The retention email flows every ecommerce brand should have live

Most email programmes spend their time on the weekly campaign, which is the part that requires a decision every week. Automated flows require the decision once and then run. For most ecommerce brands they generate a share of email revenue far out of proportion to the effort they take, because every message is triggered by something the customer just did.

The six worth building, in order

• Welcome: two or three emails covering what you sell, why you are different, and one reason to buy now. Sent while attention is at its highest.
• Abandoned cart: three messages over 48 hours. The first is a reminder, the second handles an objection, the third can carry an incentive if your margins allow — never earlier.
• Browse abandonment: lighter than cart abandonment, triggered on repeated product views without a cart. One message, helpful in tone.
• Post-purchase: order confirmation, dispatch and delivery, then a genuinely useful message about the product bought. This flow has the highest open rates you will ever see; do not waste it on nothing.
• Replenishment or repeat purchase: timed to your actual consumption cycle, which you can calculate from repeat order data rather than guess.
• Win-back: for customers past their normal repeat window, with a clear acknowledgement that they have been away rather than a generic offer.

What makes the difference in each

Timing, mostly. A cart email at one hour outperforms the same email at 24 hours, and the sequence matters more than the copy. Then honesty about the objection — most abandoned carts are about delivery cost, delivery time or uncertainty about returns, so address those explicitly instead of restating the product.

The discipline that keeps flows healthy

• Exit conditions on every flow, so someone who buys stops receiving the cart sequence immediately.
• Global frequency rules, so a customer in four flows does not receive four emails in a day.
• Suppression of unengaged contacts, applied to flows as well as campaigns.
• A quarterly read of each flow's revenue per recipient, which tells you which one deserves the next hour of work.

Six flows, built once, reviewed quarterly. It is the least glamorous part of an email programme and reliably the most profitable.