Klaviyo Flow Benchmarks: Real Conversion Rates
Most Klaviyo flow benchmarks online are one-number averages, scraped from blog posts that scraped each other, pinned to a Klaviyo-published number from 2022. They don't tell you what your flow should convert at because they don't show you the distribution your flow sits in. The median welcome flow in our 14-brand portfolio converts at 4.37% on the entry email. The bottom of the range converts at 0.95%. The top converts at 18.04%. The spread is the story. A single average pretends the difference between a 1% welcome flow and an 18% welcome flow is rounding error. It's 19×.
This post is the per-flow conversion, open, click, and revenue-per-recipient benchmarks we pulled from 14 active ecommerce brands across the BS&Co portfolio over the trailing 365 days. Seven standard flows, two ways of measuring conversion, real medians and ranges, no industry-pooled fluff. If your welcome flow converts at 2%, this post tells you whether that's normal, where it sits on the distribution, and what the brands above you are doing differently.
Methodology
Pulled from Klaviyo across 14 active ecommerce accounts in our portfolio. Trailing 365 days. Live flows only. Email only (SMS branches excluded from v1). Brand-flow combinations with fewer than 250 entry-email recipients in the window are excluded from per-brand statistics. Klaviyo's account-default last-touch conversion attribution applies — the window varies brand-by-brand (most are on the 5-day default), and we accept that variance because it matches what each brand sees in their own Klaviyo dashboard.
Two conversion numbers, both reported, both defensible. They measure different things, and confusing them is one of the most common mistakes we see in audits:
- Entry-email conversion rate = orders attributed to the flow's entry email ÷ entry-email recipients. The intuitive number — "if someone enters this flow, what % convert off the first touch." This is the headline.
- Full-flow conversion rate = total flow orders ÷ recipients summed across every message in the flow. Matches Klaviyo's flow-level dashboard number. Reads lower than entry-email CR by construction — every send is in the denominator, so a 4-email flow has roughly 4× the denominator of a 1-email flow at the same conversion volume. Not a contradiction, just Klaviyo's convention.
Brand names are anonymized throughout — same convention as our other benchmark posts (AOV breakdown, attribution benchmarks, engagement benchmarks). Per-brand spread charts use letter keys (Brand A, Brand B, etc.) so you can see the distribution without anyone's name attached.
One more methodology rule worth stating up front: we lead with the per-brand median, not the pooled portfolio mean. Pooling sends across 14 brands lets the highest-volume brand drag the average. The pooled welcome entry CR is 5.54%, but that's a single 18%-converting brand pulling the number up. The median across brands is 4.37%, and that's the number you should locate yourself against. Pooled means show up below each table as a caveat, never as the headline.
The Overview
Seven flows, ranked by entry-email conversion rate, with the full-flow rate and full-flow revenue per recipient (RPR) alongside:
| Flow | Median CR (entry email) | Median CR (full flow) | Median RPR (full flow) | Brands in sample |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome | 4.37% | 1.53% | $2.51 | 12 |
| Abandoned Checkout | 2.30% | 1.92% | $3.55 | 9 |
| Abandoned Cart | 1.82% | 1.31% | $3.56 | 7 |
| Browse Abandonment | 0.61% | 0.51% | $0.92 | 12 |
| Replenishment | 0.46% | 0.49% | $0.29 | 5 |
| Post-Purchase | 0.31% | 0.33% | $0.47 | 10 |
| Winback | 0.09% | 0.07% | $0.07 | 6 |
Three things to register from the overview before we go flow-by-flow:
- Welcome is the highest-converting flow, not abandoned cart. 4.37% entry CR vs. abandoned checkout's 2.30% and abandoned cart's 1.82%. The counterintuitive read is that the strongest intent signal in your flow stack is not the customer who abandoned a cart — it's the customer who just subscribed to your popup. We'll come back to why.
