Email categories to copy, used by Liquid IV, Meshki & HigherDOSE. Our topic: AI-driven retention.
Bonjour Millionaire,
Your brand knows that email’s important.
That’s why you’ve got a team or 1 highly caffeinated person running the Big 4 Flows:
👋: Welcome
🛒: Cart abandonment
👛: Checkout abandonment
🌹: A win-back that kinda works
These are great at capturing the most obvious, highest-intent slice of shoppers – around the top 5%.
But, often, the other 95% goes untouched – because they’re messy. Their purchase journeys aren’t linear.
Which is to say, they are…
…A MAJOR OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE MORE $$$
Yet even the smartest, most ambitious brands miss out.
Even the best email marketers don’t have the time to build dozens of new flows. Much less update them every single time they make a change to their site (!)
Or at least…they didn’t.
Let’s talk about the practical unlock: automated email flows.
Flows that generate incremental revenue, from automated sequences you’re not even running yet.
NEXT UP: How these sequences reach the shoppers you’ve already paid for (but haven’t done anything about.)
INFINITE SHOPPING JOURNEYS
The thing about traditional email flows is that they treat shoppers like they’re on train tracks, when actually they’re more like a pinball.
Because: most browsing behavior doesn’t follow an orderly, 1-way funnel.
Shoppers browse, compare, come back later, check the price, add to cart, get distracted, return on a different device…they’re all over the place.
In the process, they MIGHT get 1 or 2 messages from you. IF they fall into 1 of the Big 4 Flows. But the majority of these shoppers, even the high-intent ones, aren’t being touched.
2 common misses:
- Browse a product. Instead of [*crickets*], why not reach out with a graphic and personalized copy that points out how that top would go great with those trousers you already bought?
- Collection abandonment. A pet peeve of mine: if a shopper is looking at the new spring collection via your Meta ad, but disappears back into their Instagram Stories, why are we not triggering a 3-5 step email flow about it?
Now, I know what you’re about to say: sounds nice, but who has the time?
Marketers have ignored deeper personalization in the past, because it was very much in the category of “easier said than done.”
Tracking all these variables & data, then acting on them? It was manual and time-consuming.
Especially for brands with more than a handful of SKUs.
Especially for brands with higher AOVs.
Especially for teams with just 1 highly-caffeinated person.
And, that’s if it was even possible to track them in the first place!
It’s no wonder brands have prioritized acquisition ahead of retention and assumed diminishing returns on anything beyond the Big 4.
Good news: this has gotten a LOT easier. Choo choo. 🚂
Instant AI takes the manual and time-consuming work of tracking customer data, and creating messages tailored for each shopper…without you building 100 versions by hand.
Instead, you’re harnessing AI to curate an INFINITE number of shopper journeys.
Many of which journeys are incredibly common, but criminally under-monetized.
(Okay so not LITERALLY infinite, but certainly more variations than your team would ever realistically be able to build, with better deliverability & smarter copy that matches your shopper.)
Anyway, let’s get into what this looks like, starting with the #1 MVB (Most Valuable BrowseAbandonment)…
It drove$350K in 60 days for July Luggage!
BROWSE ABANDONMENT: A BENCHMARK + AN UPGRADE
Retention flows should drive at least 20-30% of your site revenue. Instant AI’s top brands reach 45%.
Getting to this benchmark isn’t easy if we’re going about things the old-school way: emailing everyone 24 hours later, by default. With a generic subject line, no product context, and in the exact same template as cart abandonment emails, minus a [NAME] field.
It’s basically a courtesy ping instead of a conversion machine.
Here’s what happens when browse abandonment emails get hyper-personalized:
👗: Referencing the exact SKU or category browsed
📝: Personalized copy tied to their site actions, personal info, and shopping history
😍: Pulling in dynamic proof points – like reviews, UGC, top value props, shipping thresholds, fit guidance, etc.
⌚: Adjusting timing based on behavior – some people need an insta-nudge, but others need a sec to breathe. Success here lives or dies based on good timing.
🫰: Leveraging adaptive coupon logic – behavior-triggered & controlled with a unique offer tied to a deadline – not just “here’s 10% off because you’re breathing and have a credit card, we assume.”
