Guide Flows
Replenishment email timing
Lilou & Ben5 min read
Which products get a reminder
Anything that gets used up: supplements, skincare, coffee, pantry food, pet food and refills. Clothing, devices, drink bottles and tools don’t, even when they sit in the same store, so decide product by product.
When someone buys the same style again in a different colour, that’s a cross-sell, and it belongs in a different flow.
Step 1: Work out when it runs out
This is the estimate you use before you have data, and for any new product.
Say a tub holds 60 capsules and the dose is two a day, so it lasts 30 days. With three to five days of shipping, a first reminder around day 23 gives the customer time to reorder before they run out.
Adjust for how the product gets used. Skincare often lasts longer than the label suggests, and coffee goes faster when people are home on weekends and holidays. If you sell several sizes, each size needs its own timing.
Step 2: Read your own reorder gaps
Once a product has enough repeat orders, your own data should decide the timing. Take every customer who bought it twice or more and measure the days between one order and their next order containing that product. Then look at three points on that spread:
- The 25th percentile, the day by which a quarter of reorders have happened
- The median, the day by which half have happened
- The 75th percentile, the day by which three quarters have happened
Customers rarely match the label, because they skip days, buy two at once or forget to reorder. In the capsule example the label says 30 days, but the store’s own data might put the median closer to 40, so the timing moves later than the day 23 estimate.
Example: the same 30‑day tub, timed from the store’s own data
We usually send the first reminder a little before the 25th percentile, so the earliest reorderers hear from you before they go looking elsewhere, a second near the median and a last one near the 75th.
Step 3: Keep refining it
The first number you pick will be off in one direction or the other. Check the gaps again every month, and once the flow is live, look at when people reorder after each email. If most reorders come straight after the second email, the first may be going out too early.
A few things shift the timing: a new pack size, a price change, subscription customers (take them out of the flow, they don’t need reminding) and seasons, like summer for sunscreen or the new-year reset for supplements.
Setting it up in Klaviyo
- Trigger the flow on Ordered Product, filtered to the product or collection, with one flow or branch for each timing.
- Ordered Product fires once for each product in an order, so add a flow filter that excludes anyone who has been in this flow in the last 30 days, which stops one order starting it twice.
- Set the first time delay from Step 2.
- Add the flow filter Placed Order zero times since starting this flow, so anyone who orders again drops out. That also removes people who buy something different, so to keep them in, filter on Ordered Product for that product instead.
- Exclude active subscribers if you sell subscriptions.
- Keep it to two or three messages. Lead with when the product is likely to run out and give a one-click link to reorder it. Hold back discounts unless your data shows people stall without one.
None of it lands if the email goes to spam, so check where your Klaviyo emails are landing before you judge the flow on its results.
What timing does to customer value
For a consumable product that customers reorder, repeat orders often make up a large part of what a customer is worth over 12 months, and that sets how much you can afford to pay to win one. Our LTV:CAC calculator shows what one extra order a year does to that number, and our beauty case study shows replenishment timing as part of a full rebuild.
If you’d like us to work out the timing for your products, bring an export of your orders to an LTV:CAC Gameplan call and we’ll work out the first reminder day for each product with you. Book an LTV:CAC Gameplan.