Flow Sends Trend, Klaviyo

Flow Sends Trend for the selected period. Automation send volume over time, excluding campaigns. The steady drumbeat of triggered email. How to read it, why it matters, and how to act on it.

Metrics type: Supporting Metrics • Category: Email Marketing

The steady drumbeat behind your email programme. Flows send as customers trigger them, so this line is calmer than campaign sends and far more telling when it moves.

At a glance

A time-series of flow (automation) send volume across the selected period, excluding campaigns. Because flows fire continuously as customers trigger them, by signing up, abandoning a cart, placing an order, this line is far steadier than the spiky campaign-sends trend. That steadiness is the point: a smooth flow-sends line tracks underlying customer activity, so when it moves sharply without a matching change in traffic or orders, something structural has shifted, a flow paused, a trigger broke, or audience filters drifted. Drawn as a line and sourced from flow-values-reports recipients data, excluding broadcast campaign sends.

What it counts	The number of emails (and SMS, where applicable) sent by flows in each interval of the period. Triggered automation sends only; broadcast campaigns are excluded.
API endpoint + statistics field	POST /api/flow-values-reports over the recipients statistic, aggregated across the merchant’s flows and bucketed per interval. Flow identity comes from GET /api/flows.
Flows vs campaigns	This is the flow side only. Campaign (broadcast) sends are tracked separately. Keeping them apart is deliberate: flows reflect customer behaviour, campaigns reflect the marketing calendar.
Why it is steadier	Flows fire on triggers spread across every hour and day, so volume rises and falls gently with customer activity rather than in calendar-driven spikes.
Email vs SMS aggregation	If flows include SMS steps, those sends are included alongside email unless the view is scoped to one channel.
Chart type	Line (time-series).
Time window	Selected period, bucketed by day or week.
Alert trigger	The line surfaces movement; a sudden drop with no matching fall in traffic or orders is the signal to investigate flow status and triggers.
Roles	owner, marketing

Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Klaviyo data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

Worked example

A health-foods brand on Shopify running eight live flows. The 30-day window covers 14 Mar 26 to 12 Apr 26. All figures are illustrative.

Day pattern (in window)	Flow sends / day	Campaign sends / day (for contrast)
Typical weekday	2,800 to 3,400	0 or 55,000 on send days
Typical weekend	2,300 to 2,900	0
02 Apr onward	drops to ~1,100	unchanged

Baseline daily flow sends   = ~3,000 (weekday midpoint)
Post-02 Apr daily flow sends = ~1,100
Drop                         = (3,000 - 1,100) / 3,000 = ~63% fall
Campaign sends over same days = unchanged

Five observations:

1. The flow-sends line is smooth until 02 Apr, then drops about 63 percent. Unlike the campaign line, which is zero most days and spikes to 55,000 on send days, the flow line sits in a tight band around 3,000 because automations fire steadily on customer triggers. That smoothness is exactly what makes the 02 Apr drop legible.
2. The drop is not explained by campaigns or traffic. Campaign sends are unchanged and, in this example, store orders held flat. A sharp fall in flow sends with no matching fall in the activity that triggers flows is a structural problem, not a demand problem.
3. The likely cause is a paused flow or a broken trigger. A 63 percent drop is too large for one minor flow; it points at a high-volume flow (welcome or browse abandonment) being switched to draft, or its trigger event ceasing to fire after an integration change around 02 Apr. The flow status breakdown is the first place to confirm.
4. Weekend dips are normal, not alarming. The gentle weekday-to-weekend taper reflects lower sign-up and purchase activity, which means fewer trigger events. A regular weekly rhythm is healthy; a cliff that ignores the weekly pattern is the warning.
5. This line is an early-warning sensor for the whole flow programme. Because flows generate a large share of email revenue, a silent collapse in flow sends precedes a revenue dip you would otherwise only notice later on the revenue cards. Watching this trend catches the break in days rather than weeks.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Flow Sends Trend is the automation-volume sensor. Pair it with these:

Card	Why pair it with Flow Sends Trend
Flows	The flow inventory. When sends drop, this is where you confirm which flow changed state.
Flow Count	The tally of flows. A change in count can explain a shift in total send volume.
Flow Status Breakdown	The live/draft/manual split. A high-volume flow slipping to draft is the classic cause of a send-volume drop.
Top 10 Flows by Revenue	Connects send volume to value. The flows driving the most sends should also be driving revenue.
Flow vs Campaign Revenue Mix	The revenue-side counterpart to this volume-side split between flows and campaigns.

Reconciling against Klaviyo

Where to look in Klaviyo:

• Analytics → Reports → Flow Performance for recipient counts by flow over time, the closest direct comparison to this line.
• Flows → [a flow] → Analytics for the per-flow recipient trend, useful for isolating which flow drove a change in the aggregate line.
• Analytics → Performance to see flows and campaigns side by side, which confirms that this card’s flow figure excludes the campaign volume.

Why our number may legitimately differ:

Reason	Direction of divergence
Time-zone. Klaviyo buckets in account time zone; Vortex IQ buckets in UTC. Sends near midnight can land in a different day.	Per-day count shifts; window total close.
Flow vs campaign scope. This line excludes campaign sends by design. A Klaviyo view that combines flows and campaigns will show a larger number.	Vortex IQ lower than a combined view.
Channel scope. If flows include SMS, those sends are included unless scoped to email. A Klaviyo email-only view will be lower.	Variable by channel filter.
Aggregation across flows. This line sums all flows; a single-flow Klaviyo view is naturally smaller.	Vortex IQ higher than a single-flow view.
Page caps. Flow and recipient reads paginate at 50 per page; large windows or many flows are assembled across pages with minor mid-pull drift possible.	Marginal.

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why is this line so much smoother than my campaign sends? Because flows fire on triggers that happen all day, every day, sign-ups, cart abandons, orders, while campaigns are scheduled blasts. The flow line tracks the steady rhythm of customer behaviour; the campaign line is zero most days and spikes on send days. The smoothness is a feature: it makes genuine breaks easy to spot.

Flow sends dropped sharply but my orders and traffic are flat. What happened? That combination almost always means a structural break, not a demand change. A high-volume flow has been switched to draft, or its trigger event has stopped firing after an integration or template change. Check the flow status breakdown first, then verify the trigger events are still arriving in Klaviyo.

Does this include campaign sends? No. This card is flows only, by design. Campaign (broadcast) volume is tracked separately so you can tell behaviour-driven sends from calendar-driven ones. For the two together, use Klaviyo’s combined performance view.

Does it include SMS? If your flows include SMS steps, those sends are included alongside email unless you scope the view to one channel. A flow’s SMS step counts as flow volume just as its email steps do.

A weekend dip shows every week. Is that a problem? No, that is the normal weekly rhythm. Fewer people sign up and buy at weekends, so fewer flow triggers fire and send volume tapers. The pattern that matters is a drop that ignores the weekly shape, a cliff on a weekday with no matching fall in activity.

Higher flow sends, is that always good? Not necessarily. Rising flow volume is healthy when it tracks rising sign-ups and orders. But a jump caused by a misconfigured flow looping or an over-broad audience filter is a deliverability risk. Read the trend against your traffic and order trends, and confirm any sudden rise corresponds to real customer activity.

Can I use this to forecast flow revenue? Loosely. Flow sends and flow revenue move together over time, so a sustained change in send volume usually precedes a change in flow revenue. For the actual revenue figures, read the top flows and flow revenue mix cards; use this line as the leading indicator.

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Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Flow Sends Trend is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Klaviyo and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English.

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