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The only browse abandon email you'll ever need. It is popular and I recommend breaking your browse abandon based on three different kind of funnels. People are interested in products that are curated for them, even if it's curated by a machine. Oh, recommendations for me. Oh, these are for me. These are for me. Recently added why are recently added emails good? Because people like newness. People react very well to newness. The funnel flusher. What is this?
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It's all killer, no filler. I'm Eric and today on the DTC Podcast we are previewing a brand new episode from our sister podcast, the world's best retention and email podcast, lovingly known as TWA Burp. Hosted by Pilot House's own Jordan Gordon, this episode is titled the only browse abandoned email you'll ever need and it's a must listen for retention focused marketers and brand owners who want to maximize every session driven intense signal on their site. If you listen to this, you will learn how to build a single scalable browse abandoned flow that dynamically converts. You'll understand when and why to segment by product or category behavior and you'll be able to get tactical on product feeds, wait steps and subject lines that actually move more revenue. Make sure you go to your podcast provider and search twiberp, tw, B E R P wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe for a retention masterclass every week from Jordan Gordon. But for now, please enjoy episode six of the world's best retention email marketing podcasts, the only browse abandoned email you'll ever need and on with the show.
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It's the world's best email Retention Podcast and I'm your host, Jordan Gordon. We are a member of the DTC Network of Podcasts and the philosophical home of the Pilot House email and customer retention team. If you want to make the sweet nectar of low cost revenue a large part of your digital ecosystem, follow us on your favorite podcast app today. This time we will discuss the only browse Abandon email you'll ever need. Recently I've been producing a lot of very high level, sophisticated strategic content which is important because email fits into a very large ecosystem. So you know, if you have not yet watched episode 40 where I brought a lot of important ideas together that we've been discussing, Please watch episode 40 now. That said, there's still lots of basic stuff about an email program. You know, there's still lots of important table stakes that people still get wrong. So I can't abandon that. So for any fans who are still crossing little Bridges as they cross big bridges. Here's an episode where we go through some some foundational stuff for for email marketing and also anybody who's kind of new to the POD or you know, just listening in in recent episodes, you can go back to the first. You know for sure the first half dozen episodes were very foundational. Just how email works, how opens work, stuff like that. All that being said, let's talk through the only browser banding you'll ever need. Let's start from trigger. We'll go all the way to the top. We'll start from trigger. Of course you trigger on viewed product that makes it a browse abandoned email. But to just add some nuance, you can also make a category abandoned email. There is a data point category or catalog viewed. I've noticed, I've just noticed not all klaviyo accounts have it. So it's present. Sometimes it's not present, other times I've never really dug into why. I just know, you know, sometimes you can do this and sometimes not. The viewed product is better because you can show someone the product that they viewed. But if somebody got to a category and then didn't click on a product, this would allow them to get something specific to that category, you know, whereas the site abandoned would generally not be specific to a category. Although if you do go back and watch our episode on the only site abandoned email you'll ever need, we do talk about ways that you can incorporate category or psychographic segmentation based on tracking what pages someone has visited in your blog or other rich content space. Point being, look, it's going to trigger unviewed product. But consider also taking what you learn here and building yourself a category abandon based on people visiting top categories. It is popular and I recommend breaking your browser banding and your category band if you make it based on three different kind of funnels. Your number one category, your number two category and default. Don't start by breaking down five or six or seven different categories because you don't yet know how much of an uplift you're going to get from your effort. And effort is precious. Time is precious. So if you're going to segment based on category by what category someone has visited or psychographic like we discussed on the only site abandon you'll ever need. Some episodes go. If you're going to do that, just do it by two different ones and a default. Now you don't have to break it down by category. One approach to this is one clean funnel. You will never find