Klaviyo Segments: 12 Every Store Should Build

Your whole list doesn't want this email.

I know, because I've hit send on it. Everyone gets the sale. The number on the screen looks huge. A megaphone feels great in your hand.

Here's the short answer. The best Klaviyo segments are the ones with a job, and 12 of them cover almost every store: 3 decide who hears from you at all, 4 split people by how they've bought, 3 catch the next order, and 2 go after the people you're losing. Each one below is tied to the campaign or flow that uses it. If a segment doesn't change who gets an email or what the email says, delete it.

#	Segment	Who's in it	What uses it
1	Engaged 30 day	Opened or clicked in 30 days, or joined in 15	Your weekly campaign
2	Engaged 90 day	Opened or clicked in 90 days, or joined in 45	Launches, Black Friday
3	Unengaged 90 day	5+ emails received, no opens or clicks in 90 days	Excluded from campaigns, sunset flow
4	Active, never bought	Active in 30 days, zero orders	Objection campaign, browse abandonment
5	First-time buyers	Exactly 1 order, in the last 60 days	Post-purchase flow, second-order campaign
6	Repeat buyers	2+ orders	New product early access
7	VIPs	Your top order count or lifetime spend	Early access with no coupon
8	Bought A, never B	Ordered one SKU, never the other	Cross-sell campaign
9	Due for reorder	Next order expected within 14 days	Replenishment flow
10	Just bought	Ordered in the last 3 days	Excluded from promos
11	Churn risk	No orders in 180 days, ignoring your email	Winback flow
12	High value lapsed	Spent big, no orders in 180 days	A personal email from you

A segment without a campaign attached is a spreadsheet with a nice name.

Why does sending to your whole list cost you money?

Because the people who won't buy can still report you. Run the math on a store like this, a hypothetical: a skincare brand with 40,000 subscribers and 9,000 of them in Engaged 30 day.

Send to the 9,000 at a 2.5% click rate and you get 225 clicks. At a 4% conversion rate and a $68 average order value, that's 9 orders and $612.

Now send to everyone. The other 31,000 click at 0.1%, so you pick up 31 more clicks. That's 256 clicks, 10.24 orders and $696.

Engaged 30 day 25

Whole list 6.4

Everyone else 1

225 clicks from 9,000, 256 from 40,000, 31 from 31,000.

So 31,000 extra sends earned about $84.

And every one of those 31,000 people can hit report spam. Google tells senders to keep spam rates below 0.10% and never reach 0.30%. If 16,000 of those emails land in Gmail, 0.30% is 48 people. That's what you're risking for $84: your deliverability, flows included.

Klaviyo's email benchmarks say flows drive nearly 41% of email revenue from 5.3% of sends. Flows are segments that fire themselves. Campaigns are the other 94.7% of sends, and that's where the megaphone lives. The split between flows and campaigns only works if both can reach the inbox.

Which Klaviyo segments decide who hears from you?

1. Engaged 30 day. Klaviyo creates this one for you and calls engaged segments the "primary groups of people that you should send to." Your weekly campaign goes here. One fix: Apple prefetches tracking pixels, so set Apple Privacy Open to False on the opened condition. It's a blunt filter, since Klaviyo can't tell a person from the inbox on those opens, but people who click still qualify. Send less than weekly? Klaviyo suggests stretching to 60 days.

2. Engaged 90 day. Same logic, wider net. This gets your launch and your Black Friday campaigns, a handful of times a year.

3. Unengaged 90 day. Klaviyo's recipe: can receive email, received at least 5 emails, zero opens and zero clicks in 90 days. Put it in "Don't send to" on most campaigns, then run a sunset flow of 3 emails at most. That flow doesn't suppress anyone by itself. You do that after.

Your list size is a vanity number. Your engaged segment is the list.

Which segments split buyers from browsers?

4. Active, never bought. Klaviyo's default is called Potential Purchasers. They keep showing up and they keep not buying, which means they've got a question your page isn't answering. "Why is this $48 when the one on Amazon is $19?" Send a campaign that answers it, with no coupon, and let your browse abandonment flow catch them mid-visit.

5. First-time buyers. Placed Order exactly once, in the last 60 days. This feeds your post-purchase flow and a campaign built around the second order. Teach them to use what they bought before you pitch them anything.

6. Repeat buyers. Has Placed Order, at least 2, over all time. They already trust you. New products go to them first, at full price.

7. VIPs. Klaviyo's default is more than 5 orders. I think that's lazy for most stores. Five orders is a coffee subscriber's first winter, and a mattress brand will never see it. Set the bar by your catalog, or use historic customer lifetime value if your account has it. Give them Black Friday 24 hours early with no coupon.

