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Expected outcome:

As a Flow user, I expect that I can set a specific Email action that is _immediately sequential to a Time Delay_ to "Live" from previous value of "Draft" hours before the Time delay (configured to propagate the contact profile at 9:15am local time for M/Tu/Thu/Fri) propagates the existing contact profiles to that same successive Email action, and that users would receive that email on Monday after a 3-day delay from propagating there from the previous successful email action on Thursday afternoon

 

Actual outcome:

As a Flow user, I had changed the Email action from "draft" to "Live" on Monday morning a little after 12am (and well before the expected Time Delay criteria of 9:15am for any contact profiles local time), and the preceding Time Delay utility (set to proceed profiles to the next Action at 9:15am recipient's local time on M/Tu/Thu/F) that profiles had already entered into on the previous Thursday afternoon after all successfully receiving the first Email in this flow, however upon the expected time trigger of 9:15am Local Time, no email was sent out to any contact profiles, and the analytics (on the Email action) continue to show 0 emails were sent/delivered/etc

 

Additional context:

I have configured a fairly simple 7-Email action flow with time-delays interspersed between each email.

The time delays are to control for when emails are delivered to users.

The trigger is based on existing list of ~200 test profiles that I had to use "Add Existing Profiles" to ensure they were "induced" into the flow and they all successfully received the first Email in the flow and were then moved into the succeeding ‘Time Delay wait 3 days and send 9:15am local time M/Tu/Th/Fri.’ 

However, they did not receive the 2nd email as expected, and I am unsure as to where they currently "are" in the flow (are they stuck in the second time delay? Did they move on to the 3rd time delay??)

 

What I am trying to understand/related questions

  1. Is there any way to get analytics on where contact profiles are in specific Actions/Tools within the Flow beyond just email actions?
  2. What I am trying to understand: was this a bug on Klaviyo's side triggered on some edge case that I accidentally stumbled on? 
  3. How do I make sure I set up these flow campaigns such that I don't have to babysit something that should work based on Klaviyo's own documentation?

Hey ​@AndytheMac - This is a really well documented issue, thanks for laying it all out. A few thoughts and suggestions that might help clarify what’s going on:

 

Why the second email didn’t send

Even though you switched the second email to “Live” before the 9:15am scheduled time, Klaviyo evaluates whether a contact should proceed at the moment they enter the time delay step. If the email was still in “Draft” when they reached that point (even if it’s later set to Live), they’ll skip it entirely unless you re-queue them. This is a known behavior in Klaviyo flows, although not always clearly stated. So what likely happened: Your contacts hit the Time Delay on Thursday afternoon after receiving Email 1. At that point, Klaviyo calculated when to move them forward (Monday at 9:15am). But since the next Email action was still in Draft when they entered the delay, they weren’t set up to receive it—even if it was Live by Monday.

 

How to check where people are in the flow

Unfortunately, Klaviyo doesn’t provide a direct visual of where contacts are within time delays. But here’s how you can investigate:

  • Go to the flow and select the Time Delay step after Email 1.
  • Click “View Activity” on that step. You should be able to see how many profiles are scheduled to move forward.
  • In the “Analytics” tab, click on individual contacts to see their flow history and where they were last active.

Alternatively, export your test segment and check each profile’s flow activity manually, it’s tedious, but it’ll confirm whether they got stuck.

 

Was this a bug or expected behavior?

This is expected behavior, but it’s a common edge case that trips up users. Klaviyo locks in the next step’s state (Live or Draft) at the time of entry into the delay, not at the time of sending. That’s why everything needs to be Live before contacts hit the delay step.

 

How to avoid this in future flows

  • Always publish every Email action as Live before any contact enters the Time Delay step before it.
  • Use test profiles with clear timestamp tracking to monitor flow progress.
  • If you need to go Live mid-flow, consider cloning the flow and adding a conditional split to isolate affected profiles, or re-queue them manually.

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