yourself annoyed at the Technical debt and extra work you have to do by designing a single browse abandon flow. Even if you have multiple categories, because we're going to talk about dynamic content, you're going to have dynamic content load into the email so they're going to see messages that make sense for them based on where they were on the site. Quick point. When you build your product feeds recommendation is to use a blend of visit and purchase to make sure that visits that don't result in a purchase like this browser band and that clicked on a product feed good recommendations into the engine. But also purchases carry way more weight than visits. So you do a blend, which means you get the view if someone's only viewed, but you are waiting by purchase if somebody actually purchases something. Product feed, blend. Product feed, blend. Okay, understood. So if you just do one clean funnel and you don't break it up by what category someone's purchased or what, you know, content pages people have, have most recently viewed, you're still going to get them the merchandising that is relevant for them. What you won't get is, is talking about, you know, that specific category which can be like overcoming objections for that category. In the marketing. What are the most common objections from buyers? Okay, let's overcome those. Well, you know, you kind of want to do that on a category specific basis usually unless you're like a single SKU business. You can also talk about manufacturing and materials. I mean, if you've got a whole lot of categories, getting really into manufacturing materials is difficult with one clean funnel. So one clean funnel is like maybe good for businesses that have so many categories. You wouldn't possibly even think about breaking it down because it's just too much or you just, you're limited in time and you're limited in scope and you want to just get the best results you possibly can. You're going to get like the uplift from breaking things down by a few categories will be slight, right? I mean it will, you will get an uplift generally, but it's, it won't be fireworks because so much of it is just getting in the inbox with the product they clicked on and some good recommendations and, and the dynamic content will cover so much, will accomplish so much of the lift. Okay, so we're triggering off a viewed product maybe category. If we're also doing a category. Brandon, we are segmenting by the category someone clicked on. Has clicked on this category. Yes. No. Has clicked on this category. Yes. No. Right. So we can kind of do that category segmentation. Recommend you do Category one, category two, and default at first. And then we reach our wait step. How long do we wait? Actually, you probably put the wait step before the logic I just described. But whatever. Here's the recommendation. Although you should watch your results. I mean, always watch your results, but you should watch your results and make sure that, that your, your base reacts well to this amount of inboxing. First one goes 20 minutes. Second, first email goes after 20 minutes. Second meal goes after eight hours. Why 20 minutes and eight hours? Because that way you get them when they're in the same session, sitting down or on the train or whatever, and you get them like later that day or if it was at night, you get them when they wake up. So you just, you just really, really hugging that intent by getting these two to go in on, on the same day. I mean, this. If you're only doing two, browse abandoned emails, maybe not, right? But if you're gonna do more than two, then do two really tight up front and then follow up with another one a day or two later. You have to watch your smart sending. Okay? So I'm not gonna go through all the different scenarios where this can screw things up. But obviously if your smart sending is more than eight hours and you send your second email in eight hours, it's not gonna go. So smart sending is. There are. It's a universal, It's a universal setting in Klaviyo settings. By the way, obviously we're talking about Klaviyo here. We're like, we're a Klaviyo first agency and it's a product with mass market appeal. But all of this philosophy works with other systems. In fact, I built all this stuff in other systems before I used Klaviyo. So you can do all this stuff in any system. I just talk through Klaviyo in shorthand. Okay, so we've triggered it. We've routed to the appropriate content category, if appropriate, based on product category. We have given people a chance to convert and then they open the email. Right. Actually, we should start with subject line. Of course, the classic is caught you looking right or you've got great taste. I think it's fine to split test against that. Maybe it gets used all the time because it's a winner. I'm pretty deep in email, so I see it and my eyes roll. But you know, I'm deep in email, so I'll acknowledge that it's worth testing. You've got good taste, but we can probably do better. And so in here, we're going to Discuss the dynamic content, the. The dynamic value that's embedded in the email. I would consider calling out that value. So this is foundational when it comes to