Measure Flow Effectiveness with Goals - Setup and Examples

Summary

When you create an email marketing campaign, you should have a specific intent in mind for the action you want your customers to take.

Your flow goals should represent this intent by using user properties that should be updated or events that should occur.

For example, if you want trials to convert to paying, you should use an event-based goal that is hit if the trial purchases your product. In Encharge, you can achieve this with the Goal step.

Tip: Unlike other platforms, Encharge has taken a different approach to setting up goals. In other platforms, goals are defined as part of the automation settings rather than being part of the automation itself. In Encharge, you set goals as part of the automation steps.

How to add or define a goal?

In your flow, look for the Goal action step inside the steps menu under Actions and place it in your flow.

Then, you must define your goal by connecting it to a trigger step. The trigger represents your goal definition. Depending on the trigger conditions, different people will achieve the goal.

For example, if you want your app users to perform an Action, you can use the Entered trigger to hit the goal. In this case, registrations will receive an email after 3 days if the action hasn't been performed. If they do perform the action, then they will reach the goal and count as a conversion in the flow.

Note that the use of Segments in relation to Goals will help you achieve maximum accuracy as you'll have the ability to combine multiple conditions. For example, the conditions used in this example are:

Has Performed Action
Has Received the Nudge Email
Is not paying customer

What happens when a customer reaches the flow goal?

When a contact hits your goal they won't exit the flow by default. If you'd like them to exit the flow, click on the Goal step and activate "End the flow for a person if they reach this flow" in the step settings.

On the Flow metrics tab, you'll see the percentage of people who entered the flow that met the goal, also known as the "Goal Conversion Rate":

You can also see a full list of every individual that hit the goal by clicking on the "View People" drill down button.

If you haven’t set up any Goals or end rules for your flow, then we won’t show these in the overall flow metrics by default.

Let’s list a few examples where you might want to use Goals in your marketing campaigns.

Goal: Convert trials to paying customers

In this example, we want to track what percentage of trial users are converting to paying customers.

For this example we'll use as simple onboarding sequence as shown below.

Place the goal step inside your flow and consider what trigger you may need to define your goal. In this case, a Stripe Subscription Activated trigger might be best suited for the job.

Note, if you're not using Stripe as your billing provider, you can replace the trigger with any event that represents a Purchase.

Goal: Convert leads to trials

In this example, we'll look at how to measure the conversion rate from marketing leads to app trials.

The left side of the flow adds contacts to a lead nurturing campaign once they submit a lead capture form. we have the event "CTA Form Submitted," which fires when someone submits a form on our website — i.e., they become a lead. So, we'll use the event trigger for our leads.

The right side of the flow defines the goal as follows: Whenever the user performs the desired action, move them toward the goal. However, we want to track only specific people with that goal. We want to exclude contacts who have not received at least the first lead nurturing email. That way, we can track the actual effectiveness of the campaign. We achieve this creating a segment with the following conditions:

To summarize, when a contact submits a form on our website, they will enter the flow and be considered a lead. When a lead signs up for our tool, they will be considered a trial user and reach the flow's goal only if they received the first email of the campaign. That way, we can track the percentage of leads who become trial users.

Goal: Perform in-app action

One of the most effective ways to utilize email marketing for your SaaS is to create behavior-based flows. These are flows with emails that push users to use your product and receive value. Adding goals to such flows will help you measure their effectiveness. The right behavior email can be the difference between a purchase and churn. Here's how you can do this:

In the example below, the left side of the flow sends an email if new trial signups have not performed a key action after 3 days — this is also called a nudge email. The purpose of this email is to nudge people back to the app and perform the desired action.

The right side of the flow defines the goal as follows: Whenever the user performs the desired action, move them toward the goal. However, we want to track only specific people with that goal. We want to exclude paying customers and people who have not received the nudge email. That way, we can track the actual effectiveness of the nudge email. We achieve this creating a segment with the following conditions:

Goal: Booked Calls

In the example below, the left side of the flow adds contacts to a lead nurturing campaign once they submit lead capture form. The purpose of this campaign is to push leads to book sales demo calls.

The right side of the flow defines the goal as follows: Whenever the user books a call, move them toward the goal. However, we want to track only specific people with that goal. We want to exclude leads who have not received at least the first nurturing email, as they can book a call without taking part of the nurturing campaign. We achieve this creating a segment with the following conditions:

How to track multiple goals per flow

The current flow mechanics allow only one goal per flow. If you have more than one distinct goal in your flow, you won't be able to distinguish the conversion rate between each goal. However, there's a trick you can use.

In the sequence below, we send an email with the intent for trials to perform an in-app action. However, we also offer them the option to book a call with a member of our team. Having two distinct goals means we'll either have to choose one goal to track, or use a small trick.

In the main flow, choose one goal to track. In this case, we are tracking the Goal: Performed Action.

Notice the "Add Tag" step at the top of the sequence. We will use this to push people into another flow.

The flow goal conversion rate is calculated as follows: Total number of people who reached the goal / Total number of people who entered the flow * 100. Knowing the formula, you can use the tag to send people to another flow and count the 2nd goal separately. In this case, the booked calls goal was outsourced to another flow.

When people get tagged, they will be triggered into the new flow which will give you the metric: Total number of people who entered the flow.

Then, add the Booked calls trigger to define the goal, this will give you the metric: Total number of people who reached the goal.