- The first week should be about getting your core flows live, not months of discovery calls and decks.
- Flows come first because they earn the most per person. Campaigns come after, built off what the flow data shows.
- I work in 90-day blocks. A lot of brands notice a lift in the first 30 days; most see it within 90. That's a pattern, not a promise.
- Judge the first 90 days on clicks and revenue per recipient against a baseline you exported before day one.
Before day one: what the agency needs from you
Onboarding goes as fast as your access does. Before kickoff, get these ready:
- Klaviyo and Shopify access, with the agency added as its own user. You stay the Owner.
- Brand assets: logo, fonts, colors and product photos.
- Product priorities and discount rules: what to push, what's running low, what's off limits.
- One person on your side who can approve things quickly.
Also export your last 90 days of flow and campaign results before anything changes. That's your baseline. If you're coming from another agency, I covered the handover in how to switch email marketing agencies without losing revenue.
Days 1 to 7: the core flows go live
This is where I start with every brand. I install the same baseline system, the Bardown Flow System, and get it live in the first 7 days. It's 8 core flows:
- Welcome Series
- Abandoned Checkout
- Abandoned Cart
- Browse Abandonment
- Collection Abandonment
- Site Abandonment
- Post Purchase Thank You
- Customer Winback
Every flow starts with one question: has this person ever placed an order? If not, they get the non-customer path, built around education and trust. If yes, they get the customer path, built around loyalty and what to buy next. All in, that's 60+ emails.
Two shared rules keep people from getting buried. Nobody can re-enter the same abandonment flow within 35 days. And anyone who ordered in the last 30 days is routed out of site, collection and browse abandonment, so they only get the sequence that fits. Every flow also carries an offer. Non-customers get the same one the welcome series gave them, never a bigger one, so nobody learns to abandon a cart for a better deal. Customers get a slightly better offer, a buy-more deal, or a monthly subscription.
Here's the shape of the system I install:
- Welcome: 6 emails per path over 7 days. The offer goes in email #1 and expires on day 7. It stops as soon as someone buys.
- Abandoned checkout: 5 emails per path, starting 35 minutes after someone leaves checkout. The customer path is a day shorter, because existing buyers need fewer touches.
- Abandoned cart: 5 emails per path over about 8 days, with the gaps getting shorter toward the end. In cart and checkout, the first email has no offer; it comes in later in the sequence and expires with the last email. Customers who order in large quantities are usually kept out.
- Site, collection and browse abandonment: 3 emails per path over 4 days.
- Post purchase thank you: split by order count. A first order gets 6 emails, a second 5, a third 4 (including a review invitation, which goes to everyone who reaches a third order, not just people we guess are happy), and a fourth or later 3, all within 30 days.
- Customer winback: waits 45 days after an order, then sends 5 emails through day 60, with the offer in email 4. Only people who've genuinely been opening (not Apple auto-opens) get it, and anyone who reorders drops out.
Why flows first? Because that's where the money per person is. Across 4 consumable brands in my data, welcome email #1 earned about $4.50 per person. If you want the full picture of what each flow does, it's in my guide to essential Klaviyo flows, and the setup itself is in Klaviyo setup for Shopify.
If your product runs out, like coffee, supplements or skincare, a reorder reminder flow goes on top of the core 8 early. Across those same 4 brands, replenishment flows earned about $2.23 per person, about 28x the best campaign, and only 2 of the 4 had one built.
Days 7 to 30: personalize once the data comes in
A baseline system gets you live fast. It doesn't know your customers yet. Once the flows have been running for a few weeks, the data tells you where to dig in.
In this stretch I look at which flow emails get clicks, revenue per recipient for each one, where people drop off, and what customers buy first and second. Clicks matter more than opens, since Apple Mail inflates opens.
Then personalize: the copy, the products featured and the offers, flow by flow. The structure stays the same; what goes inside it gets fitted to your brand. Welcome email #1 carries most of the money, which is why the offer goes in it, and the rest of the week builds trust before it expires. Later emails still earn too. In my 4-brand data, cart abandonment email #5 earned about $0.25 per person, the same as email #3, and winback email #3 earned about 2x email #1.
Days 30 to 90: the campaign calendar
Once flows are working, campaigns come next. I plan a monthly calendar with a 14-step process, and it starts with your data, not a template: what your past campaigns earned per click, which subject lines won, and which flows carry your revenue. The calendar should support your strong flows, not fight them.
The process, in short:
- One story for the month. A main product story, a secondary one, the seasonal moments and the offer, split into 3 to 5 phases, like educate, push the hero product, a promo cluster, and an end-of-month push.
- Products with jobs. Each product gets a role: hero, support, add-on (to lift order value), promo (holidays and gifting), or trust (a proven product that lends credibility to newer ones).
- A steady cadence. Normal campaigns go out every other day. Big promotions get consecutive sends, usually 2 to 4 emails across the window, plus 1 or 2 final reminders near the end.
- The offer as a layer. Education mentions it softly near the button; a promo email leads with it. Not every email should feel like a sale, even when a sale is live.
- Subject lines from past winners. I write from patterns that already worked on your list, like short curiosity, proof or practical utility, not from scratch.
I cover how to build one yourself in my post on the email campaign calendar.
What results should you expect in 90 days?
Honestly, it depends on where you start. A brand with no flows has more upside than one with decent flows that need tuning.
Here's the pattern I see. A lot of brands notice a lift in the first 30 days, mostly from flows that were missing or broken going live. Most see it within 90.
One example of what a rebuild can do, from a skincare brand: its email revenue went from $48,193 for a full year to $203,777 in the first seven months of the next, after its flows were rebuilt. Flows went from 60% to 83% of email revenue. That's one brand, not a forecast for yours.
I don't guarantee results. If an agency promises you a number in the first 90 days before seeing your account, that's a red flag.
How do you know onboarding is going well?
By day 90, you should be able to answer yes to these:
- Are all the core flows live, with separate paths for customers and non-customers?
- Can someone explain why each flow and campaign exists?
- Is click rate and revenue per recipient up against your baseline?
- Have you been talking to the person doing the work? My clients work with me directly, with no hand-offs.
If most of these are no, read signs your email agency isn't working. And when you look at the revenue numbers, remember they're attributed, not proven. I explain what that means in Klaviyo attribution.
Where these numbers come from
The pooled numbers come from 4 consumable brands I work with, 2,897 campaigns and $17.7M in email revenue. It's a small sample, so treat them as directional. Single-brand numbers come from individual client accounts and are labeled with a descriptor instead of a name.
FAQ
How long does email agency onboarding take?
It shouldn't take months. With my system, the 8 core flows are live in the first 7 days. Personalizing them and building the campaign calendar happens over the rest of the first 90 days.
When will I see results from a new email agency?
A lot of brands notice a lift in the first 30 days and most within 90. It depends on how much was missing or broken when you started. Nobody can guarantee a number.
What happens after the first 90 days?
I work in 90-day blocks. At the end of one, we look at what moved, decide what to focus on next, and plan the next block. What we focus on depends on what the data shows.
Founder of Bardown Digital, a Chicago-based Klaviyo email and retention agency for Shopify brands. He's worked with brands doing $500K to $100M a year, with $100M+ in email-attributed revenue across them.