recommendations trending new to site best sellers emails. Perfect for you. Where you pay our recommendations. Foundational to that is the reason those are popularized in multiple email systems is because they work. All the research has been done. The science is settled. Right? People are interested in products that are curated for them, even if it's curated by a machine. Oh, recommendations for me. Oh, these are for me. These are for me. What is. What's every landing page do? We've said it so many times. What's a landing page? Where am I? What do you want me to do? What's in it for me? So calling out for them, what's in it for you in a subject line. That's what every subject line is. If every subject line is what's in it for me, you're going to do great. Right? So we haven't gotten to the section with the, the different dynamic content, but let's just stick with recommendations because recommendations is classic in a browser band and email because you know they clicked on a product so you can make a recommendation for them. You could say, you know, the product you missed + recommended for you. I know that's kind of wordy, but don't be afraid of that. Don't be afraid of calling out recommended for you in the subject line because someone's gonna go, oh, recommendations. Oh, this, these are gonna be good. This isn't gonna be random stuff. What are you doing? When you call out the fact that there is curated content for them in that message, you're saying, this isn't gonna be a rando campaign. You're gonna see stuff in here that you like and you know what it's gonna get opens. And if you've followed the pod, you will know that when you optimize your subject line, the largest uplift is actually on page conversion. It's actually revenue procession. Revenue procession is what goes up the most when you optimize your subject line. Seems crazy because it's subject line, you got to open it, then click, click through the email, then purchase on the site. You got to even add cart. How is it that revenue per session is what goes up the most? Well, there's a few things going on there. One, the benefit. The benefit has time to compound down the funnel. Two, you're creating something in someone's mind and then if you do your, if you write your copy properly, you're playing on that the whole way. And building on this concept and what's the concept we're building, why this thing's right for you. They're called value propositions for a reason. So we are building on that from the subject line to the asset and then often to a banner on top of the category page. If you're dropping into a category page, you put a banner up there for your seasonal launch or whatever it is that you're doing. And through building on that, the final endpoint, the revenue procession is what went up the most. Right. Went up more than, than just the, the open rate. So calling out the what's in it for me is huge for the subject line and caught you looking. I mean, how about something more like. And I, I recognize and I acknowledge every time I write these subject lines on the fly. They're not great because you really got to sit down and do it. But it's like, yeah, keep shopping. Plus recommended for you. You can even do a plus sign or you can break it down and you know the, the product name that you, that you left behind. And then in the pre header text you could say plus recommended for you. Right? Anyway, point being subject line, let's at least test something better than caught you looking. Let's at least test, let's at least try to beat that. And if you want to think about where to start beating that, start beating it by spelling out what's in it for them. Because that's what they're, that's what they care about. They care about what's in it for them. And further, dynamic value. Dynamic, dynamic content. The things that we dynamically load are tested and proven to appeal to consumer psychology. Right. Recently added. Why are recently added emails good? Because people like newness. People react very well to newness. So. Oh, there's dynamic content that loads newness. Right. There's no like super old products. There's, you know, hey, it's a super old products email. Oh, products that have been on the site for years old. Oh, I gotta open this one. The dynamic value is tested and proven to work. So call out the dynamic value in the email in the subject line in some way or another. Okay, so subject line done. Then what do we see in the email? First of all, my goodness. Okay, you know, like more than half of the people who open the email. Well, more than half do not scroll down. Right. So so much of the action is in the hero or basically above the fold. So much of the action. Now we talk about making email shoppable landing pages. Who's that for. Well, that's for the third that do scroll down, right? The third. I mean, do you want to just like walk away from the third that that scroll down and just show them like garbage? No, you gotta keep entertaining them, right? So, you know, we do make emails that are shoppable landing pages. But let's acknowledge that most of the action is above the fold. That is where most of the action is. It's above the fold. So I know I've said it before, but