Why Flows Beat Campaigns for July
The reason flows matter so much at July comes down to how people buy premium luggage. It’s a high price point, close to $1,500 for a set, and it’s a lifetime commitment, so the decision takes a while. July spends the bulk of its marketing and creative time building beautiful campaigns to sell the dream of travel, but that’s not where the sale closes.
“People are going on the website so much, they’re not purchasing off the campaign, they’re purchasing off the flows. They’re thinking about it for so long, and the flow is what keeps us in the conversation the whole way through”
- Lachi Agnew, Head of Technology, July
The customer might sit in that consideration window for a week or two, sometimes months. The campaign plants the want. The flow does the converting. Which is why, no matter what, July’s main revenue driver will always be the flows, and why the panel is so comfortable leaning into automation to enhance the brand rather than take away from it.
Lesson One: Find Your High-Value Flows, Then Make Them Work Harder
Start by finding out which of your flows are actually high value, because the answer usually surprises people. Open your platform and split your email revenue two ways, campaigns versus flows. Most teams never stop to look at it that cleanly, and when they do, they often find a handful of automations they built months ago are out-earning the campaigns that eat their entire week.
So the job isn’t to build more flows. It’s to find your biggest earners and make them work harder. A flow fires on every single customer who hits the trigger, so even a small improvement stacks up across thousands of sends. One of the clearest breakdowns of this came from Jason Anderson at Andzen, one of the world’s leading Klaviyo and retention agencies.
“By changing the language based on where the customer is in their journey, they might go from converting at 8 or 9% up to 15%. And a big fraction of that is now checking out at 100% margin instead of 90%.”
- Jason Anderson, Andzen
His example is the abandoned cart, usually the highest-grossing automation a brand has. In Klaviyo it’s one step to add a rule that says if a customer has ordered before, don’t send them the discount version. That single split plugs a margin hole and moves conversion at the same time. So pull your campaign versus flow report this week, find your two or three biggest earners, and ask what one change would make each of them work harder.
Lesson Two: Build Flows Around How Your Category Buys
Once you know which flows are carrying the load, stop treating the standard flow library as the finish line. Welcome, browse abandon, cart abandon, post purchase, that’s the starter kit everyone has. The brands getting real value out of flows shape them around two things: their category’s buying rhythm, and the way people actually decide to buy their product.
So the questions worth asking are whether your customer needs educating before they’ll buy, whether they need peace of mind after the sale so they don’t regret it, and how long they sit and think before they commit. Your flows should answer those questions at the exact moment the customer is asking them. The best example of building to a category’s rhythm came from Nat Hinser, who runs digital and marketing at Mr Pool Man, the online pool-supplies business she and her brother grew out of their dad’s pool-servicing round.
“With some basic business insights, you can predict that if they come in with a small ticket purchase, within 30 days they’re going to come back and purchase what they really need. You should be there ready for when they’re ready to come back.”
- Natalie Hinser, Mr Pool Man
When your pool breaks, you’re a needs-based buyer, not a wants-based one, and Mr Pool Man reads its own order data to know exactly when a customer will be back. That episode was recorded before AI really landed, so the team mapped those windows by hand. Today the smarter versions of this are baked into the platforms, and the answers are already sitting in your data. The hard part isn’t the manual mapping anymore. It’s asking the right question: what are the operating and decision-making rhythms of your customers, and have you built a flow for each one?
Lesson Three: Build the First to Second Purchase Flow
The last one is the flow most teams never get to, and it might be the most valuable of the lot. Turning a first-time buyer into a second-time buyer. In most databases the steepest drop-off is right there, between order one and order two. Get someone to buy a second time and the odds of a third and a fourth jump, so that single moment shapes your whole retention curve.
It’s bigger than retention, too. Every extra order from a customer you’ve already paid to acquire spreads that acquisition cost across more purchases. Win the second order and you’ve effectively halved your cost of acquisition on that customer. The mistake teams make when they’re flat out is treating that gap as a reason to fire off another discount. The better play is to give before you ask, and nobody frames that better than Jen Gilbert, Head of Digital at Nutra Organics.
“Once you’ve gotten a customer from the first purchase to the second purchase, they are so much more likely to stick around. We don’t always want to ask, ask, ask. How else can you give, give, give?”
- Jennifer Gilbert, Nutra Organics
Her point is that once someone has bought, it’s time to build the relationship, showing them how to use the product and how it fits their life, so you’re adding value rather than always selling. She also flags the final mile: you spent all that effort getting the customer to convert, so was opening the box a good experience, and was there a magic moment in it? So build one flow with a single job, turning a first-time buyer into a second-time buyer. Lead with help, give them a reason to come back that isn’t only money off, and save the incentive for when you actually need it.
The Takeaway
If you take one thing into your week, don’t make it a better campaign. Make it thirty minutes with your flow report open, looking at what those automations are actually earning and where a small change could move real money. Campaigns will always shout the loudest. Your flows are the steady, repeatable revenue, and they reward whoever actually goes back and tends to them.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between email campaigns and flows? Campaigns are one-off sends you schedule manually, like a Tuesday newsletter, a launch or a sale. Flows are automated sequences triggered by customer behaviour, like an abandoned cart or a welcome series, that run continuously in the background. Because flows fire on every customer who hits the trigger, small improvements compound across thousands of sends.
Which email flow makes the most money? For most brands the abandoned cart is the highest-grossing automation. A simple, high-impact optimisation is changing the messaging based on whether the customer has purchased before, so repeat buyers don’t automatically receive a discount, which protects margin while still lifting conversion for first-timers.
What is RFM segmentation in email marketing? RFM stands for recency, frequency and monetary value. It groups customers by how recently they bought, how often they buy, and how much they spend, placing them into cohorts like loyal or champion buyers, high-propensity browsers, and at-risk or churned customers. The most useful signal is when a customer switches between groups, because that’s when targeted messaging works hardest.
How do you get a customer’s second purchase? Build a dedicated first-to-second purchase flow and lead with help rather than a hard sell. Show the customer how to get the most out of what they just bought and give them a reason to return that isn’t only a discount, saving incentives for when you genuinely need them. Winning the second order also spreads your acquisition cost across more purchases.
Based on an episode of the Add To Cart podcast featuring the Klaviyo Champions panel with Lachi Agnew (July), Hani Rifai (Step One) and Alice Michael (APG & Co). Join the Add To Cart community for free.
In this Playbook we cover three things ecommerce operators can take into their business:
- Find your high-value flows first, because the biggest earners are usually already built
- Shape your flows around how your category actually buys, not the standard flow library
- Build the flow almost nobody builds, the first to second purchase
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