Build a win-back flow for customers lapsed 90 days

01/The build

How to build it

1. 01

   Find your real lapse window — don't default to 90

   Needs a human

   Ninety days makes a fine headline, but it's the wrong number for most catalogs. Base 'lapsed' on how often your customers actually buy. Pull the median time between orders for your repeat buyers — Klaviyo's customer analytics shows this, or export orders from Shopify and measure the gap between consecutive orders per customer. Set the lapse threshold at roughly 1.5–2x that median: a coffee brand whose regulars reorder every 30 days has a lapsed customer at ~60 days, while a brand people buy from twice a year shouldn't flinch at 90 at all. While you're here, make the other judgment call — which customers you'd never hand a discount. Your highest-lifetime repeat buyers don't need a coupon to return, and teaching them to wait for one is expensive. Everything after this runs on its own; this is the part only you can decide.

2. 02

   Build the 'Lapsed customer' segment in Klaviyo

   Runs itself

   Create a segment with two conditions joined by AND: 'What someone has done → Placed Order at least once over all time' (so former regulars and one-time-never-returned buyers both qualify) AND 'What someone has done → Placed Order zero times in the last [your window] days'. The Placed Order metric flows straight from Klaviyo's native Shopify integration, so there's no custom event to wire. If value tiers matter to you, add a tier property or a second segment splitting VIPs from everyone else — a lapsed high-lifetime customer and a lapsed single-order customer are not the same problem, and shouldn't get the same email.

3. 03

   Trigger on segment entry, and set the filter that self-exits

   Needs a human

   Build a flow triggered by 'When someone enters the Lapsed customer segment'. Then add the flow filter that keeps it honest: 'Placed Order zero times since starting this flow'. That one filter is what makes a customer drop out the instant they buy again — without it, someone reorders on day two and still gets your 'we miss you' email on day five, the most embarrassing version of this automation. Turn on segment re-entry so a customer who returns, buys, and lapses again months later can be re-won on the next cycle instead of being permanently used up after one pass.

4. 04

   Suppress the people a win-back shouldn't touch

   Runs itself

   Before anything sends, filter out the profiles where 'lapsed' is a false alarm. Active subscribers are the big one: if you run Recharge, someone with a live subscription already has their next order scheduled — they're not lapsed, and a 'come back, here's 15% off' email to a paying subscriber teaches them to cancel and re-buy at a discount. Suppress on Recharge's active-subscriber signal (exposed through its Klaviyo integration). Also drop anyone who placed an order in the last few days (a race between segment entry and send), and let Klaviyo's built-in handling exclude unsubscribed and suppressed profiles automatically. If you split VIPs from regulars in step two, branch here so your best customers get a warmer, no-discount track.

5. 05

   Message 1 — reconnect, no discount

   Runs itself

   Lead with the product, not a coupon. The first email is a re-introduction: what's new since they last bought, restocks in the category they actually purchased, a bestseller or two. Use Klaviyo's dynamic product blocks to pull these from the Shopify catalog feed instead of hand-picking per send. No discount here — most lapsed customers come back because they were reminded the brand exists, not because of 5% off, and leading with a coupon trains people that lapsing is how you earn one. After the email, add a time delay (4–5 days is a sane default) before the flow decides what to do next.

6. 06

   Split on the only outcome that matters — did they buy?

   Runs itself

   After the delay, add a conditional split on 'What someone has done → Placed Order zero times since starting this flow'. Anyone who ordered has done the job; they exit here and never see the rest of the sequence. Everyone still silent continues. Split on the actual Placed Order event, never on email opens — Apple's Mail Privacy Protection inflates opens to the point of noise, and the thing you care about is the purchase, not whether an inbox pre-loaded your images.

7. 07

   Message 2 — proof and a reason, still no heavy discount

   Runs itself

   Second email, different angle: social proof, your best-reviewed products, a fresh arrival, or a reason-to-believe that isn't a price cut. Add another delay, then another Placed Order split after it — same as step six — so buyers keep exiting. Holding the discount back to the next step means the people who'd have returned anyway already did, for free, and you only spend margin on the genuinely stubborn.

8. 08

   Message 3 — the incentive, with a unique, expiring code

   Runs itself

   Only customers who ignored two product-led emails reach the offer. Use a Klaviyo-generated unique coupon (a dynamic per-profile code tied to a Shopify discount), not one shared code — a single static code lands on a deal-aggregator site within days and gets burned by shoppers who'd have paid full price. Give it a short expiry (say 7 days) so it creates a real reason to act now and caps how long the discount is live, and exclude any collections you won't discount. Re-check right before the send with one more 'Placed Order zero times since starting this flow' split, so a customer who bought during the last wait can't be handed a coupon they no longer need.

9. 09

   Sunset whoever's still gone — don't email a dead profile forever

   Runs itself

   After the offer and a final wait with still no order, this customer has had a full, well-spaced shot and stayed silent. End the flow, tag the profile (a property like winback-exhausted, or a tag on their last Shopify order), and stop including them in regular campaign sends — move them to a low-frequency 'sunset' segment instead. Continuing to email people who never engage drags deliverability down for everyone, including the customers who do open. Because re-entry is on, if this person ever buys again and later lapses, they re-enter the segment for a fresh, clean attempt — but until then, you let them rest.

02/The stack

What it’s built on

Klaviyo

Owns the whole build: the lapsed segment, the segment-entry trigger, the 'self-exit on purchase' flow filter, the Placed Order splits between messages, the active-subscriber and recent-buyer suppressions, the unique expiring coupon, the sends, and the frequency cap that keeps the win-back from colliding with your other flows. The Recharge active-subscriber signal and the Placed Order metric it suppresses and splits on both arrive through Klaviyo's native integrations — no custom events needed.Klaviyo's free tier is enough to build and test this, and you're almost certainly already running it for email. Any ESP that supports a segment-triggered flow with conditional splits and native unique coupons works the same way — only the split syntax and coupon feature differ.

Shopify

Read through Klaviyo's native integration: the source of the Placed Order data that defines who's lapsed and who's exited, the catalog feed behind the dynamic product blocks in each email, and the store where the discount the coupon points to lives and where the winback-exhausted tag can sit. No custom Shopify code is required — the integration surfaces the order data, products, and tags inside the flow.

03/Questions

Before you build