so let's say it again. Why put a hero shot on your browse abandon email when the value to them is the thing they clicked on? They clicked on that product. You've got crazy heavy data that through the process of product discovery, they really found that product interesting. They interacted with it, they showed intent. Why wouldn't you lead with that? Why would you lead with some random picture of some dude? You know what I mean? Here's a dude with a product from my site, right? I've got, you know, 15 products or I've got 30 products. Here's a picture of a dude with the hero product from my site. Now, is this the hero product? Is that what they clicked on? Maybe not. Is that the product that's below this hero shot? Maybe not, right? So someone's going to open it up, say, oh, that's there's the other thing that I didn't. I'm not interested in that other thing. And they click back and you just wasted it. You just wasted it. So if you're a fashion brand and you have amazing on model shots, you know, and your imagery is fantastic. Sure, okay, lead with a hero. But if you are not like some kind of fashion or design brand with the best imagery out there, lead with the product. It's what they wanted. Okay, so probably we've skipped the hero shot. And then next you show recently viewed product. It's a feature inside of Klaviyo. Show the recent. And many systems just show the recently viewed product. It's the most recent event in the viewed product event. Sorry, this is the most recent product in the in the viewed product event. Now if you have a multi stage abandoned flow, browse abandoned flow. And especially if it's a longer flow, if you get sneaky and you start making it like a continuation, you can go back and watch the episode on continuation. Forget which one it was 26. I forget. But you can go watch the episode on continuation. Don't understand what I'm talking about? If you start getting this longer flow, you can always put in Some logic on future emails and say has clicked on three products or has viewed product three times. And if someone has viewed product three times, you can show them recent three products. You can have an email. It's like products you've recently viewed. And this is getting closer to Amazon inspired product discovery. Okay, they didn't convert on their first pass through. That round of intent is expired. We need to draw them back in to the catalog. Oh, here's products you've viewed. And that's going to let them self select which part of your catalog they want to re enter into. So point being, don't walk away from the idea of recently viewed products on a future subsequent message when the you don't want, when someone has just shown intent, you want to just show them the product they clicked on. Don't confuse them. Right. Get them back where they were. If you show them multiple products, you're going to get them thinking. You get the paradox of choice. They're going to be thinking, well, which part of the catalog do I want to enter? And actually that just measurably kills conversion. It's known. It's known. So, but after that round of intent has expired, which realistically is like a week, you can start kicking in recently viewed products and show three products. Right there you have a rule. Has viewed three products. Oh, they have viewed three products. Okay. Yes. Then show them three products and they can click okay. After the recently viewed product or products. Now you've got some options. So one is just keep the shopping going. Okay. And this is valuable for very large catalogs. So you have the recently viewed product and directly below that you have dynamic merchandising. And the dynamic merchandising that we will discuss is Recommendations, Trending, Recently Added Bestsellers and Perfect Together. Perfect Together is two different recommendations restricted to two different categories like necklace and earring, with one recommendation each. So you get a recommended earring and a recommended necklace and they'll think it looks perfect together because they're recommended. Right. Look, not every curation is going to be perfect. But what we're looking at doing. What are we doing here? We're automating our work. We don't want to email every single person who's been on the site manually. Hey, you were on the site, right? We're finding ways to automatically bring people back in through product discovery. So recommended together. Super cool. So those are the five kinds of dynamic merchandising that we're discussing here. Okay. Which dynamic merchandising belongs in Browse Abandon, Recommended and Trending we keep bestsellers and new to site for site abandoned best. Why? Well, they didn't click on a product so we can't necessarily make a good recommendation. They didn't get into the catalog. Right. We don't. And since we don't know that about them, we can just show bestsellers. Like we don't know if they've ever been in the catalog. They might have never been in the catalog. Show bestsellers. Bestsellers always work. Someone's been down, they've. They've been through the products, they've seen your catalog. You don't need to leave. With bestsellers, you can leave the recommendations. Also for site abandon, you