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A large share of your email revenue comes from messages you build once. Standalone campaigns need attention every week. Email flows keep running while you do something else.
Steer by revenue per recipient and your whole assessment of email changes. This figure divides the revenue from a message by the number of people who received it.
Its strength lies in comparability. A campaign to 10,000 people that brings in β¬4,000 performs worse than a flow to 800 people that brings in β¬1,000. In absolute figures the first one wins, per recipient the second wins by a wide margin.
That insight guides your choices. As soon as you calculate per recipient, it almost always turns out that the smaller, more targeted sends deliver the most. That is exactly where your growth opportunities lie.
Calculate it per send, per flow and per segment. The differences that become visible point you straight to where your time is best spent.
Add one supplementary figure, namely the revenue per recipient over a full year. That corrects for the fact that some messages only lead to a purchase weeks later.
You send a campaign once to a group. A flow starts automatically as soon as someone does something and then follows its own route.
Campaigns suit news, seasonal moments and offers with an end date. They need preparation every time and their result fades as soon as the send is over.
Flows suit everything related to behaviour. Someone signs up, abandons a cart, places an order or goes quiet for a long time. Each of those moments deserves a response. You build that response once.
At most businesses, flows deliver around a third to 40% of email revenue, while they account for only a small share of your send volume and get a fraction of the attention. That imbalance is exactly where the profit lies.
So build your flows first and then add campaigns. That order delivers visible results within a quarter.
Someone who has just signed up is at their most engaged. That attention drops every day after that, so the first week counts for a lot.
A good welcome flow consists of three to five messages over about ten days. The first message delivers what you promised straight away and arrives within minutes. The second briefly tells who you are and why you do what you do. The third shows proof, from customer stories to results.
Only then does a concrete offer follow. Selling in message one uses up trust before it has been built.
Include one question in the first message too. Ask what someone is working on right now and use the answer to segment. That gives you context exactly when people are most willing to reply.
Measure this flow separately from your other emails. At most businesses, the welcome flow delivers the highest result per recipient of all.
People who leave something in their cart have already shown their intent to buy. A series of three messages still wins back part of those orders.
The timing needs care. The first message follows within an hour, while the consideration is still fresh. The second comes after about a day and the third after three days.
Vary the angle per message. The first simply reminds them of the product and shows an image. The second removes an objection, from shipping costs to return terms to delivery time. The third adds urgency with limited stock or a promotion that is about to end.
Be sparing with discounts. Offering 10% by default in message three teaches regular customers to always wait a little. Save discounts for higher order values.
The same set-up works for service providers with an open quote or an advice meeting that stalled halfway.
The period right after a purchase is rarely used, while that is exactly where the foundation for repeat business lies.
Start with expectations. Confirm the order, state the delivery time and explain what will happen next. These messages are almost always opened, which also makes them good for your reputation with mailbox providers.
Then add value. A manual, a maintenance tip or a suggestion for use increases satisfaction and lowers your returns.
Next, ask for a review, well after someone has been able to use the product. For a product that arrives within two days, a week later works well.
Finish with a fitting suggestion. Someone who bought a camera is interested in a bag or a memory card. That feels helpful rather than pushy.
Customers who have been quiet for months take remarkably little effort to bring back compared with winning new ones. A win-back flow sets out to do that systematically.
First decide when someone counts as lapsed. For an online shop with daily purchases that threshold is sixty days, for a service provider with annual contracts it is six months. Work out how long your average customer normally takes and double it.
Then build three messages. The first is pure value and leaves sales out, which works surprisingly well because it stands out. The second asks an open question about what has changed. The third makes a concrete offer to come back.
End with a choice. People who stay quiet after three messages get one more email asking whether they still want to receive emails. Anyone who stays silent gets archived. That keeps your list healthy and protects your deliverability.
If you sell something that runs out, this is the easiest revenue of all. Coffee, personal care products, filters, food, office supplies.
Work out how long a product lasts and send a reminder shortly before supplies run out. For a pack of coffee that lasts three weeks, the message goes out around day sixteen.
Add one action that simplifies everything, namely a button that repeats the previous order instantly. The shorter the route, the higher the conversion.
Also offer a regular delivery. Set this flow up well and you will see some customers switch to a subscription, which raises the value per customer considerably.
