Turning visitors into customers
Recovering lost sales
Personalizing experiences
Gathering social proof
Post-purchase flows
Customer service revenue
Predicting customer interactions
Winning back customers
Improving results

1. Turn website visitors into customers with automated nurturing

First impressions are important. But in marketing, what matters most is what those impressions can lead to. A welcome series for new subscribers is essential communication infrastructure that can set the pre-conditions for brand retention and loyalty.

Welcome flows are automated emails, texts, mobile push notifications, or WhatsApp messages that introduce new subscribers to your brand. They’re also super effective: according to Klaviyo’s latest email marketing benchmarks, the top 10% of welcome flows have an average placed order rate of 9.89%.

Welcome flows typically do several things: 

• Introduce your brand story to establish an initial connection. 
• Showcase your bestselling products. 
• Offer a discount on a first order. 

Beyond the basics: how to make your welcome flow special

You can also customize your welcome flow to trigger different messages based on a subscriber’s actions. For example, you might launch a unique welcome series depending on where a new subscriber signs up for your list.

Fitness supplement brand More Nutrition redesigned their welcome flow to better guide subscribers through their exploration phase to purchase. Here’s how they designed the sequence:

• Email 1: personalized introduction, discount code, product highlights, and influencer endorsements
• Email 2: wellness routine tips, testimonials, and unique selling points
• Email 3: introduction to the fasting program, weight loss tips, and social proof
• Email 4: reminder of the discount, free meal plans, targeted product recommendations, and key influencer content

As a result of the redesign, order rates increased 302%. 

Maintaining compliance and gathering consent for automated messages

Automated emails, texts, push notifications, and WhatsApp messages require that subscribers opt in with express consent, usually through sign-up forms on your website. Express consent means subscribers willingly agree to receive promotional messages from your business. 

This is how your business can remain compliant with multiple privacy laws, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Violating these regulations can incur penalties and fines in many regions and countries. 

For WhatsApp messages, Meta requires that senders use pre-approved message templates for any outreach that doesn’t have a 24-hour reply window. These include marketing messages, transactional messages, and support messages.

2. Recover lost sales when customers leave items behind

The abandoned cart automation is one of the best marketing opportunities for any small business. According to our email marketing benchmarks, abandoned cart flows generate the highest revenue per recipient of any automation, coming in at $3.07. 

With your B2C CRM, you can build abandoned cart flows that trigger automatically when someone leaves your website without completing a purchase. To personalize your abandoned cart flows, try:

• Offering discounts only for high-value carts
• Suggesting complementary products based on what’s in the cart
• Sending reminders through customers’ preferred channels
• Adding user-generated content (UGC) that features the products in the cart

Handcrafted jewelry brand Manly Bands uses a survey to collect customer feedback in their abandoned cart flow. Manly Bands asks customers who recently abandoned their cart a simple question: “Why didn’t you want to buy?” The customers who respond receive a personalized follow-up message with a coupon. 

In January 2023, the placed order rate for this flow was 4.8x the median in Manly Bands’ peer group.

3. Personalize offers and content with marketing automation 

According to Klaviyo’s future of consumer marketing report, 74% of consumers expect brands to provide more personalized experiences in 2025. Automated personalized marketing is how you can exceed these high standards across thousands or even millions of customer interactions.

With zero- and first-party data, you can transform generic messages into more relevant ones that reflect how someone has actually interacted with your brand. For example, you can personalize your automated flows by:

• Offering product recommendations based on past purchases and browsing behavior
• Targeting your customers on the channels they use the most based on historical engagement data
• Sending proactive outreach to people who are predicted to order soon—or predicted to churn (more on this later)
• Gifting loyalty points to customers who have spent a certain amount or purchased a specific number of times

Marketing automation that handles this type of personalized communication is how small businesses can compete against larger ones. Define your segments and conditional splits, set up your criteria and content, and monitor and tweak rather than reinventing the wheel with every message.

4. Gather social proof after every sale

Our future of consumer marketing report also found that customer reviews are the most influential factor when someone is making an initial purchase with a brand. Consumers want to know about their peers’ experiences, particularly those who may have the same considerations as they do when evaluating new products or brands.

But collecting high-quality reviews that address real customer concerns could be a full-time job all on its own. This is where automation can help: by setting up an automated flow timed to product usage, you’ll be able to collect detailed reviews that influence purchase decisions without any manual outreach.

Review request automations can improve the quality of reviews with incentives, too. For example, when coffee shop chain Compass Coffee wanted reviews that included a picture, they rewarded reviewers with auto-generated Shopify discount codes. 

Using smart marketing automation, Compass was able to set up a conditional split. If a review included a photo, the reviewer received a 15% discount on their next order. If it didn’t, they simply got a thank-you email and a reminder to leave a photo next time.

After their first quarter using this review flow, Compass saw a 3.7x QoQ jump in customer photos submitted—and a 70.5% jump in total reviews submitted.

5. Support customers with post-purchase marketing automations

Once your customer makes a purchase, automatically send them post-purchase flows such as order confirmations, shipment tracking, delivery estimates, return information, and product education. 

These types of post-purchase automations can do more than support customers—they can drive repeat purchases and decrease returns rates while building customer loyalty. 

Natural cosmetics brand Freshly Cosmetics set out to do just that. The team created specific journeys tailored to the needs of several high-priority cohorts: first-timers seeking products for specific needs, repeat buyers with consistent average order value (AOV) patterns, and VIP customers.

Based on these behaviors and traits, Freshly Cosmetics recommends bestsellers, invites customers to try new product categories, and offers content like skincare tips and makeup advice. Repeat buyers receive cross-selling recommendations based on their recent purchases. 

