You pay to get someone to your site. Most of them leave without buying. Email flows are how you get a second and third chance at the customer you've already paid for — automatically, and without spending anything more.
This is why I'd almost always build flows before scaling ad spend. Ads acquire; email converts and retains. Scaling paid traffic into a store with no email automation is pouring water into a bucket with a hole in it.
1. Welcome series
Triggers when: someone signs up to your list, usually via a popup offering a discount.
Three to five emails over about a week. The first delivers the discount code immediately — within minutes, while they're still on the site. The rest introduce who you are, what makes your products different, and any social proof you've got, before making a clearer offer at the end.
The mistake here is making all five emails a discount reminder. The sequence should build a reason to buy from you, not just a reason to buy cheaply.
2. Abandoned checkout
Triggers when: someone reaches checkout, enters details, and doesn't complete.
This is the highest-revenue flow in most accounts, because these people were seconds from purchasing. Three emails: one within an hour, one at 24 hours, one at 48. The first shouldn't discount — often the checkout failed for a boring reason like a card decline or a delivery cost surprise, and a simple nudge recovers it. Save any incentive for the third.
3. Browse abandonment
Triggers when: a known subscriber views a product and doesn't add it to basket.
Lower intent than checkout abandonment, so keep it gentler and shorter — one or two emails. This flow only works for people you can already identify, which is why the welcome popup and the flows feed each other.
4. Post-purchase
Triggers when: an order is placed.
The most neglected flow, and the one that quietly determines whether ads are profitable long term. Thank them, set expectations on delivery, tell them how to use or care for what they bought, then request a review at the right moment — after they've actually received and used it, not the day it ships.
Why this matters for your ad economics: if repeat purchase rate goes up, you can afford a higher cost per acquisition, which means you can outbid competitors for the same customer. Retention is an acquisition strategy.
5. Winback
Triggers when: a customer hasn't ordered for a set period.
Set the window to roughly one and a half times your natural repurchase cycle — 60 days for consumables, six months or more for furniture and homeware. Two or three emails, with the incentive escalating. Reactivating an existing customer costs a fraction of acquiring a new one.
6. Back in stock and price drop
Triggers when: a product someone signed up for becomes available, or drops in price.
Small volume, exceptional conversion rate. These people raised their hand for a specific item. Worth building even if your catalogue is small.
Build them in this order
| Priority | Flow | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Abandoned checkout | Highest revenue per recipient |
| 2 | Welcome series | Converts every new subscriber your ads generate |
| 3 | Post-purchase | Drives reviews and repeat orders |
| 4 | Browse abandonment | Catches earlier-stage intent |
| 5 | Winback | Needs a customer base to work on |
| 6 | Back in stock | Depends on your catalogue |
Things that will undermine all six
- No popup, or a bad one. Flows need subscribers. If you're not capturing email from paid traffic, none of this fires.
- Emails that don't work on mobile. Most opens are on a phone. Check every one.
- Discounting in every single email. Train people to wait for a code and they will wait for a code, forever.
- Setting them live and never touching them again. Flows should be reviewed and tested a few times a year, not built once and forgotten.
How long this takes
A properly built set of core flows — designed on brand, segmented sensibly, tested — is typically a few days of work, not an ongoing commitment. Once they're live they run themselves, with a periodic review.
Which is precisely why I don't put Klaviyo work on a retainer. It's a build project followed by occasional maintenance. I charge hourly, for the hours the work actually takes, and when there's nothing meaningful to do that month you don't get an invoice for doing nothing.
Pair the flows with well-run Meta Ads and the two compound — the ads fill the list, the list converts the traffic you've already paid for, and your effective cost per customer falls.
Want your flows built properly, once?
Book a free discovery call. I'll look at what you've got in Klaviyo and tell you what's actually worth building first.
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