Best practice for Sunset Flow

  • 27 January 2022
  • 5 replies
  • 4600 views

Userlevel 3
Badge +5
  • Active Contributor IV
  • 42 replies

Hello everyone,

 

I would really appreciate if you could share how you setup your Sunset Flow.

 

I have started my list in 2014 in MailChimp and moved from MailChimp to Klaviyo about a year ago.

I have never ever cleaned my list. I know it sounds terrible :see_no_evil:  My list size now is ~10.000 and I managed to score 25% open rates when I send to the entire list. I try to send weekly. 

I had the goal of spending one year using Klaviyo and then clearing my list. This was mainly because I wanted everyone on the list to receive Black Friday emails.

 

So I created Sunset flow.

I spend much time reading how to do it best, but in fact, I still don’t know the best solution.
Sorry for the long prehistory.


I created my Sunset flow using the standard flow. I included profiles in the segment who were inactive for 365 days. They receive 2 emails. The second email is sent after a week. And then, after another 5 days, the profile is marked as ‘suppress’.
The second email has two options. The first option - standard Klaviyo wording. The second option says we miss you, but since you are inactive, we will remove you from the list in 5 days. And then there’s the ‘Wait, Keep me on the list’ button. But now I have doubts on how I should deal with those profiles who received the second letter and opened it, but did not click the button. Discard them or send further emails?
It might still be logical to send emails to those who received the first option, but what to do with those who received the second option? I said I would delete them from the list, so it would be fair not to email them again if the profile did not express a desire to stay on the list by clicking the button?

 Here is the email I am concerned about:

 

I have a technical question of how to do this. Flow is set so that the profiles that open the email are filtered out and will no longer go to the last step and will not be marked as ‘suppressed’. What's more, the profile becomes active now and becomes eligible to receive our weekly emails.

 

Here is how my Sunset Flow looks like:


 


5 replies

Userlevel 2
Badge +15

Hey Lina!

It all depends on your goals. If you want to increase your sales, here's what I would do: 

For example, you can divide the flow: those who have already ordered on your site, and those who have never ordered. 

 

For those who have already purchased, you can announce the release of a new product and a promo code to encourage them to order. 

 

For the rest, I would offer them an even bigger promo code (you have nothing to lose, they will be removed from the list anyway) while highlighting your bestsellers. 

 

I hope you find my advice useful.

 

If you are looking to optimize your Klaviyo account, you can schedule a free consultation call on my calendar : https://calendly.com/standardecom/klaviyo

 

Cheers,

Tom

Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Hi @Tomb ,

 

Thank you for sharing your ideas. I have a Winback Flow for those, who are inactive but made a purchase with me. 

While in Sunset Flow I include the profiles that were not active and did not purchased anything. I’ve read a lot of articles on creating a Sunset Flow and most of them do not advice to offer a discount to cold profile which I think is quite logical, because you are not going to purchase anything if you are not interested even with a discount. Also, I do not want to sound desperate with crazy discounts while I offer them really rarely.

Userlevel 7
Badge +60

Hey @Tomb, good suggestion!

@Lina, based on your situation, since you’ve never actually list cleaned, instead of sending these users through a sunset flow, I would instead prioritizing doing so. The reason being that if these users are not engaged, sending them through a sunset flow isn’t likely to change much. Instead, sending out more cold emails to these unengaged contacts would actually have a negative impact on your sending reputation. Not only will inbox providers note that you are sending emails to an unengaged audience, but you also run the risk of these contacts marking your email as spam. 

Instead of sending your pre-existing contacts who you are aware are unengaged, I would focus on building out your sunset flow for new or existing contacts who are on the cusp of churning. 

The behavior you are experiencing of these contacts who interact with your email while going through the flow would be removed from the flow and the segment is actually expected behavior! The goal of a sunset flow is a last opportunity to see if your contacts were still interested in receiving emails from you. Any interactions to your emails such as opening or clicking into the content will consider them active. For this reason, those who don’t interact with your email would all end up reaching the end of the flow which is an update profile property step which applies a custom property indicating to suppress these users. 

This means if you have content in your emails such as “keep me on your list” you shouldn’t have worry about it since these contacts would be considered engaged again anyways by opening and clicking your emails. By contrast, if you have a button that says “remove me from the list” you’ll want to link it back to your unsubscribe page to allow these users to unsubscribe and be suppressed. 

Also keep in mind that contacts who reach the end of your sunset flow who has been marked by the update profile property step are not automatically suppressed. You would still need to manually suppress these users through periodic list cleaning and manual import to your suppression list. 

Overall from your screenshot, I think your flow looks to be set up accordingly. One additional suggestion I would make is shortening the timeframe of who you consider as an inactive user. Typically we consider contacts who have not interacted with your brand in the past 60 days as unengaged and those who have not engaged in the last 120 days are highly unengaged. Allowing such a large time frame such as 365 days before sending a sunset flow to contacts to entice them to join the brand again may raise suspicious from the receiver’s end as they may have already forgotten your brand.

I hope this helps!

David

Userlevel 3
Badge +5

@Lina depends on how you define an engaged profile vs non-engaged (I know that can be confusing). I define it based on the following.

Definition - brand engagement is taking any action that Klaviyo can track in the purchase funnel, including opening or clicking an email.

I generally do the following…

  • Treat all “brand engagemed” profiles as engaged (I use OR conditions in the segment). This is usually what I send campaigns to and I use the window that gets me the right engagement stats. Eg. 20-30% opens, 1%+ clicks, bounces below Klaviyo guidance etc. Usually 365 days or over all time after basic list cleaning segments have been removed from your account (bounced >4 times in last 60 days, group emails “office@” etc.)
  • Tread all “total brand disengaged” profiles as non engaged (use the same conditions as the brand engagement segment but use AND conditions to be exclusive)
  • I add conditions to this segment for “has received x emails over all time” and “subscribed to list x days ago” Usually this window is 90 days and however many emails a subscriber should have received in 90 days

This means that you’re telling the segment, pick the profiles who have had ample opportunites to engage after being on the list over 90 days and have NEVER done any trackable action. I use this as the sunset trigger.

Hope that gives you a different perspective. 

Userlevel 3
Badge +5

Thank you Matthew for sharing your experience.

I think it’s quite logical to sunset disengaged profiles over 90 days.

 

What do you do with the disengaged segment (quoted below)? Do they enter sunset flow as well?

 

  • Tread all “total brand disengaged” profiles as non engaged (use the same conditions as the brand engagement segment but use AND conditions to be exclusive)

 

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