Klaviyo Winback Flow and Sunset Flow: Re-Engage Lapsed Buyers, Clean Your List

Pick a number: 60, 90, 120, 180. Somewhere in that range is the point at which a customer who has not reordered from your store is probably not coming back on their own. Most brands never find their number, so they treat a customer who bought last week and one who bought two years ago exactly the same. Both get every campaign. One of them is also quietly dragging down the inbox placement of everything you send.

Two flows fix this. A winback flow tries to bring lapsed customers back while there is still a relationship to rescue. A sunset flow identifies subscribers who have stopped engaging entirely and gives them a clean exit before they hurt your sender reputation. They are often confused with each other, and building only one of them leaves a real gap.

Two flows, two different jobs

The two connect. A customer who ignores your winback flow and keeps ignoring campaigns eventually becomes a sunset candidate. A subscriber in the sunset flow who clicks is, by definition, engaged again and should drop back into normal sends.

Step 1: find your repurchase window

Your winback timing should come from your own order data, not a blog post (including this one). The question is: for customers who place a second order, how long after the first order does it usually happen?

1. Export orders from Shopify or pull them from Klaviyo, and for each repeat customer measure the days between order one and order two.
2. Find the median. If most second orders happen within 45 days, a customer at day 90 with no reorder is genuinely lapsed. If your product lasts six months, day 90 is far too early.
3. Set the winback trigger at roughly one and a half to two times that median. That gives natural repeat buyers room before you start nudging.
4. If you have enough history, check Klaviyo's predictive analytics. The expected date of next order and churn risk fields can refine the timing per customer, though small stores often do not have enough data for those to populate.

As a very rough illustration: a coffee subscription brand might land around 45 to 60 days, a skincare brand around 60 to 90, and a furniture or apparel brand much longer, where winback is less about reordering the same item and more about the next season.

Building the winback flow in Klaviyo

The trigger

The cleanest approach is a metric-triggered flow on Placed Order with a time delay equal to your lapse window, plus a flow filter of Placed Order zero times since starting this flow. Anyone who buys during the delay drops out automatically. Klaviyo also lets you trigger a flow when someone joins a segment, such as customers whose last order was more than X days ago; either works, as long as recent buyers exit fast.

Add a second filter to remove anyone who has unsubscribed or is suppressed, and consider excluding customers with open support tickets or recent refunds if you track those as events.

The emails

Three emails is a reasonable default. Space them about a week apart.

Email 1: The check-in (no discount)

• Subject line idea: It has been a while
• Acknowledge the time gap without guilt.
• Show what is new since their last order: new products, new formulas, restocks.
• Recommend products based on what they bought before.
• Many lapsed customers simply forgot. A friendly reminder can be enough, and you keep the margin.

Email 2: The reason to come back

• Lead with proof: reviews on the product they bought, or a how-to that makes the product more useful.
• If you plan to use an incentive, this is where a modest one can appear, or save it for email 3.
• Use a conditional split: customers with a high historical order value might get a free-gift offer instead of a percentage off.

Email 3: The last nudge

• Your strongest offer, with a real deadline.
• Keep it short. One product or one offer, one button.
• Optionally, a line asking why they stopped, with a link to a one-question survey. The answers are often more valuable than the orders.

Example copy for email 1

Here is a sample of how the first winback email might read for a fictional tea brand. Adapt the voice to yours.

Subject: Your cupboard might be running low

Preview text: Plus three new blends since you last visited

Hi Sam, it has been a few months since your last order of Morning Blend. If your tin is looking empty, it is still here, same recipe. We have also added three new blends since then, including a caffeine-free evening option people keep asking about.

Button: Reorder Morning Blend

Secondary link: See what is new

No discount, no pressure, and a direct path to the product they already know they like. A one-click reorder link or a pre-filled cart makes this email far more effective than sending people to the homepage.

Discount discipline

If every winback email contains a coupon, you train customers to lapse on purpose. A few safeguards:

• Hold the incentive until the second or third email.
• Use unique, single-use codes with an expiry rather than a public code.
• Test the flow with and without an incentive using a split, and compare revenue per recipient, not just conversion rate.

