Ask an Iterator: Rebecca Chow on Workflow Building

Last week, we debuted our Personalization Playbook on Workflow Building, as a part of our Pillars of Personalization sequence. In this playbook, we talk about the 4 constructing blocks of a profitable messaging workflow, and the way our prospects like bloomon put this technique into follow.

But one information just isn’t practically sufficient to exhaust this matter, so we went straight to our consultants to present you much more insights.

In this newest installment of “Ask an Iterator,” we ask Rebecca Chow, Senior Customer Success Manager, to dive into the finer particulars of workflow constructing so you possibly can stroll away with the arrogance to construct an superb cross-channel marketing campaign.

Ask an Iterator: Rebecca Chow

Rebecca Chow has been at Iterable for over three years, and he or she holds over a decade of expertise in buyer success and technical account administration.

(And in case you thought she was a heavyweight in her career, it’s best to know that she’s additionally a aggressive Olympic weightlifter!)

Rebecca is able to pump your workflows up, so let’s soar proper in!

1. Let’s get everybody on the identical web page. How do you outline a workflow?

Workflows information your prospects by way of completely different milestones of their lifecycle from the preliminary touchpoint (activation by way of an onboarding sequence), studying extra about your services or products (nurture and engagement), to changing into loyal prospects and followers (reactivation by way of referrals, repeat buy, and upsells).

In Iterable, you possibly can customise workflows in a number of methods to ship customers alongside sure paths and ship personalised and dynamic messages based mostly on their interactions together with your firm.

2. What ought to I do earlier than I begin constructing a messaging workflow?

I might advocate whiteboarding what the client lifecycle ought to appear to be out of your buyer’s perspective from starting to finish, in any other case referred to as lifecycle mapping. Establish your finish aim of the workflow by asking, “What do you want to achieve with this workflow?”

Then, outline your viewers, whether or not that’s prospects, new prospects, current prospects, and so on. Next, determine on what can be the motion that the person takes to enter the workflow. Some examples might be when a person indicators, fills out a type or makes a purchase order.

After, draw out the steps that you’d wish to occur earlier than sending the message to the person. For instance, do you wish to filter anybody in or out of the workflow or add a delay of some hours and test to see if the person’s exercise modified earlier than sending the message? 

Determine what you’ll be utilizing to measure as success to your finish aim, whether or not that’s turning prospects into prospects or larger conversions, for instance. 

3. What are the weather that make a profitable workflow?

I imagine that the weather that make a profitable workflow embrace:

• A place to begin of when the person will enter the move. The message must be related and well timed to your buyer’s interactions together with your group.
• Defining the steps that the person should take earlier than sending the message to make sure that you’re focusing on the correct viewers, sending in a well timed method, and populating personalised dynamic content material inside the message.
• An finish aim for the person to succeed in inside the workflow.
• Tracking and monitoring metrics to measure the success of the workflow.
• Optimizing the workflow on enhancing total buyer expertise based mostly on the above metrics.

4. How can I increase a single message right into a multi-touch sequence?

Instead of simply sending a single message, you possibly can increase the workflow right into a sequence of messages to your prospects. With a welcome sequence, you possibly can increase the primary message “welcoming” your prospects to your organization by sending a sequence of messages, separated by 1-3 days every, displaying them how you can use your services or products and even information them by way of your cell app.

If the client signed up however has not accomplished some other motion, nudge them to take action. In a workflow, after the primary message is shipped, you possibly can wait a day after which add a Filter node to test if the person has taken the desired motion. If not, ship the person one other message to nudge them, like “create your first task” or “which genre or category interests you?”, which may also help with progressive profiling and gathering extra data about your person.

5. What’s the easiest way to implement progressive profiling?

Determine what data you wish to learn about your prospects that’s not available based mostly on their interactions together with your web site. Prioritize the questions you’d prefer to ask and restrict to just a few over time. Also, you probably have a type on your web site, monitor the place they left off on filling it out.

