Most businesses think about email as campaigns: write something, send it to everyone, watch the graph. Flows are the other kind — triggered by what someone does, sent once, then working indefinitely. They are where the quiet majority of email revenue comes from, and you can build the first three in a week.
1. Welcome
Triggered when someone joins your list. This is the moment of maximum interest and it is usually wasted on a discount code and silence.
- Immediately: whatever you promised, delivered without friction. If you offered a discount or a guide, it is in this email and nothing else competes with it.
- Two days later: why you exist. What you do differently, who you are for. People buy from businesses they understand.
- Five days later: proof. A customer story, a result, something concrete that is not you talking about yourself.
2. Abandoned cart or abandoned enquiry
Someone got close and stopped. For a store that is a cart; for a service business it is a half-finished form or a quote that went quiet. Same idea either way.
Send within a few hours while the intent is warm, and make the first one a reminder rather than a pitch — people genuinely do get distracted. Follow up a day later addressing the actual reason people hesitate. Usually that is shipping cost, delivery time, or whether they can send it back. Answer it plainly instead of discounting.
Resist discounting in the first email. Do it reliably and you train people to abandon carts.
3. Win-back
Triggered when a customer has not bought in however long is unusual for your business — which depends entirely on what you sell, so use your own repeat-purchase interval rather than a number from a blog post.
The one that works is not “we miss you”. It is a reason to come back now: something new since they last looked, or a genuine acknowledgement that it has been a while and a question about whether something went wrong. The replies to that last one are worth more than the revenue.
Build them in this order
Welcome first, because everyone joining your list passes through it. Abandonment second, because it catches people at the highest intent. Win-back third, because it needs enough purchase history to be meaningful.
All three are written once and then keep running. That is the entire argument for doing them before your next campaign.