Klaviyo flows: which to build, in what order

What are Klaviyo flows, and which ones actually matter?

Five Klaviyo flows matter. Not the twenty in the library.

A Klaviyo flow is an automated sequence triggered by an event, a list join, or a segment entry, with delays and filters between the messages. Five earn their place on a Shopify store: welcome, abandoned checkout, browse abandonment, post-purchase and winback. Klaviyo’s pre-built abandoned cart flow waits four hours before its first message.

Klaviyo ships a flow library with dozens of templates. Almost every store that builds twelve of them ends up with twelve flows nobody has read in a year, three of which are quietly sending the same person the same offer.

Build five. Read them every quarter. That is a system you can hold in your head.

Which Klaviyo flows should you build first?

This order, one at a time.

Five flows, in this order. Build welcome first, because your own form controls the trigger. Then abandoned checkout, the highest intent event in the account. Then browse abandonment, post-purchase, and winback last, because winback needs enough order history for its timing to mean anything. Finish one before starting the next.

1. Welcome series. Triggered when someone joins the list your sign-up form feeds. Klaviyo notes a subscriber can only enter a single welcome flow once, which is why your email and SMS welcome flows have to be separate builds. Klaviyo’s email welcome series guide covers the setup, and what each welcome email should say for a Shopify store covers the part the guide leaves generic.

2. Abandoned checkout. Triggered on Started Checkout, which fires after a shopper enters contact details and moves to the shipping step. This is the flow with the most craft written down, so start from abandoned cart email examples and a template rather than the stock copy in the template.

3. Browse abandonment. Triggered on a product view with nothing added. Weaker intent, so one email, two at most. Klaviyo’s browse abandonment guide has the build, and it needs behavioural tracking switched on.

4. Post-purchase. Triggered on Placed Order. Shipping, care, how to use the thing, and only then the second order. Lowest risk in the account, because the person already bought.

5. Winback. Triggered on a segment of buyers who have gone quiet. Build it last. The right gap between orders is different for coffee and for a mattress, and you cannot guess it until you have order history to read.

Two more are worth adding later, and only on evidence: back in stock, if you actually run out of things, and price drop, if you actually change prices. Neither is a starter flow.

What trigger and filters does each flow need?

The filters matter more than the copy.

Every flow needs a trigger, at least one exit filter, and a re-entry limit. Klaviyo recommends two on abandoned cart: Placed Order zero times since starting this flow, and has not been in this flow in the last X days. Add both at build time, before anyone real enters the flow.

Klaviyo has two kinds of filter and the difference is the thing people get wrong.

• Trigger filters are checked once, when someone enters. Use them to decide who belongs in the flow at all.
• Flow filters are checked again at every step. Use them to pull someone out mid-sequence when the reason for the flow disappears.

If you put “has not placed an order” in a trigger filter only, a shopper who buys after email one still receives emails two and three. It is the most common broken flow in a Klaviyo account, and it is invisible from the dashboard, because the flow reports as healthy.

Set the delays deliberately. Four hours, then about a day, then about two days is a workable shape for the checkout flow. For a welcome flow the first email goes immediately, because the person is still on the site.

Wiring five flows for the third time this year? The free course runs one of these jobs end to end from your own brand context, and you keep whatever it produces. Start the free course. Free. No pitch. You write the brief once.

How do you stop two Klaviyo flows sending at the same time?

Three settings, all before launch.

Turn on Smart Sending, which skips a profile who already received a message inside the window you set. Add flow filters so a flow stops when its reason ends. Add re-entry limits so nobody restarts a sequence twice a week. Overlap is the normal result of five live flows, not a rare edge case.

Picture the collision. Someone joins the list at 9am and gets welcome email one. At 10am they add to cart, start a checkout and stop. At 1pm the welcome flow wants to send email two and the checkout flow wants to send its reminder. They have known your store for four hours and now have three emails from it.

What fixes it, in order:

1. Smart Sending. It skips a flow message to anyone who already received one inside your chosen window. It is the cheapest protection in the account and it is off in more places than owners think.
2. Flow filters at every step. The order was placed, so stop. The checkout resumed, so stop.
3. Re-entry limits. A person who browses the same product on Monday and Thursday should not run the browse flow twice.
4. A quiet-hours rule on campaigns. Do not send a campaign to the segment your flows are already working through today.

