The best Klaviyo flows, ranked — all 11 worth building in 2026
There are eleven Klaviyo flows worth building. Not thirty. Not the six your app store template pack came with. Eleven — and they are nowhere near equal. The top four typically account for the overwhelming majority of flow revenue, and the bottom three exist mostly to keep your list healthy and your VIPs warm.
Build order matters more than build count. A store that ships abandoned cart, welcome, browse abandonment, and post-purchase in week one will out-earn a store that spent that week perfecting a birthday flow — every single time.
Here is the full list of Klaviyo flows, ranked by revenue impact, with the trigger, typical revenue contribution, build priority, and one non-obvious tip for each. All revenue figures are typical industry ranges from what we see across Shopify brands — your mix will vary by category and traffic.
Table of Contents
- All 11 Klaviyo flows, ranked
- Tier 1 — the four flows that carry email revenue
- Tier 2 — build these in months 2-3
- Tier 3 — build these last, or not yet
- What NOT to build early
- Frequently Asked Questions
All 11 Klaviyo flows, ranked
Revenue share below = typical share of total flow revenue we see across Shopify brands. Ranges, not promises.
| Rank | Flow | Trigger | Typical share of flow revenue | Build priority |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Abandoned cart / checkout | Started checkout, no purchase | 25-40% | Week 1 |
| 2 | Welcome series | Joined list, no purchase yet | 15-25% | Week 1 |
| 3 | Browse abandonment | Viewed product, no cart | 8-15% | Week 1-2 |
| 4 | Post-purchase | Placed order | 5-12% | Week 2 |
| 5 | Win-back | No purchase in 60-120 days | 4-8% | Month 2 |
| 6 | Back-in-stock | Subscribed to restock alert | 3-8% | Month 2 |
| 7 | Replenishment | X days after consumable order | 3-8% (much higher for consumables) | Month 2-3 |
| 8 | Cross-sell | Purchased product A, not B | 2-6% | Month 3 |
| 9 | VIP / loyalty | Hit spend or order-count threshold | 1-4% | Month 3+ |
| 10 | Sunset | No engagement in 90-180 days | ~0% direct (deliverability play) | Month 3+ |
| 11 | Birthday / anniversary | Date property | 0-2% | Whenever, honestly |
The top four are covered in depth — message-by-message, with send timing — in our deep-dive on the Klaviyo flows that drive 80% of email revenue. This post is the full map; that one is the zoom-in on the flows that matter most.
Tier 1 — the four flows that carry email revenue
1. Abandoned cart / abandoned checkout
- Trigger: Started Checkout (fall back to Added to Cart if you want earlier coverage).
- Typical revenue share: 25-40% of flow revenue. The single highest-intent audience you will ever email — they picked a product, entered checkout, and left.
- Build priority: Week 1, before anything else.
- Non-obvious tip: Most stores stop at 1-3 emails. Intent decays slower than people think — a longer sequence with escalating angles (reminder, objection-handling, social proof, last call) keeps recovering carts through day 4-5. We published the exact structure in the 7-email abandoned cart flow for Shopify.
2. Welcome series
- Trigger: Subscribed to list (usually via popup), filtered to exclude existing customers.
- Typical revenue share: 15-25%. Highest open rates of any flow — subscribers are never more interested than in the first 72 hours.
- Build priority: Week 1. If you run a signup popup with a discount and have no welcome flow, you are collecting emails and setting the incentive on fire.
- Non-obvious tip: Deliver the discount code in email 1, but do not make email 1 only the code. Add your single strongest proof point (review count, guarantee, founder line). Emails that are a bare coupon train subscribers that your emails contain nothing worth reading.
3. Browse abandonment
- Trigger: Viewed Product, no Added to Cart or Started Checkout within a few hours.
- Typical revenue share: 8-15%. Lower intent than cart abandonment, but the audience is 5-10x larger — most visitors never reach the cart.
- Build priority: Week 1-2. It is a 30-minute build once cart abandonment exists.
- Non-obvious tip: Cap frequency hard. Someone browsing five products in a week should get one email, not five. Set flow filters so a profile can only enter once every 7-14 days — over-triggering this flow is the fastest route to spam complaints.
4. Post-purchase
- Trigger: Placed Order.
- Typical revenue share: 5-12% directly, but its real job is protecting repeat purchase rate and reviews — the compounding revenue shows up later.
- Build priority: Week 2.
- Non-obvious tip: Split the flow by first-time vs. repeat buyer on entry. First-timers need reassurance, usage guidance, and a brand story. Repeat buyers need neither — send them earlier toward the next product. One generic thank-you sequence serves nobody well.
Tier 2 — build these in months 2-3
5. Win-back
- Trigger: Placed Order, then no order for 60-120 days (set the window to roughly 2-3x your median repurchase interval).
- Typical revenue share: 4-8%.
- Build priority: Month 2 — you need a few months of customer history before the segment is big enough to matter.
- Non-obvious tip: Do not lead with a discount. Email 1 should be new arrivals or "what's changed since you bought." Save the offer for email 2-3. Leading with 15% off trains lapsed customers to lapse on purpose.
6. Back-in-stock
- Trigger: Subscribed to Back in Stock (requires the button on sold-out product pages).
- Typical revenue share: 3-8% — wildly variable. Stores with frequent sellouts see this flow convert at the highest rate of any flow they run.
