Email Flow / Automation Sequence
An automated series of emails triggered by a user action or condition.
An email flow (sometimes called a sequence, automation, or journey) is a pre-built series of emails that fires automatically based on triggers — a signup, a purchase, cart abandonment, inactivity, or behavioral signals. Flows operate continuously, unlike campaigns which are one-time sends.
Context
The highest-ROI flows across most businesses: welcome (triggers on signup), browse abandonment, cart abandonment, post-purchase, win-back, and VIP. For top-quartile ecommerce brands, flows drive 30%+ of total email revenue.
Flow ROI compounds over time. A well-built welcome sequence converts at 15–25% and runs 24/7 on autopilot; the setup cost is amortized over every future signup.
A 4-step cart abandonment flow (email at 1h, 24h, 72h, 7d) typically recovers 5–15% of abandoned carts and produces $5–$15 revenue per triggered send for DTC brands with $50+ AOV.
Flow exhaustion is real. Users who've been through your entire welcome sequence shouldn't re-enter it; flows need exit conditions and deduplication against overlapping flows, or subscribers get hammered with duplicate messaging.