The Klaviyo Flows Your Shopify Store Should Have (And What Happens When They Are Actually Built Properly)

Most Shopify stores have Klaviyo installed. Most have at least one or two flows switched on. And most are leaving a significant amount of revenue sitting uncollected every single month because those flows were set up once, never properly configured, and have not been touched since. This guide walks through every flow your store should have running, what each one should actually be doing, and what it looks like when a specialist agency manages that programme properly.

What Klaviyo Flows Are Actually For

Klaviyo flows are automated email sequences that fire based on what a customer does. Add something to the cart and disappear. Place a first order. Go quiet for three months. Each of those behaviours can trigger a sequence that responds in real time, without you or anyone on your team doing anything manually.

That is the version most Shopify store owners understand. What fewer people understand is the difference between a flow that exists and a flow that is performing. A welcome series sitting in your account with default Klaviyo copy and no segmentation logic is not an asset. It is a missed opportunity firing on autopilot.

When we audit a new client account at WebSpring, we almost always find the same things: flows that were built by a previous freelancer or an in-house hire who has since left, timing that was never tested, no conditional logic separating first time buyers from repeat customers, and revenue attribution that looks acceptable on the surface but tells a different story when you dig into it.

The stores generating 35 to 50 percent of their total revenue from email are not doing something exotic. They have the same flows available to every Shopify brand. They just have them built properly, maintained consistently, and improved continuously. That is what this guide is about.

The Seven Flows Every Shopify Store Needs

These are ordered by revenue impact. If you are building from scratch or inheriting a neglected account, work through them in this sequence.

1. Welcome Series

Trigger: A new subscriber joins your list

The welcome series is the first thing a potential customer sees from your brand after showing enough interest to hand over their email address. It is your highest open rate flow. It is also the one we most commonly see reduced to a single email delivering a discount code and nothing else.

A properly built welcome series runs three to five emails over five to seven days. The first email delivers whatever was promised at signup. The second builds the brand story in a way that creates genuine preference over competitors. The third showcases your bestsellers with a clear path to purchase. The fourth layers in social proof. The fifth, if needed, makes a final case for conversion with a soft urgency signal.

When we rebuild a welcome series for a client, we are not just rewriting the copy. We are adding suppression filters so existing customers never receive a new subscriber offer. We are building conditional splits so a subscriber who purchases on day two exits the sequence immediately rather than receiving five more emails about buying something they already bought. We are setting send times based on when their specific audience actually opens email, not Klaviyo's defaults.

The difference in conversion rate between a default welcome series and a properly architected one is material. For most of our clients, the welcome series alone covers a significant portion of the cost of working with us.

2. Abandoned Checkout Flow

Trigger: Checkout is started but not completed

This is the single highest revenue recovery flow for the majority of Shopify stores. Klaviyo receives checkout-started events from Shopify natively, so the data connection is there by default. The question is what you do with it.

Most abandoned checkout flows we inherit from clients have three problems. The first email is sent too late, typically two to four hours after abandonment, by which point the customer has either purchased elsewhere or lost the impulse entirely. The sequence treats a £15 cart the same as a £400 cart. And the emails themselves are generic, with no reference to the specific product abandoned, no social proof relevant to that product, and a CTA that sends the customer back to their cart rather than directly to checkout.

A well-built abandoned checkout sequence sends the first email within thirty to sixty minutes. It shows the exact product left behind. It routes high-value abandons through a different path that includes a more personalised message and potentially a direct outreach touchpoint. By the third email, it is actively handling objections: delivery times, returns policy, sizing information, anything that might have caused hesitation at the checkout page.

For a Shopify brand doing reasonable volume, a properly managed abandoned checkout flow is worth tens of thousands of pounds per year in recovered revenue. Most stores are collecting a fraction of that.

3. Abandoned Cart Flow

Trigger: Items are added to cart but checkout is never started

This sits upstream of the abandoned checkout flow and catches a different pool of intent. The customer was interested enough to add to cart but not quite ready to begin checkout. The addressable audience is large and the conversion rate is lower than abandoned checkout, but the volume makes it worth building carefully.

Two emails work well here. The first, sent around an hour after the cart is abandoned, focuses on the product itself: a strong image, a short and direct message, a clear CTA. The second, sent the following day, brings in social proof and a light urgency signal where that is genuine and accurate.

