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Email flow

An email flow is an automated series of emails sent to each shopper who triggers it, for example by subscribing, leaving a checkout or placing an order.

How it works

A flow has a trigger, filters and messages. The trigger is an event: joining the email list, starting a checkout, placing an order, a date such as a birthday, or a price drop on a product the shopper viewed. The email service checks filters before every email: in an abandoned cart flow, a shopper who places an order gets none of the remaining ones. A campaign is the opposite: a one-off send to a list built in advance, such as a newsletter.

Common examples of flows are a welcome series, abandoned cart and browse abandonment, a post-purchase thank-you or cross-sell, and win-back. Which to set up first is covered in email and SMS for online stores, and the emails after the first order in post-purchase emails.

The email service credits a flow with orders by its own rule. In Klaviyo the default for new accounts is last touch: an order within 5 days of an email being opened or clicked. If the shopper also clicked a Google ad within its conversion window, Google Ads counts the same order.

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop’s welcome flow has three emails: on signup, 2 days later and 5 days later. Each has the filter “has placed no order since starting this flow”. In a month 160 people subscribe, 40 of them order after the first email and no one else orders before the third. The flow sends 160 + 120 + 120 = 400 emails instead of 480.

Not to be confused with

  • Remarketing — ads shown to past visitors of the site. It can reach the same shopper as a flow; both then report the order.
  • Abandoned cart email — one flow, triggered by a started checkout. A store runs several flows at once.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “Klaviyo credits the welcome flow with 40 orders, so email added 40 orders.” Right: credit goes to orders that followed an email within the window, including shoppers who would have bought anyway. What the flow added, its incrementality, shows only against a group that gets no emails.

Sources