would do new to site. They didn't get in the catalog. You don't know how long it was since they saw the catalog. So that's where you show them something new and trending. Trending is like the best selling products in the last three days. That is social proof. So when someone's actually been in a product, they were considering that product, they were looking at that product. We want to now show them what you know, what people like you are shopping right now. And we, you might have gotten these kinds of emails from different tech giants before. It's like, yeah, what things? You know what people like? What people just like you are shopping right now. You got a wordsmith. It sorry, that's trending. So we will show recommendations and trending in browse abandon. And also if you're going to do a third message perfect together, right. Which I just broke down, that's the kind of dynamic content, the dynamic products that we show at this layer of the purchase funnel, we can restrict these in our data feeds by category, by catalog. And I mean if you're breaking things up by three, by two different catalogs in default, like we discussed above, you're gonna want to make specific data feeds for these different funnels because you don't want to show recommendations for products that aren't in that feature set. If, look, if you got, if you've got the skateboard and the rollerblades, you want to have the skateboard email that's all about the skateboard show. Recommended skateboards, not recommended rollerblades. Right. So go in and restrict those. Okay. So like we said, we can go from the recently viewed right into the dynamic merchandising and it's like a shopping extravaganza. And then after that we can go to some content. But let's just keep in mind we actually could have put this content above the dynamic merchandising. What works best, you gotta test, right? So, yeah, you can just try both. It's such an easy test. Just swapping this around an important point. If you're going to show more products below the fold, have a little bit of the next product appear so someone sees, oh, there's more products, it'll get them to, you know, it'll get, it'll get them thumbing down a bit so they can see the other products. It just triggers the scroll. All right, so whether or not you lead with, you follow with dynamic merchandising or you follow with the content, here's some content you could put in there. And now we've reached more art than science. There are so many things you can do in here. Let's just talk about it again. Overcome main objections. What are the number one objections for that product line? Okay, let's just explain them away. Manufacturing materials, ingredients. Right? Talk about what's inside the product and how it's made. So do some brand marketing. Just, just talk about your brand. Take this second to, you know, they've, they've gone through all this stuff. Take a second to remind them exactly why your brand is special. And if, and if, if your brand is special, if that's the killer versus the manufacturing quality, you're going to know and just call out those things. This is your chance to, to bring them into your world. Some things like customer served, always great. This was on a recent kind of episode I did. It's like, how many customers have you served? How many star ratings of 10,000? Five star ratings. What's your mission? So do some marketing, right? This is where you do the marketing. And let's just keep in mind this is like a free brand impression, right? So let's make the most of this free brand impression, not just say, caught you looking, right? And then finally, I like to end off with some social proof. So testimonials. Although I'll acknowledge, look, if your testimonials are amazing or if you really need testimonials because you've got a complicated or just a tricky product. Yeah, maybe you actually bring the testimonials right below the recently viewed product. So of course, play with this order. Right? But finish off with some testimonials. Okay. After your browse, abandoned emails are done and we just discussed, I mean three, right? You've got the one, the product you viewed, the product you viewed, and then the products you viewed, followed by recommendations, trending and perfect together. So look, this format just totally supports three emails. And we discussed three different funnels Category one, category two, default. So that's technically nine messages. Although what are you going to do? You're going to use the same three, but you're going to swap out the kind of middle bit where we talk about, oh, the manufacturing materials and ingredients. Let's make sure we're talking about the right product. So the content will switch, but the skeleton for this message is going to be the same. The kind of, the layout, you know, and the core technical aspects are going to be the same. You're going to switch the data feed so you've got the right category. After those messages are done, we finish off with the funnel flusher. Final flusher could go after seven days or after say, 30. Right. Or 28 or whatever. Why seven or 30? What are we thinking about here? Okay, there's two things. One, intent is dead in seven days. So