How to Build a Klaviyo Flow That Boosts Retention by 57%
29 May 2025 · 3 min read
Why Fulfilled Order Beats Placed Order for Cross-Sells
Increasing your repeat order rate is the fastest lever to lift overall store revenue and profitability. We used this exact post-purchase architecture to grow one client's retention rate by 57% over a 12-month period.
When an order is placed, there is almost always a 1 to 3 day warehouse delay before the parcel leaves the building. If you time your follow-up sequence from Placed Order, your emails arrive before the customer has even unpacked their order. Trigger off the Fulfilled Order metric instead. It ensures your delays reflect when the customer actually receives the package.
Splitting by Collection Instead of Single SKUs
Once your trigger is set to Fulfilled Order, you need to route customers down relevant pathways. If your store sells three items total, trigger splits based on individual SKUs work fine.
If you have dozens or hundreds of SKUs, single-product branching creates an unmanageable mess. In my books, collection-based splits are much cleaner and far easier to maintain.
For this client, we divided the flow into their primary product collections (such as productivity and focus). This allowed us to group similar customer intents together and speak to specific product use-cases without designing 40 separate email branches.
Moving Shipping Confirmations into Klaviyo
The first touchpoint in this flow goes out immediately upon fulfilment as a shipping confirmation. Shopify handles this natively, but we choose to send it through Klaviyo instead.
Transactional messages and shipping updates generate open rates well above 60%. Pushing these high-engagement sends through Klaviyo builds positive sender reputation with inbox providers and steadily lifts your overall deliverability.
Timing the Cross-Sell and Educating First
After the shipping notification, we insert a time delay of roughly 7 days. This allows adequate transit time for the customer to receive and open their parcel.
Do not immediately jump into a hard sales pitch on day seven. Your first email after delivery should educate the customer on how to get the best results from their product, tilting the value equation in their favour.
Once that value is established, you can introduce complementary products from the same collection. Because you know the exact collection they purchased from, your copy can address their specific goals rather than showing a generic catalogue grid.
Using Conditional Splits for the Second Purchase
Toward the end of the sequence, we add a conditional split based on purchase count. Specifically, we isolate profiles where Placed Order equals 1 overall time.
Here is the thing: getting the second purchase is always the hardest hurdle in retention. If a customer has already placed three orders with you, offering a discount simply burns your margin.
For one-time buyers who have not returned, you can use this final branch to present a dedicated cross-sell alongside an incentive. That small push is often all it takes to turn a single-order customer into a repeat buyer.
Final Thoughts
Personalisation at scale does not require an impossible web of hundreds of standalone flows. It comes down to using accurate trigger metrics, segmenting by collection, and delivering the right product recommendation once the customer has experienced initial value.
Scale Your Retention Strategy
If you want our team to audit, design, and build custom retention flows that lift your repeat purchase rate, explore our email automations service.
