Building a granular, personalized cross-sell flow based on past purchases is usually the wrong place to focus your energy. The most profitable email flows don't try to create new demand out of thin air; they capture existing, high-intent demand that's already there.
The common wisdom, fueled by the marketing for platforms like Klaviyo, is to pursue a perfect 360-degree view of the customer. It's a compelling vision. You imagine that if someone buys Product A, you can create a perfectly-timed flow to introduce them to Product B, then C, then D, all based on their purchase history. It feels like the pinnacle of data-driven marketing, creating a bespoke journey for every single customer. On Honest Ecommerce, guests often speak about using real-time data to make every interaction feel more relevant, and this seems like the logical endpoint of that idea. You can build segments and flows triggered by specific SKUs, and it feels like you're a marketing genius.
But the reality is that this approach often creates a tangled mess of brittle logic that's a nightmare to maintain and, more importantly, doesn't actually perform that well. Nik Sharma made the point on Limited Supply that replenishment emails crush every other flow. Why? Because the intent is already there. You are not creating demand, you are simply catching it. Trying to guess what a customer might want to buy next is a low-odds bet. Reminding them to re-order a product you already know they like is as close to a sure thing as you can get.
Even the data scientists from Klaviyo, speaking on an episode of Honest Ecommerce, pointed to more fundamental opportunities being underutilized. When host Chase Clymer asked about advanced strategies, Woody Austin and Michael Lawson brought up using personalization inside abandoned cart flows and triggering flows based on a customer's