this is your last chance to, to, to get anything out of that intent session. And what would you do? You would give either your welcome coupon, again, which is 10%, or, you know, maybe your welcome coupon with a bit of a kicker, 15%. That's what you're going to do at seven days. And it's, it's a way to make sure that you capitalize on this intense session without being too aggressive with the discount. Right. Because you don't want people to just understand, oh, yeah, deals are coming. Right. All I got to do is just wait a week. I'm gonna get my deal. So 10 or 15%, and then it can go at 30 days and the funnel flush rate. 30 days. I'll explain what the funnel flusher is in a second. Just, let's just start with the time frame. A funnel flush rate, 30 days is like 20 to 30% off. You know, 25, 30%, something like that. So what are we thinking about 30? They, they definitely, definitely did not purchase in that session. So what are you doing? You're giving them time? Of course, some trailing purchases come through, right? Of course they do. So you're saying we are going to make sure they didn't purchase off this intent. And you can also put in some rules that, like, they haven't visited in the last, like 14 days or something like that. Right. And so it's like they're gone. Okay. All right. Well, now when you put in that kind of 20 to 30%, it's actually becoming a reactivation email. You know what I mean? It's reactivation email built into your browse bandit. Yeah, it's like saying, look, let's just. They came in they didn't buy anything. Let's just clear it out, make any money we can on it and start fresh with a new set of addresses. And so that, that 30 off, that's more for like an acquisition based system. Pretty big discount. So you wouldn't want people getting, getting to understand that as regular shoppers. But like if you, if you, if you're putting a lot of effort into new addresses and new acquisition and you really don't want to lose on any of those addresses, that's where you might use that 30 day, 30%. They haven't been on the site in two weeks, whatever, right? They're gone. Okay, let's just capitalize next set of addresses. Where you do the 10 or 15 in a week is like they are regular shoppers and they liked this and they just, they just didn't buy this one. Okay, fine. Let's just give them the welcome coupon again. All right, it's just the welcome coupon again. We were going to give it the first time, let's give it the second time, right. And it's, it's shorter afterwards. So the funnel flusher, right? What is this? This is a coupon email and it's got a much simpler layout than what we just discussed. And by the way, this funnel flusher, it should go after site abandon, it should go after browse, it should go after cart, it should go up to checkout after category. Whichever funnel, whichever one of these they entered, if they make it all the way to the end. And how would they not make it all the way to the end? Because of course you've got rules set up so that if someone's in browse abandon and they put something in their cart, they get kicked out of browser band and added to cart. And there's honestly, to do this properly. So people can only go down, they can't go up, they can't be in more than one at once. They get kicked out of the last one and added to the new one. Honestly, it's dozens of rules across these, across all these flows, dozens of individual rules. I'm not going to go over it in the pod. It's, it's just, I'd rather poke myself in the eye with a Q tip. But you know, you need to have those rules. Okay, so it goes at the end of all of those. So someone receives it if they did not progress, right? And it is here it is a hero. It's offer over hero. Because you know what, the offer, it's got a set offer. So you give that Offer over a hero shot. We don't know if they were. If this is in browser band and our site abandoned, we're not, you know, so this is going to be very general, a really nice hero shot. Offer over hero. Below that, best sellers because whatever they entered on didn't work. So just show them best sellers, right? And then you drive them to the, the cart, the checkout or the category page, depending on which flow you're putting it in. So in this case, for you to use this rule, you'd need to put the same email at the end of multiple flows. Another option is to have funnel flusher flow that runs after a certain number of days if someone hasn't been on the site, right. And then you just drive them to the shop all page. The interesting thing about that is it doesn't put them in, doesn't put them in where they left like when you put it in all the individual ones. But it does give you one funnel flusher flow. And so you can then test and optimize. You know, you could have a little funnel flusher, you'd have a reminder that goes and you can optimize those as one thing. And you know, I've never tested or studied which one is better to do. If you're going to do a 30 day, you should do it as its own separate flow because you want to have safeties. When you go back to those dozens of rules that I discussed, you want to have safeties that someone can't be in this flow if it's been so many days. And yeah, if