Instant offers discounted trials to new customers for Instant AI. Trials enable merchants to see the value of Instant AI first hand, before committing to our full-price offering.

How trials work

Trials of Instant AI last thirty days and come at a discounted price. Our discounted trial price is contingent on a few simple conditions:

① All abandonment flows must be enabled

First, customers on trial must commit to enabling all three of our standard retention marketing flows (Abandoned Cart, Abandoned Checkout, Browse Abandonment). If you are apprehensive about switching your flows over to Instant AI, you can start with the Abandoned Cart flow, but you should aim to have all three of our standard retention marketing flows live by week two of your trial.

② Coupon and special offer parity

Second, make sure your coupons and offers for Instant AI match your coupons and offers in your previous email marketing software. Discounts can have a massive impact on performance, so launching with different discounts can heavily distort results. Many merchants realise that, with the added performance of Instant AI, they can reduce their use of discounts in abandonment flows and achieve the same or better results, but it is best to test this after your trial.

③ Template design parity

Third, look for any obvious email template design gaps between your Instant AI flows and your email templates in your previous email marketing software. Most of the time, Instant AI’s standard templates will outperform custom templates in a legacy system. Occasionally, things like social proof and product/brand educational content can boost the performance of emails. So, if you’ve invested heavily in your templates, and they are currently performing well, it may make sense to migrate some of those design elements over to Instant AI before starting your trial.

④ Touchpoint parity

Fourth, make sure your Instant AI flows have as many touch points as the equivalent flows in your previous email marketing software. If you used to send five emails for cart abandonment, but Instant AI is configured to only send three, you’ll likely hamper the results of the trial.

⑤ Integrate Klaviyo with Instant AI

Finally, if you use Klaviyo, it’s a good idea to integrate Instant AI with Klaviyo. This synchronises shopper opt-in status between Instant AI and Klaviyo, enhancing early performance, reducing the warm-up period of Instant AI, and ensuring total opt-out compliance. If you use another email marketing software, let our team know.

Interpreting results

Instant AI matches Klaviyo’s default attribution standard. This means that if a customer buys within 5 days of opening/clicking an email or 24 hours of clicking an SMS, and that specific message was the last touchpoint they clicked, then that purchase will be attributed to the last email/SMS. When trialling Instant AI against Klaviyo, make sure you use this default attribution standard, otherwise your comparison between Klaviyo and Instant AI will not be fair.

If you are comparing Instant AI to another email marketing software, given most have configurable attribution models, try to adjust the attribution model in your previous email marketing software to match Klaviyo’s default attribution standard, as this will align it with ours.

When comparing Instant AI’s results with another platform, it is usually best to compare these results with a rolling three or six-month average from your previous system, as results can vary dramatically from month to month.

FAQ

Does Instant AI require warming to outperform my legacy system?

Typically, no warming is required to go-live with Instant AI, though there can be exceptions.

Many software vendors recommend warming when transitioning email marketing products. There are two types of warming for a product like Instant AI:

  1. Email deliverability warming

    Shopper’s email inboxes can take some time to trust emails sent from a platform or IP address you have not sent emails from before. This is why it’s best to start with low volume flows like Abandoned Cart, Abandoned Checkout, and Browse Abandonment, for about a week, before shifting all of your sending volumes over to Instant AI. Our AI-enhanced deliverability optimisations typically negate the need for any additional deliverability warming.

  2. Identification rate warming

    Each of your marketing systems can typically only identify shoppers who’ve identified themselves on your website after that marketing system was installed on your website. This means your previous email marketing system could have a short term advantage over Instant AI, typically for about a week, when it comes to identifying returning shoppers for targeting in flows like Abandoned Cart, Abandoned Checkout, and Browse Abandonment. If you’re moving from Klaviyo, integrating Instant AI with Klaviyo can speed up this process. Large merchants transitioning from other email service providers may be required to install the Instant AI pixel first, and let it warm for a period, before enabling our abandonment flows. During the onboarding process, we’ll take note of Instant AI’s identification rate on your website and let you know if this is necessary.

I don’t use Klaviyo’s default attribution standard, can I use another?

If you use a different attribution model to Klaviyo’s default, you can adjust your attribution model in Instant AI to match.

All attribution models over or under attribute revenue. This is because shoppers are rarely converted by a single marketing activity. This is especially true for bottom-of-funnel retention marketing tools like Klaviyo or Instant AI. What is important about the attribution standard is not absolute accuracy, but comparability: i.e., when using a fair and equivalent measurement method, does System A, or System B perform better?

If you’re considering Google Analytics as an attribution tool, please review these notes first.