- Build priority: Month 2, earlier if you regularly sell out.
- Non-obvious tip: Send within minutes of restock, not on a daily batch. These subscribers asked to be told. Speed is the whole product — a restock alert that arrives after the item sells out again is worse than no alert.
7. Replenishment
- Trigger: Placed Order for a consumable, delayed to just before the product runs out (30-day supply → email at day 21-25).
- Typical revenue share: 3-8% overall — but for consumables brands (supplements, coffee, pet, skincare) this flow can rival abandoned cart. If that is you, treat it as Tier 1.
- Build priority: Month 2-3, or week 2 if you sell consumables.
- Non-obvious tip: Pitch the subscription in the replenishment email, not just the reorder. "Never run out — 10% off on subscription" converts a one-off buyer into recurring revenue at the exact moment the product's absence is felt.
8. Cross-sell
- Trigger: Placed Order containing product A, has never purchased product B.
- Typical revenue share: 2-6%.
- Build priority: Month 3 — needs enough order volume to see which product pairs actually co-purchase.
- Non-obvious tip: Build it from your data, not your assumptions. Pull the "customers who bought X also bought Y" pairs from your order history before writing a single email — the real pairs are frequently not the ones you would guess. We walk through doing this analysis with AI in how to use Claude to analyze your Klaviyo account.
Tier 3 — build these last, or not yet
9. VIP / loyalty
- Trigger: Profile crosses a threshold — 3+ orders, or lifetime spend above a bar you set.
- Typical revenue share: 1-4% directly; the value is retention of your best 5-10% of customers, who often drive 30-40% of revenue.
- Build priority: Month 3+, once you have enough customers for a real VIP tier.
- Non-obvious tip: The best-performing VIP emails contain no discount at all. Early access, a founder thank-you, input on the next product — status beats savings for people who already buy at full price.
10. Sunset
- Trigger: No opens or clicks in 90-180 days, across both campaigns and flows.
- Typical revenue share: ~0% direct. This flow exists to protect deliverability — suppressing chronically unengaged profiles is a large part of why your other ten flows land in the inbox.
- Build priority: Month 3+, and before your list crosses ~10k profiles.
- Non-obvious tip: Actually suppress at the end. A sunset flow that sends "we miss you" and then keeps emailing non-openers forever is theater. The suppression step is the flow.
11. Birthday / anniversary
- Trigger: Date property (birthday collected at signup, or signup anniversary).
- Typical revenue share: 0-2%. It sends to roughly 1/365th of your list per day.
- Build priority: Whenever you have literally nothing higher-leverage to do.
- Non-obvious tip: Signup anniversary beats birthday for most stores — you already have the date for 100% of profiles, versus the small fraction who volunteered a birthday in a popup field that lowered your signup rate to collect.
What NOT to build early
Building a birthday flow before your abandoned cart flow is finished is malpractice. Same for VIP tiers before a welcome series exists, or a sunset flow on a 2,000-person list.
The failure pattern we see constantly in audits: eight flows live, all of them 1-2 emails deep, none of them finished. Eleven shallow flows lose to four deep ones. Concretely:
- Under $10k/month in revenue: build flows 1-4 only. Make them long, tested, and segmented. Skip everything else.
- $10k-50k/month: add flows 5-8, in that order. Replenishment jumps the queue if you sell consumables.
- Above $50k/month: flows 9-11 start paying for themselves, because 1-4% of a large number is real money and your list is big enough to need a sunset.
If a freelancer's proposal leads with loyalty and birthday automations, they are selling you the flows that are easy to build, not the ones that make money.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the best Klaviyo flows for a Shopify store?
Ranked by typical revenue impact: abandoned cart, welcome series, browse abandonment, and post-purchase are the top four — together they typically drive the large majority of flow revenue. After those: win-back, back-in-stock, replenishment, cross-sell, VIP, sunset, and birthday flows, in roughly that order.
How many Klaviyo flows should I have?
Eleven cover essentially every trigger worth automating, but under $10k/month you only need four: abandoned cart, welcome, browse abandonment, and post-purchase. Depth beats breadth — four flows with 4-7 emails each outperform eleven flows with one email each.
Which Klaviyo flow makes the most money?
Abandoned cart (or abandoned checkout) is the highest-revenue flow for most stores — typically 25-40% of total flow revenue in what we see across Shopify brands, because it targets the highest-intent audience: people who reached checkout and left.
What order should I build Klaviyo flows in?
Week 1: abandoned cart, then welcome. Week 1-2: browse abandonment. Week 2: post-purchase. Month 2: win-back and back-in-stock. Month 2-3: replenishment and cross-sell. Month 3+: VIP, sunset, birthday. Consumables brands should pull replenishment forward into week 2.
Are birthday flows worth building in Klaviyo?
Eventually, but last. A birthday flow reaches about 1/365th of your list on any given day and typically contributes 0-2% of flow revenue. Build it only after the top eight flows are live and deep — and consider a signup-anniversary flow instead, since you have that date for every profile.
Get your flow stack built
We build the full Tier 1-2 flow stack for Shopify brands as part of our retention sprints — sequenced, segmented, and tied to a revenue dashboard so you can see what each flow earns. If you want to know which flows your store is missing and what they are worth, book a free 30-minute working session and we will map it live on your account.