5 Best Klaviyo email flows to rack up repeat customers

There’s a reason you chose Klaviyo to power your email flows and your sms marketing. It's a powerhouse tool that gives you the flexibility to build the emails and automations you need.

The most exciting part of Klaviyo for most brands is the flow building capabilities. There are already countless articles that show you how to build the standard “everyone should have” Klaviyo flows, so we wanted to go deep on the retention flows you should build.

Here are 5 retention flows you can add with Klaviyo + some other tools to maximize your retention marketing efforts.

The 5 best Klaviyo flows to get returning customers

Over the past few months we have been observing what brands in our community (CPG House) have been deploying to win customers back and build LTV through email. Here are the five that have stood out to us that you can automate.

1. Post purchase education flows
2. Replenishment flows
3. Transactional follow up flows
4. Winback flows
5. Returning customer browse abandonment
6. A bonus tactic for campaigns

1. Post-purchase education flows

• Trigger = Has made purchase
• Filters = Number of orders is <2

Here at Repeat we mostly focus on CPG brands making this type of Klaviyo flow extra important. A ton of products like supplements and hair oils require continuous use to see results, and other products require knowledge on how to use them (hair wax) or reminders on benefits of sustained use (functional soda).

When combined with number 3 on this list (transactional flows) an educational flow allows you to keep the excitement of the purchase high and nudge customers towards the point of real value.

That value comes when they see the expected results of the purchase. That could be as simple as tasting the flavor or smelling the candle, all the way to as complex as seeing the weight loss or muscle gain they were looking for from your supplements.

Joey Coleman covers this point of educating to desired outcomes perfectly in his book Never Lose a Customer Again which I highly recommend checking out, but on to an example of this type of flow.

Here’s an email example from my favorite educational flow automation from Blumaan:

This email was sent to me after my first purchase giving me tips for how to use the product and getting me excited to use it once it arrived. That email was followed up for about two weeks with additional content not just about how to use the product but also with additional hair tips and tricks.

Through the entire flow the other products on offer were expertly weaved in to make sure I had maximum exposure and to encourage me to return to discover something new.

The length of this flow is totally up to you, but I would recommend keeping consistent touchpoints at least through the average time between purchases for your brand. That will maximize the potential to turn a one time purchaser into a returning one. You can supercharge this klaviyo flow by also running it in tandem with our next retention based email flow.

Brands who's emails you should check:

• Blumann
• Kopari
• Hanz de Fuko

2. Replenishment flows

Trigger = Repeat’s due to reorder trigger

There’s a common misconception that if you just keep customers educated and stay top of mind that they will come back to purchase on their own. While I don’t doubt that’s true, combining the flow above with a flow designed to ask a customer to reorder at the right time is super powerful.

A replenishment flow is an email flow that is designed to invite the customer back to buy again when they are most likely to accept that invite. When are they most likely to accept that invite? When they are running low on a product they love.

Here’s Amber from Kopari talking about how to blend the two

The best replenishment flows are timed to land when a customer is most likely running low, but how do you time it correctly?

• OK = Make an educated guess based on “typical” consumption
• BETTER = Trigger all flows off of your store level reorder interval
• BEST = Trigger flows based on each product’s reorder interval

Knowing reorder intervals allows you to trigger replenishment flows when a customer is most likely to order. You can do it with manual analysis and setup, or you can automate replenishment flows with Repeat.

By using Repeat’s trigger in your Klaviyo flows you are able to simplify a mess of branching logic that uses per product reorder intervals into a single streamlined replenishment flow.

When you combine that reorder trigger with dynamic content you have an automated flow that asks customers to replenish at the right time with minimal work for you. Here’s an example of what that email could look like from Stryx.

With this setup your customers get the right offer, at the right time, and can even be sent to a personalized cart for returning customer conversion. If automating your replenishment emails is interesting, grab some time for us to set it up for you.

Brands who's emails you should check:

• Olipop
• Blueland
• Stryx

3. Transactional flows

Trigger = multiple product update points

Some emails are historically boring, and for most brands there is nothing more boring than the transactional emails that are sent. Your order was placed, your order was received, your order was shipped.

But boring can be good. While these emails are not all that exciting and very transactional in nature, they are also some of your most opened emails. Everyone wants to know where their order is and when it will arrive.

Brands like Aura Bora have partnered with Wonderment to send different delivery touchpoints to Klaviyo to build a transactional flow that does so much more.

Since these transactional emails have high open rates, the team saw an opportunity to turn them into both a brand building and revenue creating opportunity. By adding their own brand flair the team made these emails exciting to open.

On top of being more exciting than your traditional transactional flow, they also created an easy way to turn customer excitement into reorders. On each of the emails in this Klaviyo flow they added a Repeat reorder banner that takes each customer to their personalized cart pre-populated with what they bought last time so they can easily buy again.

Brands who's emails you should check:

• Aura Bora
• DUDE Products
• Dr. Squatch

4. Customer winback flows

Trigger = customer has gone x days without returning for a purchase

This type of Klaviyo flow is popular but very difficult to execute properly. Why? Because it’s hard to know when a customer has lapsed and has no intent to come back.

The previous three email flows were all about keeping customers engaged and making the offer to come back for that next purchase easy and timely. This flow is about conceding that the customer is not returning and making one last offer to them.

A quick google search will give you a bunch of definitions and ways to determine when a customer has lapsed, but the best way to look at it is using your store’s own data. Here at Repeat we like to trigger winback flows when a customer hits the 75th percentile reorder interval.

Setting this flow to trigger on the 75th percentile day ensures that you are not making an aggressive offer to a customer that still has a high likelihood of returning but also doesn’t wait so long that the offer falls on deaf ears.

I know getting this information can be difficult, but that’s why Repeat exposes store level, product level, and variant level reorder intervals for you directly in our app.

5. Returning customer browse abandonment

• Trigger = Viewed product
• Wait = 2 hours
• Filter = Placed order 0 times since starting flow

Let me start by saying that I have not seen many brands pull this off, but it is technically possible with Repeat + Klaviyo.

Because each customer with a previous purchase is given a unique Repeat cart link, you are able to send a follow up to those who were browsing the site and did not complete a purchase with a link to restock on what they bought last time.

How often have you got distracted going to buy something you need? This is an easy way to give existing customers a shortcut to what you know they are already familiar with and hopefully love.

BONUS: Reorder banners in regular campaigns

While this recommendation isn’t a Klaviyo flow, it is a way to get the most out of your regular campaigns. With Repeat reorder banners you are able to add a piece of dynamic content that only shows to customers with a previous purchase that allows them to go restock their favorites.

Each link is tailored to that specific customer to give them the most relevant offer. This allows you to turn brand building, product launch, or even educational emails into additional orders.

You can also use the same principle to include links to restock to headers or footers of the emails like Olipop does.

Stop fighting with flows

Email automations and flows are always on the list to complete but are usually deprioritized to focus on something else. They require a significant amount of data digging and setup to be effective, but once they are set up they continue to pay retention dividends.

That’s especially true if those flows are updated automatically to reflect how customers are interacting with your products and brand.

Repeat can completely automated flow number 2 and make each of these other retention flows more powerful, let us show you how.