Email marketing for your Shopify store: from welcome email to abandoned cart

Email has the highest ROI of all marketing channels. An average of €42 return per euro spent — not marketing hype, that’s years of measured reality. And for Shopify stores, email is the most underused growth lever available.

In this article I explain which email flows to build first, which tool to use, and how to set this up practically without a marketing team.

The tool: Klaviyo or Shopify Email?

There are two serious options for Shopify stores.

Klaviyo is the gold standard for serious e-commerce email marketing. The power: deep Shopify integration that lets you segment on purchase behaviour, viewed products, amounts spent and more. Free up to 500 contacts, then scalably priced.

Shopify Email is built-in, simple and free for the first 10,000 emails per month. Perfect if you’re just starting and don’t need complex automations.

My recommendation: start with Shopify Email if you have fewer than 1,000 contacts. Switch to Klaviyo when you’re ready to get serious about automation.

The 4 flows to build first

1. Welcome flow

The welcome email is the most-read email message you’ll ever send. Open rates of 50–60% are normal — people are most interested in your brand at this moment.

What to include:

• Personal introduction of your brand and the people behind it
• What subscribers can expect (products, content, vibe)
• Optionally: a 10% welcome discount for first purchase

Timing: Immediately after sign-up. Make it a series of 2–3 emails: day 0 (welcome), day 3 (your bestsellers), day 7 (social proof or brand story).

2. Abandoned cart

This is the flow with the most direct impact. On average 70% of shoppers leave the cart without buying. A good abandoned cart sequence recovers 10–15% of those shoppers.

The sequence:

• 1 hour after abandonment: “You left something behind” — simple reminder, no discount
• 24 hours later: “Still saved for you” — add a review or guarantee
• 72 hours later: Optionally a small incentive (5–10% discount) for the highest-value abandoned carts

Shopify has built-in abandoned checkout emails. Enable those as a minimum. Klaviyo gives you more control over timing, segmentation and design.

3. Post-purchase sequence

You’ve got a customer. Now you want to retain that customer and send a review request.

The sequence:

• Immediately after purchase: Confirmation email (Shopify does this automatically — personalise it)
• 3 days after expected delivery: Review request — link this to Judge.me or Stamped.io
• 30 days after purchase: “How are you enjoying it?” + product recommendations based on the purchase
• 90 days after purchase: Win-back if there’s been no second purchase

4. Browse abandonment

Someone views a product page but doesn’t buy. In Klaviyo you can send an email 24 hours later with that specific product. Open rates are typically higher than a regular newsletter, because the interest is proven.

This is a Klaviyo-only feature — Shopify Email doesn’t support this.

Segmentation: send relevant emails

Mass-blast emails to your whole list work less and less. The future is segmentation:

• VIP customers (3+ purchases or €500+ spent): offer exclusive access or discounts
• One-time buyers: win-back campaign after 60 days
• Inactive subscribers (no open in 90+ days): re-engagement campaign, then remove

Clean lists perform better. A list of 2,000 active subscribers is more valuable than 10,000 half-hearted contacts.

Technical connection with Shopify

Klaviyo connects directly to Shopify via an app. After installation, Klaviyo automatically synchronises:

• Customers and contacts
• Order history
• Product catalogue (for dynamic product blocks in emails)
• Abandoned checkout events

Set this up once properly — then it runs autonomously.

When to bring in a professional?

Setting up email marketing for the first time takes a day or two. But the quality of the copy, the segmentation strategy and the technical setup determine the result.

If email marketing is meant to be a serious growth lever for you — and it should be — it’s worth doing it properly. At Web Builders we also help with email marketing setup alongside the Shopify build. Discuss the possibilities.

Summary

Start simple: activate abandoned checkout emails in Shopify, add a welcome email via Shopify Email, and set up a post-purchase review request. That’s the foundation and costs an afternoon.

Once you grow: switch to Klaviyo and build out the 4 flows above. The ROI will surprise you.

Email is not dead. For Shopify stores it is actually the channel that converts best — and the channel that most stores structurally leave on the table.