Most Shopify merchants send a welcome email, maybe a promotional blast at Black Friday, and then leave their list to go cold. They are sitting on one of the most valuable assets in ecommerce and barely touching it. Email generates an average of £42 for every £1 spent, outperforming paid social, SEO, and influencer marketing on pure return. If your store is not working its email list every week, you are leaving money on the table.

This guide covers everything: which platform to use, how to build your list, which automated flows to set up first, how to segment your customers, and how to recover the buyers you have already lost. Each section links to a dedicated deep-dive where you can get the full implementation detail. Use this page to understand the full picture, then follow the links to build it out.

Why Does Email Outperform Every Other Marketing Channel for Shopify Stores?

Email works because you own the channel. You do not pay to reach your own list. No algorithm decides how many of your subscribers see your message. When Meta changes its ad auction or Google shifts its ranking signals, your email list is unaffected. That ownership is the core reason experienced ecommerce operators prioritise list growth above almost every other metric.

The numbers back it up. Email's £42 ROI figure (DMA, 2024) is a median across all sectors. For ecommerce specifically, Klaviyo's platform data puts the median at closer to £45. Abandoned cart emails alone recover between 5% and 15% of lost revenue depending on the number of sends and the offer. Browse abandonment sequences, if set up correctly, add another 2% to 4% on top of that.

There is a behavioural reason email performs so well: it reaches buyers at the moment they have already expressed intent. Someone who joined your list via a discount popup was actively shopping. Someone who abandoned a cart was seconds away from buying. Email lets you re-enter that conversation with a relevant message, something no paid channel can replicate at the same cost.

Repeat customers also spend significantly more than new ones. Research from the Harvard Business Review puts the premium at 67% higher spend per order from repeat buyers compared to first-time customers. Email is the most efficient mechanism for turning a one-time buyer into a repeat customer. A well-structured post-purchase sequence, a loyalty nudge at the 60-day mark, and a personalised product recommendation can do more for your revenue per customer than any acquisition campaign.

The final advantage is measurement. Email gives you clean, attributable data: open rate, click rate, conversion rate, revenue per recipient. You know exactly which flows are working and which are not. Paid channels increasingly obscure attribution behind modelling and estimated figures. Email does not.

Which Platform Should You Use: Shopify Email, Klaviyo, or Omnisend?

The platform decision shapes everything else. Get it wrong at the start and you will either outgrow your tool in six months or pay for capabilities you do not need. Here is a practical breakdown for Shopify merchants.

Shopify Email

Shopify's built-in tool is included with every plan at no additional cost for up to 10,000 emails per month (£1 per 1,000 emails after that). It integrates natively with your store data, requires no third-party connection, and covers the basics: newsletters, simple automations, and order-related emails.

The limitations are real. Segmentation is shallow, automation logic is limited to basic triggers, and reporting stops well short of what a scaling store needs. It is a reasonable starting point if you are under £5k monthly revenue and want to test email before committing to a paid platform. Do not try to build a serious retention programme on it.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is the standard choice for Shopify merchants who are serious about email revenue. It pulls full behavioural data from your store, including browse history, purchase frequency, product affinity, and predicted lifetime value. You can build flows and segments of any complexity, and the reporting shows revenue attribution down to individual email sends.

Pricing starts at free for up to 250 contacts (500 emails per month). The 500-contact plan is £15 per month, scaling to roughly £100 per month at 5,000 contacts and £150 per month at 10,000 contacts. SMS is priced separately at around £0.01 to £0.015 per message in the UK.

For most merchants doing over £10k per month in revenue, Klaviyo's data depth pays for itself within weeks of setting up proper flows. It is the tool most used by eight-figure Shopify brands and the one referenced throughout this guide.

Omnisend

Omnisend sits between Shopify Email and Klaviyo. The free plan covers 500 emails per month, the Standard plan (£16 per month) covers 6,000 emails per month, and Pro (£59 per month) is unlimited sends. It includes SMS and push notifications at the same tier, which makes it cost-effective if you want a multichannel setup without Klaviyo's per-channel pricing.

The trade-off: Klaviyo's data model and segmentation are more sophisticated. If your store relies on complex behavioural segments, Klaviyo is stronger. If you want email, SMS, and push notifications in a single tool without paying separately for each, Omnisend is a solid choice.

