Klaviyo flows: which ones a store needs and in what order.

01What a Klaviyo flow is and what a campaign is

Flow

runs on its own after a trigger

Campaign

sent once to a list or segment

Status

draft, manual or live

Klaviyo describes a flow as an automated series of steps triggered by an activity, a behavior or a date [2]. A campaign, by contrast, is a one-time send to a group of contacts you set up beforehand, for example your newsletter [2].

Which triggers you can choose depends on the data you have connected. The options are a list, a segment, a metric such as “Started Checkout”, a date, a price drop or low inventory [1]. New emails in a flow start as drafts. Only on “Live” do they go out automatically. On “Manual” they stay in the flow but are not sent automatically [1].

Why the work pays off shows in Klaviyo's 2026 analysis of more than 183,000 customers. Flows bring in nearly 41% of email revenue there, although they make up only 5.3% of emails sent. Revenue per recipient is nearly 18 times higher than for campaigns [3]. These are Klaviyo averages, not a promise for your store.

02Which flows a store needs first

First

welcome and abandoned cart

Next

post-purchase and winback

Later

browse abandonment and sunset

Klaviyo names four flows that have the most impact and should therefore go live first. The order is welcome series, abandoned cart, post-purchase and winback [1]. After that we add two more: a reminder about viewed products and a sunset flow for contacts who no longer respond.

You can use this plan as it is. Under “Flows” and “Create flow” you open Klaviyo's flow library with ready-made templates that you then adapt [1].

03Welcome and abandoned cart bring the most revenue per recipient

Abandoned cart

$6.77 per recipient

Welcome

$5.75 per recipient

Data

Klaviyo 2026, over 110,000 customers

For 2026, Klaviyo analyzed data from over 110,000 customers. In revenue per recipient, the abandoned cart flow leads the five flows compared, and the welcome series comes second [10].

That is why we build these two first. What goes into each email of the greeting sequence for new subscribers and how to win back left-behind carts with two or three emails is covered in separate guides.

Two rules apply to both flows. Anyone who buys during the flow leaves it. And anyone who is already a customer does not get a discount meant for new customers. How to set this up in Klaviyo is explained further down under filters and splits.

04Post-purchase and winback: the path to the second order

Trigger

order placed (“Placed Order”)

Goal

the second order

Delay

based on your buying cycle

The post-purchase flow starts with the order. Klaviyo distinguishes four types: thank-you, review request, related products (cross-sell) and a higher-value product (upsell). Klaviyo recommends a time delay for review, cross-sell and upsell flows, but not for the thank-you email [6].

Watch the line between this and the order confirmation. According to Klaviyo, an email only counts as transactional if it contains no marketing at all. Order and shipping confirmations fall into that group [6]. As soon as you recommend products, it is a marketing email, and that needs consent or the existing-customer exception (see below).

The winback flow also starts with an order but waits a long time. Klaviyo advises setting the first delay a little longer than the average time between two orders in your store. You get that value by exporting a segment of repeat customers and averaging the “Average Time Between Orders” column. The filter “Placed Order zero times since starting this flow” makes sure only people without a new order keep getting emails. Klaviyo recommends three emails per recipient and an incentive in the first one [7].

05Setting filters, splits and Smart Sending correctly

Filter

who enters and stays in the flow

Split

which path inside the flow

Smart Sending

16-hour pause for email

Klaviyo has two kinds of filters. Trigger filters check the data of the event that starts the flow. Profile filters check the person and what they have done before, both on entry and before every further step [11]. We set these four almost every time:

• Exit after purchase: “Placed Order zero times since starting this flow” as a profile filter in the abandoned cart flow [5].
• No double reminders: If you run one flow for “Added to Cart” and one for started checkout, the first one excludes everyone who then starts checkout or orders [12].
• A pause between runs: “Hasn't been in flow in the last X days” stops someone from getting the same reminder too often [5].
• Customer or new customer: A split on “Placed Order at least once over all time” separates the two, for example in the welcome series [4].

Then there is Smart Sending. When it is on, Klaviyo skips an email if the person has already received one within the set time window. For email the default is 16 hours, and the feature is switched on in many pre-built flows [13]. Check for every flow email whether that is what you want.

How often someone may go through the same flow again is set at the trigger: only once, every time they qualify again, or only after a minimum period [11].

06Consent for flows in Switzerland and Germany

Switzerland

Art. 3(1)(o) Unfair Competition Act

Germany

Section 7 Act against Unfair Competition

Note

not legal advice

As soon as an email is meant to sell something, it is no longer a transactional email [6]. Both countries apply similar basic rules to marketing emails. The exceptions are worded differently, though.

For your flows this means: welcome, abandoned cart and browse abandonment often reach people who have not bought anything yet. In our reading, the exception does not apply to them, so you need consent. Winback and post-purchase recommendations can fall under the exception if you pointed out the opt-out at checkout and only promote your own similar products [14][16].

In Klaviyo, every list is set to double opt-in by default [4]. Leave it that way. This is our reading of the laws and not legal advice. If in doubt, have it checked by a qualified professional.

07Flows in several languages that land in the inbox

Language

profile property “Locale”

Translation

Smart Translations, paid accounts only

Delivery

SPF, DKIM, DMARC

If you sell in Switzerland in German, French and Italian, you need every flow in every language. With Smart Translations, Klaviyo can send flow emails in the recipient's preferred language. By default Klaviyo reads that language from the profile property “Locale” [18]. For Shopify stores, Klaviyo syncs this value from Shopify, as long as Shopify knows it [19].

Smart Translations requires a paid Klaviyo account and uses machine translation and AI. Klaviyo itself says this can produce errors and advises reviewing every translation before sending [18]. How to make the store itself multilingual is covered in our guide to languages and countries in Shopify.

A flow only helps if it arrives. Gmail requires SPF or DKIM from all senders and a spam rate below 0.3%. Anyone sending more than 5,000 emails a day to Gmail needs SPF, DKIM and DMARC, plus one-click unsubscribe for marketing emails [20]. A sunset flow marks contacts who have not responded for a long time. Once you suppress them, they no longer count toward your active profile limit [9].

08Check before launch, build it yourself or have it built

Yourself

with Klaviyo's templates

Help

for languages, legal and custom data

With us

Szymon

You can set up the first four flows yourself with the templates from the flow library. Before launch we check every flow in four steps:

1. Test trigger and filters with the preview. For a specific profile, Klaviyo shows whether it would enter the flow and which path it would take [23].
2. Set each email to “Manual” and send a test to yourself. Klaviyo advises customizing and previewing every email that comes from a template [1].
3. Switch Smart Sending on or off for each email on purpose [13].
4. Only then set it to “Live” and look at the numbers for each email after a few weeks.

How emails, newsletters and flows work together in a store is shown in our overview of email for online stores.

From our work. At ZinCuTec, a metal furniture maker from Nürtingen, Germany, nothing was active in the Klaviyo account before. Today there are 14 email flows in Klaviyo and 38 emails that run on their own. You can read more in the ZinCuTec migration case study. With us, Szymon sets up Klaviyo for Shopify stores. We don't promise fixed numbers.

Honest limits. Klaviyo's numbers are averages across customers in all industries, in US dollars. These reports contain no figures for Switzerland or Germany alone. What your flows bring in depends on traffic, list and product range. Help is worth it if you have several languages, custom events outside Shopify or unclear consent. The legal question is for a qualified professional, not for us.