How to Make Flowcharts Your Email Superpower
Flowcharts. Flowcharts. Flowcharts.
Hi, I’m Ben Watkins 👋 Thanks for joining another edition of La Vie Ben Rose. Every week, I unravel copywriting examples from the most recognized brands.
I love telling people that emails are my superpower.
Superman has lots of powers. Spider-Man has a lot of powers. Even Batman has cool kinda techy superpowers.
But I bet none of them can write an email like me. They can’t even create a flowchart like me.
Let me explain the power of flowcharts aka my superpower.
Create Your Flowchart Before You Write Your Emails
Email marketing for sales and marketing teams can be messy.
For someone like me who works for healthcare companies, there can often be audiences like payors, clinics, providers, and insurance companies.
For every audience, there is a bunch of emails that need to be sent out, from onboarding to demo re-engagement to sales follow-ups.
Here’s an example of segmenting based on one audience.
You need this kind of flowchart to guide you. It’s a strategy to send the right email to the right audience.
You can’t send willy-nilly and hope for the best. On top of that, you have to understand your audience. You have to understand what they want from you.
Know the Beginning of Your Flowchart and What Comes Next
When you branch out your audiences, you’re not just branching out on who they are, you’re also branching out on their behavior.
It’s beyond important. It’s something you have to know the more you get into the weeds of your emails.
More importantly, the more you know about your flowchart, the more you know what the strategy is and what emails to send.
These are things you have to consider:
How many emails are you sending per week? (What expectation are you setting for your audience?)
What triggers do you have in place?
What’s the entry point for each segment?
What email is generating the most revenue?
When does sales send emails vs marketing sending emails?
What emails have high engagement but low revenue?
Asking the Right Questions About Your Flowchart
Flowcharts are unique to every business. They look different as you continue to build them out.
When you create a flowchart, you do more than create a map. You’re figuring out the strategy. You’re understanding how to build that awareness.
Here are some final questions to ask about your email flowchart and overall strategy:
What is the goal of each branch in this flow?
(Are we driving sales? Re-engagement? Education? Every step / flow needs a job.)Where are we losing people?
(Which emails have the highest drop-off or no response? That’s your oh so leaky faucet of lost of money getting dumped.Are the segments based on real behavior or just assumptions?
(Did they click a link? Leave without saying goodbye? Or are we guessing personas here because we think guessing is cool?)
Does the messaging match the user's current stage of awareness?
(Don’t hit them with a hard pitch if they just found out you exist. Don’t propose just yet.How timely and relevant is each email?
(Are we sending that welcome email three days late? Not cool)Are there clear, singular calls to action in every email?
(Too many options = decision fatigue = no click = bad)
Are the delays between emails optimized for action or just arbitrary?
(If someone opens the first email within 2 minutes, do they reallyyyy need to wait 3 days for the next one?)What triggers each part of this flow, and do they make sense?
(Did they actually qualify for the upsell email, or are we prematurely jumping the gun?)
Where are the best-performing emails and what can we learn from them?
(Steal from yourself. The high performers are screaming “copy me!”)When was this flow last updated, and what testing has been done?
(If it's been running since 2022 untouched, you're probably bleeding conversions.)
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Thanks for reading or skimming!
Ben Watkins