The point is not that Klaviyo is fragile. It is that five flows on one list will overlap by default, and the only thing that stops it is a decision you make at build time and write down.

How do you check a Klaviyo flow is actually working?

Read revenue per recipient, and read the flow itself.

Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection pre-fetches images, so open rate now moves for reasons unrelated to the reader. Judge a flow on three numbers instead: clicks, orders inside a fixed attribution window, and revenue per recipient. Then open the flow and read its emails as one sequence.

The numbers, in the order they earn attention:

1. Revenue per recipient. The one number that exposes a flow that only works because it reaches everybody.
2. Click rate per message. Which email in the sequence does the work, and which is filler.
3. Exit through purchase. People leaving the flow because they bought is the flow succeeding. A flow where most people reach the last email is a flow that is not converting.
4. Unsubscribes per message. Usually one specific email causes them. Find it.

Keep the attribution window fixed. Klaviyo’s getting started with flows covers the reporting view. Changing the window mid-quarter is the most common way a store convinces itself something improved.

Then do the part no dashboard does. Open the flow, read the three emails top to bottom as one piece, and check they still describe products you sell. Flows are written once and left running, and the store changes underneath them.

How do you keep five flows current without rebuilding them?

Write the brief once and rerun it.

Each flow needs a written brief: trigger, filters, delays, the job of each message, and who approves changes. Five briefs cover the whole account. Clockwork runs its own marketing this way, so the quarterly review becomes a read instead of a rebuild from a blank page.

The reason most stores stall at two flows is not the building. It is the maintenance. Every review starts from nothing, someone has to remember why email two says what it says, and the review gets postponed until the flow is a year stale.

Clockwork holds that shape of work as a job with its context attached, so a rerun starts from your products, your rules and your last corrections instead of a blank page. Anything it is unsure about comes back held, with the reason, and nothing goes live without your yes. Clockwork’s own marketing runs on that shape of work, which is why the record and the held row exist at all.

The flows are one part of a bigger picture. The ecommerce email marketing system shows where flows sit next to the weekly campaign calendar, and which half to fix first.

What should you build this week?

One flow, finished.

Pick the welcome series if your sign-up form is live, or the abandoned checkout flow if it is not. Write the brief, wire the trigger, set both filters, rewrite the template copy, then turn it on and leave it. One finished flow beats five half-built ones, because a half-built flow still sends.

Write the brief before the copy. Trigger, filters, delays, the job of each message, and who approves a change. That brief is what turns the quarterly review into a read instead of a rebuild.

FAQ: what else do people ask about Klaviyo flows?

Four questions that come up before the first build.

The usual questions are how many flows to run, whether flows or campaigns matter more, how long to wait before judging one, and whether the pre-built templates are usable. Short answers: five, flows, weeks not days, and yes as a skeleton but never as finished copy.

How many Klaviyo flows should a store have?

Five is a working system for most Shopify brands: welcome, abandoned checkout, browse abandonment, post-purchase and winback. Add back in stock or price drop only if that event really happens in your store. More flows means more overlap to manage and more emails nobody has read since launch.

Are flows more important than campaigns?

Flows first, because they run against the highest intent moments and they keep working after you stop writing. Campaigns need a fresh reason and fresh copy every week. A store with five working flows and one weekly campaign beats a store with four campaigns a week and nothing automated.

How long before you can judge a flow?

Long enough that the numbers come from behaviour rather than noise. A flow needs enough triggers to compare against something, which on a smaller store means weeks. Write down the date you turned it on, keep one fixed attribution window, and read it after 30 days of real entries.

Are Klaviyo’s pre-built flows good enough to use as they are?

Use them as a skeleton and rewrite the copy. The structure and the default delays are a reasonable start, and Klaviyo’s four-hour abandoned cart delay is one you can keep. The words are written for every store, so they name no product and answer no objection.

Keep reading: what should you build next?

The two flows worth building first.

Klaviyo is the wiring. The copy lives on the two flow pages: the welcome series, which owns the moment a subscriber arrives, and the abandoned checkout sequence, which owns the highest intent event in the account. The hub page holds the whole system, flows and campaigns together.

• Welcome email series best practices for Shopify for the flow to build first.
• Abandoned cart email examples and template for Shopify for the flow to build second.
• Ecommerce email marketing: build the flows first for where flows sit next to campaigns.