One thing we check on every new client account is whether the add to cart event is actually being passed to Klaviyo correctly. Depending on the Shopify theme and any customisations in place, this data connection sometimes needs additional configuration. A flow built on an unreliable data feed is a flow that fires inconsistently or not at all.

4. Post-Purchase Flow

Trigger: An order is placed

The post-purchase flow is where most stores think email marketing ends. In reality it is where long-term customer value is built or lost.

A properly structured post-purchase sequence does several things. It confirms the order in a way that feels warm and brand-consistent rather than transactional. It cross-sells a relevant complementary product at the right moment, typically two to three days after purchase when the customer is anticipating delivery and still in a positive frame of mind. It requests a review at the point when the customer has had time to experience the product. And it creates the conditions for a second purchase before the customer has any reason to look elsewhere.

What we build for clients is not a single post-purchase email. It is a multi-step programme differentiated by whether this is a first purchase or a repeat purchase, by what was bought, and by the customer's predicted lifetime value. A customer buying from you for the fourth time should receive a meaningfully different experience than someone who just discovered your brand.

For stores with a natural replenishment cycle, we also build replenishment reminders into this flow, timed to the average interval between repeat purchases for that specific product category.

5. Browse Abandonment Flow

Trigger: A known subscriber views a product page but does not add to cart

Browse abandonment catches warm intent that the cart and checkout flows miss entirely. The customer was curious enough to spend time on a product page but did not take the next step. Because this requires the visitor to be a known contact, the addressable audience is smaller, but the intent signal is real and the emails perform well.

We keep this flow lean: one or two emails, conversational in tone, featuring the specific product viewed alongside a supporting review or two. The goal is not to pressure. It is to remove whatever friction or hesitation caused them to leave without acting.

6. Winback Flow

Trigger: A customer has not purchased within a defined window, typically 90 to 180 days depending on your category's average purchase frequency

Reactivating a lapsed customer costs significantly less than acquiring a new one. The winback flow exists to recover that value before it is gone permanently.

A three-step winback sequence works well for most Shopify stores. The first email leads with brand warmth rather than a discount, featuring new arrivals or something genuinely interesting that has happened in the brand since the customer last purchased. The second email, sent a week later to non-responders, takes a softer approach and gives the customer a genuine reason to come back. The third makes a direct offer and is followed by a suppression action for anyone who still does not engage.

What most stores skip is the suppression step. Continuing to send to contacts who have not engaged in six months or more does active damage to your sender reputation and reduces the deliverability of every email you send, including the ones going to your most engaged customers.

7. Sunset Flow

Trigger: A subscriber has been completely unresponsive for six to twelve months

The sunset flow is the least glamorous and the most neglected. Its job is to identify contacts who will never re-engage and remove them from your active list before they pull your deliverability metrics down.

A two-email sequence works here. The first is a plain text message asking directly whether the subscriber still wants to hear from the brand, with a clear option to stay on the list. Anyone who does not click to confirm is moved to a suppressed segment and removed from future sends.

Running this process regularly is one of the highest-impact things you can do for the long-term health of your email programme. A smaller, highly engaged list outperforms a large, disengaged one in every metric that matters: open rates, click rates, revenue per recipient, and inbox placement.

What We See When We Audit Most Shopify Email Accounts

When a brand comes to WebSpring, either because their email revenue has plateaued or because they have grown to a point where managing it internally no longer makes sense, the audit typically surfaces the same patterns.

Flows that fire on the wrong contacts. A welcome series sending to customers who already have three orders. An abandoned checkout sequence that has never had its timing tested. A post-purchase flow that treats every buyer identically regardless of what they bought or how much they spent. A list that has never been cleaned and is quietly suppressing deliverability across everything.

None of these are unusual. They are what happens when email is set up by someone who understands the platform but does not have the bandwidth to manage it properly, or when a previous agency built the foundations and no one has maintained them since.

The cost of leaving these issues unaddressed is not theoretical. Every week a welcome series underperforms is potential first-time buyers who did not convert. Every month an abandoned checkout flow sends at the wrong time is recovered revenue that went elsewhere. Every quarter a sunset flow goes unrun is a sending reputation that gets a little more damaged.

