Weekly Update August 29th

Guide to E-mail Automation Flows

August 29, 2022

Hey , 

Happy Monday! Today, let's talk about how to build a robust customer retention strategy and how to use e-mail marketing to do so. 

If you're like most other e-commerce brands, you've seen a slowdown in sales over the past few months. It's a combination of a bunch of things happening that are out of your control - Recession scares, pandemic-related behavior change, nice summer weather - and a bunch of things that are in your control - not building a robust customer relationship process. 

PS. If you were forwarded this newsletter, please 

. 

  Relationships Compound, Transactions Don’t.

- Yash Chaven

Are you investing in building relationships with your customers or do you simply view every order as a transaction? If you don't aren't building relationships, your customers are churning and you're slowly going to run out of new customers. 

That's why right now you need to be focused on getting every customer you have to stay with your brand as long as possible. 

There are 3 reasons consumers will stop buying from you:

  1. Product isn't for them (bad taste, bad usage experience, too costly).

  2. Bad one-time experience with the brand.

  3. Customer forgets to re-order.

Without a relationship with the customer, you won't know which of the 3 reasons it is, and what you can do to fix it. To do this, have a clear metric to measure success, and setup e-mail automations to track them. 

  Use This Metric as Your E-Commerce Northstar

As an e-commerce brand, I recommend using

3 - Month Customer Value

as your Northstar metric.

first introduced this to me, and it make a ton of sense. We all know that customer lifetime value is important, but those first 3 months are critical. If a customer doesn't repurchase within the first 90-days, you've effectively lost them forever.

.

So you need to do whatever it takes to develop strong relationships with every customer during this time. 

Let's develop a process to develop a relationship with every customer through automated e-mail flows. 

  Relationship-Focused Automated E-mail Flows

As a new brand, I highly recommend personally reaching out to every new customer in a non-automated way. As you begin to grow, you won't always have time to do this, so automated e-mail flows become really important.

I recommend using

as they've built out robust automation tools that connect directly with

.

The first thing to know is that you likely aren't communicating enough with your customers. You should be sending at least 1-3 emails per week to stay top of mind.

You'll do this through automated flows and campaigns. But for today, let's talk about the 3 automated flows you need to have.

  • Pre-Purchase Flow

  • Post-Purchase Flow

  • Win-Back Flow

Pre-Purchase Flows

  Lead Generation Sequence 

Audience

: Signed up for e-mail list but haven't purchased.

Communication Goal:

Educate about Brand, Product, and provide discounts to get first sale.

Number of E-mails

: 5-10

Email Inspiration

:

  • Product Giveaway

  • About the brand

  • Why the founder started

  • Discount to purchase 15%

  • Discount to purchase 25%

  • Best selling products

  • Video reviews of customers using product

  • Discount to purchase (15% off or free shipping)

  • Discount to purchase (20% off or free shipping)

  Abandoned Cart Sequence 

Audience

: Added product to cart but didn't purchase

Communication Goal:

Get buyer over the purchase hurdle 

Number of E-mails

: 5-10

Email Inspiration

:

  • Whoops, looks like you left something in your cart

  • Friendly reminder

  • Personalized video message from founder using Maverick

  • 5 Reasons why to use the product

  • Discount to purchase (15% off or free shipping)

  • Discount to purchase (20% off or free shipping)

  • Best selling products

  • Video reviews of customers using product

  Post Purchase Flows

  First-Time Purchase 

Audience

: Customer purchased for the first time

Communication Goal:

Build a relationship with the customer and engage them with the brand. 

Number of E-mails

: 10-15

Email Inspiration

:

  • Thank You personalized video message from founder using Maverick

  • What to expect from your order

  • Order update

  • How to use the product

  • Founder message

  • Customer support message. Did you have any issues with your order? What can we fix to make it better?

  • What do you think of the product?

  • SMS Signup

  • Blog post sharing vision / mission

  • Time to re-order

  • Re-order the same product

  • Re-order best-selling products

  • Discount to purchase (15% off or free shipping)

  Repeat Purchase 

Audience

: Customer purchases 2x, 3x, 4x+ times

Communication Goal:

Convert into loyal advocates

Number of E-mails

: 5-10

Email Inspiration

:

  • Thank you for purchasing "2x / 3x / 4x" times

  • Here's a free gift with your purchase

  • Invite to VIP SMS club

  • Why do you like your favorite product and how are you using it?

