381 - We Need to Talk About Your Customer Winback Flow
Release Date: 05/10/2026
Marketing With Laryssa
Get the FREE "Front Door" Report: Right now, roughly a third of your subscribers are opening your emails in dark mode. On some lists it's closer to 40%. And depending on how your emails were built, that could mean your logo is invisible, your text is unreadable, or your email just looks like something went terribly wrong. The worst part is you'd never know - because if you're testing in light mode on desktop, everything looks fine. It's only when you flip to dark mode that you see what a chunk of your audience is actually looking at every time you hit send. Dark mode isn't an edge case...
info_outlineMarketing With Laryssa
Cody Cessna almost didn't do email marketing at all. He told me straight up he didn't want to be the brand that annoys people and gets unsubscribed. And honestly, that instinct made our job harder - because we had to build in more restraint and intention than we might have with another brand. But he came around, and it's actually paying off. Cody is the founder of COE, a brand built for the active and working man who needs eyewear that can handle the job site without looking terrible doing it. He spent years as a lineman touching 16,000 volts every day, wearing safety glasses that were ugly...
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📥 Download the FREE Front Door Study: I subscribed to 362 real ecommerce brands - jewelry, fashion, beauty, home, wellness, accessories - using fresh email addresses and phone numbers I'd never used before. I just wanted to know what actually happens after you hand over your contact information. Not what a Klaviyo dashboard says is happening. What actually shows up in the inbox. Nearly half of them never sent a welcome email at all. That means 158 brands took someone's email address, made them a promise - usually a discount or incentive - and then went completely silent. And SMS had the...
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Every SMS marketing platform is pushing something called RCS right now, telling you it's the future of texting your customers. And the upgrade is real - but the pitch is leaving out a few things worth knowing before you make any decisions. RCS, which stands for Rich Communication Services, isn't actually new technology. It was standardized back in 2007. The reason everyone is suddenly talking about it in 2026 is that Apple only added support for it in iOS 18, which came out in fall 2024. Once iPhone users were covered, rich messaging across both major platforms became possible for the first...
info_outlineMarketing With Laryssa
390Julie Cole said something in our conversation that I haven't stopped thinking about. Social media, content, followers - all of it can disappear tomorrow. The only thing she actually owns is her email list. Julie is the co-founder of Mabel's Labels, the brand behind those indestructible labels you've seen on kids' water bottles and lunchboxes - the ones that survive the dishwasher, the microwave, and everything in between. She started the company 23 years ago in her sister's basement with three co-founders, none of them technical, trading a foosball table for their first website. It's since...
info_outlineMarketing With Laryssa
Klaviyo has been rolling out something called Composer in beta - an AI agent that promises to build entire marketing campaigns from a single prompt. Audience, copy, design, segmentation, all of it. The promise is impressive. So I got access on a real client account and tested it myself. And my honest take is more nuanced than the hype - and more useful than the skeptics would have you believe. The short version: Composer is less an autonomous agent and more a really well-informed assistant. It knows your account data better than any outside AI tool could. It just still needs you. Where it...
info_outlineMarketing With Laryssa
$6,000 in Klaviyo. $600 in Google Analytics. Same campaign. Same week. Real numbers from a real account my team took over. If you've ever stared at two reports that should say the same thing and thought - is someone lying to me? - this episode is for you. Nobody is lying. But what's actually happening is something every ecommerce brand sending marketing emails needs to understand. Those two tools aren't giving you different answers because one of them is wrong. They're giving you different answers because they're asking completely different questions. Klaviyo is asking how much did the...
info_outlineMarketing With Laryssa
The moment someone signs up for your emails is the highest attention moment you will ever have with that subscriber. They just said yes. They're interested. They're engaged. And most brands are using that window to send two, maybe three emails - and then calling it done. That's a problem. Because the subscribers who buy from email one were already close to purchasing anyway. The discount and the timing just pushed them over the edge. The rest of your welcome series exists for everyone who wasn't ready yet - the people who need more trust, more context, more touchpoints - and that group is...
info_outlineMarketing With Laryssa
Segmentation sounds like the answer to everything. The right message to the right person at the right time - that's the dream. And to be clear, I'm a segment stan. Smart segmentation is one of the most powerful things you can do for your email program. But the conversation around it is almost always one-directional: more segments, more targeting, more personalization. And at a certain point, that stops being true. I see brands build 12, 20, who even knows how many segments - and end up spending more time managing those segments than actually sending good campaigns. The result is a...
info_outlineMarketing With Laryssa
The call to action is the last thing someone reads before they click - or don't. And for something that important, it gets surprisingly little strategic thought in most email programs. What I see instead is one of two extremes. Either the CTA is completely ignored - "Shop Now" slapped on every button, same wording across every email, no thought given to whether it's actually doing its job. Or it's wildly overthought - someone spent 20 minutes trying to make the button sound clever and ended up with copy that nobody instantly understands. Both are a problem. And the fix is simpler than most...
info_outlineKlaviyo makes it easy to set up a win back flow. There's a default template ready to go, so most brands turn it on, move on, and assume it's working. And technically it is - it's running. But running and working are two very different things.
When I go into a new client's account and look at their win back flow, what I almost always find is something that was set up once, never really thought through, and is running on default settings that nobody ever questioned. The timing is off. The re-entry settings are wrong. The emails are leading with a discount when they should be leading with something worth coming back for.
A lot of that comes down to a fundamental confusion about what a win back flow is even supposed to do - and how it's different from a sunset flow. Because they're not the same thing, and if you're treating them like they are, you're bringing the wrong energy to the wrong audience.
A win back flow isn't about rescuing the unrescuable. It's about reopening a conversation with someone who already knows you and just needs a reason to come back. That's a completely different job - and it requires a completely different approach.
In this episode, I walk through the four things I look at when auditing a win back flow, the real brand examples that show what getting it right actually looks like, and a framework for making sure yours is doing the work it's supposed to do.
✨ In this episode, you'll learn:
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The difference between a win back flow and a sunset flow - and why mixing them up costs you
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Why the first question to ask isn't about the emails at all - it's about who's entering the flow
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How to use your actual repurchase data to set win back timing (instead of guessing)
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Why firing your win back too late means you're showing up to a conversation that already ended
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The re-entry setting most brands never check - and why it matters more than you think
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Why leading with a discount is often the laziest and least effective way to bring someone back
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Real brand examples of win back flows that lead with relevance, voice, and something actually worth coming back for
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A five-part audit framework to run on your own win back flow
The best win back flows don't feel like a win back flow. They feel like a well-timed, thoughtful message from a brand that noticed you'd been away - and actually has something worth showing you.
Work with Joy Joya: https://joyjoya.com