Email marketing for online stores: the 4 automated flows to set up first
Instead of manually blasting promo emails every week, start by building four automated flows: welcome, abandoned cart, post-purchase and win-back. Set them up once and they keep running.
Email is one of the few traffic channels an online store truly owns. As ad costs keep rising, keeping and winning back people who have already visited your site is often more cost-effective than acquiring new ones.
When many teams think of email marketing, they picture a weekly promotional blast. But the four automated flows below are worth setting up first.
1. Welcome flow
Trigger: a visitor subscribes to your emails or creates an account.
Content:
- Email 1: a welcome, plus the offer you promised at sign-up.
- Email 2: your brand story and core products.
- Email 3: customer reviews or best-sellers.
The welcome flow reaches people when your brand is freshest in their minds, so it usually gets the highest open rates.
2. Abandoned cart recovery
Trigger: a shopper adds to cart or starts checkout but doesn’t complete payment.
Content:
- A reminder that items are still in their cart, with product images.
- Answers to common concerns: shipping costs, returns and delivery times.
- A limited-time offer when it makes sense, but not every time, or shoppers learn to wait for a discount.
3. Post-purchase flow
Trigger: a customer completes a purchase.
Content:
- Order confirmation and shipping notifications (built into most platforms).
- A product guide or care tips.
- A review request after delivery.
- Accessories or related products based on what they bought.
4. Win-back flow
Trigger: a subscriber hasn’t opened your emails or bought again for a while.
Content:
- New arrivals or brand news.
- An exclusive welcome-back offer.
- For long-inactive subscribers, ask whether they want to stay subscribed to keep your list healthy.
Setup tips
- Authenticate your sending domain so your emails don’t land in spam.
- Check how every email looks on mobile first.
- After each flow goes live, track open rates, click rates and the orders it drives, then refine the content and timing step by step.
Once these four flows are in place, plan your campaign emails for holiday sales and product launches. For flow design and email templates, see our email marketing (EDM) service.