Playbook Operations systems
The Klaviyo flows every Shopify store needs
Most of a store's email revenue comes from a handful of automated flows, not from campaigns. Here are the core Klaviyo flows every Shopify store should run, what each one does, and the order to build them.
Most store owners pour their email energy into campaigns, the sale announcements and newsletters they send on a schedule, and underbuild the flows that quietly earn more. The truth is that a handful of automated Klaviyo flows, triggered by each shopper’s behavior, produce the majority of email revenue, because they reach the right person at the exact right moment without you doing anything. These Klaviyo email flows are the engine. Here are the core ones every Shopify store needs, what each recovers, and the order to build them.
Why flows beat campaigns
A campaign goes out on your schedule to a segment. A flow triggers on a person’s behavior, the moment they join your list, abandon a cart, or place an order, and speaks to them individually at their highest-intent moment. That timing is why flows out-earn campaigns: they catch people when they are most ready to act, and they run themselves once built. Campaigns are how you talk to everyone; flows are how you talk to the right one.
Campaigns are the work you do every week. Flows are the work you do once that keeps paying every day.
The core Klaviyo flows, in build order
The abandoned checkout flow
The highest-value flow for most stores, and what people usually mean by an abandoned cart flow. Someone started checkout and left, the clearest possible buying intent. A short sequence, an email reminder and a well-timed SMS, recovers a real slice of those carts. This pairs with fixing the checkout friction itself: fix the leak, then recover what still slips through.
The welcome series
The welcome flow Klaviyo triggers when someone joins your list. It is your best chance to convert a new subscriber while interest is high: introduce the brand, deliver the signup incentive, and make the first purchase easy. New subscribers are never more engaged than right now.
The browse abandonment flow
For someone who viewed products but never added to cart. Lower intent than an abandoned checkout, but a large audience, so a gentle nudge with the products they looked at recovers sales you would otherwise never see.
The post-purchase flow
After an order: confirm, set expectations, and begin turning a one-time buyer into a repeat customer with education, cross-sells, and a review request. Repeat-purchase rate is where real brand value compounds, and this flow is where it starts.
The winback flow
For customers who have not bought in a while. A timely reminder, sometimes with an incentive, brings back buyers you already paid to acquire, which is far cheaper than finding new ones.
Build a few well, not many half-built
The temptation is to build twenty flows. Resist it. Five or six core flows, built well and combining email with well-timed SMS, capture the vast majority of the value. A half-finished flow that triggers wrong is worse than none, because it trains people to ignore you.
The flows every store needs
- Abandoned checkout, email plus a timed SMS
- Welcome series for new subscribers
- Browse abandonment for product viewers
- Post-purchase to drive the repeat
- Winback for lapsed customers
- Replenishment, if you sell consumables
Email and lifecycle is its own operating system, and like every recurring part of the business it deserves to be built deliberately and documented, the same way you would write an SOP for any core routine. It is core operations-systems work: the revenue that runs while you sleep.
If your flows are missing, half-built, or not recovering what they should, building the lifecycle system that does is exactly the kind of work a Growth Audit maps and a retainer runs.