Klaviyo post-purchase flow

Placed Order starts the series, and it is not the receipt

A post-purchase flow sends after someone buys. Klaviyo groups four jobs under that name: a thank-you, a cross-sell, an upsell, and a product review. The basic setup in the post-purchase article triggers on Placed Order. Open Analytics, then Metrics, and use the order metric the store is actually recording. Placed Order and Ordered Product sync seconds apart and are not the same event. A flow triggered by one and filtered by the other will skip the people you meant to keep.

The order confirmation is a different flow. Klaviyo says a transactional email cannot contain a marketing effort, and that order and shipping confirmations should stay in their own flows so every buyer gets them. A thank-you that includes a discount is marketing. If it is the only message on the Placed Order trigger, a buyer who fails a marketing filter, or who is skipped by Smart Sending, can miss the fact that the order was received. Keep the confirmation on its own trigger and its own status.

A thank-you is immediate, and a review is not

Klaviyo’s setup article is specific about delays. A thank-you should not wait. A review, a cross-sell, or an upsell should. The frequency chart in the flow-frequency article marks three post-purchase sends: immediately, at 3 days, and at 1 week. That chart is the average-brand library. It is not a delivery date.

The same article’s example is a brand that ships in about 9 days. The marketing series there is a thank-you, an optional instructions email timed to that shipping window, a review request, and a cross-sell. The shipment notice is left out of the example on purpose, because it should trigger from the fulfillment event so the timing follows the package. A review that fires on Placed Order, three days later, asks someone to review a product that has not arrived when the catalog ships slowly. Time that message to delivery, or trigger a dedicated review flow from a fulfillment metric.

Klaviyo’s third-party review article uses a different trigger. The Product review / cross-sell template should show Fulfilled Order. Set the delay longer than the average delivery time. The article’s example is 14 days. Then point the button at the review form for the purchased product and check the link before the message is live. A review flow on Placed Order and a review flow on Fulfilled Order will both send if you leave both live. Decide which metric owns the ask.

A first order and a later order are not the same email

Klaviyo’s split for new versus returning is Placed Order equals 1 over all time. The first-order path can welcome the person and point them at the list or a loyalty program. The repeat path should speak to someone who has already bought, including a loyalty status if the store has one. A split on a property the event does not have sends everyone down one branch. Preview a real Placed Order and read the count before you trust the branch.

A second split in that article is the order value. A trigger split on $value, above a number you choose for this catalog, can send a different note to a large order. The threshold is the store’s, not a default in the article. Read the value on a real event. A split copied from another client’s account uses that other catalog’s number.

Cross-sell content has the same preview problem. Klaviyo says that if you use a product feed, you configure the feed and preview which products appear. Do not assume every way of adding products excludes what the person just bought. The cross-sell can also be its own flow. So can the review. A single Placed Order flow that contains all four jobs is the example, not a requirement. What matters is that you can point at the message that will actually send.

The same buyer can be in the welcome series the same week

Klaviyo’s post-purchase article tells you to ask three questions before you add another email. Is this person also on the marketing list? If they are, are they inside the welcome series? If they buy and then abandon a cart the next day, will the cart flow also pick them up? A new customer who came in through a popup can receive the welcome series and the post-purchase flow in the same week. Email Smart Sending defaults to 16 hours. SMS and push use a separate 24-hour window. A message skipped for Smart Sending is not retried when the window ends.

Some pre-built flows turn that skip off on a particular message. Open the message and read the checkbox. Leaving Smart Sending on protects the inbox and can also swallow the thank-you, which is the email that has no delay. The confirmation flow, if it is truly transactional, is the one Klaviyo says should not use Smart Sending. The marketing series is where you decide message by message.

Each message is still draft, manual, or live on its own. If every message is draft, nobody enters until at least one is live or manual. Review and turn on is the control when the configured messages are all draft. Otherwise use Update status. Choose Live and save. Unconfigured actions stay draft. A draft in the middle of the series is skipped, and the person continues. They do not appear on that draft message’s analytics, so a missing review request will not show up as a skip.

What each email is allowed to do

The confirmation says the order was received. It goes to everyone who placed the order, and it does not carry an offer. The thank-you is the relationship email: a first order can introduce the brand and the list, and a repeat order can talk about loyalty. An instructions email, if the product needs one, has to land near the shipping window. Too early and they forget it. After the package arrives, it is late. Klaviyo points that message at its own flow when a tool such as the shipper owns the timestamp.

The review ask is the one that depends on the product being in hand. The cross-sell is the one that asks for another purchase, usually with popular products, after you have previewed the feed. You can send these in another order. The constraint is the one Klaviyo states for transactional mail, and the constraint of the delay you can defend for this shipping window. The chart’s 3-day and 1-week marks are a starting grid. The 9-day shipper in the article is already on a longer marketing series than those three marks.

Read the order metric, then the day each message sits on

Name the trigger and confirm it is the metric this store records for a completed purchase. Confirm the confirmation lives in another flow and does not contain an offer. Read the thank-you delay. It should not be a multi-day wait. Read the review delay against how long this catalog takes to arrive, and check whether a Fulfilled Order review flow is also live. Read the first-order split and the value split against a real event. Read Smart Sending on the thank-you, because that message collides with the welcome series. Read every message status, including a draft sitting between two live emails.

KlavyFlow shows the connected flow on a day-by-day timeline after a read-only Klaviyo connection, with the creative on the day it is scheduled. An immediate thank-you and a review a week later are visible without opening each delay card. The workspace does not send the series, move a confirmation into its own flow, or turn a draft live. Those controls stay in Klaviyo. Flow performance is a separate view for 7, 30, or 90 complete account-local days, and a missing observation stays unavailable. One client’s campaign totals are not a stand-in for another client’s post-purchase flow.