What Are the 8 Essential Klaviyo Email Flows for Shopify Stores?

Last updated: August 2026

The eight essential Klaviyo email flows for a Shopify store are the welcome flow, browse abandonment flow, cart abandonment flow, checkout abandonment flow, post-purchase flow, winback flow, review request flow, and cross-sell and replenishment flow. Built and maintained together, these automations typically generate around 30% to 50% of a store's email revenue, and across Klaviyo's benchmark data flows drive close to 41% of email revenue from only about 5% of sends.

The reason flows matter so much is timing. A flow triggers on real behaviour, a signup, an abandoned cart, a delivered order, so it reaches a customer at the exact moment intent is highest, automatically and forever. That is why Klaviyo's data shows flow emails earn many times the revenue per recipient of one-off campaigns.

This guide is a practical implementation checklist for Australian Shopify merchants. Each flow below is a standalone block covering its trigger, purpose, recommended timing, how many emails to send, and the benchmark to measure it against. If you are choosing between flows to build first, build cart and checkout abandonment and the welcome flow before anything else.

Quick answer: The eight essential Klaviyo flows for Shopify stores are Welcome, Browse Abandonment, Cart Abandonment, Checkout Abandonment, Post-Purchase, Winback, Review Request and Cross-Sell/Replenishment. Together these automations typically generate 30% to 50% of email revenue, with cart and checkout abandonment flows producing the highest recovery rates. One Elinix AI client recovered A$18,000 in one month from a single cart abandonment flow.

1. Welcome flow

The welcome flow triggers when someone joins your email list, usually through a signup form or popup, and it introduces your brand and converts a new subscriber into a first-time buyer. It is your highest-volume entry point, so it is often the single most valuable flow you build.

• Trigger: A new subscriber joins a list or submits a signup form.
• Purpose: Welcome the subscriber, set brand expectations, deliver any signup incentive, and drive the first purchase.
• Recommended timing: First email immediately, then spaced over three to five days.
• Number of emails: Three to five.
• Benchmark: Klaviyo reports the welcome series among the highest revenue-per-recipient flows of any automation, so treat a weak welcome flow as lost first-purchase revenue.

2. Browse abandonment flow

The browse abandonment flow triggers when a subscriber views a product but does not add it to their cart, and it gently nudges an interested shopper back to the product. It reaches people earlier in the buying journey than cart abandonment, so intent is lower but the audience is larger.

• Trigger: A known subscriber views a product page without adding to cart.
• Purpose: Remind the shopper of the product they viewed and answer the hesitation that stopped them.
• Recommended timing: First email within a few hours, second the next day.
• Number of emails: One to two.
• Benchmark: Lower revenue per recipient than cart or checkout flows, but a strong assist flow that recovers demand you would otherwise never see again.

3. Cart abandonment flow

The cart abandonment flow triggers when a shopper adds an item to their cart but does not begin checkout, and it recovers a sale where the buying intent is already clear. Alongside checkout abandonment, it is the highest-return flow in the entire stack.

• Trigger: A shopper adds a product to cart and does not start checkout within a set time.
• Purpose: Bring the shopper back to complete the purchase, showing the exact items left behind.
• Recommended timing: First email within one hour, second after about a day, third after two to three days.
• Number of emails: Two to three.
• Benchmark: Klaviyo's abandoned cart data shows an average open rate around 50.5%, a click rate around 6.25% and a placed-order rate around 3.33%, and three-email sequences dramatically outperform single-email flows.

"If you build nothing else this quarter, build cart and checkout abandonment. The intent is already there. You are not creating demand, you are recovering it, and that is the cheapest revenue in ecommerce."

Ewen Ling, Founder, Elinix AI

4. Checkout abandonment flow

The checkout abandonment flow triggers when a shopper starts checkout, and usually enters their email, but does not complete the order. Because the customer has gone further than a cart add, this is the highest-intent behavioural trigger you have, and it carries the highest revenue per recipient of any flow.