- Abandoned Checkout beats Abandoned Cart on every metric. Treat them as different products, not interchangeable triggers. The Started Checkout event fires when the customer initiates checkout — they've moved past the cart toward the purchase flow. That's a stronger intent signal than Added to Cart, which fires on every add (including impulse adds and wishlist-style behavior that never moves forward).
- Sort by RPR and the ranking shifts. Abandoned cart's full-flow RPR is $3.56 — higher than welcome's $2.51 — despite a lower CR. AOV does the work; cart shoppers already picked a product, welcome subscribers haven't. Stop optimizing your flow stack on CR alone.
Welcome — 4.37% (and the 19× spread that's the real story)
Brands in sample (N ≥ 250 entry-email recipients in the window): 12 of 14.
Entry email
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 52.3% | 27.4% – 67.7% | 42.1% |
| CTR | 9.2% | 3.0% – 19.8% | 7.5% |
| Conversion rate | 4.37% | 0.95% – 18.04% | 5.54% |
| Revenue per recipient | $8.17 | $0.92 – $110.68 | $13.18 |
Full flow (recipients summed across messages)
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 43.0% | 23.1% – 54.0% | 33.9% |
| CTR | 3.5% | 1.6% – 10.4% | 2.8% |
| Conversion rate | 1.53% | 0.29% – 5.30% | 1.53% |
| Revenue per recipient | $2.51 | $0.28 – $57.85 | $3.34 |
The entry email of the welcome flow converts the bottom brand in our portfolio at 0.95% and the top brand at 18.04%. That's a 19× spread. The median (4.37%) sits in the middle but does not tell you anything useful about which half of the distribution your flow is on. Below is the actual distribution — 12 anonymous dots, one per brand, with the median marked.
What separates the 18% brand from the 1% brand isn't a secret. From our audit work across the portfolio (not derivable from this data pull, but the pattern we consistently see in account-level reviews), four levers explain most of the spread:
- A popup question that segments the welcome flow. One radio-button intent question on the signup popup populates a Klaviyo profile property, and the welcome flow branches on it. Same product, different angle per goal. See our deep dive on adding one intent question to your Klaviyo popup.
- A real discount offer. 15–20% off the first order, not a fake-urgency 5% "welcome" gesture that doesn't cover the customer's consideration friction.
- Tight follow-up timing. Email 1 fires within minutes of signup. Email 2 lands within 1–2 days. Not the "Email 1 immediately, Email 2 a week later" cadence we see in audits.
- A flow that actually sells, not just "welcomes." The flow ends on a CTA-heavy email with a real offer expiration. The 1% brands are running "welcome to the family" flows that never push the purchase.
For the full welcome flow framework, see our welcome flow examples post. For the popup-side change that consistently lifts welcome CR more than any single email rewrite, the popup question post is the playbook.
If your welcome flow is below 2% entry-email CR, you're in the bottom quartile of our portfolio — and the lift available is real, not theoretical. Send us your account and we'll point at the specific levers.
Abandoned Checkout — 2.30% (a tighter spread, less room to optimize)
Brands in sample (N ≥ 250 entry-email recipients in the window): 9 of 14.
Entry email
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 39.7% | 20.6% – 50.1% | 34.4% |
| CTR | 3.6% | 1.6% – 11.3% | 3.9% |
| Conversion rate | 2.30% | 0.92% – 4.75% | 1.94% |
| Revenue per recipient | $3.47 | $0.38 – $67.86 | $8.82 |
Full flow
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 40.7% | 23.7% – 50.1% | 35.8% |
| CTR | 3.6% | 2.3% – 9.2% | 3.7% |
| Conversion rate | 1.92% | 1.34% – 2.94% | 1.76% |
| Revenue per recipient | $3.55 | $0.66 – $42.66 | $7.49 |
Abandoned checkout's entry-email CR is roughly half of welcome's, but the spread is much tighter: 0.92% to 4.75%, a 5× range vs. welcome's 19×. That tightness means there's less operator-skill leverage on this flow — the Started Checkout trigger does most of the work. Anyone who hits Started Checkout has actively initiated the checkout flow, which is a meaningfully stronger commitment than a casual add-to-cart. Even a generic recovery email converts a subscriber that intent-loaded.
