How do you earn the second order?
One well-timed letter for first-time buyers, while they are still mid-project.
What does this flow do?
The second order is when a one-time buyer becomes a customer. This flow tries to earn it once, gently, at the moment it is most likely.
It is also the flow where we learned to measure first and set timings second.
When does it start?
A few weeks after a first order. Bento’s date trigger never fired for us, so a small daily job tells Bento who reached the right day.
How does it run, step by step?
- Every morning, our daily job sends Bento the first-time buyers who reached the right day.
- The flow checks they still have only one order, and that post-purchase has finished with them.
- If post-purchase is still running, it waits and tries again.
- One letter goes out: what is new in their medium, and a natural next step.
- An order at any point ends it.
What happens before every send?
Every email in every flow passes the same quiet check first. Is the customer still in this flow? Have they bought since it started? Have we emailed them in the last couple of days? If any answer says wait, the flow waits a day and asks again, rather than piling another email on top.
After the send, the flow marks a short cooldown, so the next flow that wants this person knows to give them a breather.
How do you build this on your platform?
These are the events the flow needs, and where each one comes from on your store.
Order placed Works out of the box
Bento’s Shopify app sends purchases with order value and items.
A daily “due” event Needs a small recipe
Bento’s date trigger never fired for us, so a small daily job sends the due events.
Order placed Works out of the box
Bento’s plugin sends $OrderPlaced, but only when an order reaches completed.
A daily “due” event Needs a small recipe
The same small daily job, reading last order dates.
Order placed Works out of the box
Our open-source plugin sends $purchase with items, categories and totals.
A daily “due” event Needs a small recipe
We run a tiny scheduled worker that sends these every morning.
How does it connect to the other flows?
- It waits for post-purchase to finish.
- A second order hands the customer back to post-purchase for that order.
What does one of the emails say?
A few weeks ago you picked up your first set from us. Here are a couple of things artists often add next, once they are a few paintings in.
Kshitij, Art Lounge
An excerpt. The full emails change with each customer’s order and medium.
Questions people ask about this flow?
When should you send a second purchase email?
We looked at our own orders before deciding: most second orders come within weeks, not months. So the letter arrives while someone is still in the middle of a project, not after they have moved on.
Why only one email?
We used to plan two. In practice, one good letter at the right moment did the job, and a second one felt like nagging a new customer.
How do you trigger a flow on a date in Bento?
Bento has a date trigger, but it never entered anyone for us. We send a daily event from a tiny scheduled job instead, and the flow starts on that.