How to set up a Klaviyo price drop flow (and low stock emails that don't lie)

This is for Shopify founders on Klaviyo who want to know what these flows need, whether they fit their brand, and where they rank.

Which brands should build these flows?

I'll be upfront: I don't have much personal experience with these two flows. The brands I work with don't lower prices often enough to warrant a price drop flow. So here's my take on who they fit, not results from my accounts.

Price drop flow: for a brand with a large collection of products, I think it'd be super helpful. More products means more price changes, and more people who looked at something and didn't buy.

Low stock flow: this can help a brand that's running through inventory quickly. Drop-oriented clothing brands are a good example. When a drop sells through in days, "almost gone" is true and it's useful news.

Everyone else: if you rarely run low, I'd cover low stock in individual campaigns instead of a flow. A campaign gives you control over the message and the audience for the few times it actually happens.

What is a Klaviyo price drop flow?

It tells shoppers when a product they looked at gets cheaper. Per Klaviyo's help center:

• Who enters: you pick people who viewed the product, people who started checkout with it, or both. Klaviyo notes the started checkout group is the narrowest but most likely to convert.
• The trigger: you set how much the price has to drop, as a dollar amount or a percentage.
• Lookback window: 30 days by default, adjustable from 1 to 90 days.
• Who's excluded: anyone who bought the item within that period.
• Timing: Klaviyo says a time delay isn't recommended, because you want to tell customers as soon as the price changes.

Klaviyo lists Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento 2, PrestaShop and Salesforce Commerce Cloud as supported, plus catalogs synced through a custom feed or API.

What does Klaviyo need before the price drop flow will work?

Two rules trip people up, and both are on Klaviyo's page:

• In stock only. Price drop flows only trigger for items listed as in stock.
• It has to be on first. A price drop is only registered in Klaviyo if a price drop flow is set to Live or Manual. Drop the price first and build the flow after, and nobody gets the email.

So build the flow before you plan the markdown, not the morning of.

How does a low inventory email work in Klaviyo?

Same family, different trigger. Per Klaviyo's low inventory flow page:

• The trigger: you set a unit threshold. The flow fires when inventory drops from above that number to at or below it. Further drops while it's already below don't trigger it again.
• Who enters: people who viewed the item, added it to cart or started checkout with it. Which options you get depends on the inventory level you pick.
• Engagement timeframe: 30 days by default, custom up to 90. Anyone who already bought the item in that window doesn't get it.
• Timing: put the first message right after the trigger, with no delay.
• Filters: you can include or exclude items by name or ID, or exclude collections. Klaviyo recommends IDs, since product names can change.

How I'd set up a price drop email and a low stock email

Price drop flow. One email, sent right away. The subject line names the product and the new price. One button that goes straight to that product page. Set the trigger threshold high. A few cents off isn't news, and an email for every small change trains people to ignore you.

Low stock flow. Start with one email, sent right away. Tell them it's running low and link straight to the product. If you do run a low stock flow, you might want additional emails that add a discount on top of the urgency, for the people who didn't act on the first one. Klaviyo's own page says to be careful adding more messages, since you can't predict how fast the item sells out, so keep the follow-ups short and make sure the product is still there before they send.

For both, click every link before the flow goes live. Clicks with no sales usually means something broke, like a link to a sold-out variant.

What about overlap with browse abandonment? Both use product views, so it's a fair question. In practice, overlap here is very unlikely, so it's not something I'd particularly worry about. If you really want to rule it out, you can adjust the send timing of certain automations so they can't fire at the same time. My browse setup is in browse abandonment email.

Real urgency sells. Fake urgency burns trust.

Both of these flows work for one reason: the email is true. The price really dropped. There really are only a few left.

The temptation is to fake it. "Almost gone!" with a warehouse full. A countdown that resets every time someone opens. It might work once. Then people learn your urgency means nothing, and your real deadlines stop working too.

Urgency alone isn't the sell, either. Across 3,176 Klaviyo campaigns from 9 brands I've looked at, deadline subject lines earned about 1.06x a brand's typical revenue per email, barely above normal. Subject lines that named the offer earned about 1.46x. Say what the deal is, not just that time's running out. I break that data down in Black Friday email subject lines.

And be honest without oversharing. When a discount is involved, you don't need to let the customer in on the business itself. Give them context instead:

• The time of year. A seasonal moment people already expect deals around.
• Timing for the brand. An anniversary, a launch, the end of a season.
• Timing for the customer. Why they deserve a discount right now, like being a long-time customer.

So my rules for these flows:

• Only call it low stock when it's low. Set the threshold where running out is a real possibility.
• Only send a price drop when the price actually dropped, and put the new price in the email.
• Name the product and the deal in the subject line. Don't hide it behind "Don't miss this."

For consumables, low stock and restock go together

If you sell something people run out of, a low stock moment is the first half of a story. The second half is the restock.

When something sells out, the restock email is your biggest send of the month. At a snack brand doing about $650K a month, the restock email "We're back baby!" made $48,771 from 30,498 people, the brand's best campaign ever. Its back-in-stock emails earn about 1.7x its average per person ($0.26 vs $0.15).

So if a product is about to sell out, have the back-in-stock flow ready before it does. I cover the full setup in Klaviyo back in stock emails.

Where do these flows rank?

Not first. For a consumable brand, I'd build the 8 core flows, then a reorder reminder, then back in stock if you ever sell out. Price drop and low inventory come after that. The build order is in essential Klaviyo flows for CPG brands.

If you don't lower prices often, skip the price drop flow. If you rarely run low, handle low stock in campaigns. And if you do run markdowns often, read my take on email discount strategy first, because a price drop is still a discount.

I looked for public data on how price drop and low stock emails perform and didn't find anything credible enough to put here, so I'm leaving benchmarks out rather than guessing.

FAQ

WRITTEN BY Jack White

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.

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