  • Sign up for a subscription and get a discount

  • Time to re-order

 

Win-Back Flow

Audience

: No purchase for 60-120 days

Communication Goal:

Win-back churned customers

Number of E-mails

: 5-15

Email Inspiration

:

  • Sale (15% off)

  • Message from founder asking, how are you?

  • Message from founder asking how can we improve?

  • Thank you for being a customer (15% off)

  • Flash sale (20% off)

  • Thank you for being a customer (25%)

  • Come back to us (40%) repeat weekly 

And there you go, a bunch of e-mail flows you should be utilizing in your e-commerce business to build a relationship with your customers.

What other ideas do you have?

Jordan Buckner

Foodbevy

HIRING AS AN EMERGING CPG BRAND (VIRTUAL ROUNDTABLE)

Tuesday, August 30th | Free RegistrationAs an emerging CPG brand, how do you know who to hire and when to do so? Join me for a roundtable event in partnership with Simera to highlight the key issues facing brands around leadership development, hiring, team building, retention, and building company culture.

We’ll discuss

  • What are the first roles to hire

  • When to bring on full-time employees vs. contractors

  • What to look for in candidates

  • Hiring junior employees vs. seasoned experts

  • Setting expectations in a high growth environment

FINANCE FOR CPG BRANDS MINI-SERIES

If you missed it, be sure to listen to/ watch our 3-part Finance Mini-Series for CPG Brands. I've partner with Alice Zhang, founder of myPocketCFO to put together aWe cover:

  1. Financing and Capital Raising Strategy

  2. Common CPG accounting mistakes

  3. Working capital and cashflow for CPG brands

I created this series with Alice Zhang, founder of myPocketCFO. E-mail [email protected] to try out their auto-bookkeeping for an introductory price of $99 for three months and then $199/month.

HOW TO GENERATE AD CREATIVES FOR FREE

A creator-produced video review appears more credible than a generic advertisement by the brand itself. Their content feels more organic & has a greater persuasive effect on buying behavior. More persuasiveness leads to more sales.Saral put together a 6-step system for how an eCommerce brand can generate free ad creatives from nano-influencers. Check it out.

HOW TO PROPERLY ACCOUNT FOR COGS

Odds are you're not properly accounting for your inventory.It’s no secret that accounting for your inventory is complicated and dynamic. Most founders end up lumping all their inventory expenses under COGs on the profit and loss statement, rather than recognizing them as an asset on the balance sheet until it's sold, then moving them to COGs. In this article Accountfully breaks down how to properly account for your COGs.

QUICK CASHFLOW HACK

Definitely check out 

. It's a credit card built for e-commerce businesses with 45-60 day payment terms based on spend date (compared to the normal 30 based on billing cycle). You can unlock 100% of monthly e-commerce sales as your credit limit too.

NEW PODCAST EPISODE: 56. Building a Brand in Public with Parker Olson

If you've been on Linkedin, I'm sure you've seen Parker Olson's daily posts sharing his journey building Forij. The content is fun, exciting, and raw, as he showcases the highs of landing new accounts, to the lows of having his van break down in the middle of nowhere and having to sleep at a rest stop.  Join me for a fun conversation as we discuss why he decided to publically showcase his daily journey and how it's benefited the company.

DISCOUNTS

- Mindful Goods 

is an awesome Amazon expert that can quickly get you started or optimize your pages for strong ROI. 

 use code FOODBEVY.

- Maverick Lab 

allows you to create individually personalized videos (with a customer's name) welcoming them to your community. Foodbevy members save 40%. Reply to this e-mail for an introduction.

- Chop 

is a

that allows you to drive in-store trial, collect customer shopping data, and build customer profiles to further drive your business. Foodbevy members save 20% off. E-mail me for the discount.

- Stripe 

is now providing $70,000 in fee-free processing for new and EXISTING customers.

The Accountrepreneur 

is your go-to outsourced CPA and CFO firm for the food and beverage industry. Receive

- Airtable

 can store information in a spreadsheet that's visually appealing and easy-to-use, but it's also powerful enough to act as a database that businesses can use for customer-relationship management (CRM), task management, project planning, and tracking inventory. 

With your help we're building an amazing community of Food and Bev entrepreneurs helping each other!

Jordan

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