someone progresses down, you don't want them to progress back up. Bottom line, when you really get down to the brass tacks, if that thing's going after 30 days, you can't have it in, you can't have it embedded in one of those flows. Or they could be in another flow further down the funnel and still be in that one and get that one. Because you haven't, because you got your safety has to, has to accommodate a 30 day email. You know what, that's just trust me on that. Don't you know you don't need to spend like two hours screwing around on rules to discover what I've already discovered. If you want a 30 day, it's got to be its own flow. If you want to insert someone to exactly where they were in the funnel. You got to do four different funnel flushers and four different flows after. After seven days. And you got to change the, the event behind the dynamic content that drives you to the cart or the cta, all of you, all to figure that out. Ultimately, if you want the simplest, just show them the hero with the offer. Show them bestsellers and have a. Have a button that drives them to the category page. Can't lose, right? Can't lose. No matter what, can't lose. The only browser band you'll ever need. If you guys take what I just said and take your subpar browse abandon. If you have a subpar browse abandon. If you've listened 40 minutes into this, you might have a subpar browse abandon. This is what I see a lot of, by the way. This is what I see a lot of. Someone's got one browser band Email. Wow. One email, right? Please draw me back into your world. Or it's like an email sends after four hours. Four hours. After four hours, they do not care about you. They're busy caring about the other thing that got their attention, right? We're surrounded all day by things that are just grabbing our attention. Four hours toast. You have missed the opportunity, right? I told you, I see a lot of. Caught you looking, right? You open up the email and the email is just the dynamic product. It's just the product and often a price. Quick one. Don't put your prices in there. Why? Because eventually something's going to happen where it's like, oh, these prices were. It was the wrong prices in the wrong column in Shopify or, you know, not all of your customers are in the United States. Some are in Australia. They've got different kinds of dollars. They're all dollars, but they're different kinds of dollars. So don't put the prices in the email. Leave the prices in the site. Let the site logic take care of that. Right? Yeah. So I see a lot of that. It's like, oh, it's just the dynamic product, nothing else. And maybe a price which. Which is possibly wrong. Right? And then all the marketing we discussed the dynamic marketing, the product marketing, the brand marketing, right? Further down the email, putting in these amazing vistas. The best shots you've got, right? The best shots, right? The kind of on the beach with the dog. Bring them into your world and they. What you might see is the beach with the dog at the top. It's a hero shot. No product, of course, we're hiding the product below the fold, right? No, bring all that stuff down and really ham it up. Really bring them into your world. Because you can build this email once and it's going to keep sending for like, you know, years. So build it once, build it right. Two Thirds of the people are going to stay up above the fold. They're only going to see what's above the fold. So make the fold hammer. But if they're curious, if they are shopping, let them scroll down and show them an amazing shoppable landing page. That's what we just made here. We just made a shoppable landing page. You know, okay. It's like we can assume that they are product aware now. I mean, when, you know, when we're like kind of doing this, these landing pages further up the funnel, it's like, are they problem aware? Are they solution aware? Right. And kind of breaking that up by designing. We know that they're product and solution aware. So we can go, we can hammer right down. Here are the benefits. Right, right. You know, pain point resolution. We can just hammer that stuff. And what better place to do it, Right? Because you've got a whole page. Okay, there we go. We've got more great episodes coming. There's so much going on. We talked last week about, you know, recent changes where we are. We're doing more on the kind of CRO front. We've got some pretty interesting episodes coming up on. On scarcity and abundance. Right. The economics of scarcity. The economics of abundance. We're going to drop that. Yeah, just. Just amazing stuff. So please stay tuned in. If you've not yet subscribed, please subscribe. And if you've got any questions about any of this, of course, feel free to come to Pilothouse Co, fill out the lead form and ask to speak me directly. Have fun spamming.
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Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not getting the D2C newsletter, you can subscribe for free at directtoconsumer.co. and if you want to learn more about Pilothouse's all killer no filler services, take off to Pilothouse Co. I'm Eric Dick and this has been the DTC podcast. We'll see you next time.
