Keep Your Flow Dynamic With a 365-Day Wait Step
Klaviyo Flows vs. Campaigns — A Critical Difference
There are significant differences between Klaviyo Flows and Campaigns. Once they are set up, Flows are initiated and run without your direct control, independently for each profile that enters. Campaigns go to a pre-defined audience on your specific timetable.
Another critical difference is that Campaigns are totally open ended. You can always add content to a Campaign. Klaviyo Flows, on the other hand, release a profile once it has run through all of the actions. They are finished.
But what if you have a Flow that is delivering an ongoing marketing message and you want it to be open ended — just like a Campaign? This is a problem.
How Klaviyo Time Delays Actually Work
The obvious solution is to add a long Time Delay at the end of the Flow. Problem solved, right? This is another instance where knowing exactly how Klaviyo functions is critical. The answer is no.
A Time Delay in Klaviyo is a time stamp. It is an instruction added to a profile. The profile goes to the Time Delay, gets the updated instruction, and is then immediately passed on to the next step. If the Klaviyo Flow ends with the Time Delay, the next step is the end of the Flow. The profile passes out of the Flow with a meaningless time stamp attached.
So the open-ended Klaviyo Flow is not attainable? Again, knowing how the components of Klaviyo interact with each other is the solution.
How to Keep Profiles Active in a Klaviyo Flow
The process is simple, but must be executed in the proper order. After adding the Time Delay — 365 days or more to ensure the Flow remains static until you are ready to update it — add an email immediately after it. This email is blank. It is a Bucket that holds the profiles in place inside the Klaviyo Flow.
The key to the process is understanding what happens when you delete that Bucket email. Profiles are sent to the next step in the Flow, but they are stripped of their Time Stamp instruction. They arrive at whatever follows with a clean slate — ready to receive new content on whatever schedule you define next.
With this understanding of Time Delay and email functions within a Klaviyo Flow, your Flow has now become open-ended and dynamic.
How to Add New Content to an Open-Ended Klaviyo Flow
When you have a new email to add to the Flow, follow these steps:
Add the new content to the end of the Flow.
Add a new 365-day Time Delay immediately after that email.
Add a new Bucket — a blank email — immediately after the Time Delay.
Based upon the sending cadence you desire, place an appropriate Time Delay immediately in front of the new email content.
Delete the old Bucket and 365-day Time Delay.
How Existing Profiles Receive New Klaviyo Flow Emails
All profiles in the Bucket will immediately pass to the new Time Delay, get a time stamp, and move to the new content where they will be delivered in the specified time. After delivery, they will receive the new 365-day time stamp and be collected in the new Bucket at the end of the Flow.
All profiles that had not yet reached the end of the Flow will run through the entire sequence on the exact cadence as if this content was always there.
MJE Consult builds email and text marketing systems for ecommerce businesses. If you are evaluating your Klaviyo architecture or starting from scratch, the Client Discovery Survey is the place to start.
