Prevent customers going through an abandoned cart flow from receiving other emails?

Question

I'm looking for advice on how to prevent subscribers who are going through this flow from receiving other types of emails, like campaigns or other automated flows.

Specifically, I'd like to know:

Preventing Overlap: What is the most effective way to ensure that people who are in the middle of a core flow (e.g., abandoned checkout) aren't also receiving other emails at the same time? How do you prioritize certain flows over others?
Exclusion Settings: Are there specific exclusion settings or techniques within Klaviyo that you find particularly useful for managing this?
Best Practices: Are there any best practices or common pitfalls to avoid when setting up these exclusions to ensure a seamless experience for the customer?
Testing: What methods do you use to test and verify that these exclusion rules are working correctly?

I want to make sure that the customer journey remains smooth and that they aren't overwhelmed with too many emails at once. Any insights or strategies you can share would be greatly appreciated!

liz.hayes · Accepted Answer

Hi GV123, thanks so much for the question! These are actually super important strategies to consider when creating a customer journey. You’ve addressed a few points so I’ve tried to summarise my advice on each but please let me know if I can provide any further insight.

Prioritize checkout over browse with delays and splits
- In your Abandoned Browse flow, add a longer wait before your first message.
- After that wait, add a conditional split that checks if the person has already entered your Abandoned Checkout flow.
- If yes, end or short-circuit the browse path; if no, continue the browse sequence. This gives checkout (deeper-funnel) messaging priority.
Use conditional splits within core flows to check for other active journeys
- Inside Abandoned Checkout (and other core flows), use conditional split logic to check whether someone is currently in another key flow (e.g., Welcome, Winback) and route accordingly so they don’t receive conflicting messages.
Control entry with segment-triggered flows and entry exclusions
- Create a segment for people currently in your Abandoned Checkout flow (e.g., “In Abandoned Checkout Flow”).
- Make other flows segment-triggered and exclude this segment at the trigger so profiles in checkout don’t enter competing flows until they’re done.
Exclude active flow participants from campaigns
- In each campaign’s recipient settings, exclude your “In Abandoned Checkout Flow” segment so campaign sends don’t collide with live checkout messages.
Add flow filters at the trigger level
- On each flow’s trigger, add flow filters that exclude people based on recent flow activity (e.g., has recently received messages from another core flow) so people aren’t scheduled into overlapping automations.
Turn on per-email suppression to avoid back-to-back sends
- In every flow email, keep Skip Recently Emailed Profiles enabled. This is especially important for abandon flows where overlap is most likely.
Map your journey to avoid conflicts
- Sketch the end-to-end journey so you can see where someone can enter/exit each flow, and set a clear cadence across all site-behavior flows to prevent accidental overlaps.
Test and verify
- Check flow analytics frequently to spot overlaps and unintended sends.
- Spot-check individual profiles to confirm they’re entering only the intended flow and are being skipped where expected.

Helpful resources:

Understanding flow triggers and filters — https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002779051
Understanding flow branching — https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003883992
Smart Sending — https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002779311

MisterEcomm · Answer

The simplest way to avoid this is to keep the box ticked per email in each flow to Skip Recently Emailed Profiles.

I would suggest doing this for all abandon flows as that is where most of the overlap can occur.

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