The 5 Must Have Klaviyo Flows to Drive More Sales and Retention

Email marketing is a lot like building a house. Specifically, while the shiny designs and fancy fixtures and fittings are impressive, the foundations are all-important.

A bad foundation can cause the whole house to fall apart. The same is true with email marketing.

For ecommerce stores, these foundations are a series of flows that are the backbone of any effective email marketing strategy.

At FlowCandy, we’ve identified five foundational flows that should be the heartbeat of your sales and retention efforts. These foundational flows work. They’ll make you money. Set them up once and they’ll continue to run in the background, bringing in a steady stream of income month after month.

Thousands of ecommerce stores are using these flows to scale their business. They are proven winners that reliably bring in revenue for any ecommerce store in any industry.

They work for just about any store – including yours. (No matter what niche you’re in.)

These flows nurture a relationship with your customers, build trust and authority, educate, answer questions, and overcome objections. They convert visitors into new customers, recover old customers, and increase customer lifetime value – significantly boosting your overall revenue.

By setting up these five flows alone, you can boost your store’s revenue by at least 5% to 10% through email marketing alone.

In this blog, we’ll break down each foundation flow in detail, looking at how and why they work, and why you need to implement them now.

Ready to take your store to the next level? Let’s go.

Abandoned Checkout

The Abandoned Checkout flow is always one of the first flows we set up for a new client. 73% of customers abandon the checkout at some point, which is why having a way to tempt them back is so important…and so profitable.

Customers who abandon the checkout are highly motivated to make a purchase and there’s a high chance they’re still interested in that product. You’ve already got them hooked, all they need is a little persuasion to push them over the edge and become customers.

The stats say these emails are very effective: 39.07% of people open them, and 23.33% of people click on the products in them.

Further on down the line, you can expand your abandon checkout flow with more emails, optimized design and copy, SMS, social proof, object busters, and split testing.

But at the core, a few simple emails are really all you need to generate significant revenue.

Browse Abandonment

While it might sound a little less simple than Abandoned Checkout, the Browse Abandonment flow can have a huge impact.

This flow is sent to potential customers who view a product on your store but leave the site before adding it to their cart. It’s a gentle nudge to people who have already shown interest in your brand to come back and get the product they want.

Not only are you preaching to an already warm audience, this flow is a great opportunity to add urgency with a discount or a ‘get it before it’s gone’ message.

A good Browse Abandonment flow is usually one of the top 3 highest earning flows. You can add social proof and reviews to make things more enticing, but ultimately these emails can be very simple and still yield great results.

Pre-Purchase

Your Pre-Purchase flow is your first impression, so it is worth getting it right. Sometimes called a Welcome flow or a New Subscriber flow, it goes to every new subscriber when they sign up to encourage them to make their first purchase and become a first-time customer.

This flow typically introduces your brand, gives your new subscriber an offer, shares social proof, and overcomes any potential objections they may have. It is a great way to build trust and authority, and to nurture your relationship with your subscribers.

The performance of your Pre-Purchase flow is tied to the pop-up people use to sign up to your list. If the pop-up works well and looks great, you will get more subscribers and your flow will perform more effectively.

We typically recommend that double opt-in is turned off so everyone who signs up starts receiving these emails immediately – without having to go through unnecessary extra steps.

If you’re offering a discount in your flow, use dynamic discount codes so you train people to open their emails, the code can’t be shared with other people, and it expires when the offer ends.

Post-Purchase

Of course, foundational flows shouldn’t just be about speaking to potential customers. Your previous customers are just as important and building a long-term relationship with people who’ve already purchased from your store can be really lucrative.

The Post-Purchase flow is designed to follow up with first-time customers and help them fall in love with your brand. It is also an opportunity to give them a reason to make another purchase, with a compelling offer arriving when they’ve already shown a willingness to buy from your brand.

Post-purchase emails are highly effective: they get 217% higher open rates, 500% higher click rates, and 90% higher revenue than your average email campaign.

A Post-Purchase flow takes your customers on a journey. First, you thank them for their purchase, then you nurture the relationship by showing how you add value and positioning yourself as a trustworthy authority. Once you’ve built the foundations of your relationship, you can follow up with a clear offer that encourages them to make another purchase.

Winback

Our final foundational flow is the Winback flow. This is the ‘hey, haven’t seen you around in a while, come check out what’s new’ flow. It’s not as flirty as it sounds, promise.

Cleaning up your email lists is important, so if a customer hasn’t bought from you in a while then you might want to stop sending them emails. But before scrubbing them off your list, it is worth reaching out to see if you can persuade them to come back and make a purchase. Attracting new customers is roughly 5x harder than retaining old ones, so a little effort at this stage is very much worth it.

The Winback flow reopens the lines of communication, reminds your old customers why they bought from you in the first place, and makes a strong, special offer that’s compelling enough to tempt them back.

By setting up these five flows alone, you can boost your store’s revenue by at least 5% to 10% through email marketing alone.

Setting up these flows might take you a few weeks. Take your time. Get it right. You don’t have to obsess over making them perfect, hire a designer, or do anything advanced. Just keep it simple, use basic templates, and get them implemented. Once they’re bringing in sales, you can optimize them to perform even better.