I love well planned systems and standard operating procedures. They’re like an extra set of hands for a small business owner who is trying to juggle a dozen balls at once.

My absolute favorite are automated email flows. A well executed welcome email series or abandoned cart flow can create a customer for life and generate a lot of revenue. With an email marketing platform like Klaviyo or Mailchimp email flows run in the background and automagically generate income. They can scale infinitely as your business grows and you get more web traffic.

I recently received an email that changed my perspective.

I’m currently in the market for a couple of new fly fishing reels. I was looking online to see what the fly shop near me had in stock. I found a couple of reels and fly line that I was interested in and added them to the cart to see what the total would be. I closed the browser and went on about my day.

The next morning I had a personalized email from someone at the shop. They offered to spool new fishing line onto the reels and ship that same day if I wanted to complete the order. Free shipping too.

A real email from a real person offering personalized service. I’d love to see their conversion rate on these emails. I asked. They don’t track it. I suggested that they should…right after I placed my order.

Do things that don’t scale.

Personally responding to every abandoned cart on your ecommerce site doesn’t scale. But it probably provides some valuable feedback and insights to improve your automated abandoned cart email flow. Most importantly, it creates a human connection that leads to brand loyalty and, most likely, high lifetime value for that customer.

We’re always thinking about how to scale up. How to automate to make things run smoother and generate more revenue.

But there are opportunities to stand out from the crowd and to connect with customers in new ways by doing things that don’t scale.

What is something that you can do in your business that doesn’t scale?