An offer works as soon as it fits the recipient's situation. The same offer sent to the whole list almost always performs worse.
So use what you already know. Purchase history tells you which category someone buys. Click behaviour tells you where the interest lies. And the stage in the customer journey tells you how much persuasion is needed.
Lead with the benefit instead of the feature. People buy the result, so describe what changes in their situation.
Stick to one action per message. Two buttons pointing in different directions halve your conversion, while one clear button focuses attention.
Make the terms clear. Duration, shipping costs and delivery time should be visible, because every bit of uncertainty costs you an order.
With flows, the delay between the trigger and the message counts for more than the time of day.
Responding quickly pays off when the intent is fresh, as with an abandoned cart. Leaving room pays off when someone needs time, as with a request for a review.
Recommendations based on previous behaviour increase the average order value, especially with a wide range.
Three variants work well. Products others bought together with this product. Products from the same category in a higher price bracket. And products that logically complement the last order.
Modern email platforms deliver this out of the box once your online shop is connected. The quality depends entirely on the data you supply, so make sure categories and attributes are tidy.
Limit the number of suggestions. Three products in a block work better than nine, because too much choice slows down the decision.
Check what is shown from time to time. Automatic recommendations sometimes show sold-out or discontinued items, which instantly undermines a good impression.
The question of what share of your revenue comes from email is trickier than it looks. If you only count the orders that follow directly from a click, you consistently sell email short.
So work with a window. Count purchases made within a few days of a click, even when someone later returns through a different route. Five to seven days is a reasonable window for most businesses.
Add codes to your links so your traffic arrives recognisably in your analytics package. Give each message and each flow its own label, otherwise everything ends up in one big pile.
Also look beyond the last click. Email often plays a role halfway through the decision and consistently gets too little credit in a model that only counts the last step.
Once a year, run a simple test. Temporarily keep a comparable group out of a flow and compare the revenue. That gives the fairest picture of what that flow really adds.
Many tests focus on subject lines, while the biggest differences lie elsewhere.
A message on someone's birthday or on the anniversary of their first purchase consistently performs above average. It stands out because it is about the recipient.
Only ask for the date when you will really use it. An extra field costs sign-ups, so it is better to add it later through a preference centre than at the first sign-up.
If the birthday is missing, an alternative works fine. The anniversary of the first order has the same effect and you already have that date.
Keep the offer modest. A personal greeting with a small perk works better than an aggressive offer, because the strength lies in the attention.
Send it a few days in advance. That gives people room to act on it, while a message on the day itself gets lost among all the other birthday wishes.
Setting up all your flows at once grinds to a halt. This order delivers results fastest and keeps the work manageable.
Start with the welcome flow. It reaches people at their most engaged moment and usually delivers the highest result per recipient. Allow half a day for three messages.
Then build the cart flow, or for service providers the flow around an open quote. This is almost always where the fastest revenue gain lies.
Next, add the post-purchase flow. It increases satisfaction and repeat purchases at the same time. It also supports your reputation with mailbox providers, because these emails are almost always opened.
Finish with the win-back flow and possibly the replenishment flow or the birthday flow. These need more fine-tuning and only pay off once the first three are running.
Allow a few weeks between each step. That way you see what each flow adds and you keep the overview.
Before you build, a rough estimate is valuable. It tells you whether the work is worth it and which flow deserves priority.
The calculation has three ingredients. The number of people entering the flow per month, the share likely to order and your average order value.
An example makes it concrete. Say 400 visitors a month abandon their cart, 5% of them still order after the flow and an order brings in β¬80 on average. Then that flow delivers around β¬1,600 a month.
Set the build time against that. Three messages cost you half a day once plus some maintenance. After that, it keeps running.
Check your assumption against reality after three months. The outcome almost always differs. Precisely that difference sharpens your next estimate.
Flows age quietly. They keep running while products change, prices move and links expire. Nobody notices, because there is no error message to flag it.
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About the author
Dominic Pietersz
Your dedicated point of contact
Dominic helps SMEs grow through Google and other channels. With his international experience, he turns challenges into concrete growth.
Follow Dominic on LinkedInInspiration Β· When I read that we spend twenty weeks a year in our inboxes, I thought, that is where you want to be. That is how this piece on email from a sales perspective came about.