The recommendation: Start with Shopify Email if you are pre-revenue. Move to Omnisend if you want simplicity and multichannel at a fixed price. Choose Klaviyo if you want maximum data depth and are willing to invest the setup time.

Here is a side-by-side comparison of the three platforms on the criteria that matter most to Shopify merchants:

Feature	Shopify Email	Omnisend	Klaviyo
Free tier	10,000 sends/month	500 sends/month	250 contacts / 500 sends
Paid entry price	£1 per 1,000 over limit	£16/month (Standard)	£15/month (500 contacts)
Shopify data sync	Native	Third-party	Native (deep integration)
Automation depth	Basic	Good	Excellent
Segmentation	Shallow	Moderate	Deep (predictive CLV, RFM)
SMS included	No	Yes (Standard+)	Separate add-on
Revenue attribution	Basic	Good	Excellent
Best for	Stores under £5k/month	Multichannel simplicity	Serious retention programmes

One consideration that trips up merchants switching platforms mid-growth: migration. Moving from Omnisend to Klaviyo at 10,000 contacts is straightforward but time-consuming, particularly if you have complex flows built in the old tool. Build on the right platform for where you are heading, not just where you are today. If you expect to exceed £20k monthly revenue within the next 12 months, start with Klaviyo now.

How to Build an Email List That Is Actually Worth Having

A list of 50,000 unengaged subscribers who joined for a discount they never intended to use is worth less than a list of 5,000 people who open every email. List quality matters as much as list size, and the way you grow your list determines the quality of what you get.

The most effective list-building tactics for Shopify stores in 2026 are built around value exchange, not friction. Popups still work, but they work best when the offer is relevant and the timing is right. A 10% discount shown to a first-time visitor after 15 seconds on a product page outperforms a popup that fires immediately on homepage entry. Exit-intent popups, shown as the cursor moves toward the browser tab, convert at 3% to 8% on most stores.

Beyond the popup, the highest-quality list-building mechanisms are: product quiz lead captures (email required to see results), gated content such as buying guides or size charts, loyalty programme sign-ups, and post-purchase referral flows that turn existing customers into list-growth engines. These capture buyers with demonstrated intent, not bargain hunters.

What to avoid: buying email lists. They destroy deliverability, violate GDPR, and produce zero revenue. Any shortcut that skips consent is not a shortcut, it is a liability.

The technical foundations matter too. You need a branded sending domain (not @gmail or @yahoo), DKIM and DMARC authentication, and a confirmed opt-in process for GDPR compliance. Gmail and Yahoo's 2024 sender requirements made these non-negotiable for anyone sending over 5,000 emails per day.

It is also worth thinking about list hygiene from the start rather than treating it as a remedial exercise. Remove hard bounces immediately, as a single send with a bounce rate above 2% is enough to damage your sender reputation. Soft bounces (temporary delivery failures) should be monitored and removed after three consecutive failed deliveries. Most platforms handle this automatically if you leave the default settings in place, but check this is configured correctly when you first connect your list.

The growth rate benchmark to aim for: 3% to 5% net list growth per month, after accounting for unsubscribes, bounces, and suppressions. If you are growing faster than this, you are either running aggressive acquisition campaigns or you have a quality control problem on incoming opt-ins. If you are growing slower than this, your acquisition channels need attention.

Read the full guide: Shopify Email Marketing: Building Your List From Zero

Which Automated Flows Drive the Most Revenue?

Automation is where email marketing moves from a time-consuming newsletter exercise to a revenue system that runs without you. The right flows are set up once, refined over time, and generate income every day regardless of what else is happening in the business.

The flows that deliver the most revenue for most Shopify stores, in order of typical impact, are:

Abandoned cart: The single highest-ROI email for most stores. Someone added a product to their basket, started the checkout process, and left. A three-part sequence, sent at one hour, 24 hours, and 72 hours after abandonment, recovers between 5% and 15% of those lost transactions. The first email should be a simple, clean reminder. The second can address objections (returns policy, reviews, sizing guidance). The third, if you use a discount, keep it small and present it as a last-chance offer.

Welcome series: Sets the tone for the entire relationship. A five-email sequence over 10 days that introduces your brand story, your best-selling products, your returns and delivery policies, and social proof converts new subscribers into first-time buyers at a measurably higher rate than a single welcome email. Welcome series typically generate 3x the revenue per email compared to standard broadcasts.

