Fail to Launch: Why Customers aren’t buying and how to fix it

Many businesses assume that when a potential customer signs up for a newsletter (NB) with a discount offer, the sale will follow automatically. But what if these sign-ups don’t lead to purchases? Somewhere in the customer journey, something is going wrong.
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What’s Going Wrong?

When someone signs up for a newsletter to receive a discount but doesn’t make a purchase, there could be several reasons:

• The customer might be distracted!
• Is there too much friction in the buying process?
• Or simply not enough urgency to complete the purchase?

This is where feedback loops play a crucial role.
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What Are Feedback Loops?

Feedback loops are structured processes where you gather insights from customer behavior and use that information to optimize your marketing strategies. This could involve analyzing customer data, conducting surveys, or sending automated follow-up messages to better understand why a customer didn’t complete an action.

There are multiple types of feedback loops:

• Positive feedback loops: These reinforce successful behavior. For example, if customers respond well to a specific email campaign, you can scale up similar campaigns to maximize the impact.
• Neutral feedback loops: These focus on collecting objective data without immediate action. For instance, monitoring open and click-through rates to analyze trends and customer behavior without directly optimizing.
• Negative feedback loops: These help correct problems. If you notice that many customers drop off at a specific step in the purchasing process, you can make improvements to increase conversions.
  
  

Why Use Feedback Loops?

Feedback loops are essential for improving your marketing efforts and creating a more personalized experience for your customers. By continuously learning from customer behavior, you can optimize your marketing strategies and respond more effectively to your audience’s needs. They provide:
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Better Customer Insights

Feedback loops help you understand why customers do or don’t take certain actions. Whether it’s abandoning a purchase, not opening an email, or leaving a shopping cart behind, these insights allow you to identify and address specific obstacles or uncertainties. This enables you to tailor your offerings to what your customers truly want or need.
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Higher Conversions

By identifying and resolving bottlenecks in the buying process, you can significantly increase conversion rates. Feedback loops allow you to pinpoint where customers are getting stuck—whether it's filling out forms or selecting payment methods. Removing these barriers helps streamline the customer journey and drive more purchases.
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More Efficient Marketing

Feedback loops help refine your marketing efforts by focusing on what truly works. Instead of wasting time and resources on ineffective campaigns, analyzing customer behavior enables you to adjust strategies and target them more effectively. This ensures you get the most out of your marketing budget and achieve better results.
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Stronger Customer Relationships

By responding to customer needs and understanding their preferences, you can enhance customer satisfaction and build long-term relationships. Feedback loops provide valuable insights into customer expectations, allowing you to offer more personalized communication and deals. This not only helps attract new customers but also fosters loyalty among your existing audience.
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The Power of Feedback Loops

By systematically feeding customer data back into the customer journey, you can gain valuable insights. This can be done through:
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Qualitative Research

Gathering customer feedback is crucial to understanding why customers do or don’t take certain actions. For example, you can directly ask customers why they didn’t complete a purchase through a short survey after they abandon their shopping cart. This can help uncover specific obstacles in the buying experience, such as confusion about the product, doubts about the price, or website issues. These insights allow you to make targeted improvements to better serve future customers and increase conversions.
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Targeted Follow-up Emails

Another way to collect feedback is by reaching out to customers who didn’t complete their purchase with targeted follow-up emails. For example, you could send a reminder two weeks after cart abandonment with a question like:
"We noticed you left some items in your cart. What held you back from completing your purchase?"

This not only gives you a chance to re-engage the customer with a discount code or other incentives, but it also helps you gather valuable insights into why the transaction wasn’t completed. These insights can improve not only this specific customer’s journey but also your overall abandoned cart email strategy.
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A/B Testing

Feedback loops can also help optimize your marketing campaigns through A/B testing. By testing different versions of your emails, landing pages, or offers, you can determine what resonates best with your customers.

Perhaps customers respond better to an offer with a shorter expiration date, or maybe a more personalized email message increases conversions. Testing different elements of your communication allows you to refine your strategy and get more value from your campaigns. A/B testing enables data-driven decisions, leading to higher conversion rates and an improved customer experience.
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How to Implement This in Klaviyo?

Klaviyo is a powerful email marketing platform that makes it easy to implement feedback loops. Read more about the power of Klaviyo here.
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Setting Up Automated Follow-up EmailsCollecting Insights Through Surveys

• Use Klaviyo’s integration with Typeform or Google Forms to add a survey.
• Place a dynamic link in the follow-up email to collect responses.
• Analyze the feedback to identify patterns in customer behavior.
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Applying Segmentation for Personalized Marketing

• Create segments based on behavior, such as "Subscribed to newsletter but no purchase."
• Test different offers and email frequencies for each segment.
• Use dynamic content to make emails more relevant.
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Optimizing the Customer Journey with Data-Driven Decisions

• Analyze conversion rates in Klaviyo’s analytics dashboard.
• Adjust your flows based on high-performing emails.
• Test alternative triggers like “Abandoned Cart” or specific product interests/preferences.
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Winback CampaignsKlaviyo also enables you to set up personalized winback campaigns for customers who have been inactive for a while.‍

• Create a new Flow in Klaviyo.
• Use the trigger "Subscribed to List" or “Checkout Started” with the profile filter “Placed Order zero times since starting this flow.”
• Set a 14-day delay and add an email with a survey or discount reminder.
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Conclusion

Offering a discount in exchange for a newsletter signup is a great start, but it doesn’t guarantee conversions. By actively using feedback loops and leveraging customer insights, you can optimize the customer journey and drive more sales.

Want to see real results? Start today with data-driven research and strategic email marketing via Klaviyo!

Do you have questions about email marketing in 2025? Feel free to reach out to Polaris Growth—we’d love to help!

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