👯♀️: A/B tests for every single email – subject lines, graphics, tone, send time – so it can get to know your customers, and get smarter over time.
You’ll never send the same email to 2 different shoppers EVER again.
This is Instant AI’s pitch exactly: generating browse abandonment variations dynamically, including copy & timing & SKU specificity to drive home precisely why a shopper should take action.
This is how browse abandonment emails graduate from a bottom-tier flow into a top revenue driver, WITHOUT touching cart flow.
A clothing brand I’ve written about before generated $1.1M incremental in 90 days using Instant AI, just like this.
If you’re reading this thinking “my browse abandonment flow has never even sniffed that kind of revenue,” that’s very much the point.
But browse abandonment is FAR from the only category of revenue-driving flows you should know about…
CURIOUS ABOUT OTHER EMAIL FLOWS TO TURN ON? (OF COURSE YOU ARE!)
Again, the bottleneck for email marketers was never ideas. It was the TIME it took to test them!
Instant’s predictive opt-in and “infinite memory” for opted-in users starts with better reach. Then Instant AI generates, tests, and adjusts every email layer dynamically.
The point is having an always-on “test & learn” layer. In this case, the A/B testing’s always going, automatically optimizing subject lines, content, and flows.
No other testing’s needed on your end. (I need this for the rest of my life, TBH.)
Instant offers 12 automated email flows across 3 core revenue tactics.
Your team turns them on. AI does the personalization and timing.
Imagine the $$$ your brand could make just with these 3:
🍪: Mid-intent expansion
Collection/category abandonment
Second-session nudges
🤺: Friction resolution
Back in stock
Low stock
Price drop
🌠: Lifecycle compounding
Post purchase
Replenishment
Behavior-triggered winback
Or, look at a case study like Linda’s, which runs all 12 of these automated flows. They’ve added $2.8M in incremental revenue at a 109x ROI since starting Instant AI, and their email revenue is 51% of their Shopify revenue – a 5x increase. Crafty!
GETTING STARTED
Now, if you’re still on the fence about trying this out, because it sounds like work (ugh) that requires change (hard), I get it. Genuinely!
Because, what you’re doing now might be working. And if it is, I’m all for continuing what works.
But, if you have a few minutes (not weeks, MINUTES) to spare, why not use this demo to give 2-3 UNcovered email categories a whirl?
Here’s how to test 1 single layer:
Don’t touch your brand’s top performing flows (yet!).
Ask for help choosing what to test, and add it ON TOP of what you’re already doing well.
📐 Measure what works by focusing on:
- Revenue per recipient
- Incremental revenue
- Time to purchase
- Holdout testing
Reminder: if revenue per recipient increases or stays stable AND coverage expands, you can send MORE emails and exponentially scale your email revenue.
This works because Instant AI’s personalization variance (timing, special promos, etc.) prevents inbox fatigue, so “more emails” becomes “more money,” more reliably.
An example here comes from The Noli Shop: using Instant’s identification + personalization, they’re sending more emails every month, and driving more revenue per email. Now, email flow revenue has grown 10-20% MoM, and hit $1M incremental in 30 days.
THINGS CAN CHANGE IN AN INSTANT…
So, as you can see: there’s a lot of $$$ hiding in the flows nobody had the bandwidth to build, much less personalize, not to mention TEST.
When testing gets deprioritized, learning and growth do, too. And if we’re going to get through 2026, we may as well explore harnessing every tool at our disposal.
Instant is offering 50% off the first 2 months to kickstart that harnessing.
This AI-driven retention is being leveraged by brands like Liquid I.V., HigherDOSE, ThirdLove, and 1,000+ others. (The testimonials on their case studies are worth a look.)
With Instant AI, you can upgrade your email flows to entire AI-powered flow CATEGORIES. Seamlessly automating, personalizing, optimizing, testing, selling products and taking names. (Don’t worry, they’ve opted in.)
Book a demo by March 20thto get 50% off your first 60 days of Instant AI.
Drop me a line and tell me how it goes! Personalized, please.
Yours,
Ari