The practical implication: spend your optimization time on welcome, not on abandoned checkout. AC is more about "is it on, is the timing tight, is the offer present" than "can we 4× this through copy iteration." The biggest mistake we see on this flow in audits isn't bad copy — it's Klaviyo Smart Sending suppressing the highest-converting email in the account. Smart Sending should be off in every flow, and abandoned checkout is the one where leaving it on costs the most.
Abandoned Cart — 1.82% (and the cleanest RPR-beats-CR data point)
Brands in sample (N ≥ 250 entry-email recipients in the window): 7 of 14.
Entry email
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 45.4% | 27.3% – 48.3% | 35.9% |
| CTR | 4.4% | 1.7% – 7.6% | 3.6% |
| Conversion rate | 1.82% | 0.32% – 3.32% | 1.30% |
| Revenue per recipient | $2.96 | $0.19 – $25.59 | $4.12 |
Full flow
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 41.2% | 27.7% – 47.6% | 36.4% |
| CTR | 3.4% | 1.6% – 6.0% | 3.5% |
| Conversion rate | 1.31% | 0.66% – 1.99% | 1.15% |
| Revenue per recipient | $3.56 | $0.36 – $11.99 | $3.30 |
The Added-to-Cart trigger fires on every add — including casual wishlist-style impulses that never move toward purchase. That's why Abandoned Cart entry-email CR runs lower than Abandoned Checkout (1.82% vs. 2.30%, a 20% gap), and the recipient pool is much larger.
The biggest mistake we routinely find on this flow in audits is that brands don't run it at all. Teams convince themselves that Abandoned Checkout is "enough" and skip the cart-stage flow entirely. It isn't enough. Started Checkout fires later in the funnel; every shopper who added to cart but never made it to checkout is invisible to your Abandoned Checkout flow. That's the entire upper-funnel of cart abandonment leaking out of the email program. Both flows belong in the stack: Abandoned Cart catches the early-funnel adds, Abandoned Checkout catches the further-down-funnel committers. They don't replace each other. See our full breakdown of abandoned cart vs. abandoned checkout for how the two divide the work.
The most interesting cross-comparison in the entire post lives here. Abandoned cart's full-flow RPR is $3.56 — higher than welcome's $2.51 — despite abandoned cart's CR being lower. Two things stack on each other to explain it. First, intent: someone who added a specific product to cart has explicit purchase intent on that product. A welcome subscriber, by contrast, is often discount-shopping with no specific SKU in mind. Second, AOV: cart baskets tend to be larger than first-purchase welcome offers, which are usually a smaller intro SKU + discount. Lower conversion frequency, higher value per conversion. This is the cleanest data argument in our portfolio for the principle do not rank your flows by conversion rate alone. RPR is what determines real revenue contribution.
Browse Abandonment — 0.61% (volume flow, not per-recipient flow)
Brands in sample (N ≥ 250 entry-email recipients in the window): 12 of 14.
Entry email
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 38.8% | 29.0% – 53.2% | 35.0% |
| CTR | 4.0% | 1.7% – 6.6% | 3.0% |
| Conversion rate | 0.61% | 0.07% – 1.13% | 0.57% |
| Revenue per recipient | $0.90 | $0.17 – $11.07 | $1.02 |
Full flow
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 38.5% | 30.6% – 53.2% | 35.9% |
| CTR | 3.6% | 1.5% – 6.6% | 3.0% |
| Conversion rate | 0.51% | 0.13% – 1.03% | 0.47% |
| Revenue per recipient | $0.92 | $0.15 – $6.79 | $0.98 |
Browse's per-recipient revenue is roughly 1/4 of abandoned cart's ($0.92 full-flow RPR vs. $3.56). On a single-recipient basis, browse looks like a weak flow. That's not why browse earns its place in the stack. Browse earns its place on volume. The recipient pool for browse is much larger than abandoned cart's, because every product page view fires it — not just the much smaller subset that adds to cart. Multiply by that volume and browse routinely lands as the second- or third-largest flow contributor by absolute attributed revenue in the accounts we manage, despite per-recipient numbers that look small. Our browse abandonment guide covers the build.