Building the sunset flow

A sunset flow is about deliverability. Mailbox providers watch how recipients interact with your mail. Sending repeatedly to people who never open, click or buy can hurt where your emails land for everyone, including your best customers.

Define unengaged carefully

Since Apple Mail Privacy Protection, opens are inflated for a large share of recipients, so an open alone is not a reliable sign of life. A sturdier definition combines several signals. A starting segment might be:

• Can receive email marketing, and
• Has been in your list for at least 90 days (so new subscribers are not caught), and
• Has not clicked an email in the last 120 to 180 days, and
• Has not placed an order or been active on site in the same window.

Adjust the window to how often you send. A brand emailing five times a week sees unengagement faster than one emailing twice a month.

The trigger and sequence

Trigger the flow when a profile joins that unengaged segment. Then send two emails:

1. Do you still want to hear from us? A clear, honest subject line. One button to stay subscribed, and an easy unsubscribe. Some brands offer a lower-frequency option here, such as a monthly digest, if they have a way to manage it.
2. Last email, a few days later. Say plainly that you will stop emailing unless they click. No guilt trips.

Use the button click as the signal to stay. You can tag clickers with a profile property, and anyone who clicks is naturally no longer in the unengaged segment.

What to do with non-responders

After the final email and a short wait, suppress the profiles that did not respond. In Klaviyo you can do this in bulk from the segment. Suppressed profiles stop receiving email and do not count toward your billable active profiles, which can also lower your plan cost. They are not deleted; if someone resubscribes later, they can come back.

Do not keep them around in a separate list you still email occasionally. That defeats the point.

How to measure both flows

The two flows succeed in different ways, so measure them differently.

For the winback flow, track:

• Placed order rate and revenue per recipient for each email.
• The share of lapsed customers who reorder within, say, 30 days of entering the flow.
• Average discount given per reactivated customer, so you know what each comeback cost.
• Whether reactivated customers go on to buy again without an incentive. A winback that only produces one discounted order is less valuable than it looks.

For the sunset flow, track:

• How many profiles enter each month and what share click to stay.
• Click rate and placed order rate on your regular campaigns before and after you start suppressing. As the least engaged profiles leave, these rates should rise.
• Spam complaint rate and bounce rate, which Klaviyo reports per campaign and flow. Both should stay low and steady.
• Your list size over time. A sunset flow will make the list smaller. That is the intended result, so agree on it with whoever reports on list growth before it looks like a problem.

A campaign exclusion rule to add today

Even before the sunset flow runs, stop sending your regular campaigns to your least engaged profiles. A common setup is to send campaigns to an engaged segment (for example, anyone who clicked, ordered, or subscribed recently) rather than to the full list. That single change often does more for inbox placement than any subject line test.

Mistakes that make these flows backfire

• Starting the winback too early. Nudging people before their natural reorder date wastes discounts on customers who would have bought anyway.
• No exit when someone buys. Always filter on Placed Order since starting the flow. Getting a comeback offer the day after reordering is irritating.
• Judging engagement by opens. Use clicks, orders and site activity as the core signals.
• Never suppressing anyone. A list that only grows looks healthy on a dashboard and performs worse every month.
• Sunsetting new subscribers. Always exclude people who joined recently; they have not had a fair chance to engage.
• Set and forget. Review lapse windows and engagement thresholds at least twice a year, especially after changing send frequency.

A quick build checklist

1. Calculate median days between first and second order.
2. Build the winback flow on Placed Order with the lapse delay and a purchase exit filter.
3. Write three winback emails, holding the incentive back.
4. Create an unengaged segment based on clicks, orders and site activity, excluding recent subscribers.
5. Build the two-email sunset flow off that segment.
6. Suppress non-responders after the final email.
7. Switch regular campaigns to an engaged segment.
8. Put a calendar reminder in for a six-month review.

Want these built and tuned for you?

Winback and sunset flows are small builds with outsized effects, but only when the windows match your real buying cycle. Our Klaviyo flows service sets both up from your order data, alongside post-purchase, welcome and cart recovery, so every customer is in the right flow at the right time. If your list has not been cleaned in a while, get in touch and we can start with an engagement review before anything is sent.