Guide for the basic flows; Welcome and abandonment series
Email marketing should drive 30 to 40% of your total revenue, which is why 87% of DTC brands use it as their main channel for customer communication. It all starts with the welcome series, where you get consent to email your customers. However, how you set this up can determine whether email brings in just 10% of sales or pushes it to 40%. This post explains why your sign-up form and welcome flow setup matter so much and how to get them right.
Jul 02, 2025
Most brands have some basic email flows in place, like a welcome series and an abandonment series. However, just having these flows does not guarantee they are driving the revenue they should. In some cases, poorly set up flows can even hurt your email conversion rates. After helping dozens of DTC brands build and optimize these flows, we have created a proven setup guide that helps maximize revenue. We are excited to share this guide publicly so more DTC brands can use it as a reference. If you have not set up your basic flows yet, follow the steps below carefully. If you already have these flows but your welcome flow open rate is below 60 percent, use this guide to review and improve them.
1. Welcome Series
Sign-up Form
Many brands make simple but costly mistakes when setting up their sign-up forms. The first is giving away the coupon code directly in the pop-up. Never do this. Instead, deliver the code in your welcome email. I will explain why this matters in the welcome flow section.
Another mistake that often goes unnoticed for a long time is keeping double opt-in. With Klaviyo’s default settings, new subscribers must confirm their subscription in their inbox even after entering their email on your site. This means you might see your profile count grow while your active subscriber list stays the same.
To fix this, switch to single opt-in:
- In Klaviyo, go to Lists & Segments and select the list for new subscribers (usually “Email List”).
- Click Settings, then Consent.
- Under Opt-in Process, choose Single Opt-in.
Next, build your sign-up form directly in Klaviyo. It’s easy to set up, but keep these best practices in mind:
- Add a short teaser to encourage more sign-ups.
- Only collect the email address. You likely do not need SMS right away.
- On the success page, remind subscribers to check their spam or promotions folder if they don’t see your email in their inbox.
- In Targeting and Behavior, set the form to appear 1 to 3 seconds after a visitor arrives, and in the Frequency settings, allow it to show again 1 to 2 days later if they close it without signing up.
Welcome flow
Once your sign-up form is set up correctly, the next step is making sure your welcome email actually reaches your subscribers. If your welcome email has an open rate below 60 percent, it’s usually not because customers don’t want to open it. It’s because they never see it. It’s landing in their spam folder.
When you’re an early-stage brand, Gmail does not trust your domain yet and will often test your emails by sending them to spam first. Spam filters are complex, but simply put, if your emails get opened and clicked often, Gmail will see them as useful and start delivering them to the inbox. If your email does land in spam, and a subscriber pulls it back to the inbox by clicking “Report not spam,” this helps boost your domain reputation much faster.
This is why you should never put the coupon code directly in your sign-up pop-up. Instead, deliver it in your welcome email. When customers know there is a discount waiting, they are more likely to look for your email in spam or promotions, open it, and interact with it, which trains Gmail to trust your domain and keeps future emails out of spam.
If you skip this step early on, most of your emails might end up in spam, which can cut your open rates in half and cost you significant revenue. The longer you leave it that way, the harder it becomes to recover your domain reputation.
Follow these steps to set up your welcome offer properly:
- Create the coupon in Shopify. A simple code like WELCOME10 works well. No expiration date is needed.
- Design your welcome email template.
- Use a shareable link for the coupon so customers do not have to type it manually.
- Basic format:
www.yourdomain.com/discount/WELCOME10 - If you want add a product recommendation block that sends customers straight to a product page, add a redirect:
- Example: If your product page is
https://yourdomain.com/products/product-name - Your shareable link would be:
https://yourdomain.com/discount/WELCOME10?redirect=/products/product-name
- Even if you use shareable links, include the coupon code as plain text in the email in case a customer wants to copy and paste it manually.
2. Abandonment series
From our experience, your abandonment series should be as simple as possible. Instead of adding more blocks or unnecessary content, focus on the purpose of the email and highlight the product your customer left behind. If you need inspiration, check out our templates to see how we design ours.
To optimize your abandonment series, the first thing you should adjust is the time delay. We usually run A/B tests with two options: one hour and two hours. This test can be tricky because a shorter time delay often shows a higher conversion rate at first glance.
ㅤ | 1 hour | 2 hours |
Delivery | 328 | 311 |
Order | 32 | 24 |
Skipped | 202 | 239 |
Conversion rate | 9.8% | 7.7% |
(Many emails are skipped for the reason “Fails Flow Filters,” which means the recipients have already placed an order while the flow was waiting for the time delay.)
Here’s why: with a shorter delay, you’re likely capturing people who were going to buy anyway. For example, if you set a browse abandonment email to go out after just one minute, someone who was about to check out will see the email almost immediately. If they complete the purchase after opening the email, the conversion is attributed to the email even though they would have bought regardless. This makes the shorter delay look like it performs better than it really does.
So, how do you really measure which delay works best? You need to factor in the skipped customers, the people who purchased before the email was sent.
Use this formula to get a more realistic picture:
Actual conversion rate = (Orders + Skipped) / (Delivered + Skipped)
ㅤ | 1 hour | 2 hours |
(Orders + Skipped) | 234 | 263 |
(Delivered + Skipped) | 530 | 550 |
Actual conversion rate | 44% | 48% |
As you can see in the examples above, even if the standard conversion rate (Orders divided by Delivered) for the one-hour delay looks higher than the two-hour delay, the actual conversion rate is higher for the two-hour delay. In that case, the two-hour delay is the better choice because it shows a true lift by converting people who would not have purchased otherwise.
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