Browse abandonment: Triggered when a subscriber views a product page but does not add to cart. Lower intent than cart abandonment, but the volume is much higher. A two-part sequence, sent after six hours and 48 hours, is the standard approach.

Post-purchase: Sent after the first order, this sequence does two things: confirms the buying decision (reduces buyer's remorse and returns) and plants the seed for the second purchase. The second purchase is the inflection point at which a customer becomes a repeat buyer, and repeat buyers have a customer lifetime value three to five times higher than one-time buyers.

Win-back: Targets subscribers and customers who have gone quiet. More on this below.

Each of these flows has detailed setup guidance, subject line frameworks, and timing recommendations in the dedicated guide.

Read the full guide: Shopify Email Flows That Drive Revenue

How Do You Drive Repeat Purchases Through Email?

Acquiring a new customer costs five to seven times more than retaining an existing one. Most Shopify stores spend the vast majority of their marketing budget on acquisition and almost nothing on retention. Email is the most cost-effective retention channel available, and for most stores it is dramatically underused beyond the post-purchase confirmation.

The repeat purchase lifecycle has predictable patterns that email can exploit. If your average customer buys again within 45 days, send a "time to restock" email at day 35. If your product has a natural replenishment cycle (supplements, skincare, pet food, coffee), build a replenishment sequence around that exact interval. Klaviyo's predictive analytics can estimate each customer's next purchase date individually, making these sequences far more precise than a generic timer.

For stores with larger catalogues, cross-sell and upsell sequences outperform replenishment flows. A customer who bought running shoes is a strong candidate for running socks, insoles, or a hydration vest. Product recommendation emails based on purchase history, using Klaviyo's product blocks or Omnisend's product picker, consistently outperform generic newsletters by 30% to 40% on click-through rate.

Loyalty mechanics introduced via email, points, early access, member-only pricing, also drive repeat purchase rates. These do not require a formal loyalty programme app. A simple VIP segment in Klaviyo (customers with two or more orders, or lifetime value above a threshold) can receive preferential offers ahead of your main list, creating the perception of exclusivity without the overhead.

The key metric to watch is repeat purchase rate: what percentage of first-time buyers make a second purchase within 90 days. Industry averages sit between 25% and 30%. Stores with strong retention email programmes consistently hit 35% to 45%.

Read the full guide: Shopify Email Marketing: Repeat Purchases

How Do You Set Up Klaviyo for Shopify?

Klaviyo is the tool of choice for most serious Shopify operators, but getting the integration right from the start saves hours of troubleshooting later. The setup process has a few steps that are frequently skipped and cause problems down the line.

Step 1: Connect the Shopify integration. In Klaviyo, go to Integrations, search for Shopify, and connect your store. This syncs your customer data, order history, and product catalogue into Klaviyo. Klaviyo places a tracking snippet on your store that captures on-site behaviour, including product page views and cart activity, for use in flows.

Step 2: Authenticate your sending domain. Do not skip this. Go to Account, then Settings, then Domains. Add your store's domain and publish the DKIM and DMARC DNS records your registrar requires. Without these, your emails are at high risk of landing in spam, particularly with Gmail and Outlook. Allow 24 to 48 hours for DNS propagation.

Step 3: Set up your sending profile. Configure your From Name, From Email (using your authenticated domain), and Reply-To address. Consistency here builds sender recognition and reduces unsubscribes.

Step 4: Import or sync your existing list. If you have contacts from a previous platform, import them as a CSV. Map the fields correctly, apply the right consent tags, and suppress anyone who has previously unsubscribed. Running a re-engagement campaign on cold imported contacts before your main sends protects your deliverability.

Step 5: Activate your core flows. Klaviyo provides pre-built flow templates for welcome series, abandoned cart, and post-purchase. Use these as your starting point and customise for your brand voice and product range. Do not activate all flows simultaneously on day one. Start with the abandoned cart flow, let it run for two weeks, then add the welcome series.

Step 6: Set up your lists and segments. Klaviyo distinguishes between lists (people explicitly opted in) and segments (dynamic groups based on behaviour or properties). Your main email list is a list. "Customers who bought in the last 30 days" is a segment. Understanding this distinction is fundamental to using Klaviyo correctly.

Read the full guide: How to Set Up Klaviyo for Your Shopify Store

How Do You Segment Your Shopify Customers for Better Email Results?

Sending the same email to your entire list is the fastest way to train your subscribers to ignore you. Segmentation, dividing your list into groups based on behaviour, purchase history, and engagement, is what separates stores that generate 20% to 30% of revenue from email from those generating 5%.