Post-Purchase — 0.31% (the high-open, low-CR paradox)
Brands in sample (N ≥ 250 entry-email recipients in the window): 10 of 14.
Entry email
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 58.0% | 19.6% – 65.6% | 41.8% |
| CTR | 4.5% | 1.9% – 15.5% | 5.1% |
| Conversion rate | 0.31% | 0.00% – 1.47% | 0.17% |
| Revenue per recipient | $0.48 | $0.00 – $12.25 | $0.24 |
Full flow
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 51.3% | 20.0% – 62.6% | 41.6% |
| CTR | 3.4% | 1.6% – 8.3% | 2.8% |
| Conversion rate | 0.33% | 0.05% – 2.09% | 0.24% |
| Revenue per recipient | $0.47 | $0.04 – $3.50 | $0.28 |
Post-purchase has the highest open rate of any flow we measured at 58% (entry email) — and one of the lowest CRs at 0.31%. The subscriber just bought. They're delighted, they're reading order confirmations and shipping updates and "here's what to expect" emails — but they're not in the market for another product yet. Post-purchase is a retention and lifecycle-onboarding flow, not a conversion flow. Brands that judge it on CR get disappointed and either kill it or pile on more discount-heavy emails. Brands that judge it on repeat purchase rate at 30/60/90 days see the actual ROI. Our post-purchase deep dive covers how to structure these flows around the right metric.
Replenishment — 0.46% (N=5; directional only)
Brands in sample (N ≥ 250 entry-email recipients in the window): 5 of 14. Small sample — treat these as directional, not conclusive.
Entry email
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 43.3% | 23.4% – 50.8% | 34.2% |
| CTR | 1.6% | 0.9% – 3.3% | 1.4% |
| Conversion rate | 0.46% | 0.20% – 3.28% | 0.36% |
| Revenue per recipient | $0.26 | $0.14 – $3.82 | $0.30 |
Full flow
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 43.3% | 23.4% – 52.4% | 32.9% |
| CTR | 1.4% | 0.8% – 4.2% | 1.2% |
| Conversion rate | 0.49% | 0.19% – 1.77% | 0.36% |
| Revenue per recipient | $0.29 | $0.14 – $2.17 | $0.28 |
The range is the part to register: entry-email CR runs 0.20% to 3.28% across the 5 brands in sample — a 16× spread on a small N. The principle behind why replenishment varies so widely is sound even though the sample is too small to call out which brands sit where: replenishment is a flow that fits some product categories and not others. If you're selling consumables with a predictable reorder interval (skincare, supplements, coffee, pet food), build it. If you're selling fashion, electronics, or one-time-use products, the "you're running out" framing the flow depends on doesn't apply. Our replenishment flow guide walks through the fit test.
Winback — 0.09% (the graveyard)
Brands in sample (N ≥ 250 entry-email recipients in the window): 6 of 14.
Entry email
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 40.0% | 13.7% – 45.3% | 31.1% |
| CTR | 0.9% | 0.5% – 3.2% | 0.9% |
| Conversion rate | 0.09% | 0.00% – 0.12% | 0.08% |
| Revenue per recipient | $0.05 | $0.00 – $0.16 | $0.06 |
Full flow
| Metric | Median | Range (min – max) | Portfolio pooled |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open rate | 40.8% | 13.8% – 46.8% | 33.2% |
| CTR | 0.8% | 0.5% – 2.2% | 0.8% |
| Conversion rate | 0.07% | 0.04% – 0.19% | 0.11% |
| Revenue per recipient | $0.07 | $0.03 – $0.29 | $0.11 |
Winback converts at 0.09% on the entry email. That's the smallest CR of any flow we measured — and it's also a fair read on how hard the underlying job is. By the time a winback flow fires, the subscriber has lost interest, switched to a competitor, or moved on from the category. The flow isn't selling to a warm audience the way welcome or abandoned cart are; it's trying to undo a churn decision that's already been made. Of the seven flows in this post, this is the one where the trigger event is genuinely working against you.
