How to Run Email Marketing Like a $20M+ Brand

The larger your brand gets, the more every email matters—not just in opens and clicks, but in revenue and retention.

At scale, a missing flow or underperforming email isn’t a small oversight, but a suddenly a six- or seven-figure hit to your P/L.

Here are 11 Klaviyo flows for brands doing over $20M+ in annual revenue.

The 3 Types of Flow Emails

Think of your email flows as three strategic pillars:

1. Acquisition Flows
2. Recovery Flows
3. Retention Flows

These flows overlap in function, but each has a distinct purpose.

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Acquisition Flows

Acquisition flows are your front line. They convert new subscribers and re-engage lapsed non-purchasers.

Primary Goals:

• Convert non-buyers into first-time purchasers
• Reinforce brand positioning and hero products
• Deliver your lead-gen offer with clarity and urgency

Examples:

• Welcome Series
• Non-Purchaser Offer Flows

Recovery Flows

These flows target high-intent users who dropped off at critical points in their journey. Think of them as revenue recovery systems.

Primary Goals:

• Rescue abandoned carts and sessions
• Close the gap on incomplete purchases
• Nudge high-intent users back into the funnel

Examples:

• Cart Abandonment
• Checkout Abandonment
• Browse Abandonment
• Site Abandonment

Retention Flows

Retention flows are the growth engine most under-leveraged by mid-market brands.

Primary Goals:

• Increase repeat purchase rate
• Improve LTV with tailored product offers
• Win back churned or at-risk customers

Examples:

• Post-Purchase Cross-Sell
• Replenishment Offers
• Repeat Buyer Upsell
• Winback Flows

Bonus: Transactional Flows

We’ll dive deeper into transactional flows in a separate post, but know this:

These emails aren’t just operational—they’re strategic. Used right, they build trust, reduce CX load, and reinforce your brand at key moments post-purchase.

Must-Have Flows for Klaviyo Accounts Doing $20M+

Let’s break down the essential flows you need in Klaviyo—and how to make them perform like a growth channel.

1. Welcome Flow

The the most overlooked and under-optimized flow in email marketing. Everyone knows the importance of having a welcome flow, yet many still get the core setup wrong.

Critical Elements:

• Align the first email with your pop-up offer.
• Understand list triggers versus segment triggers to avoid delays or interruptions in coupon deliveries.
• Leverage conditional splits and filters to align subscriber source with offer and content strategy.
• Introduce your hero product(s) to new customers early.
• Know when to use flow filters, email filters, trigger filters, or conditional splits to manage recipients. 
• Include a resend strategy for users who don’t open key emails in the flow.

Simple ≠ simplistic. Depending on your account structure, this flow can drive up to 30% of your total email revenue, so be sure it gets the attention it deserves. 

2. Cart Abandonment

One of your highest-ROI flows when configured properly, yet most brands overlook this one entirely...

Cart abandonment is not the same as a checkout abandonment. They are two very different flows, and they trigger along different points of the customer journey; their event payloads are also different, so the creative and personalization available are unique to each flow.

Critical Elements:

• Use Klaviyo’s “Added to Cart” event as the primary trigger to isolate high-purchase-intent visitors.
• Use dynamic blocks to personalize the contents based on the product the customer added to their cart.  
• Apply conditional splits based on cart value or category to tailor the offer, urgency, and tone.
• Implement at least three reminders with varied messaging angles; friendly nudge with value reinforcement first, then urgency or incentive in subsequent messaging. 

3. Checkout Abandonment

This flow is your closer. At this point, the shopper has moved deep into the funnel—your job is to eliminate the last few reasons not to buy.

Core Enhancements:

• Dynamically surface cart contents alongside trust elements like guarantees, policies, and delivery timelines.
• Use behavior-based filters and checkout information (available via the integration) to determine if a second email should include urgency, scarcity, or a final incentive.
• Test plain text vs. visual formats to match different buyer psychology.

4. Browse Abandonment

Designed to shift curiosity into action. This flow is all about feeding interest, not forcing a decision.

Execution Tips:

• Triggered when a subscriber views a product page; must include flow filters to avoid over-triggering.
• Highlight recently viewed items with adjacent products (cross-category recommendations work well here).
• Use persuasive bullets, reviews, or creator content to boost emotional trust without hard-selling.
• Use filtering logic to remove anyone who’s moved to cart or checkout since the trigger.