The foundational segments every Shopify store should maintain in Klaviyo or Omnisend are:

Engagement tiers: Active subscribers (opened or clicked in the last 90 days), at-risk subscribers (no engagement in 90 to 180 days), and lapsed subscribers (180 days or more). Send your full campaigns to active subscribers. Run re-engagement campaigns on the at-risk tier. Sunset the lapsed tier (suppress them or run a final win-back) to protect deliverability.

Purchase behaviour segments: First-time buyers, repeat buyers (two or more orders), VIP customers (top 10% by lifetime value), and non-purchasers (subscribers who have never bought). Each of these groups should receive different content, cadence, and offers. Sending a first-time buyer discount to someone who has already placed three orders wastes margin. Sending an upsell to someone who has never purchased is premature.

RFM segmentation: Recency, Frequency, Monetary. Klaviyo calculates predicted CLV and purchase frequency automatically. You can build RFM segments without any manual scoring: "bought in the last 30 days AND has placed two or more orders AND lifetime value above £100" is a segment you can create in minutes and target with a loyalty reward.

Category affinity: If your catalogue has distinct product categories (skincare and body care, for example, or running shoes and gym wear), segment by the category a customer has purchased from. Cross-sell emails sent to category-specific segments consistently outperform generic product recommendation emails.

Location and demographic: UK vs international customers need different delivery messaging, currency, and sometimes different product recommendations. If you hold date of birth data, birthday flows with a personal discount generate open rates above 50% in most stores.

Segmentation is not a one-time setup. Review your segments quarterly, check for list bloat (subscribers who have never engaged), and retire or rebuild segments that no longer reflect real groups.

Read the full guide: Shopify Customer Segmentation: Group and Target Buyers

How Do You Win Back Lapsed Customers?

Every Shopify store has a cohort of customers who bought once, maybe twice, and then went quiet. They have not unsubscribed, which means they still represent an opportunity, but they are no longer active buyers. Win-back campaigns target this group with a specific goal: reactivate them before they are lost entirely.

The starting point is defining "lapsed" for your store. If your average repurchase interval is 45 days, a customer who has not bought in 120 days is lapsed. If you sell furniture with a natural two-year repurchase cycle, the threshold is very different. Set your win-back trigger based on your actual data, not a generic benchmark.

A three-email win-back sequence is the standard approach:

Email 1 (sent at the lapse threshold): A simple "we miss you" message with a reminder of what they bought and a prompt to browse again. No discount yet. This email identifies which lapsed customers are still engaged, those who open it are worth a stronger follow-up.

Email 2 (7 to 10 days later, sent to non-openers): Introduce an incentive. A modest discount (10% to 15%) or free shipping is typically sufficient for most product categories. Frame it as a welcome-back offer with a clear expiry to create urgency.

Email 3 (7 to 10 days after email 2, sent to non-converters): A final attempt, often with a stronger offer or a different angle (new products, new features, a brand story update). Tell the subscriber explicitly that this is your last message if they do not engage.

Win-back campaigns typically recover 5% to 15% of lapsed customers at positive margin, even accounting for the discount cost. The recovered customers often go on to become repeat buyers again. Those who do not engage after a three-email sequence should be suppressed to protect your sender reputation.

The critical mistake most merchants make is waiting too long to run win-back sequences. The sooner you re-engage a lapsed customer, the higher the recovery rate. A customer who bought six months ago is much easier to win back than one who bought two years ago.

Read the full guide: Win-Back Campaigns for Shopify: Recover Lapsed Customers

Should You Add SMS to Your Shopify Email Marketing Strategy?

SMS is not a replacement for email, but it is a powerful complement. The open rate for SMS is approximately 98%, compared to 20% to 30% for email. The click-through rate is typically 10% to 20%, versus 2% to 5% for email. Those numbers make SMS compelling, but the channel comes with strict regulatory requirements and a higher cost per send.

In the UK, SMS marketing must comply with PECR (Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations) and UK GDPR. This means subscribers must have explicitly opted in to receive marketing texts, separate from their email marketing consent. You cannot assume email consent covers SMS. If you operate in the EU, ePrivacy Directive rules apply.

The use cases where SMS generates the clearest return for Shopify merchants are:

Abandoned cart: A single SMS sent 60 to 90 minutes after cart abandonment, alongside your email sequence, increases cart recovery rates by 15% to 25% in most implementations. Keep it short: the product name, a direct link to the cart, and a clear message.

