How to Set Up a 7-Figure Automation Strategy in Klaviyo for Your E-commerce Brand (With Steps)

For any e-commerce brand on the path to seven figures, scaling efficiently while maintaining strong customer relationships is crucial and balancing the time you're able to spend on and IN the account is no easy task.

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That's why one of the most powerful tools in Klaviyo and any other email marketing platform, are automations.

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Automations, also called flows or journeys are email sequences triggered by pre-determined actions that users take on your website like signing up to your newsletter, added an item to their cart, proceeding to checkout, or placing an order.

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We can setup conditions inside of these sequences and boom, an automation/flow is born.

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If someone has signed up to our list but not made it to checkout, send them this email. If someone has added an item to their cart, but not purchased, send them a different email, if someone purchased for the first time, send them this OTHER email, and so on.

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In this guide, we’re diving deep into how to build a 7-figure automation strategy with Klaviyo that grows with your brand, helps to keep your list engaged, and drives sales for your brand on autopilot.

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1. Build a Strong Flow Foundation

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If you're just getting started, there can be a lot to think about and it'll be easy to overthink, but let's keep it simple, we want to create our core 3 flows. There are 2 ways to get started:

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1. Creating the Welcome flow, Abandoned checkout flow, and Post-Purchase flow: This creates a touchpoint at every level of the customer journey from just getting onto our list, being interested but unsure, all the way to becoming a customer and beyond.
2. Creating the Welcome flow, Browse abandoned flow, and Abandoned checkout flow: This create a touchpoint at most levels of the pre-purchase journey from just getting onto our list, window shopping, then becoming interested but unsure and never purchasing.

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These 4 flows listed above are often the most profitable, now the question becomes, should I build my Klaviyo account like setup 1 or 2? That will depend on a few things that will vary based on your brand e.g if your brand is a mattress company looking to sell a high priced product with a long considerations cycle or a lower AOV consumable like a protein bar. If your goal is to get a lot of people to purchase once, or a small group of people to purchase as many times as possible?

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If your product requires a lot of education, needs selling after purchase to reduce buyers remorse, or the goal is to condense the brands 90-day LTV into as tight a window as possible (don't try to do this with a product that has an AOV of hundreds and hundreds of dollars, you will waste your time) go with setup 1.

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If your product has a high AOV, really high conversion rate, or sells itself and you want to convert as many people as possible, choose 2.

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As with all things there's always variability, use discretion here, but you get the idea.

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2. Optimize Content and Backend for Deliverability

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Optimize Email Content for Deliverability

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When building out the emails for these flows, make sure you or the team working on this are monitoring the size of the emails. We want to optimize content to make sure:

• The emails are not getting clipped in Gmail
• The images aren't too big
• Links aren't getting flagged by mailbox providers

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Here are a few things you can do to make sure your content is optimized for deliverability:

• The images used are being compressed to make each image as light as possible (jpg images might be lighter, but png images will be lossless. Weigh the pros and cons there).
• You're slicing your images into smaller parts. The larger the individual image, the longer it may take to load, vs 2 or 3 smaller images.
• Links in the email are sending to the root domain, not another brands domain to cross-sell and so on, as this can sometimes trigger spam filters with new brands/accounts.
• Make sure you're cutting down on the number of links in a single email. If you have 45 links in your email that could trigger spam filters.
• If you're having issues with deliverability, make your emails as short as possible. This encompasses most of the points from above where the email is overall lighter to deliver and has less links overall.
• In some cases, balancing the number of images in an email to text block sections. This has some benefit, but you'd likely get more benefit from just making the emails shorter.

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Optimize Email Backend for Deliverability

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This is one is simple but not easy. Deliverability is still somewhat of a blackbox, but there are some checkboxes we can tick that certainly improve deliverability.

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Verify Authentication Records are Installed Correctly

We need to make sure that the backend authentication records are installed and firing correctly. You'll want to use a platform like easydmarc.com or dmarcian.com to verify the following records are setup correctly:

1. DMARC: Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance
2. SPF: Sender Policy Framework
3. DKIM: DomainKeys Identified Mail

If they're not, submit a form here and we can help: GET HELP

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Install Google Postmaster Tools

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Next you'll want to install (If it isn't already) Google's deliverability monitoring platform https://postmaster.google.com/. Here you'll be able to view spam rates in Gmail, IP reputation, Domain Reputation, etc to make sure you stay compliant as you send.

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UPDATE: They recently released their V2 dashboard which you can view here once installed and setup! ➝ https://postmaster.google.com/v2/sender_compliance

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Use a 3rd Party Deliverability Service

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Lastly, and the only option that isn't free, use a platform like easydmarc.com to get real-time monitoring and easy setup instructions for your authentication records, along with getting to see if your email is being spoofed with an easy to understand dashboard.

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3. Scale Your Acquisition Efforts

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Once you have the foundation in place, now it's time to scale your acquisition efforts to get more people to the site and more prospects in these automations. This will require your paid media team to increase spend, increase creative output, and make sure the outcome is more net-new session to the site over a given period of time.

