When I started at Money Clothing there was no email marketing at all. No welcome email, no abandoned checkout reminder, nothing. Every Klaviyo flow the brand ended up running, I built from scratch. That is a useful position to learn from, because you are forced to decide what goes first. The order matters more than most people think.
If you run a DTC brand with steady traffic and patchy or non-existent automated email, this is the order I would build in. It is not the only way to do it. It is the way that puts revenue first and complexity last.
Why flows come before campaigns
Campaigns are the part of email everyone sees. The weekly newsletter, the sale announcement, the new drop. They matter, but they are a lot of work, and each one is a one-off.
Flows are different. They fire on behaviour, at the moment someone has shown intent, and once they are built they work every day without you touching them. A good abandoned checkout email sent to someone who left twenty minutes ago will almost always beat a beautifully designed campaign sent to your whole list on a Tuesday.
The rule of thumb I work to: get the core flows live before you worry about campaign calendars. A healthy account usually sees flows bring in a large share of email revenue from a small share of the sends. If yours is the other way round, your foundations are missing.
1. Abandoned checkout: the one that pays for itself
Start here. Someone has added a product, entered their email and got as far as checkout. They are the warmest person you will ever email. Building this flow first means you start recovering lost orders this week.
A simple version that works:
- Email one, about 1-4 hours after abandonment. Plain reminder. Show the product, the price, a clear button back to checkout. No discount.
- Email two, around 24 hours later. Handle objections. Delivery times, returns policy, reviews, sizing help. This is where most brands are lazy and most of the extra recovery sits.
- Email three, around 48-72 hours. If your margins allow it, this is where an incentive can go. Free delivery often works as well as a percentage off and costs less.
Keep the copy short. People know what they left behind. Your job is to remove the reason they left.
Once checkout abandonment is live and performing, add the softer versions: added to cart (for stores where the cart step comes before email capture) and browse abandonment. Browse abandonment should be lighter still. One or two emails, a gentle nudge, no discount. These people looked; they did not commit.
2. The welcome series: where your brand actually gets introduced
Most welcome series are one email with a discount code. That leaves a lot on the table.
The person who just signed up has more attention for your brand right now than they ever will again. Use it. I would aim for three to five emails over the first week or two:
- Email one, immediately. Deliver whatever you promised at sign-up. If it is a code, put it at the top. Then a short line on who you are.
- Email two, a day or two later. The brand story, briefly. Why you exist, what makes the product different. Real photos beat polished renders.
- Email three. Social proof. Reviews, customer photos, press if you have it.
- Emails four and five. Bestsellers, how to choose, a reminder that the code expires.
Two things people get wrong. First, they do not exit customers from the flow once they buy, so someone who ordered on day one gets told to "treat yourself" on day five. Second, they treat the welcome series as a set-and-forget asset. It is worth reviewing every few months, because your bestsellers, reviews and offers change.
3. Post-purchase: where the second order comes from
Acquisition is expensive. The second order is where DTC margins start to make sense, and the post-purchase flow is how you earn it.
Split it in two: first-time buyers and repeat customers. They need different things.
For first-time buyers, the early emails should be about reassurance, not selling. Order confirmation is handled by your platform, so use Klaviyo for what comes after. How to care for the product, how to get the fit right, what to expect from delivery. This reduces returns and support tickets, which is revenue you keep.
Then, once the product has arrived and been used, ask for a review and introduce complementary products. This is where cross-sell belongs. At Fields Luxury, raising average order value with accessories and cross-sell was a big part of turning the watch brands around, and the logic carries straight into email. Recommend the thing that naturally goes with what they bought, not just your bestsellers.
Timing depends on your product. Clothing might be reordered within weeks. A watch might not be. Look at your own data for the typical gap between first and second orders and time your replenishment or "you might also like" emails just before it.
For repeat customers, cut the hand-holding. They know you. Thank them, give them early access or something small that feels like recognition, and move on.
4. Winback and sunset: keeping the list honest
Every list decays. Customers drift, subscribers go cold, and if you keep emailing people who never open or click, your deliverability suffers for everyone.
The winback flow targets customers who have not bought in a while. A sensible trigger is roughly one and a half to two times your typical repurchase gap. If people usually come back within 60 days, start the winback at around 90-120 days with no order. Two or three emails: what is new, a reminder of what they bought before, and a genuine offer on the last one if the economics stack up.
The sunset flow handles subscribers who have stopped engaging. Before you suppress them, send one or two emails asking if they still want to hear from you. Make it easy to stay. Anyone who does not engage gets suppressed from regular campaigns.
This feels counter-intuitive. Nobody likes shrinking a list. But a smaller list that opens and clicks will get better inbox placement than a big one full of ghosts, and that protects the revenue from every other flow on this list.
Set-up rules that stop flows tripping over each other
Building the flows is the easy part. Making them behave together is where most accounts fall down. A few rules I stick to:
Use flow filters properly. Every abandonment and welcome flow should exit anyone who has placed an order since starting the flow. This is the most common mistake I see and it makes the brand look careless.
Decide your discount policy before you build. If every flow ends in a code, you train customers to wait for one. Pick which flows earn an incentive and keep the rest full price. Abandoned checkout and winback usually justify one. Browse abandonment rarely does.
Turn on smart sending, then check it. It stops people getting three emails in an hour from different flows. Just make sure it is not suppressing your highest-intent messages, like the first abandoned checkout email.
Measure on revenue per recipient, not opens. Open rates have become unreliable as a measure of anything. Placed order rate and revenue per recipient tell you whether a flow is working. Compare each email against the others in the same flow and cut or rewrite the weakest.
Test one thing at a time. Timing, subject line or offer. Not all three at once, or you learn nothing.
At Money Clothing, getting these basics right mattered most in the big sales periods. When traffic spikes around Black Friday, every leak in your flows gets multiplied. Fix the leaks in a quiet month, not in November.
FAQ
Which Klaviyo flow should an ecommerce brand build first?
Abandoned checkout. It targets people with the highest intent and recovers orders you have already paid to attract. Get it live, then build the welcome series straight after.
How many emails should each flow have?
As a rule of thumb, two or three for abandonment flows, three to five for a welcome series, and two or three for winback. More is not better. Each email should have a clear job, and if you cannot say what that job is, cut it.
Should every flow include a discount?
No. Discounts in every flow train customers to wait for one and erode margin. Save them for the points where they genuinely change behaviour, usually the last email in abandoned checkout and winback, and lead with reassurance and proof everywhere else.
If you get these five flows built properly, you will have an email setup that earns money while you sleep and gives your campaigns a much healthier list to work with. It is not glamorous work, but it compounds. I am currently open to Head of Marketing and Head of Growth roles, with DTC and consumer brands first, and I take on consulting work alongside that. If you want help building or fixing your flows, get in touch via the contact link on tomosborne.me.