That doesn't mean winback isn't worth building — it means the bar for a winback that pays off is higher than for any other flow. In our experience building winback for clients, three things separate the ones that meaningfully recover lapsed revenue from the ones that quietly run in the background:
- An offer that actually overcomes the lapse. 5% off doesn't pull back a subscriber who's already moved on. 20% off plus free shipping might.
- Segmentation by why they lapsed. The subscriber who bought once and never came back is a different audience than the subscriber who bought repeatedly and stopped. Same flow, different messaging, different offer aggressiveness.
- Channel mix beyond email. SMS adds meaningful lift on winback specifically because the inbox is the channel the lapsed subscriber has been ignoring. For higher-AOV brands, layered direct mail is worth testing.
Doing all three lifts winback into a flow that earns its place in the stack. Doing none of them — the "I built a generic 4-email email-only winback because the checklist said I should" version — lands at the bottom of the distribution and isn't worth the production cost. Our winback flow guide walks through the version that's worth building.
Three Patterns That Hold Across All Seven Flows
Pattern 1 — Every flow open rate beats the average campaign open rate
Median full-flow open rates, sorted descending:
- Post-Purchase: 51.3%
- Welcome: 43.0%
- Replenishment: 43.3%
- Abandoned Cart: 41.2%
- Winback: 40.8%
- Abandoned Checkout: 40.7%
- Browse Abandonment: 38.5%
Every flow clears 38%. Klaviyo's published industry average for campaign open rate is roughly 37%. Even the lowest-open-rate flow in our portfolio beats the average campaign send. Flows aren't just higher-converting; they're a fundamentally different engagement product. The whole flow-vs-campaign revenue split we've documented before sits on top of this engagement gap.
Pattern 2 — Variance scales with optimization potential
Entry-email CR ranges by flow (max ÷ min, where min > 0):
- Welcome: 19.0× (0.95% → 18.04%)
- Replenishment: 16.4× (0.20% → 3.28%)
- Browse Abandonment: 16.1× (0.07% → 1.13%)
- Abandoned Cart: 10.4× (0.32% → 3.32%)
- Abandoned Checkout: 5.2× (0.92% → 4.75%)
Welcome has the widest spread because it has the most operator-skill leverage — popup question, branched flow, offer strength, segmentation, and timing all multiply. Abandoned checkout has the tightest spread because the trigger does most of the work; even a generic AC flow converts. Variance is a signal of where your optimization budget should go. If you're below the median on a high-variance flow (welcome, replenishment, browse), the lift available is real. If you're below the median on AC, the ceiling is close.
Pattern 3 — CR ranking and RPR ranking diverge
Top flows by entry-email CR vs. top flows by entry-email RPR:
| Flow | Entry CR rank | Entry RPR rank | Entry RPR (median) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Welcome | #1 (4.37%) | #1 | $8.17 |
| Abandoned Checkout | #2 (2.30%) | #2 | $3.47 |
| Abandoned Cart | #3 (1.82%) | #3 | $2.96 |
| Browse Abandonment | #4 (0.61%) | #4 | $0.90 |
| Replenishment | #5 (0.46%) | #7 | $0.26 |
| Post-Purchase | #6 (0.31%) | #5 | $0.48 |
| Winback | #7 (0.09%) | #6 | $0.05 |
The top four flows align on both rankings, but the magnitudes diverge. Welcome's RPR lead ($8.17) is 2.4× abandoned checkout's ($3.47) at the entry-email level, even though Welcome's CR is only 1.9× higher. AOV does the extra work — welcome subscribers redeeming a popup discount tend to use higher-value first-purchase offers than abandoned-checkout returners. And replenishment converts slightly more often than post-purchase but earns half the per-recipient revenue, because replenishment baskets are smaller. Rank your flows by RPR, not CR, when you decide what to optimize next. Two flows at the same CR can be valued very differently.
