The #1 Reason Email Automations Break (And How to Check in Two Clicks)

You're not going to believe the first job I had when I was a teenager.

Back in Boulder, Colorado, we have this city program called Junior Rangers. They paid me a whopping five bucks an hour.

Every morning I’d bike to the ranger station to meet up with my crew. Then we’d toss a bunch of tools into beat-up vans, and drive into the mountains to work on trails.

We did all kinds of odd jobs.

Some of my personal faves were picking poison ivy and flipping a massive 400-pound rock down a hill to build stone steps.

All of it in that scorching dry Colorado heat.

I’d come home dirty and destroyed and crush an entire sleeve of Oreos while reading the sports section in the newspaper.

Man, I’d kill to have that 14-year-old metabolism back.

But here’s the thing about those trails I never forgot:

You’d think once you build a trail, it’s done.

Nope.

People walk on it. Weather beats it up. Weeds grow back. 

Every trail needs constant maintenance or it turns into a mess.

You can't just build it once and forget about it.

This came flooding back when I audited a brand doing $10 million per year. 

I discovered they had a broken integration and because of it…

they hadn’t added a single customer or email subscriber to their list…in more two years. 

And NOBODY noticed.

Another account I audited went an entire year without sending post purchase emails to more than 20,000 customers. And again, no one noticed. 

Just like those mountain trails, your email automations aren't "set it and forget it." 

Integrations break. Someone accidentally changes a filter.

But the #1 biggest cause I see for broken automations are flow filters.

Someone goes into Klaviyo, sets up a filter wrong, and suddenly nobody qualifies to enter the flow.

Thousands of people never receive emails and thousands of dollars don’t end up in your bank account.

Ouch.

That's why whenever I finish building an automation, my last step is always the same.

Click on the trigger at the top in Klaviyo and use the "preview flow" feature to test where people actually go.

You can literally walk through the automation like you're a customer and see if it's working or completely broken. 

Those Klaviyo flow filters get tricky if you don't know what you're doing. One wrong setting can create a big ol’ (expensive) mess.

If you’re worried that your flows might be overgrown in digital poison ivy, just reply to this email AUDIT and I can do my free 53-point email audit on your account to check..

Ben “Barehanded Poison Ivy Picker” Fitterman

Well I hope you folks enjoyed yourselves. I’ll catch you later on down the trail.

Got a topic you want me to cook up a recipe for? Drop me an email or a DM.

- Ben

P.S.

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