Blog · · Benatar Brands
Flows vs campaigns: where your email revenue actually comes from
Most email programs spend their energy on the newsletter. Every week someone picks a theme, writes copy, finds images and presses send. The automated emails, the ones that go out when someone signs up, leaves a cart or places a first order, often get set up once and never looked at again.
The published numbers say the attention is usually pointed the wrong way. This post covers what the benchmarks show, why the gap exists, how to read the split in your own account without fooling yourself, and what to change once you know it.
What the benchmarks say
Two large email platforms publish this split, and they land in the same place.
Klaviyo's 2026 email marketing benchmarks, drawn from more than 183,000 Klaviyo customers, report that campaigns make up 94.7% of email sends while flows, Klaviyo's name for automated emails, generate nearly 41% of total email revenue from 5.3% of sends. Average revenue per recipient for flows is nearly 18 times higher than for campaigns. Flow emails average a 5.58% click rate against 1.69% for campaigns, and a 13 times higher placed order rate.
Omnisend's email marketing statistics roundup, citing its 2026 ecommerce report on 2025 data, puts automations at 2% of email sends and 30% of email revenue, with automated emails earning $2.87 per email against $0.18 for campaigns.
The exact shares differ because the platforms, customer bases and definitions differ. The direction does not. A small number of automated emails carries a large part of the revenue.
Why automated emails earn more per send
A campaign goes to a list at a time you chose. A flow goes to one person at a moment they chose: right after they signed up, a few hours after they left a cart, a few days after their first order arrived. The message matches something the reader just did, so it is relevant by construction.
That shows up in who buys. Klaviyo reports that nearly 48% of flow-driven email revenue comes from new buyers, compared with 16% for campaigns, and names welcome, browse abandonment and cart abandonment flows as the ones that matter for first purchases. Omnisend's data points the same way: abandoned cart, welcome and browse abandonment emails were its top three automation types and accounted for 87% of automated orders.
None of this means campaigns are wasted. Campaigns are how you talk to the whole list about launches, restocks and seasonal offers, and they keep people opening your email at all. The point is narrower: per email sent, automated messages do far more of the selling, so they deserve a share of the attention that matches.
How to read your own split
If you use Klaviyo with Shopify, the dashboard shows attributed revenue broken into two lines. Klaviyo's guide to the Shopify dashboard defines attributed revenue as the total of campaign revenue and flows revenue, and shows the change against the preceding period of the same length. Divide flows revenue by attributed revenue and you have your flow share.
Before you compare that number with a benchmark, know what "attributed" means, because it decides what you are actually looking at.
- Last touch gets all the credit. Klaviyo's message attribution guide says the default model gives 100% of conversion credit to the last eligible touchpoint before the conversion. If someone opens a campaign on Monday and a flow email on Wednesday, then buys on Thursday, the flow gets the sale.
- The windows are days, not minutes. For new accounts the default lookback is 5 days for email clicks and 5 days for email opens. A purchase within that window after an eligible interaction counts toward the email, even if the buyer came back through a search ad.
- Opens count, including machine opens. Klaviyo's conversion tracking guide notes that Apple Mail Privacy Protection opens can count toward attribution unless you exclude them. That can make email look more influential than it is.
- Recent sends are not finished. The same guide says reports grouped by send date can include conversions that happen later within the window, and that you should let the window pass before comparing final performance. Judge last week's campaign next week, not tomorrow.
- Changing settings rewrites history. Klaviyo recalculates past data when you change attribution settings, and says the update can take up to 36 hours. Change them once, on purpose, and note the date.
So treat your split as a rough map of where email helped, not a ledger. It is still useful, because the attribution rules apply to flows and campaigns alike. If your flows earn a small share under the same rules that the benchmarks used, that gap is real enough to act on.
What to do with the number
If flows are a small share
The usual cause is that the core flows are missing, switched off, or pointed at the wrong list. Check these in order, because each one catches people at a different moment:
- Welcome series. Every new subscriber enters it. We covered the setup, timing and exit rules in our Klaviyo welcome series guide.
- Cart and checkout abandonment. It catches people closest to buying. Confirm the trigger fires for real carts, not only test ones.
- Browse abandonment. It catches people who looked at a product but did not add it to a cart.
- Post-purchase. It is the follow-up after a first order, aimed at turning one purchase into a second.
Turning on a flow is not the same as it working. Open each one and check three things: is it live, how many people entered it in the last 30 days, and are the filters skipping people they should not.
If flows are already a large share
Then the flows are doing their job, and the next gain is usually inside them. Klaviyo's benchmarks show the top 10% of flows reaching click rates over 10%, roughly double the average. Look at each flow's individual messages, find the one with the weakest click rate, and rewrite or retime that one first.
Either way, do not cut campaigns to chase the ratio
A higher flow share looks good on a dashboard, but you can raise it by sending fewer campaigns, which lowers total revenue. The goal is more email revenue overall, not a nicer percentage. Measure the total, and use the split only to decide where to spend the next hour.
A simple monthly check
Once a month, write down four numbers: total attributed email revenue, flow share, the number of people who entered your welcome flow, and the click rate of your weakest flow message. Four numbers on one line, same day each month, is enough to see whether the automated side is growing or quietly breaking.
If your automated emails were set up years ago and nobody has opened them since, this is the cheapest place to start. Building and tuning these flows is part of our email marketing and retention work. Book a free session and we will look at your current split with you and pick the first flow to fix.
Related service: email marketing and retention.
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