As a result of their targeted post-purchase flows, Freshly Cosmetics saw a 136% increase in revenue. 

6. Automate customer service to generate sales

Exceptional customer service is both a competitive advantage and a revenue driver. According to Klaviyo’s 2025 state of B2C marketing report, brands that have full alignment across marketing and customer service are 156% more likely to significantly exceed their marketing goals.

Automation can help create this alignment through data feedback loops. For example, if a customer opens a support ticket to correct a mistake with their order, automation criteria can make sure promotional messages are suspended for the duration of that ticket. 

At the same time, after a customer support interaction goes well, automations can help you make the most of those interactions with personalized recommendations that drive repeat purchases.

Here are a few simple ways you can automate customer service processes to help turn customer service into a marketing engine:

Unified helpdesk

Your marketing automation strategy needs to meet customers where they are—on multiple channels, with full context about who they are and how they interact with your brand. 

On the back end, the way you deliver this experience is through a unified helpdesk that features:

• Unified inbox across all channels: Email, web chat, SMS, WhatsApp, and social media messages appear in one workspace. Your team manages everything from a single screen instead of switching between different tools and missing important conversations.
• Complete customer context: Every ticket automatically pulls in the customer’s order history, past support interactions, recent marketing activity, and more. Agents can resolve issues faster because they have the full story, not just the current complaint.
• AI-powered automation: Smart routing sends tickets to the right agent based on skills and availability. AI also handles spam filtering and can even resolve simple questions automatically before escalating to humans (more on this next).

AI customer agents

On that note: as customers browse product pages, you can use an AI customer agent to proactively answer questions about sizing, return policies, or product-specific details. 

Note that AI agents are most successful when you use them in conjunction with human agents. Whereas AI agents are great for proactively addressing common questions about lower-value items, human agents can generate revenue by reaching out to have more nuanced conversations with customers who are likely to spend more, or those who are at risk of churn.

Home fragrance brand Happy Wax, for example, created a sophisticated review follow-up flow for customers who leave reviews with less than 3 stars. In that scenario, the flow pings the internal customer service team to reach out and offer a new scent, free of charge. 

7. Predict when customers will order and send proactive reminders

By analyzing your customers’ behavioral data, predictive analytics can forecast their next order date, lifetime value (LTV), churn risk, and more. 

When a customer’s anticipated next order date is close, you can trigger proactive replenishment reminders that entice people with personalized product recommendations, complementary items, and educational content. For customers with high predicted LTV, you can offer a slightly larger discount to sweeten the deal.

Personal care brand Every Man Jack uses predictive analytics to do exactly this. They generate personalized predictions about each of their subscribers, then they set reorder flows to send on—or slightly before or after—each customer’s unique predicted next order date. 

Using predictive analytics with marketing automation, the brand saw 25% YoY growth in flows revenue.

8. Re-engage customers who haven’t purchased in months

It’s easier—and less expensive—to retain a customer than to acquire one. This is why it’s important to send messages that trigger automatically when someone hasn’t purchased after a certain period of time. 

To re-engage your audience, be intentional about timing, messaging, conditional splits, and offers in your win-back flows. 

Depending on the type of product you sell, you can create a conditional split based on customers who haven’t purchased after a certain amount of time. Set up an automation that sends personalized offers based on customers’ past purchase history and latest browsing behavior. Include discounts for high spenders and showcase any new products that are similar to their previous purchases. 

Texas arcade bar chain Cidercade might have some of the most creative and enticing win-back flows we’ve ever seen. Their flows trigger when a customer doesn’t visit the arcade for a few weeks, and one guarantees free admission if the customers beats a staff member at rock, paper, scissors. 

After launching their new win-back flow, Cidercade’s automation revenue jumped 221% period over period—and they consider these flows a major visit frequency lever.

9. Improve marketing automation results with smart dashboards and reports

As a small business, you need to keep a pulse on the metrics that matter. But it takes a lot of time and effort to pull specific reports, track key data points over time, and drill down on what’s driving revenue.

Using a CRM with built-in reporting, you can aggregate all of your customer data in one place. When your data is centralized, it’s easier to not only automatically pull reports like these, but also translate them into action:

• Review sentiment analysis: Gain a deeper understanding of your reviews by topic, sentiment distribution, and how sentiment is changing over time to address product issues and maintain a healthy brand reputation.
• Marketing funnel analysis: Create a funnel report in your marketing dashboard that automatically updates to track customers across their lifecycle. See where customers are dropping off and where you can optimize the customer journey.
• Benchmarking: Access benchmarks that reflect your peers’ performance by industry, company size, and market position to stay competitive.
• Omnichannel, linear multi-touch attribution: Measure how all channels contribute to conversions, not just first and last touchpoints.
• RFM analysis: Use recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM) analysis to find high-value customers or ones who are most likely to churn.

Underwear brand 2(X)IST, for example, uses their CRM to automatically update their RFM segments, without any manual exporting or refreshing.

When a customer enters one of the 3 RFM segments most likely to churn—“Needs attention,” “At risk,” and “Inactive”—it triggers a segment-specific retention flow with a personalized discount. These flows drove $15,200 in incremental revenue in a single quarter.

Automate personalized marketing with Klaviyo B2C CRM

Klaviyo B2C CRM is like hiring another full-time member of your team. The platform combines marketing automation, service, and analytics with a built-in customer data platform and AI to help small businesses:

• Centralize your customer data in one place.
• Create cohesive omnichannel experiences.
• Personalize at scale with integrated data.
• Grow faster with pre-built templates and automations.
• Turn customer service into a revenue generator.
• Measure performance with reports small businesses can act on quickly.

Work smarter, not harder, with Klaviyo on your team.