• Trigger: A shopper starts checkout (started checkout event) and does not place the order.
• Purpose: Remove the final friction, such as a shipping question, a payment concern or a distraction, and recover the sale.
• Recommended timing: First email within 30 to 60 minutes, then follow-ups over the next one to two days.
• Number of emails: Two to three.
• Benchmark: The highest revenue per recipient of any behaviourally triggered flow, which is why it belongs in your first week of builds alongside cart abandonment and welcome.

5. Post-purchase flow

The post-purchase flow triggers after a customer places an order, and it turns a one-time buyer into a repeat customer by confirming the purchase, setting delivery expectations and starting the next relationship. It has the highest open rates of any flow because customers watch for order updates.

• Trigger: A customer places an order.
• Purpose: Confirm the order, reduce post-purchase anxiety, share useful product information, and set up the second purchase.
• Recommended timing: Starts immediately, then over the days and weeks following delivery.
• Number of emails: Two to three, ideally split for first-time versus repeat buyers.
• Benchmark: Klaviyo reports post-purchase flows among the highest open rates of all automations, though revenue per recipient is lower, so use the attention to build loyalty rather than to hard-sell.

6. Winback flow

The winback flow triggers when a customer has not purchased for a defined period, and it re-engages lapsed customers before they are gone for good. It has the lowest yield per recipient of the core flows, but recovering an existing customer is still cheaper than acquiring a new one.

• Trigger: A customer has not ordered within a set window, typically 90 to 180 days depending on your purchase cycle.
• Purpose: Remind lapsed customers what they are missing and give them a reason to return.
• Recommended timing: Aligned to your product's natural repurchase cycle.
• Number of emails: Two to three.
• Benchmark: The lowest revenue per recipient of the essential flows, but a worthwhile safety net that recovers customers who would otherwise churn silently.

7. Review request flow

The review request flow triggers a set time after delivery and asks the customer for a product review, building the social proof that lifts conversion across your whole store. Its value is indirect, since reviews improve the performance of every other page and flow.

• Trigger: A defined number of days after estimated or confirmed delivery.
• Purpose: Collect reviews and user feedback that strengthen product pages, ads and future email content.
• Recommended timing: Timed to arrive after the customer has used the product, often 7 to 21 days post-delivery depending on the category.
• Number of emails: One to two.
• Benchmark: Measured on review submission rate rather than direct revenue, so judge it on how many reviews it generates and the conversion lift those reviews create.

8. Cross-sell and replenishment flow

The cross-sell and replenishment flow triggers based on what and when a customer bought, and it drives the next order by recommending complementary products or reminding customers to reorder consumables. For stores selling products that run out, replenishment is one of the most reliable repeat-revenue flows.

• Trigger: A past purchase, plus a timer set to the product's typical repurchase cycle for replenishment.
• Purpose: Increase average order value with relevant cross-sells, and recover predictable repeat orders with well-timed replenishment reminders.
• Recommended timing: Cross-sell within days to weeks of purchase; replenishment timed just before the product typically runs out.
• Number of emails: One to three.
• Benchmark: For consumable products, replenishment reaches customers at high intent and can rival abandonment flows on revenue per recipient; for non-consumables, lean on cross-sell relevance instead.

Klaviyo flow comparison table

Use this table as a build checklist. Revenue contribution is shown as a relative rank based on Klaviyo's benchmark revenue-per-recipient data, not as a fixed percentage, because the real figure depends on your store, list and product.

Together these eight flows are the automated engine that lets email contribute a meaningful share of store revenue. For where each flow sits in the wider platform picture, see our comparison of Klaviyo vs Mailchimp for Australian ecommerce, and for what an email program costs to run see our guide on how much email marketing costs for Australian brands.

Real client example: A$18,000 recovered in one month from one cart abandonment flow

In one Elinix AI implementation for an Australian Shopify store, a single Klaviyo cart abandonment flow recovered A$18,000 in revenue within one month. The result came from turning a single abandoned-cart reminder into a properly built three-email sequence, triggered within the first hour, showing the exact items left behind, and coordinated with an SMS reminder for shoppers who did not open the email.