Which segments catch the next order?

8. Bought A, never B. Klaviyo's cross-sell recipe: Ordered Product at least once where SKU equals product 1, AND zero times where SKU equals product 2. Add the "can receive" consent condition, because purchase conditions won't limit it to subscribers. Bought the bamboo sheets, never the pillows? That person gets one email about pillows, and it's the most relevant email they'll read all week.

9. Due for reorder. If you qualify for predictive analytics (at least 500 customers with orders, 180 days of history, orders in the last 30 days, some customers with 3 or more orders), use expected date of next order. If you don't, filter Placed Order by product and time the window to how long it lasts. This powers your replenishment flow. And if those buyers already reorder on a rhythm at full price, read the subscription vs one-time purchase math before you discount.

10. Just bought. Placed Order at least once in the last 3 days. It goes in "Don't send to" on every promo, with "Determine recipients at send time" switched on. Nothing burns a new customer like 20% off, the morning after they paid full price.

The best email you'll send this month is the one you didn't send to the person who bought yesterday.

Who are you about to lose, and what do they get?

11. Churn risk. Klaviyo's default Churn Risks segment: ordered at least once, no orders in 180 days, got at least 2 emails in the last 90 days and opened none. It triggers your winback flow. Change the 180 to fit your product, because a 30-day coffee bag is long gone by then. Klaviyo's predictive segmentation page says its AI can group people by churn risk too, if your data qualifies.

12. High value lapsed. Historic lifetime value at or above your line, or 3+ orders if you don't have that data, and zero orders in the last 180 days. If I had one hour, I'd build this one first.

These people already paid you, more than once, and most stores let them fall into the same sunset flow as a stranger who downloaded a coupon in 2023. Pull them out. Send a plain email from you, the founder, with no template and no sale banner.

Here's the math, on a hypothetical: 1,200 people in the segment. 4% come back at a $160 order. That's 48 orders and $7,680 from one email you wrote yourself.

Sunset flows are for strangers. Former best customers get a conversation.

Can Klaviyo AI build these segments for you?

Yes, and it's faster than clicking through the builder. Klaviyo's Composer drafts a segment from a sentence and shows you the name, conditions and usually a profile count. You still save it. The builder also has Define with AI, which needs a paid account and isn't available on EU-hosted accounts.

Klaviyo's warning is the part to read twice: "Composer fills any gaps with its own assumptions." So name the who, the behavior and the timeframe. Segment 12 as a prompt:

"Profiles who can receive email marketing, have placed at least 3 orders over all time, and have placed zero orders in the last 180 days."

Then read every condition and check the count, the way you'd check a formula from a new hire on day one. And Composer can only use data your account already has, so an unsynced SKU stays unsynced.

Here's what it won't do. It won't tell you which segments deserve to exist, and it won't write the sentence that gets a lapsed customer back. Our Composer review goes deeper. All of this sits inside the bigger Klaviyo flows guide.

Why won't Klaviyo segmentation fix a page that can't close?

Because segments decide who clicks, and the page decides what the click is worth.

Here's a bedding product on our results page: Copper Bamboo Sheets. Conversion rate 1.0%, average order value $125, so revenue per visitor was $1.25. On 10,000 visitors, that's $12,500. After the rebuild: conversion rate 4.3%, average order value $221, revenue per visitor $9.50. On the same 10,000 visitors, that's $95,000. Real client numbers, not typical results, and not a promise of what your store will do.

Send your best segment to a weak page and you've aimed a perfect email at a leak.

Frequently asked questions about Klaviyo segments

What are the best Klaviyo segments for a Shopify store? Start with Engaged 30 day, Unengaged 90 day and Just Bought. Those three decide who hears from you, and the other 9 decide what you say.

What's the difference between a list and a segment in Klaviyo? Lists are static and segments are dynamic. People join a segment when they meet its conditions and leave when they stop.

How many Klaviyo segments do you need? As many as you have different messages for. If two segments would get the same email, merge them.

What is an engaged segment in Klaviyo? People who opened or clicked recently, or joined recently. The default 30 day version counts opens and clicks in 30 days and signups in 15.

Can Klaviyo AI build segments for you? Yes. Composer drafts one from a sentence, and you review and save it.

Should you ever send to your whole list? Almost never. Your widest send should be Engaged 90 day, minus Just Bought, a handful of times a year.

What to do next

Open your next scheduled campaign. Build Unengaged 90 day and Just Bought, and put both in "Don't send to" before it goes out. That's 10 minutes, and the megaphone starts turning into a conversation.

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P.S. A megaphone reaches everybody and persuades almost nobody. Twelve small conversations keep you in the inbox long enough to get paid.