it, you’re going to drive them to unsubscribe and decrease your customer base. 

The impact from retargeting isn’t worth the effort or potential risk for things that aren’t going to directly convert or benefit your business. Plus, open rates need to be analyzed as part of a wider marketing strategy, not just taken in isolation. 

But, there’s a caveat to this. 

There are certain scenarios where retargeting unopened emails can be beneficial. 

When should you resend?

Not everything is black and white. For extremely important announcements and notifications where you absolutely need as many contacts as possible to see your email, it can be helpful. For example: 

  • Business changes like during COVID-19 when closures or updates for your physical store were happening much quicker than you could update your website.
  • New services or local initiatives/events.
  • Big news that would affect the customer e.g. you’ve rebranded, created a partnership etc. 

But this is pretty much it. For these occasions, here’s how you do it: 

Resending unopened emails in MailChimp

Replicate campaign for MailChimp resendingOn Desktop 

Go to ‘Campaigns’ > Select the campaign you want to resend > Hit the arrow next to ‘View Report’ and Select ‘Replicate’.

This will then create a complete copy, so you’ll need to edit who it is being sent to. 

Pro Tip: I suggest always changing the name of the campaign, so it’s easy to identify at a glance, but it’s completely up to you and your organization.

To do this:

Go to the ‘To’ field and under ‘Segment or Tag’ select ‘Group or new segment’ in the dropdown.

Then select ‘campaign activity’ in the first box, ‘did not open’ in the second, and then the third box will give you a list of campaigns, as well as options like ‘did not open the last 5 campaigns’.

resegmenting in MailChimp

Once you’ve updated this, the email will only go to the subscribers who meet this criteria, instead of the entire list.

Pro Tip: If you’re unsure if you’ve set the campaign correctly, save this and take a look at the number of recipients that have been updated in the ‘to’ field. If it has gone down you know you’ve updated the criteria.

Resend emails mailchimp mobile app

On Mobile

It’s a lot easier to do this in the MailChimp mobile app as you just need to go to: 

The email campaign of choice in the ‘Reports’ tab > Select ‘send to non-openers.’

2 of the best resending strategies

Resending your campaign to non-openers is not as simple as hitting resend and expecting better results. Here are two ways to make your approach more effective: 

Timing is everything

It’s important to get the timing right to make sure you don’t annoy your subscribers. Sending too soon is going to make you seem spammy, sending too long might no longer be relevant for them. 

Here are the ‘best bits’ from MailChimps’ research on Strategic Timing for Resends: 

  • 1-3 days is the sweet spot – Resending your email within 24 hours of the original results in higher unsubscribes or abuse complaints, but waiting for 1 to 3 days results in more clicks. In our experience, it’s better to wait at least 2 days, but beyond 3 days, you’re much less likely to get a higher click rate anymore. 
  • Choose your day wisely – According to one study, Tuesday is the best time to send emails, followed by Wednesday and Thursday, which debunks the traditional ‘send at 9am on Monday approach’.
  • Afternoon for opening, evening for action – The same study shows that the afternoon is the time when recipients are most likely to open emails and evening is when they’re most likely to respond.

Make subtle changes

If they saw (and chose) to not open your email the first time, it’s unlikely they’re going to open it the second time around without some subtle changes. The easiest and quickest option is to change your subject line and preview text (which sounds a lot easier than it is!).

My advice is to scrap what’s there and start fresh. Think about exactly what you want them to know in 10 words or less and avoid clickbait! Bonus points if you can tastefully use an emoji (assuming your audience is okay with emojis).

Pro Tip: Avoid changing who the email is from when you resend. This is a tactic that can damage trust, delivery, and sees an increase in abuse reports according to MailChimp.  

Ultimately, MailChimp retargeting is a strategy that should be used sparingly and only when absolutely necessary. But if you do, you have a short window, and you have to make it count if you want to see the best results!

For help with your email marketing efforts so you can focus on your business, drop me a message. I lead Low Gravity Solutions as a MailChimp Expert and Klaviyo Master with over 8 years of experience and countless happy clients. 

Learn more here: https://lowgravitysolutions.com/email-marketing/

Ready to get started?

David Sandel, Founder

David Sandel, Founder

Low Gravity Solutions

LGS provides full-service automated digital marketing for seven-figure businesses, including strategy, technology management, copy, and design. Your passion is your business. Ours is marketing and automation.