If you want to know exactly what is costing your store money right now, our email marketing audit covers your entire Klaviyo account with a prioritised action plan delivered within five working days.

Why Klaviyo Flows Stop Working (Or Never Worked to Begin With)

If you have flows live but they are not producing the revenue you expected, the cause is almost always one of the following.

The Shopify data connection is incomplete. Klaviyo depends on receiving accurate event data from Shopify to trigger flows correctly. If your abandoned checkout flow is not sending, check whether checkout started events are appearing in your Klaviyo activity feed. Custom Shopify themes sometimes require additional tracking configuration that the native integration does not cover automatically.

The flow logic has gaps. A welcome series with no suppression for existing customers. An abandoned cart flow that does not exit contacts who subsequently purchase. Conditional splits that are pointing to the wrong branch. These issues are invisible until you walk through the flow as a test profile, which most people never do.

The timing has never been tested. Klaviyo's default timing recommendations are starting points. The right send window for your audience depends on your specific customer behaviour, not a platform-wide average. First email timing in an abandoned checkout flow alone can move conversion rates by several percentage points.

The list has a deliverability problem. If your open rates have been declining gradually and nothing else has changed, your sender reputation is likely the issue. Sending to chronically unengaged contacts over a long period damages your ability to reach even your most engaged subscribers. This is one of the most common and most underdiagnosed causes of underperforming flows.

The flows have not been maintained. Klaviyo flows are not a one-time build. Product ranges change, customer behaviour shifts, platform updates alter how events are tracked. A flow built eighteen months ago by someone who no longer works on the account is almost certainly not performing at its potential.

What It Looks Like When WebSpring Manages Your Klaviyo Flows

When you work with us, you are not buying a one-off build. You are getting an ongoing managed programme.

We start with a full audit of your current setup: what is live, what is broken, what is underperforming and why. From there we build or rebuild every core flow to the standard described in this guide, with segmentation logic, conditional splits, and timing informed by your actual customer data rather than defaults.

From that point, we manage the programme on an ongoing basis. That means monitoring flow performance, identifying drops before they become problems, running tests, updating flows when your product range changes, and keeping your list healthy through regular suppression and sunset management.

You focus on the brand. We make sure the email programme is doing its job in the background.

If you want to understand what that looks like for your specific store, the best place to start is our Klaviyo flow setup service or by speaking to us directly about working with WebSpring as your Klaviyo agency.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many Klaviyo flows does a Shopify store need? Most Shopify stores should have at least seven core flows running: welcome series, abandoned checkout, abandoned cart, post-purchase, browse abandonment, winback, and sunset. Once those are performing consistently, additional flows like back in stock, price drop, and VIP sequences add further incremental revenue.

What is the most important Klaviyo flow for a Shopify store? The abandoned checkout flow typically recovers the most direct revenue. But the welcome series is equally critical because it determines whether new subscribers become buyers at all. Both need to be built properly to see the results most stores are capable of.

Why is my Klaviyo abandoned checkout flow not sending? The most common causes are an incomplete Shopify tracking setup, a flow filter that is too restrictive, or contacts triggering the flow who are not identified in Klaviyo. Check the activity feed in your Klaviyo account for the checkout started metric to confirm whether events are being received correctly.

How do I know if my Klaviyo flows are performing well? A well-built abandoned checkout flow typically converts 5 to 15 percent of triggered recipients. Welcome series click rates should be above 3 to 5 percent. If your numbers are significantly below these benchmarks, the issue is usually in the copy, the timing, the segmentation logic, or the deliverability of your sending domain.

Should I manage Klaviyo flows in-house or use an agency? For brands doing meaningful email volume, in-house management almost always means flows that are set up but not actively optimised. An agency with Klaviyo as a specialism will typically generate more from the channel than the cost of the retainer, because the programme is being managed rather than just maintained.

Can Klaviyo flows work without Shopify? Yes. Klaviyo integrates with WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and other platforms. However, the Klaviyo and Shopify integration is the most complete available, with native event data for orders, checkouts, and product views passed automatically. For Shopify brands this removes the need for custom event tracking in most standard use cases.

WebSpring is a UK-based email marketing agency specialising in Klaviyo management for Shopify and Shopify Plus brands. We build, manage, and continuously improve the full email programme as a done-for-you service.