Flash sales and limited-time offers: The immediacy of SMS makes it ideal for time-sensitive promotions. A six-hour flash sale communicated by SMS outperforms the same offer communicated by email on click-through rate, simply because the message is seen faster.

Order and delivery updates: Transactional SMS (shipping confirmations, delivery notifications) has very high satisfaction scores and reduces "where is my order" customer service contacts by 20% to 40%. This is often the first SMS use case merchants activate because it requires no list-building and delivers immediate operational benefit.

VIP early access: Giving your highest-value customer segment early access to new product drops via SMS creates exclusivity and drives faster sell-through of your best lines.

Klaviyo SMS starts at around £0.01 to £0.015 per message in the UK. Omnisend includes SMS credits in its higher-tier plans. Postscript is a specialist SMS platform for Shopify with pricing from £100 per month, worth considering if SMS becomes a primary channel rather than a complement.

Read the full guide: SMS Marketing for Shopify: Compliant, High-Converting Texts

What Metrics Should Shopify Merchants Actually Track?

Most merchants check open rate and revenue, and leave it there. The metrics that actually tell you whether your email programme is healthy are more specific, and some of them are more actionable than open rate (which has been inflated by Apple Mail Privacy Protection since 2021).

Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of recipients who clicked a link. Industry benchmark for ecommerce: 2% to 5% for broadcasts, 5% to 15% for automated flows. Low CTR usually means weak offers, poor product selection, or an audience mismatch between the segment and the content.

Click-to-open rate (CTOR): Clicks divided by opens, rather than clicks divided by sends. This strips out the deliverability variable and tells you whether the content of the email is compelling to people who are already engaged. A CTOR below 10% suggests your content is not converting the interest into action.

Revenue per recipient (RPR): Total email-attributed revenue divided by the number of recipients for that send. This is the most direct measure of email efficiency and allows you to compare campaigns with different audience sizes. A broadcast to 10,000 subscribers generating £800 in revenue is an RPR of £0.08. An automated flow sent to 500 high-intent subscribers generating £400 is an RPR of £0.80. The flow is ten times more efficient.

Unsubscribe rate: Above 0.5% per send is a warning sign, either the audience is wrong (sending to cold segments) or the frequency is too high. Above 1% per send is a serious problem.

Spam complaint rate: Google Postmaster Tools and Klaviyo's dashboard both show this. Above 0.1% triggers deliverability issues. Above 0.3% can get your domain blocked by major providers.

List growth rate: (New subscribers minus unsubscribes minus suppressions) divided by total list size, expressed as a percentage per month. A healthy Shopify list grows at 3% to 5% per month net of churn. If your list is shrinking, your acquisition channels are underperforming or your unsubscribe rate is too high.

Deliverability metrics: Inbox placement rate (what percentage of your sends actually land in the inbox rather than spam or promotions). This requires a tool like GlockApps or Litmus to measure accurately. If your open rates drop by more than 20% over two to three months without a change in audience or content, a deliverability problem is likely.

Here are the benchmark figures for a healthy Shopify email programme, pulled from Klaviyo's 2025 ecommerce benchmarks and industry data:

Metric	Benchmark (Broadcasts)	Benchmark (Automated Flows)	Action Threshold
Open rate	25-35%	35-50%	Below 20%: check deliverability
Click-through rate	2-5%	5-15%	Below 1%: review content and offer
Click-to-open rate	10-20%	15-30%	Below 8%: review CTA and relevance
Revenue per recipient	£0.05-£0.15	£0.30-£1.50	Below £0.03: segment is too cold
Unsubscribe rate	Under 0.3%	Under 0.2%	Above 0.5%: review frequency and targeting
Spam complaint rate	Under 0.05%	Under 0.05%	Above 0.1%: urgent deliverability action needed

These numbers shift by product category, average order value, and list maturity. A store with a £200 average order value will naturally generate a higher RPR than a store with a £20 average order value, even at the same conversion rate. Use these as directional guides, not hard pass/fail thresholds, and track your own trends month over month rather than measuring yourself against abstract benchmarks.

How to Think About the Full Post-Purchase Customer Journey

Email flows do not exist in isolation. The experience a customer has after they buy from you, the confirmation email, the shipping update, the unboxing, the product itself, the review request, shapes whether they come back. Email is one lever in a broader post-purchase system.

