Most Shopify brands I work with already pay for Klaviyo. A welcome series runs. A cart email goes out. And then nobody touches it for two years.
Meanwhile the store changes. New products launch, the subscription offer changes, the theme gets swapped, and the emails keep describing a store that doesn’t exist anymore.
I’m Carson Cobb. I run Shopify stores for growing DTC brands on monthly retainers, and Klaviyo is part of almost every store I run. I treat email as part of the store, not a separate channel, because the best flows are built on what happens on the site.
The core Klaviyo flows every Shopify store needs
These are the flows I check first on every account. Each one catches customers at a specific moment.
Welcome. Someone gave you their email. This is when they’re most interested. I keep it short: what makes the brand different, the product most people start with, and an offer if your margins allow one.
Browse abandonment. They looked at a product and left. A simple reminder of that product, with the reason people buy it, is often enough.
Cart and checkout abandonment. They were close. I set the timing so the first reminder arrives while they still remember, and make sure the email shows the actual items they left.
Post purchase. The order is placed. This is where you set up the second order: how to use the product, what to expect, and when to reorder. For products people use up, the timing should match how long the product lasts.
Back in stock. Your best seller sold out. Every person who signed up to wait should hear from you the moment it’s back.
Sunset. People who haven’t opened in a long time drag down your deliverability. I set up a clean way to move them out so your engaged list keeps landing in the inbox.
Subscriber flows
If you sell subscriptions, your subscribers are your best customers. Most stores still send them the same emails as everyone else.
I build subscriber specific flows that use data from Recharge or Skio:
- Subscriber welcome. Thank them, explain how to skip, pause or change the order, and remove any worry about being stuck.
- Upcoming order reminder. A heads up before the charge, with an easy way to add a product to the next box.
- Failed payment recovery. Short, friendly and clear. A failed payment doesn’t mean the customer wants to leave, so the email shouldn’t read like a collections notice.
- Cancellation follow up. A thank you, a reason to come back, and an offer when it makes sense.
- Milestones. A note at the third or sixth order. Small, but people notice.
More on how I set up the subscription side on my Shopify subscriptions page.
Winback flows
A winback flow brings back customers who bought once or twice and then went quiet.
The key is timing. A customer who bought a 30 day supply and hasn’t come back in 60 days is a very different case from one who bought a gift last winter. I look at the real gaps between orders in your data and set the winback to start when a normal customer would have reordered, not on a generic schedule.
The first email is usually a simple reminder. The offer, if there is one, comes later, so you don’t train customers to wait for a discount.
Segmentation that matches how people buy
Good segments make every campaign and flow more relevant. I keep them simple and useful:
- First time buyers vs repeat buyers vs subscribers.
- Customers by the product or category they bought.
- Engaged vs unengaged, so you don’t send every campaign to people who stopped opening months ago.
- High value customers who should hear about launches first.
Then I use those segments in flows and campaigns so a subscriber doesn’t get a discount for a product they already get every month.
How email ties into the store
This is where most email setups fall apart. The emails and the site don’t talk to each other.
When I run a store, email and the site are planned together. A product page change goes into the post purchase flow. A new bundle shows up in the winback. Back in stock signups on the site feed straight into Klaviyo. Promos go on one calendar so the homepage, the cart offer and the email all say the same thing on the same day.
That’s also why I fix tracking first. If the store isn’t sending clean order and product data to Klaviyo, flows can’t trigger correctly and reports can’t be trusted. My conversion optimization page covers the site side.
How the work is packaged
Store Sprint, $1,500 one time. One week. I audit your Klaviyo account along with the rest of the store and fix the highest impact problems that same week. If you move to a retainer, the $1,500 is credited toward it.
Operator, $3,000/mo. The plan I recommend for most growing brands. Klaviyo flows, segments and campaigns are part of running the store month to month.
Hour Block, $1,250 for 10 hours. If you only need a set of flows rebuilt and your team will run campaigns.
All plans are on the pricing section. In the first 90 days of a retainer, email is the main focus of month 2, after tracking, speed and key pages are fixed in month 1.
Across my work, I’ve supported more than $40M in client revenue for growing brands. If you sell something people reorder, like supplements or pet food, email timing matters even more.
Book a 20 minute intro call
If your Klaviyo account hasn’t been touched in a while, it’s probably leaving orders on the table. Book a 20 minute intro call, tell me what flows you have running, and I’ll tell you where I’d start.