The figure is anonymised and drawn from the store's Klaviyo and Shopify dashboards over a 30-day period, and results vary by brand, product and list quality. The mechanism is what matters and is repeatable: cart abandonment carries intent that already exists, so a well-built sequence recovers revenue that a single reminder, or no flow at all, leaves on the table.

"The A$18,000 did not come from a clever subject line. It came from replacing one reminder email with a real sequence that fired at the right moment and showed the customer exactly what they left behind."

Ewen Ling, Founder, Elinix AI

The order to build your flows

Build the flows with the highest revenue per recipient first, then layer the rest as your program matures, so the automations that recover the most revenue are live earliest. Practitioner consensus across Klaviyo agencies is that the welcome series and checkout abandonment flow alone can drive a large share of total flow revenue, which is why they belong in your first week of work.

A simple, proven build order is:

• Week one: welcome, cart abandonment and checkout abandonment, the three highest-return flows.
• Month two: browse abandonment, post-purchase and winback, which extend coverage across the lifecycle.
• As you scale: review request, then cross-sell and replenishment, which compound retention and average order value.

Building in this order means the revenue from your first flows funds the time to build and refine the rest, rather than spreading effort thinly across eight half-built automations.

How to measure whether a flow is working

Judge every flow on revenue per recipient, not on open rate, because open rate tells you a subject line landed while revenue per recipient tells you the flow made money. Apple Mail Privacy Protection has also inflated open rates, which makes them a weaker signal than they used to be.

For each flow, track revenue per recipient, placed-order rate and total attributed revenue inside Klaviyo, and review the numbers monthly against the benchmarks above. A flow that performed well at launch can decay as your catalogue, audience and offers change, so the brands that get the most from email are the ones that revisit and optimise their flows rather than building them once and leaving them. If a core flow such as cart abandonment is underperforming, the usual causes are a single-email sequence that should be multi-step, poor timing, or missing SMS follow-up.

Frequently asked questions

What are the eight essential Klaviyo flows for a Shopify store? The eight essential Klaviyo flows are the welcome flow, browse abandonment flow, cart abandonment flow, checkout abandonment flow, post-purchase flow, winback flow, review request flow, and cross-sell and replenishment flow. Together they cover the full customer lifecycle, from a new subscriber through to repeat and lapsed customers, and they form the automated core of a Shopify email program.

How much revenue do Klaviyo email flows typically generate? Automated flows typically generate around 30% to 50% of a store's email revenue, and across Klaviyo's benchmark data flows drive close to 41% of email revenue from only about 5% of sends. The share rises with store size, so smaller stores often see 25% to 35% from flows while larger stores can exceed 50%. Flows outperform because they trigger on behaviour and reach customers at peak intent.

What is the difference between browse abandonment and cart abandonment? Browse abandonment triggers when a subscriber views a product but does not add it to their cart, so intent is lower and the audience is larger. Cart abandonment triggers when a shopper adds a product to their cart but does not start checkout, so intent is clearly higher and the flow recovers more revenue per recipient. Both are worth running, but cart abandonment sits far higher in build priority.

How many emails should a cart abandonment flow include? A cart abandonment flow should include two to three emails, not one. Klaviyo's data shows multi-email sequences dramatically outperform single-email flows. A common structure is a first email within an hour, a second after about a day, and a third after two to three days, ideally paired with an SMS reminder for shoppers who do not open the emails.

Which Klaviyo flow should I build first? Build cart abandonment, checkout abandonment and the welcome flow first, because they carry the highest revenue per recipient and reach customers at the moment intent is highest. Once those three are live and optimised, add browse abandonment, post-purchase and winback, then review request and cross-sell or replenishment as your program matures.

Ewen Ling is the Founder of Elinix AI and has over 16 years of ecommerce industry experience across website conversion optimisation, email and SMS marketing automation, retention marketing, and ecommerce growth strategy. Elinix AI helps Australian ecommerce brands fix revenue leaks, improve conversion, and build sustainable customer retention systems.

If you want these eight flows built and optimised for your store, see how Elinix AI builds and manages Klaviyo email and SMS systems for Australian ecommerce brands.