Have you ever wanted to make money in your sleep? Klaviyo’s advanced automation tools allow you to do just that!

Consumer expectations are high, and it’s more important now than ever before to use automation in email marketing to personalize every touchpoint a customer has with your brand. Klaviyo flows give you the ability to automate personalized and perfectly timed messages that drive conversion and engagement.

In this article, I share real-world examples of how Universal Yums uses the core features and capabilities of Klaviyo’s flows—and how you can achieve goals specific to your business needs through a similar strategic approach.

Don’t worry if you’re just getting started—these tips are for beginners, pros, and anyone in between!

The power of Klaviyo’s automation for personalized marketing at Universal Yums

I head up lifecycle and email marketing at Universal Yums, a medium-sized subscription based business that sends customers a box of snacks from a different country around the world each month. We only have one key product, our subscription box, which accounts for over 90% of our yearly revenue, so we use the advanced capabilities of Klaviyo to cater flows to our unique business model and customer journey.

We also have a very custom website set-up and data service. But seamless integrations with Klaviyo allow us to use real-time data and customer information to create relevant and timely messaging flows that meet customers where they are—at any specific moment in their journey with our brand, from first touch acquisition to repeat purchase. 

Using Klaviyo to build flows for every aspect of the customer journey is not just convenient for a one-woman show like me who is managing both the strategy and execution of email marketing. It’s also very effective at increasing open rates, click rates, conversions, and customer lifetime value by tailoring and timing messaging for each individual consumer. 

How Universal Yums aligns business goals with Klaviyo flows and customer journeys

Our business goals are similar to many other ecommerce companies. But because our recurring subscriptions drive a large portion of our sales, we have a slightly heavier focus on retention and lifetime value.

Here’s a peek at how we think about syncing each key business goal with a Klaviyo flow:

• Acquisition: Converting new leads into buyers is critical for our growth. We are continually optimizing our welcome flow to introduce customers to our brand, explain our product value props, and encourage first purchase with offers.
• Retention: In a subscription business, it’s more important than ever to engage customers who are actively subscribed to your product. We use various post-purchase and engagement-based flows to share exclusive content customers can pair with their monthly box shipment, provide product tips and information, and offer easy access to our customer service team.
• Lifetime value: While we don’t have a large store of products where we can up- or cross-sell other items, we are still able to utilize flows to encourage customers to upgrade their box size or length, refer friends to earn a discount, send a gift subscription, or leave reviews on our website—all actions that increase lifetime value.
• Win-back: We naturally have customers that cancel their subscription for various reasons. It’s important to target these customers at key touchpoints post-cancellation to learn why they cancelled, showcase new products, and offer special pricing to encourage them to resubscribe. We can easily execute all of these tactics with a Klaviyo flow that is timed just right based on someone’s previous purchase and cancellation behavior.

What are the most important goals for your business, and how do you use Klaviyo flows to achieve them? Share your insights in the comments! 

Key Universal Yums flow examples and how they are built 

We have over a dozen Klaviyo flows running at Universal Yums. Here, I highlight the most important ones to our business that drive the highest revenue and engagement. There are endless ways you can take these examples and cater them to your business and customers!

• Welcome flow: targets new customers captured from the website pop-up, website footer, and email capture in our purchase funnel
  • Triggers immediately upon email sign-up and contains 6 emails over the course of 6 days 
  • Content focus: new customer discounts, key brand value props, introducing our subscription model, and showcasing the unique snacks and countries available for a customer’s first box choice
  • Key success metrics: conversion rate, total revenue, and revenue per recipient
• Abandoned cart flow: targets customers who started check-out but did not complete their purchase
  • Triggers 1 hour after a customer abandons their cart and contains 3 total emails and 1 SMS message over the course of 48 hours
  • Content focus: populating the dynamic product the customer abandoned, key value prop reminders of why they will love our boxes, easy access to our customer service team, and answers/resolutions to common FAQs and purchase blockers 
  • Key success metrics: conversion rate, total revenue, and revenue per recipient
• Post-first purchase flow: targets customers after they make their first subscription purchase 
  • Triggers 30 minutes after a customer makes their first purchase and contains 10 emails and 2 SMS messages over the course of of 30 days
  • Content focus: gratitude for purchase, shipping updates, easy access to our customer service team, tips and tricks for the customer to fully enjoy the entire Universal Yums experience when their box arrives, and continued assimilation to the brand 
  • Key success metrics: open rate and click rate 
• Engagement content flow: targets customers who are actively subscribed to our product; customized based on the country they are receiving in their next shipment
  • Triggers 5–7 days after a customer’s monthly box ships and contains 4–5 emails over the course of 14 days 
  • Content focus: exclusive content relevant to the specific country box the customer is receiving that month, with the idea that they will utilize and enjoy the content alongside their box (usually consists of recipes, a travel guide, and media recs, all curated from a local in that country who gives them a deeper look into the food and culture) 
  • Key success metrics: open rate and click rate 
• Win-back flow: targets customers who cancelled their subscription 3–12 months prior and have not resubscribed since
  • Triggers 90 days after a customer cancels their subscription and contains 3 emails over the course of 30 days
  • Content focus: customized win-back discount and messaging, sneak peeks at any new products coming up, and a reminder of key value props of a subscription 
  • Key success metrics: re-subscribe rate and click rate
• Up-sell flow: targets customers who are actively subscribed to our product and currently receiving our smaller-size boxes or shorter subscription lengths 
  • Triggers after an active customer’s second box ships and contains 1 email
  • Content focus: up-selling customers to a larger box size or longer-length subscription by highlighting the savings and benefits of upgrading 
  • Key success metric: up-sell rate

Advanced tactics and further flow enhancements for our business 

Once you have the fundamentals down in your flows, there is always room to optimize and improve performance using Klaviyo’s more advanced flow features.

The options are endless based on your business needs and available data, but here are a few use cases of advanced features we use in flows at Universal Yums:

• Split logic for different subscription types: Many of our flows use different creative and messaging based on which type of subscription a customer purchased or what country box they are receiving. We use the split logic feature to create multiple branches within one flow using purchase SKU data so each customer receives a message relevant to what they bought.
• Profile property data to customize creative with dynamic content: We collect first-party data from customers around how adventurous of a snacker they are, and we save their answers as a profile property in Klaviyo. We then use this data to customize which types of snacks or country boxes customers see in email creative using dynamic content blocks. Within one creative block, different content will show based on each customer’s specific profile property.
• Segmentation to trigger a flow: We use segmentation to trigger a few custom flows, such as when a customer places their 6th order with us or when someone has received a certain number of messages but never engaged with our brand. The possibilities are endless here with Klaviyo’s powerful segmentation engine and any data you have flowing into the platform. We trigger these types of flows to customers when they enter specific segments.

What advanced features are you using in your Klaviyo flows that are specific to your business or brand?

When you set them up strategically, Klaviyo flows can be a powerful growth engine for any type of business. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to optimize existing flows, the key is to stay focused on your business goals, use the data you have to create personalized experiences, and never stop testing.

Share your thoughts, comments, tips, and tricks in the comments and let’s keep the conversation going! Your stories and input may be exactly the advice someone else needed to hear. You can also check out this help center article that dives into the more tactical details of getting started with Klaviyo flows.