Title: The Only Browse Abandon Email You’ll Ever Need | AKNF Preview of TWBERP
Date: August 22, 2025
Host: Jordan Gordon (with intro by Eric)
Podcast Network: DTC Newsletter & Podcast / The World’s Best Retention Email Podcast (TWBERP)
This episode is a tactical masterclass in crafting the most effective browse abandon email flow for direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, focusing on maximizing retention and converting high-intent site activity into revenue. Jordan Gordon, a retention and email expert at Pilothouse, dives deep into strategies for building simple but powerful browse abandon flows, with special attention to segmentation, dynamic content, subject line optimization, and automation best practices. This actionable walkthrough suits both email marketing veterans and newcomers, offering foundational principles and nuanced tricks to ensure every browse-abandon session counts.
Best Trigger: Use "viewed product" as main trigger.
Category Abandonment: Optionally, track category/page views for more granular targeting, though not all platforms (like Klaviyo) handle this identically.
"Of course you trigger on viewed product that makes it a browse abandon email. But to just add some nuance, you can also make a category abandon email."
– Jordan Gordon (04:03)
Keep Segmentation Simple: Start by segmenting only top 2 categories and a default, not too many—valuable for resource allocation.
Dynamic Content: Even with a single funnel, dynamic content customizes the message by the user’s on-site activity.
Optimal Send Timings: First email at 20 minutes, second at 8 hours post-browse.
"First one goes 20 minutes. Second...after 8 hours. Because that way you get them when they're in the same session... and you get them later that day or when they wake up."
– Jordan (12:13)
Watch for Smart Sending: Ensure your platform’s smart sending/limiting settings don’t block intended sends.
“What’s In It For Me?” This should drive every subject line for maximum open and conversion rates.
Move Beyond Cliché: Test and try to beat "Caught you looking" / "You’ve got great taste."
"Don’t be afraid of calling out 'recommended for you' in the subject line... It gets opens, but the real uplift is on page conversion and revenue per session."
– Jordan (17:01)
Highlight Dynamic Value: Call out recommendations, personalization, or “perfect for you” aspects directly.
Above the Fold Focus: Over half of users don’t scroll—put the most critical info (the product they viewed) right at the top.
"Why put a hero shot on your browse abandon email when the value to them is the thing they clicked on?"
– Jordan (24:50)
Recently Viewed Product: Should lead, not generic hero images (unless you’re a high-visuals fashion brand).
Dynamic Merchandising Types:
Paradox of Choice: Too many options in first emails kills conversion; use “recently viewed” initially, then expand in subsequent emails if intent decays.
"Finish off with some testimonials...bring them into your world with amazing vistas, your best shots, the dog on the beach."
– Jordan (36:25)
Purpose: Final “last-chance” nudge for unconverted intent, after 7 or 30 days (timing based on reactivation vs. short-latency shoppers).
Structure: Offer (hero with coupon, e.g. 10–15% off at 7 days, up to 25–30% at 30 days for dormant users), best sellers list, call-to-action to shop.
"The funnel flusher... could go after seven days or after... 30. Why? Intent is dead in seven days. So this is your last chance..."
– Jordan (37:30)
Placement: The “funnel flusher” email belongs at the end of every automation flow: browse, site, cart, checkout abandon.
"Build this email once and it’s going to keep sending for years. So build it right."
– Jordan (45:15)
For Each Main Category (or for ‘Default’):
| Time | Segment/Topic | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------| | 01:46 | Introduction to foundational email strategies | | 03:20 | Triggers: Product vs Category Abandonment | | 07:12 | Product feed: Blending visits and purchase data | | 10:45 | Wait steps: 20 minutes & 8-hour timing rationale | | 15:30 | Subject line strategy & “what’s in it for me?” | | 24:30 | Email structure: Above-the-fold and visual logic | | 34:00 | Objection-busting, testimonials, and content ideas | | 36:45 | The Funnel Flusher explained | | 41:00 | Technical flow logic & rule management | | 44:00 | Common mistakes and best-practice recap |
If you want the full tactical breakdown or have questions, reach out to Pilot House or subscribe to the DTC Podcast.