From there, set off the workflow when a person indicators up or abandons a type on the location. Within the email, ask one query to the client and allow them to choose the reply by clicking on their desire (e.g. Yes/No, garments/footwear, searching/shopping for).

Upon clicking the hyperlink, you possibly can direct the person to a type to fill out, offering extra data about them. Some examples embrace stay polling, surveys, and seasonal profiling when asking customers to replace their data.

6. What’s one of the best time to ship messages and the way lengthy ought to the delays be in between messages? How ought to timing/frequency change based mostly on marketing campaign kind?

The delays between messages ought to rely on the kind of workflow sequence. I might advocate A/B testing completely different durations of delays between messages to first set up a baseline after which, decide which length works greatest.

Also, overview in case you’re sending a message on the identical day as when the person would obtain a message from the workflow. We don’t wish to overwhelm your prospects with too many messages in in the future or inside per week.

7. What are the essential marketing campaign workflows each marketer ought to have?

The fundamental marketing campaign workflows each marketer ought to have are the next (if relevant):

• Welcome/Onboarding: Introduces and guides your new customers to your group/firm and how you can get began.
• Abandonment: The person could have left an merchandise of their cart, browsed a specific merchandise or began filling out a type however by no means completed. From these touchpoints, you possibly can nudge the person to finish their buy or type.
• Purchase: Based on a person’s earlier buy, you may ask for suggestions or advocate different associated gadgets, or they may turn out to be a repeat purchaser.
• Re-engagement. These are for customers who had been beforehand engaged together with your firm however then haven’t opened or clicked on an email, haven’t made a latest buy, or canceled. The aim right here can be to win again these prospects by displaying them the advantages of your merchandise/companies and what they might be lacking out on.

8. What are extra superior or much less generally used workflows that may uplevel your advertising technique?

More superior or much less generally used workflows to uplevel your advertising technique can embrace: 

• Upsell/Add-ons: add-on merchandise or gadgets that may go effectively with the merchandise added to the cart or with the acquisition.
• Loyalty/Rewards: incentives for being a long-time buyer or a repeat purchaser.
• Recommendations: based mostly on earlier person’s buy historical past or searching exercise.
• Product Feedback: ship after the person has made a purchase order.
• Surveys: ask the person to charge their expertise together with your firm or model.
• Referrals: based mostly on the survey responses, ask those who’re advocates to refer their household and mates.

9. How ought to I incorporate a number of channels in a workflow? Are there any greatest practices to integrating email with SMS, cell push, net push, in-app, and so on.?

If a person doesn’t reply or take any motion with email, like an open or a click on, ship a push notification or SMS message as an alternative. Depending on your viewers, some will desire SMS extra (skews towards youthful demographics) whereas others don’t learn their email instantly. Also, after sending a push message, you possibly can queue up an in-app message when the person opens the app. 

To decide which channel a person prefers to obtain messages from, I might advocate making a desire middle the place they’ll make their alternatives.

10. What are the errors you wish to keep away from when constructing workflows?

I might advocate testing your workflow earlier than enabling it to your stay viewers. Also, it’s best to overview analytics and discover methods to optimize workflows to make them higher for the client expertise.

Over time, your buyer’s lifecycle could change and so will your services and products. Make certain that the workflow is up to date to mirror these adjustments. 

11. What experiments ought to I run and what analytics ought to I monitor to optimize my workflows?

I might advocate operating experiments with completely different delays between the set off and when the message is shipped and between messages as effectively. Also, run A/B experiments on topic traces to not solely check deliverability but in addition open charges.

Another experiment can be to have a holdout group the place they won’t obtain the marketing campaign and evaluate conversions or purchases towards the customers who did obtain the marketing campaign.

Workflow Building: Get the Guide

Now that we’ve acquired the rundown from Rebecca, obtain our full Personalization Playbook on Workflow Building to discover ways to use workflows to create and automate messages that may resonate together with your viewers and deepen your buyer relationships.