FAQ
What should my welcome flow convert at?
Median is 4.37% on the entry email across 12 brands, range 0.95% to 18.04%. If you're above 4%, you're above median. If you're below 2%, you're in the bottom quartile of our portfolio and the lift available is significant — usually via popup-side and offer-side changes, not email copy iteration.
Is my post-purchase open rate of 50% normal?
Yes. Post-purchase has the highest median open rate of any flow we measured at 51.3% full-flow and 58.0% on the entry email. People who just bought open everything you send them in the days after the purchase. The relevant question is whether your post-purchase flow is doing anything with that attention besides confirming the order.
Why is my full-flow conversion rate lower than my entry-email conversion rate?
That's expected under Klaviyo's flow-reporting convention. Full-flow CR uses recipients summed across every message in the flow as the denominator — a four-email flow has roughly four times the denominator of a single email at the same conversion volume. Both numbers measure real things; they answer different questions. Entry-email CR answers "if someone enters this flow, what % convert off the first touch." Full-flow CR answers "per email I send in this flow, what % of those sends lead to a conversion."
Should I even run a winback flow?
Only if you're going to build it aggressively. At 0.09% median entry-email CR, a half-effort winback is a waste of production hours. If you're building it, segment by why they lapsed, layer in SMS, and lead with a real offer that actually overcomes the lapse. If you're not willing to do those things, turn the existing winback off and reinvest the time into welcome.
How do these benchmarks compare to Klaviyo's published numbers?
Klaviyo's published industry benchmarks cover all customers on the platform, not a curated subset of well-managed accounts. Their numbers tend to run lower across the board because the pool includes accounts with broken flows, misconfigured filters, and untouched defaults. Our portfolio numbers reflect actively managed accounts and should be read as "what a well-built flow can do," not "what the average Klaviyo account does."
Why only seven flows? What about birthday, sunset, active-on-site?
These seven cover the standard flow stack that nearly every ecommerce brand runs or considers. The next tier (birthday, sunset/list hygiene, active-on-site, VIP, anniversary, win-after-decline) is brand-specific in adoption and sample size would have been too small for portfolio-level benchmarks. A v2 of this post may add them as a separate section.
The Short Version
Welcome converts highest and varies most — your biggest optimization lever is here. Abandoned checkout converts second-highest with the tightest spread — turn it on, time it right, don't over-engineer it. Abandoned cart trails AC slightly but has higher per-recipient revenue because of AOV. Browse is a volume play, not a per-recipient play. Post-purchase is high-engagement, low-CR — measure it by repeat purchase, not by attributed orders. Replenishment fits some brands beautifully and shouldn't exist on the rest. Winback is a graveyard for most brands; build it seriously or don't build it.
Find your flow on the distribution. Identify the lever. Stop chasing pooled averages.
Related Reading
- The Klaviyo Popup Question That Powers Every Email You Send — the popup-side change that lifts welcome flow CR more than any single email rewrite
- Why We Turn Klaviyo Smart Sending Off In Every Flow — the silent killer of abandoned checkout CR
- Email Attribution Benchmarks — flow vs. campaign revenue across the same portfolio
- Email Engagement Benchmarks — pooled open and click data; complementary to this per-flow cut
- Complete Guide to Klaviyo Flows — how each of the seven flows is built
Want us to find your flow on this distribution?
We audit Klaviyo accounts every week. Send us your account and we'll show you exactly where each flow sits on the portfolio distribution and what it would take to move it up.