The 5 Flows Every Shopify Store Needs

Most Shopify stores have one or two flows running — maybe a welcome email, maybe an abandoned cart. That's it. And they're leaving money on the table every single day.

Our email attribution data across $35.3M in combined store revenue shows email driving 33.4% of total revenue — and roughly half of that comes from flows, not campaigns. That means automated sequences running in the background are generating as much revenue as every manual email you send.

The good news: you don't need 15 flows to get there. You need five. Built in the right order. And you can get all five live in an afternoon.

Why Build Order Matters

Every flow you build captures revenue that's currently leaking out of your store. But some leaks are bigger than others.

The order below is based on how we onboard new clients. We start with the flows that recover the most lost revenue and work outward from there. If you're setting up from scratch, follow this sequence. If you already have some flows running, skip to the ones you're missing.

For the full architecture — including advanced flows like winback, sunset, and replenishment — see our complete guide to Klaviyo flows. This post is about getting the foundation right first.

Flow 1: Abandoned Checkout

This is the first flow you build. Not the welcome. Not the post-purchase. The abandoned checkout.

Why? Because someone who started checkout already decided they wanted your product. They entered their email. They were ready to pay. Something interrupted them — the phone rang, they got distracted, the total was higher than expected. These are the warmest leads in your entire funnel and the easiest revenue to recover.

Minimum Viable Version

Three emails:

1. Email 1 (1-4 hours after): Simple reminder. "You left something in your cart." Show the product. Link back to checkout.
2. Email 2 (24 hours after): Address objections. Add social proof, a review, or a trust signal. Still no discount.
3. Email 3 (48-72 hours after): Final nudge. This is where you can add urgency or a small incentive if your margins allow it.

The biggest mistake we see: brands only have one email in this flow. One reminder isn't enough. Some people need the second or third touch to come back.

Flow 2: Abandoned Cart

This is different from abandoned checkout, and a lot of brands miss it entirely. An abandoned cart fires when someone adds a product to their cart but never starts checkout. They didn't enter their email at checkout — so this flow only works if you already have their email from a previous interaction (a popup, a past purchase, their account).

The distinction matters because the intent level is different. A checkout abandoner was ready to buy. A cart abandoner was interested but hadn't committed yet. Your messaging should reflect that.

Minimum Viable Version

Three emails, slightly longer delays than checkout since the urgency is lower:

1. Email 1 (4 hours after): "Still thinking about it?" Show the product with a clear CTA.
2. Email 2 (24 hours after): Benefits and social proof. Why this product, why now.
3. Email 3 (48-72 hours after): Final reminder with urgency.

Having both checkout and cart abandonment flows is critical. We see brands that only have checkout abandonment — which means every known visitor who adds to cart but doesn't start checkout just falls through the cracks.

Not sure if your abandonment flows are set up correctly? We'll audit your flows for free and show you exactly what you're missing.

Flow 3: Welcome Series

Once your recovery flows are catching lost revenue, you build the flow that converts new subscribers into first-time buyers.

Your welcome flow triggers when someone joins your email list — usually through a popup, a footer signup, or a lead magnet. These people just raised their hand and said they're interested. The welcome flow's job is to turn that interest into a purchase.

Minimum Viable Version

Five emails:

1. Email 1 (immediate): Deliver the offer if you promised one (discount, free shipping). Introduce the brand briefly. Clear CTA to shop.
2. Email 2 (day 1-2): Brand story. What makes you different? Why should they care? This is your pitch.
3. Email 3 (day 3-4): Social proof. Reviews, UGC, testimonials, press. Show them other people love the product.
4. Email 4 (day 5-6): Best sellers or product education. Help them figure out what to buy.
5. Email 5 (day 7-8): Urgency. If there's a welcome offer, remind them it's expiring. Last chance.

Five emails sounds like a lot, but this is the flow that does the heavy lifting of turning strangers into customers. One email isn't enough to build trust and drive a purchase from someone who just found you.

Flow 4: Post-Purchase

The first three flows are about getting the sale. This one is about getting the second sale — which is where real profitability starts.

Our retention curve data from 78K first-time buyers shows that the first 30 days after purchase account for 67% of all 90-day retention. If you're going to get a customer to come back, it's most likely to happen in the first month. The post-purchase flow is what makes that happen.

Minimum Viable Version

Two to three emails, and you should split this flow for first-time buyers vs. repeat customers:

1. Email 1 (immediately after purchase): Thank you + what to expect. Shipping timeline, how to use the product, anything that reduces anxiety.
2. Email 2 (after delivery, ~7-10 days): Check in. How's the product? This is a great spot for a cross-sell or a link to complementary products.
3. Email 3 (14-21 days): Review request or referral ask. They've had time to use the product — now get them to advocate for it.

The key detail: separate your first-time and repeat customer paths. A first-time buyer needs brand reinforcement and trust-building. A repeat customer already trusts you — they need product recommendations and reasons to come back sooner.

Flow 5: Browse Abandonment

This is the flow most brands skip, and it's a toss-up with review request flows for the fifth slot. We put browse abandonment here because it directly drives revenue — someone looked at a product and left without adding it to their cart.

Browse abandonment catches the gap between "interested" and "added to cart." Your cart and checkout flows only fire if someone takes action. Browse abandonment catches everyone else — the people who looked, considered, and bounced.

Minimum Viable Version

Two to three emails:

1. Email 1 (2-4 hours after): "Still interested?" Show the exact product they viewed. Keep it simple.
2. Email 2 (24 hours after): Add reviews or social proof for the product. Give them a reason to buy.
3. Email 3 (48 hours, optional): Show similar products or best sellers if the specific product didn't convert them.

Between welcome, cart, checkout, and browse abandonment — these four revenue-driving flows plus post-purchase for retention cover the vast majority of your flow revenue. Our email benchmarks data shows flows and campaigns splitting revenue roughly 50/50. Getting these five flows right is how you capture your half.

Stop Overthinking, Start Building

The most common reason brands don't have their flows set up is that they're overthinking it. They want every email to be beautifully designed before they turn anything on. So they delay for weeks or months while revenue leaks out the bottom of their funnel.

Here's what we tell every new client: forget the design. Use plain text emails. Just write thoughtful, direct copy and get the flows live. You can make them pretty later. A plain text abandoned checkout email that exists will always outperform a beautifully designed one that's still in your drafts.

We sit down and hammer out all five of these flows in two to three hours for new clients. Text-based, no fancy templates, just solid copy with clear CTAs. Then we iterate on design and optimization once the data starts coming in.

The right number of emails per flow:

• Abandoned checkout: 3 emails
• Abandoned cart: 3 emails
• Welcome series: 5 emails
• Post-purchase: 2-3 emails (split for first-time vs. repeat)
• Browse abandonment: 2-3 emails

That's 15-17 emails total. If each one takes 10-15 minutes to write in plain text, you're looking at a few hours of work for a system that generates revenue 24/7.

What Comes After the First Five

Once these five are running and generating data, you expand. The next tier of flows includes:

• Winback flows — Re-engage customers who haven't purchased in 60-90+ days
• Sunset flows — Clean unengaged subscribers to protect deliverability
• Replenishment flows — Timed reminders for consumable products
• Review request flows — Dedicated sequences to drive reviews at scale
• Back-in-stock flows — Notify people when sold-out items return

But don't build any of these until the first five are solid. The foundation generates the most revenue per hour of effort. Everything after is optimization. Check out our flow builder tool to plan your full flow architecture once you're ready to expand.