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Date-based property flows are great ways to set up automated touchpoints inside Klaviyo to drive recurring revenue and also deliver great experiences to your customers.
Here are some of my favourite ways to leverage the date-based property flow:
1: Purchase Anniversaries
These work well for stores that don’t have a high frequency of campaigns, but people may have purchased for a special occasion (i.e. a gift for a significant other).
This is because the original purchase date usually coincides with a special occasion.
Here’s an example of how the flow trigger would be configured (remember, you’ll want to go in early to give the recipient some time to make a purchase, depending on the context of your messaging and the nature of your store):
An example of how the email may look for the first touchpoint:
Then, depending on how many touch points you want to send out before then, you would also send another email out on the actual date of the first purchase:
2: Birthdays
Most birthday flows simply deliver a coupon before and on the customer's birthday. It works, but it's fairly played out at this point.
I've written a full breakdown of how to make a birthday flow genuinely good rather than another 10%-off email - if that's what you're after, go read that one, it goes much deeper than I will here.
What I'd add on top of a good birthday flow: keep progressively profiling customers throughout the year to actually collect more birthdays, rather than relying only on signup-form capture. You can do this with periodic campaigns that redirect to your preference centre, the same mechanism covered in the zero-party data section below.
3: Using Zero-Party Data for special occasions
This is by far my favourite and most creative way to use the date-based property in Klaviyo, which I outlined in the video above.
Depending on the store you’re working with, you can use it to collect anniversaries, special gifting occasions and more.
You’ll first want to put some effort into personalising your preference centre (a big missed opportunity for most brands) since this is where you’ll redirect a lot of customers to input this information:
As you can see, you have a lot of room to play here and literally unlimited fields to collect this information.
The two main places to capture this zero-party data include:
- Progressive profiling campaigns (as shown above)
- Signup forms (for new and returning customers)
One of the mistakes I see a lot of brands make is not using signup forms for returning customers as they think once they’ve offered them a discount for the first purchase, their job is done.
But if you get creative by targeting returning customers with signup forms, you have a mountain of room for creativity by using zero-party data to deliver really cool experiences.
Conclusion
Don’t sleep on date-based property flows.
They can be creative, drive incremental revenue, and, where relevant, deliver exceptional experiences to customers that lead to Word of Mouth advocacy.
Experiment with some of the above, and be sure to tell me if you have any additional ideas on Twitter. Check out our newsletter too for more insider insights into eCommerce email marketing.
FAQ
What date formats does Klaviyo accept for a date property?
Several: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM:SS, ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS), and Unix timestamps, among others. The bigger gotcha isn't the format though - see the next question.
Why did my Klaviyo date-triggered flow send a day early or late?
Almost always a timezone issue. If you import a date without a timestamp, Klaviyo defaults it to midnight UTC, which can push the flow's send a day off depending on your account's timezone. Klaviyo's own fix: if you're not including a timestamp, map the property as text rather than date, or explicitly set the time to 00:00:00 if you do use the date type.
What's the difference between a date property flow and a birthday flow in Klaviyo?
A birthday flow is one specific use case of the broader date-property-triggered flow type. This article covers two other use cases that get far less attention: purchase anniversary flows (great for stores with lower campaign frequency or gift-driven purchases) and flows triggered off zero-party data you've collected, like a partner's birthday or a specific gifting occasion. For birthday flows specifically, this article goes much deeper.
How far in advance can a Klaviyo flow trigger before a date property?
Klaviyo lets you trigger any number of days, weeks or months ahead of the actual date, then anchors the rest of the flow to that date. For a purchase anniversary flow, that means you can go in early enough to give the recipient time to actually act before the date arrives.
Can I use a date property flow for something other than birthdays or purchase anniversaries?
Yes - any date you can capture as a profile property works, which is really the point of this article. Anniversaries, renewal dates, a partner's birthday, a pet's adoption day, whatever's relevant to your store's zero-party data strategy. The mechanism (progressive profiling + preference centre capture) is the same regardless of what the date represents.
Related Reads Curated for You
If you enjoyed this Klaviyo guide, we're pretty sure you'd enjoy the other parts in this series:
- How Does Klaviyo Work? A Helpful Guide
- How to create a Net Promoter Score Flow in Klaviyo
- How to create a Segmentation strategy in Klaviyo
- How to create an epic Post-Purchase Flow in Klaviyo
- How to Implement Qualitative Research in Klaviyo
- How to use Klaviyo's Predictive Analytics
- How to Use Klaviyo: Learn the 5 Big Mistakes to Avoid
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