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Watch total brand revenue, MER, CAC, and cohorts during this time and in the coming months to be able to determine the effectiveness of this strategy.

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The desired outcome is more net-new revenue to the brand, higher revenue from Klaviyo, and lower Customer Acquisition costs. Now, with this data you'll be able to see at scale how these flows perform and where the areas of improvement are.

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If you need help finding a top-rated a validated agency partner for paid media? Reach out and we'll send over some vetted partners who have worked with brands like Snow Teeth Whitening, Kachava and more ➝ FIND VETTED PARTNERS

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4. Scale Your Automations Horizontally

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You now have the core flows and a fantastic retention based to build on in terms of automations, and you also should have been able to validate the effectiveness of your existing flows. Now it's time to move on to more advanced flows that complete the funnel to guarantee a touchpoint at every level of the customer journey.

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Some of the more advanced flows won't apply to every account, but here are some automations that you can build out to help your Klaviyo account generate 6 and 7-figures on autopilot:

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Abandonment flows

• Added to Cart flow: Different than the checkout flow, this is custom metrics setup to trigger on JUST the CLICK of an add to cart button on-site, vs a full trigger on the checkout page
• Browse Abandonment flow: Triggered by people who have viewed a product, but have not yet added an item to their cart or purchased
• Site Abandonment flow: Triggered by a subscriber going to the site, and leaving the site without viewing a product, added an item to cart, or purchased

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Post-purchase flows

• Replenishment flow: Best for CPG/replenishable brands. This flow is trigger by a purchase, and setup with a delay to trigger at the exact time that someone is set to run out of product. PRO TIP: Use a platform like reloapp.co to add AI/subscription into the mix for an even more personalized experience and higher likelihood of re-purchase.
• Expected Date of Next Order flow: Trigger by Klaviyo's predictive analytics that looks at profiles who are likely to buy again based on previous purchase data, and trigger on the date they're most likely to purchase again.
• Subscription flow: A flow triggered on subscription order, designed to reduce buyers remorse, educate on the product, and improve subscription retention, whether by offering freebies, discounts on similar one-time purchase products, discounts on products added to their current subscription, etc
• SKU-specific flow: Triggered on purchase or view of a top-selling SKU or SKU's that might require more education, have a story behind them we want to highlight, or any other details that aren't or don't want to be added to the PDP
• Winback flow: This flow is triggered when someone places an order, but have not placed another order in a set period of time (90 days, 120 days, etc)

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Other flows

• Sunsetting flow: Triggered by a profiles lack of engagement, this flow doesn't usually drive revenue, but is essential for list cleaning, account health, and overall deliverability.
• Product refund flow: Trigger when an order is returned/refunded. This can be used a variety of different ways like gather data on why it was returned, show other items, offer a discount to prevent churn, etc

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As well as other Klaviyo-native flows like the Back in Stock notification, Price Drop Alert flow, Low Inventory Alert Flow, and so on... But I think you get the point. Not all of these will drive net-new revenue, but are phenomenal at increases touchpoints without the need for more one-off campaigns from your email agency.

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5. Scale Your Automations Vertically

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Alright, the final step to help get your Klaviyo account to generate 7-figures from automations. By now, you have the core flows setup and validated, a solid deliverability infrastructure setup, scale using paid media, and have added some net-new flows to drive incremental revenue and increase the total touchpoints by automations.

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The next step is the scale your email automations vertically, what do I mean? Well there are a few ways to scale flows vertically, but really what we want to do is understand how much can we generate from our EXISTING flows?

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If your welcome series has 5 emails, and you see that your last email is still generating revenue, add another 2 or 3 emails to begin getting the most revenue out of every flow possible.

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Too often I see people rush to this step first, but what we typically see if having MORE flows increases the chance that someone will get an email. If someone comes into the welcome flow, and they purchase, they're no longer in the welcome flow, so depending your brands KPIs, people may never make it to the last 5 emails in your welcome flow anyways. Add more total touchpoints, then scale vertically.

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Ways to Scale Flows Vertically:

• Add emails to all flows where the last email is STILL generating revenue over the last 90 days.
• Add conditional splits to flows for higher AOV profiles, for example in abandonment flows to offer higher discounts or freebies, or higher LTV profiles to create a VIP experience that incentivizes re-purchase.
• Duplicate the appropriate flows and add filters to tailor one version to new subscribers or non-purchasers, and another version to existing customers. Then you can also add conditional splits to inside each to tailor based on engagement, AOV, etc

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To Summarize:

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You made it!! To wrap it all up, building a 7-figure automation strategy in Klaviyo is all about setting a solid foundation with core flows, optimizing for deliverability, scaling your acquisition efforts, and expanding both horizontally and vertically.

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By carefully crafting flows that engage users at every touchpoint and continually refining them based on performance data, your e-commerce brand can drive significant revenue growth on autopilot. As you build, remember that strategic scaling—adding new automations and optimizing existing ones—is key to turning these efforts into a major revenue stream for your business.

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Talk soon 👋

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