The post-purchase sequence sits at the intersection of customer service, brand building, and retention marketing. A well-designed sequence reduces buyer's remorse, generates reviews, and introduces the customer to adjacent products in your range before they have had a chance to start browsing your competitors.

The typical post-purchase email sequence for a Shopify store looks like this:

Immediately after purchase: Order confirmation with clear delivery timeline, customer service contact, and returns policy. This is a transactional email (sent by Shopify or your platform) but it is also the highest-open-rate email you will ever send. Include your brand's personality and something useful, not just an order summary.
Day 2 to 3: A "getting the most from your purchase" email if the product benefits from guidance (onboarding tips, usage instructions, care advice). This reduces returns and increases product satisfaction, both of which drive repeat purchase rates.
Day 5 to 7: A review request. Timing matters here. Ask too early and the product may not have arrived. Ask too late and the enthusiasm has faded. For most physical products, day 7 is the optimal ask. Yotpo and Okendo integrate directly with Klaviyo to automate this.
Day 14 to 21: A cross-sell email based on the product purchased. This is where you introduce adjacent products from your range. Keep it product-led, not promotional: "Customers who bought X also loved Y" outperforms a generic discount offer at this stage.
Day 45 to 60 (or at your predicted repurchase point): A replenishment nudge or loyalty reward. If the customer has not bought again by this point, this email is the nudge that tips them into a repeat purchase or flags them for a win-back sequence.

The operational details of building this full post-purchase system, from the confirmation email through to the 90-day retention touchpoint, are covered in depth in the dedicated guide.

Read the full guide: Shopify Post-Purchase Experience

If your store needs hands-on help building out these email systems, our growth retainers include email programme setup, flow builds, and ongoing campaign management.

What Should You Set Up First, Second, and Third?

The priority order matters. Most merchants try to set everything up at once, do it badly, and give up. Follow this sequence instead.

First: The foundations (Week 1 to 2)

Choose and connect your email platform (Klaviyo for most stores over £10k monthly revenue).
Authenticate your sending domain (DKIM, DMARC).
Import your existing subscriber list with correct consent flags.
Set up your abandoned cart flow: three emails at one hour, 24 hours, and 72 hours.
Set up a basic welcome series: minimum three emails over five days.

These two flows alone will generate positive returns within the first month. Do not move to the next phase until they are running and producing data.

Second: Retention infrastructure (Week 3 to 6)

Set up your post-purchase flow: confirm the order, handle delivery expectations, request a review, introduce a relevant cross-sell.
Build your core segments: active, at-risk, lapsed, first-time buyers, repeat buyers, VIPs.
Set up browse abandonment: two emails at six hours and 48 hours.
Begin regular broadcast sending: one to two emails per week to your active segment.

Third: Advanced optimisation (Month 2 onwards)

Launch a win-back campaign targeting subscribers and customers who have gone quiet.
Add SMS to your abandoned cart and VIP communications.
Build category-specific or product-specific flows for your highest-value product lines.
Introduce RFM segmentation for your promotional calendar.
Run A/B tests on subject lines, send times, and offer structures systematically.

The stores that generate 25% to 35% of revenue from email do not have more sophisticated tools than everyone else. They have the same flows as everyone else, built out properly, with consistent testing and refinement over six to twelve months.

The A/B testing roadmap

Once your flows are running and your broadcasts are consistent, testing is where you find the incremental gains that compound over time. Run one test at a time per flow. Change one variable per test. Wait for statistical significance before drawing conclusions (at minimum 200 sends per variant).

The highest-impact variables to test, in order of typical effect size:

Subject line: The biggest lever on open rate. Test curiosity vs direct, personalisation vs no personalisation, length (under 30 characters vs 40 to 50 characters).
Send time: For broadcasts, test morning (7am to 9am) vs lunchtime (12pm to 1pm) vs evening (6pm to 8pm). Klaviyo's Smart Send Time feature gives you a data-driven starting point.
Primary CTA copy and placement: "Shop now" vs "See the full range" vs a product-specific CTA. Button placement above vs below the hero image.
Offer structure: Percentage discount vs fixed amount vs free shipping vs no discount (for flows where the offer is optional).
Email length: Long-form product storytelling vs short, product-led emails with a single image and one CTA.

