There are 20 core flows in a complete ecommerce retention system. Most brands run about five, and usually the same five: a welcome series, an abandoned cart, and three defaults nobody has touched since launch. This is the full library we audit accounts against, what each flow does, and who actually needs it, so you can count your own gaps before anyone counts them for you.
The stakes are bigger than they look: Klaviyo’s 2026 benchmark data shows flows generating about 41% of email revenue from just 5.3% of sends (Klaviyo email benchmarks). Every missing flow is the highest-yield sending you are not doing.
A scoring note before the list: the goal is not 20 out of 20. Some flows only make sense for consumables, some only for subscriptions. The goal is knowing which of the 20 your customer behavior justifies, and running those properly. Keep score as you read.
Stage 1: Pre-purchase (the first hello)
1. Welcome flow. Triggered on signup. The highest revenue-per-recipient sequence you will ever run, because intent is never hotter. Done properly it splits paths: customers and non-customers get different messages, because “here’s 10% off your first order” reads strangely to someone on their third. Everyone needs this one.
Stage 2: Purchase recovery (the rescue layer)
The fastest money in email. If you build in revenue order, this layer comes first.
2. Checkout abandonment. They entered checkout and left. Highest intent, highest recovery rate, first flow to fix. 3. Add-to-cart abandonment. Carted, never reached checkout. One step colder, still warm, needs objection handling more than reminders. 4. Browse abandonment. Viewed products, carted nothing. Catches buyers a full stage before the cart, which is why most brands never build it and why it prints for the ones that do (the browse abandonment build). 5. Active-on-site abandonment. Visited, browsed nothing specific. The lightest touch of the four. Only worth running with meaningful traffic, and with suppression logic so nobody gets two rescue emails in a day. 6. Low-inventory alert. “Almost gone” for items in a browser’s history. Honest scarcity, triggered by real stock data. Skip it if your inventory rarely runs low.
Everyone needs 2 through 4. Flows 5 and 6 are volume-dependent.
Stage 3: Post-purchase and retention (where LTV is made)
The second purchase is won or lost in the first 60 days. This stage is that window, automated.
7. Thank-you flow. Post-purchase, zero promotion. Sets expectations, tells the story, kills buyer’s remorse. Everyone needs it. 8. Post-delivery flow. Triggered off the delivered event: usage guidance, education, then the cross-sell their order predicts. The single most under-built flow relative to its payoff (the post-purchase cross-sell build). 9. Review request. Timed to actual product use, not to your impatience. A review request that lands before the box does is a timing crime we see weekly. 10. Back-in-stock. Restocked item, instant notification to everyone waiting. Turns “sold out” into a revenue event. Catalog and drop brands need this badly (the back-in-stock playbook). 11. Predicted next-order flow. Uses purchase cycles to prompt reorder right as the customer runs low. For consumables this one flow can outearn entire campaign calendars. Irrelevant for one-off purchases (replenishment timing, explained). 12. Milestone flow. “One order away from VIP” or a gift unlocked at a spend threshold. Engineered habit formation for your middle cohort. 13. Loyalty and VIP flow. Your top decile treated like the asset they are: early access, tier updates, recognition. Needs a defined VIP segment to exist first.
Subscription lifecycle set (only if you sell subscriptions, then all five are mandatory): 14. Subscription started. Onboarding for the relationship, not just the order. 15. Subscription paused. The save attempt: address the reason, offer the alternative. 16. Subscription renewed. Reinforce the decision, seed the upgrade. 17. Failed payment (dunning). Card retries plus human-sounding recovery emails. Silent churn’s biggest single cause, and the most mechanical money in this entire list (saving cancels and failed payments). 18. Subscription canceled. Exit survey, win-back seed, the door left open.
Stage 4: Churn risk (the goodbye layer)
19. Win-back flow. Triggered from your own inter-order data, just before the lapse point, not months after. Value first, discount as the closing argument only. 20. Sunset flow. The unsubscribe you send on purpose: one last re-permission attempt, then suppression. Feels like losing subscribers. It is actually protecting your deliverability and cutting the Klaviyo bill for profiles that were never going to buy.
Five flows is a start. Twenty is a library. The number that matters is how many of the ones your customers justify are actually live, tested, and earning.
How did you score?
Rough read from the accounts we audit. 0 to 5 flows: you have defaults, not a system, and the rescue layer alone is leaking real money monthly. 6 to 10: the skeleton exists; the LTV stage is almost certainly the gap. 11 to 15: solid, and the question shifts from coverage to decay, because a flow untouched for a year is quietly shrinking. 16 plus: rare air; your problem is testing discipline, not construction.
Coverage is only half the audit, though. A flow can exist and still fail on splits, timing, and testing. When we rebuilt one brand’s automation layer, most of these flows either did not exist or ran without paths and testing; five months later flow revenue had grown 452%. The construction sequence and the logic behind it live on our Flow Architecture page. We build these on revenue share, so a flow that underperforms costs us money too, which is why the library above is a checklist we run monthly rather than a brochure.
Related reading: Is a Newsletter Worth It for an Ecommerce Brand?, Birthday and Anniversary Flows: Small Flows, Outsized Loyalty.
Quick answers
How many Klaviyo flows should I have? The ones your customer behavior justifies, built properly. For most DTC brands that is 10 to 14 of the 20, always including the welcome, the full rescue layer, and the post-purchase arc.
Which flows make the most money? Per recipient, the welcome flow. In total recovered revenue, the rescue layer. For consumable brands, predicted next-order often beats both.
Which flow do brands skip that they shouldn’t? The sunset flow. It feels like list shrinkage but protects sender reputation and reduces platform costs.
Want your 20-flow scorecard done for you? The free Health Score checks every core flow against your account: what exists, what’s broken, what’s missing, and what each gap costs in dollars. 75+ checkpoints across 8 systems, results within 72 hours of access. Get your Health Score →
