Klaviyo is installed on most Shopify stores. The default flows are enabled. The problem: the default content is generic, the timing is wrong, and the flows aren't set up to move the specific stage of the customer relationship they're designed for. Done properly, these six flows alone commonly drive 25–40% of total store revenue on autopilot. Here's our full rebuild of every essential flow.
Flow 1: Welcome series (the most important one)
The welcome series goes to everyone who signs up but hasn't bought yet. This is the most valuable audience segment you have — people who raised their hand and said they're interested. Welcome series typically see 40–60% open rates, far above any other flow, because the subscriber's intent is freshest here.
Email 1 (immediate): what you are and why it matters. Not a discount — a story. What does your brand stand for? Who is it for? What's different about it? Brands that send a 10% discount as Email 1 are training their list to only ever buy on discount.
Email 2 (Day 2): your best product with a specific use case. Not your full catalogue — one thing, with a clear "this is for someone who [specific situation]" framing.
Email 3 (Day 4): social proof. Your best reviews. A founder story. A press mention. Anything that answers "but can I trust these people?"
Email 4 (Day 7): the offer. Now you give the discount — to the people who haven't bought yet. It feels earned, not automatic.
Flow 2: Abandoned checkout (3-step, not 1)
The Shopify default is one abandoned cart email. Our setup is three, and a properly built sequence recovers 5–15% of abandoned checkouts — pure incremental revenue with zero additional ad spend.
Email 1 (1 hour after abandonment): conversational, no pressure. "Did something go wrong at checkout?" Include the cart contents with images. One CTA to resume checkout.
Email 2 (24 hours): address the objection. The most common reasons people abandon checkout are shipping cost surprise, payment concern, and "I want to think about it." Address all three directly. Offer to answer questions. Show your return policy prominently.
Email 3 (48 hours): last-chance framing with a time-limited offer. Not a permanent discount — a 24-hour offer that expires. This converts the fence-sitters who just needed one more nudge.
Flows 3–6: Post-purchase, win-back, and VIP
Post-purchase (flows 3 and 4): two separate flows — one for first-time buyers (nurture toward repeat purchase), one for repeat buyers (deepen loyalty, introduce to the broader catalogue). These are completely different relationships and most brands treat them identically, missing 20–40% of the repeat-purchase lift a properly split flow delivers.
Win-back (flow 5): triggers 60–90 days after last purchase with no new order. A re-engagement sequence: "We miss you" + best-seller + new arrivals. Cut from the list if no open after 3 emails — keeping unengaged subscribers hurts your deliverability for everyone else. See our full deliverability guide for why this matters more than it seems.
VIP (flow 6): triggers when a customer crosses a spend or order threshold. Exclusive access, early drop notices, a personal note from the brand. The goal is to make your best customers feel special — because they are.
Where SMS and WhatsApp belong in these flows
Treating email and SMS as separate programs is the most common structural mistake once a brand adds a second channel — you end up with two systems messaging the same person about the same thing on overlapping schedules.
The channels have genuinely different economics and should carry different jobs. Email is effectively free per send, so it carries the content-heavy work: the welcome series narrative, education, post-purchase nurture, and anything requiring images or length. SMS and WhatsApp cost real money per message and have far higher open rates, so they earn their place only on time-sensitive, short, high-intent moments — abandoned checkout at the two-hour mark, a back-in-stock alert, a drop launch, a shipping update.
The practical rule: for any flow running on both channels, make one the primary and the other the follow-up, with a hard suppression rule so a customer who converts from the email never receives the SMS. Abandoned checkout is the clearest example — email at one hour, SMS at four hours only if the email didn't convert, then email again at 24 hours. For the India-specific version of this with WhatsApp as the primary channel, see our WhatsApp marketing guide, and our cart abandonment breakdown covers the sequencing in more detail.
FAQs
How much revenue should these 6 flows realistically drive? 25–40% of total store revenue once all six are properly built and content is specific, not generic — most stores running only Shopify's default flows see a fraction of that.
Why does the welcome series matter more than any other flow? Open rates run 40–60%, the highest of any flow, because subscriber intent is freshest immediately after signup — it's the best chance you get to set the relationship before a purchase, not after.
Should the abandoned checkout discount be permanent? No — a time-limited 24-hour offer in the final email converts fence-sitters without training your entire list to wait for a discount on every purchase.
How long after a purchase should win-back trigger? 60–90 days since the last order is the standard window, adjusted for your product's actual repurchase cycle — a 30-day consumable and a 12-month furniture piece shouldn't share the same win-back timing.
Should I run these flows on SMS as well as email? Only the time-sensitive ones. Email is effectively free per send and carries content-heavy work; SMS and WhatsApp cost real money per message, so they belong on abandoned checkout, back-in-stock, drop launches, and shipping updates — with suppression rules so a customer who converts from one channel never gets the other.
What happens if I don't suppress across channels? You message the same person twice about the same thing, which reads as spam rather than helpfulness — and on SMS you're paying per message to annoy someone who already bought.
Our take
Most Shopify stores have every one of these flows technically switched on and still leave most of that 25–40% revenue potential on the table, because the content inside them is generic Klaviyo boilerplate instead of something specific to the brand and the moment. The flows are the easy part; the copy inside them is where the revenue actually lives — Brooklinen's email retention program is a good real-world example of that discipline applied consistently rather than as a one-time setup. If yours are running but underperforming, talk to us — we'll audit the content, not just the toggles.
If any of this sounds like your situation, talk to us. We'll tell you exactly where your revenue is leaking and what it would take to fix it. Explore Strategy & Consulting →