The Ecommerce Brand's Guide to Klaviyo Segmentation
How to segment your list based on purchase cycles, product affinity, and engagement to maximise revenue per send.
Table of contents
Segmentation is where most ecommerce email programs either compound or collapse.
Send to the right segment and your open rate is 45%, your RPR (revenue per recipient) is $0.22, and your unsubscribe rate is 0.08%. Send to the wrong segment and those numbers invert, and you take a deliverability hit in the process. Klaviyo’s segmentation benchmarks quantify the gap precisely: highly segmented lists return more than 3× the revenue per recipient of unsegmented lists ($0.19 vs $0.06), with nearly double the open rates (16.17% vs 9.95%), double the CTR (1.99% vs 0.92%), and half the unsubscribe rate.
In Klaviyo, segmentation isn’t complicated. But it requires a clear framework. Here’s how we structure it.
The Foundation: Engagement Tiers
Before you segment by anything else, segment by engagement. These tiers should inform every campaign send.
Tier 1: Champions (opened in last 30 days or purchased in last 60 days) This is your active core. They should receive every campaign. They’re conditioning themselves to expect your emails. Don’t suppress them from anything.
Tier 2: Active (opened in last 90 days, no recent purchase) Solid engaged subscribers. Send them most campaigns. Consider slightly different CTAs that target consideration rather than loyalty.
Tier 3: At-Risk (no opens in 60–90 days) These subscribers need re-engagement, not more promotion. A suppressed-from-campaigns, enrolled-in-re-engagement strategy is better than blasting offers at them.
Tier 4: Lapsed (no opens in 90–180 days) These should already be in your win-back flow. Do not include them in standard campaign sends.
Tier 5: Inactive (no engagement in 180+ days) Suppressed unless running a sunset flow. These subscribers are an active threat to your sender reputation.
Build these five segments in Klaviyo and use them as the default suppression logic for every campaign. It’s the single highest-impact change most brands can make to their email program. The scale difference is stark: $10M+ stores run an average of 134 segments versus just 13 for sub-$100K stores (Klaviyo Ecommerce Benchmarks). That gap doesn’t appear overnight, but closing it is the fastest lever available.
Purchase Behaviour Segments
Once engagement tiers are set, layer in purchase behaviour.
One-time buyers (1 purchase) The most valuable segment to convert. A one-time buyer who makes a second purchase has 3–5x the LTV of someone who stays at one. Campaigns to this segment should focus on complementary products, social proof from loyal customers, and education.
Repeat buyers (2–4 purchases) These are your best mid-tier customers. They trust you enough to buy again. Focus campaigns on deepening loyalty: VIP access, new product announcements, referral asks.
Loyal customers (5+ purchases or top LTV decile) Your true advocates. They should receive VIP treatment: exclusive content, early access, personal messages. Do not send them the same generic campaign you send everyone else.
Lapsed buyers (purchased once or twice, no purchase in 90+ days) Segmented out for win-back sequence. Don’t include in standard campaigns until re-engaged.
Product Affinity Segments
For brands with multiple product categories or product lines, segmenting by product affinity dramatically improves relevance.
Build segments in Klaviyo based on what a subscriber has purchased or browsed:
- “Has purchased [Product A] at least once”
- “Has viewed [Category X] at least twice in last 30 days”
- “Ordered [Product B], not yet ordered [Complementary Product C]”
These segments allow you to cross-sell relevantly, not randomly. A subscriber who bought a protein powder doesn’t need an email about a completely unrelated product category. They need an email about pre-workout, creatine, or a shaker. Context matters.
Predictive Segments
Klaviyo’s predictive analytics surface three segments worth using directly.
High CLV (predicted) Subscribers Klaviyo has identified as likely to have high lifetime value. Treat these like your current loyal customers. They’ve signalled purchase intent even if the behaviour isn’t there yet.
Likely to churn Subscribers whose engagement and purchase pattern suggests they’re about to leave. Get them into a retention campaign or win-back flow before that happens.
Expected next order date For brands with consumable products, this is extremely powerful. Klaviyo calculates expected next order date from historical purchase intervals. Use it to trigger replenishment reminders at the right time, not on a generic schedule. Replenishment emails have a 53.6% click-to-open rate, the highest of any email type in ecommerce (ConvertCart), and consumable categories like supplements, beauty, and food carry a typical repeat purchase rate of 30–45%, making the expected next order date segment one of the most valuable in your account.
Campaign Segmentation: A Practical Framework
When building a campaign send in Klaviyo, this is the decision tree we use:
- Who is this for? Define the intended audience by behaviour, not just demographics.
- Who should we exclude? Anyone who recently purchased the promoted item, anyone in tier 4 or 5 engagement, anyone in a conflicting flow.
- What’s the expected RPR? If RPR is projected below $0.06, the segment size or relevance needs rethinking.
- Is this a test or production? If testing creative or subject lines, run on a sample of your champion segment first.
Most brands send to a “master list” minus unsubscribes. That approach works when you’re small. It stops working (and starts actively harming deliverability) once your list grows past 10,000 subscribers.
Getting Started
If you’re starting from scratch in Klaviyo, build the five engagement tiers first. That alone will improve your open rates, your deliverability, and your campaign RPR within 60 days.
If you’re more advanced, layer in the purchase behaviour segments and start using them for cross-sell and retention campaigns. The product affinity segments come after that.
Segmentation doesn’t need to be complex. It needs to be consistent.
Want us to map your Klaviyo segmentation against what we’d build? Book a free audit.