5. Site Abandonment

Your broadest recovery tool that (almost) nobody talks about. Ideal for visitors who browsed around but didn’t hit product-page-level engagement.

If you’ve implemented this in the past correctly you are already in the top 5% of brands...

Strategic Elements:

• Trigger based on Active on Site behavior with no PDP interaction.
• Highlight best sellers, trending collections, or editorial-style discovery content.
• Route traffic by entry source or interest (e.g. blog readers vs. product listers).
• A/B test hero-led vs. product grid layouts—this audience is still exploring, not converting.
• Use conditional splits to segment subscriber content based on Active on Site event payload, if available. 

6. Post-Purchase Product-Specific Cross-Sell

Drive LTV and Returning Customer revenue through affinity-based product recommendations. 

You already own all the purchase and customer data; now it’s time to put that data to work.

Best Practices:

• Set to trigger based on Placed Order or Fulfilled Order; conditionally split, or break out across multiple flows, product or category specific branches to showcase personalized content and product recommendations. 
• Map your product-affinity to inform which products should be showcased to which customers based on their purchase history.
• Differentiate New versus Returning Customers in tone, offer, and CTA strength.
• Anchor suggestions with approaches such as “Pairs well with…” or “Complete your setup with…”

7. Post-Purchase Winback

Turn lapsed customers into repeat buyers with tactical winback strategies.

Email-based winback strategies are still your lowest-cost method of winning back lost customers. 

Key Components:

• Tailor your flow to trigger after a “lapsed”  window (typically 45–90 days) based on your average reorder cycle.
• Layer in LTV, last product purchased, review score, or support interactions into your segmentation and creative to guide tone and offer strategy.
• Lapsed VIPs get exclusives or loyalty bonuses; low-LTV users get a reactivation incentive.
• Test high-design versus plain-text based on what your audience has responded to historically.

8. Post-Purchase Replenishment Offer

For consumables and repeat-use products, this is the timing engine behind LTV growth.

Can clothing and apparel really benefit from a replenishment flow? 

Just because it’s not consumable doesn’t mean it’s not eligible for replenishment. From basics to athletic wear to “refresh” styles, every brand can drive repeat purchases through effective replenishment strategies.

Execution Details:

• SKU-specific delays are key; set your flow timing based on average use duration, such as supplements (30 days), skincare (60), etc.
• Remove friction and make reordering as easy as possible. Include pre-filled carts, mobile-optimized quick actions, and saved payment methods if possible.
• Subscribe and save. Introduce subscription options with risk-free benefits to shift one-timers to recurring.
• Build in gentle reminders and resend strategies if the initial replenishment email goes unopened or unclicked.

9. Post-Purchase Repeat-Buyer Upsell

Designed to accelerate buyer progression and develop your high-LTV segment.

Optimizations:

• Trigger to customers with 2 or more purchases. 
• Promote your highest-value offers in the form of bundles, subscriptions, or early access launches.
• Use conditional splits to create VIP branches with exclusive benefits and loyalty language based on LTV metrics and customer data for advanced personalization.
• Acknowledge their progression and milestones with the brand (“You’ve placed 3 orders. Here’s an extra something from us as our way of saying thank you!”).

10. Non-Purchaser Offer Flow

When subscribers don’t convert from the Welcome Series, this is your strategic second swing.

Flow Framework:

• Only trigger for users with high engagement but no purchase (e.g. opened/clicked multiple times).
• Don’t just recycle your Welcome offer emails—introduce a new offer, new hook, social proof, or products (such as top sellers from your discounted collections).
• Segment and branch subscribers based on their interaction type. What emails are they opening, what links are they clicking, what products are they viewing, etc?
• Timebox the offer with a clear deadline to create a sense of urgency, but avoid sounding desperate.

11. Sunset Flow

Sunset the profiles that you’re no longer sending to but are costing you money and deliverability health. 

Strategic Moves:

• Trigger only for subscribers inactive for 180-365+ days (varies brand to brand).
• Frame the message as a choice to stay or go, with clear benefits of staying.
• Ensure that anyone who opens, clicks, or buys during this window gets automatically removed from the Sunset path.
• Bonus: Use webhooks and automated logic to auto-suppress disengaged profiles, managing your active profile count in real time.

Email isn’t just another owned channel; it is your single most cost-effective method to maximize LTV, drive new and returning customer revenue, and engage with your most loyal customers. 

When done right, your flows create compounding returns, not just more sends.

If you want your Klaviyo account to scale like an 8-figure machine, these flows are non-negotiable.

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