Email automation: what to hand to software, and what to keep

The one test for whether an email should be automated

Ask whether the right email would be the same every time this happens. A first signup, a basket left at checkout, a first order, a parcel leaving the warehouse: yes, every time. Hand those to software.

A launch, a sale, a restock everybody's waiting for, a note about a delay: no. Each one needs somebody to decide what to say this week. Automate those and you end up with a flow still mentioning Black Friday in March.

Automated doesn't mean unattended

This is the bit the software demos skip. An automation sends exactly what you told it to, on the day you built it, until somebody stops it. It won't notice a product's been discontinued, an offer's ended, or three flows emailing the same shopper on the same afternoon.

• Offers that ended but still sit in the second email
• Products that sold out, still pictured and still linked
• Two flows chasing one shopper because neither knows about the other
• Filters nobody's read since the person who wrote them left

Some sends get skipped on purpose, too. Klaviyo's Smart Sending skips a message for anybody who's heard from you recently, which suits a promotion and doesn't suit a back in stock alert. The settings that mute flows are quick to check.

Reading your automation's numbers in Klaviyo

Klaviyo splits attributed revenue between flows and campaigns. Read the split before the total. If flows are the smaller half on a shop with healthy traffic, the automation isn't finished, and that's where the next month of work belongs.

Then read each flow per recipient, against its own history. A total rewards whichever flow gets the most traffic. Per recipient shows which ones actually work, and flow revenue against campaign revenue has the long version.