Key Actions

Connect Klaviyo to Shopify and authenticate your sending domain before sending a single email. Deliverability problems caused by skipping this step take months to recover from.
Build the abandoned cart flow first. It is the fastest path to measurable email revenue. Three emails, one hour, 24 hours, 72 hours. Run it for two weeks before touching anything else.
Set up a proper welcome series, not a single welcome email. Five emails over 10 days, introducing your brand, your best sellers, your guarantees, and your social proof.
Segment before you broadcast. Sending to your full list every time trains subscribers to ignore you. At minimum, separate active subscribers from cold ones before every send.
Track revenue per recipient, not just open rate. Open rate is noisy (Apple MPP has inflated it since 2021). RPR tells you what actually matters.
Add post-purchase flows to turn one-time buyers into repeat customers. The repeat purchase rate benchmark you are aiming for: 35% of first-time buyers purchasing again within 90 days.
Suppress unengaged subscribers every 90 days. A smaller, engaged list outperforms a large, cold one on every deliverability and revenue metric.
Add SMS as a complement, not a replacement. Start with cart abandonment and order updates. Expand once you have confirmed list growth and compliance.
Review and refresh your flows quarterly. Product offers go out of stock, prices change, seasonal context shifts. Automated flows that were set up 12 months ago and never touched are a common source of deliverability problems and poor performance.

Need help implementing this? Get in touch to discuss what a structured email programme could look like for your store.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much revenue should email generate for a Shopify store?

A well-run email programme typically contributes 20% to 35% of a Shopify store's total revenue. Stores with strong automated flows and consistent broadcast sending can push this to 40%. If your email is generating less than 15% of revenue, the most likely causes are low list quality, missing flows (particularly abandoned cart and post-purchase), or infrequent sending. Most stores with this problem have not invested in segmentation and are broadcasting to their entire list, including cold and disengaged subscribers.

How often should I email my Shopify subscribers?

For most stores, two to three times per week is the optimal broadcast cadence for active subscribers. Below this, you lose top-of-mind presence. Above three times per week, you risk unsubscribe rate spikes unless your content is consistently high value. Automated flows run on their own schedule separate from this cadence. The most important thing is consistency: irregular sending trains subscribers to ignore you when you do show up.

Is Klaviyo worth the cost for a small Shopify store?

Klaviyo is free for up to 250 contacts. If your store is small, you have no reason not to use it. As you scale, the question is whether the additional revenue from Klaviyo's behavioural data and flow sophistication justifies the subscription cost. For stores doing over £10k per month in revenue, it almost always does. Stores doing £5k to £10k per month should evaluate whether they are actually using Klaviyo's advanced features or could achieve the same results with Omnisend at a lower cost.

What is a good open rate for Shopify email marketing?

Open rates are difficult to benchmark accurately since Apple Mail Privacy Protection inflated figures across the industry from 2021 onwards. Klaviyo's 2025 benchmarks for ecommerce put average open rates at 35% to 45% for automated flows and 25% to 35% for broadcasts. These figures include Apple-inflated opens. Click-to-open rate (CTOR) is a more reliable metric: aim for 10% to 20% for broadcasts and 15% to 30% for flows.

How do I stay GDPR compliant with email marketing?

Under UK GDPR, you need a lawful basis for processing marketing data. For most ecommerce stores, this is explicit consent, meaning the subscriber actively ticked a box or entered their email into a sign-up form with clear language about what they are consenting to receive. Pre-ticked boxes are not valid consent. Soft opt-in (contacting existing customers about similar products) is permitted under PECR, but must be clearly communicated and easy to opt out of. Store your consent records, including the date, channel, and wording shown at the point of sign-up. Honor unsubscribe requests within 10 days. Use a GDPR-compliant platform (Klaviyo, Omnisend, and Shopify Email all qualify). If you use SMS, ensure consent is collected separately from email consent.

What is the difference between a flow and a campaign in Klaviyo?

A flow (also called an automation or sequence) is triggered by a subscriber's behaviour: adding something to cart, making a purchase, browsing a product page, reaching a 90-day lapse threshold. It runs automatically, without any action from you, once set up. A campaign is a one-time send to a list or segment, typically a newsletter, a promotional email, or a seasonal offer. Both contribute to email revenue, but flows tend to generate higher revenue per recipient because they are sent at moments of high intent. A typical Shopify store should have five to eight active flows running at all times and send one to two campaigns per week.

The Complete Shopify Email Marketing Guide (2026)