How to segment a Klaviyo list by purchase behaviour

Split a Klaviyo audience by what people bought: never-bought, one-time, repeat and VIP buyers, lapsed customers, product buyers and order value, with a consent check.

What this is for

A segment in Klaviyo is a group defined by rules rather than by who signed up where. Segments built on purchases let you send a first-order nudge to people who have never bought, a new-arrivals email to repeat buyers and a quiet check-in to customers who have gone missing, instead of one email to everyone. Klaviyo's own help centre puts the difference in revenue terms. source, checked 28 September 2026

This guide builds a set of segments on the Placed Order event from your Shopify store. Together they sort your whole audience by where each person is in their buying life, and each one takes a few minutes in the segment builder.

Time needed and what you need

Time needed: about 90 minutes. Each segment takes five to ten minutes to define; the rest is waiting for the larger ones to populate and checking their counts add up.

A Klaviyo account with the Shopify integration syncing orders
Rough numbers from Shopify: how many customers you have and how many have ordered more than once
A view on how often a typical customer reorders, even a guess, for the lapsed segment
Access to Audience, then Lists and segments, in Klaviyo

The steps

Build the segments in this order. The first three cover every profile once, which makes the counts easy to check.

1. Check that Placed Order data is arriving

Every segment on this page reads the Placed Order event that the Shopify integration sends. Open the metrics list and confirm Placed Order shows recent activity from Shopify. Without it, the order-count segments stay empty and Klaviyo cannot work out anyone's order value. source, checked 28 September 2026

2. Build a never-purchased segment

Create a segment with one condition: what someone has done, Placed Order, zero times over all time. These are subscribers who like you enough to sign up but have not bought. They are the audience for first-order offers, reviews and bestseller emails.

Be careful when you combine a zero-times rule with anything else. With an OR between conditions, a person only has to meet one of them, so a negative condition can pull in far more people than you meant. Use AND unless you are sure. source, checked 28 September 2026

3. Build a one-time buyer segment

Placed Order equals 1 over all time. This group has trusted you once. The second order is the hard one, so this segment gets care tips for what they bought, a matching product and a reason to come back, not your full catalogue.

4. Build repeat and VIP segments

Repeat purchasers are anyone with two or more orders. Klaviyo's help centre gives the exact condition. source, checked 28 September 2026

For a VIP segment, clone that segment and raise the number. Klaviyo's example uses four orders; pick the count that leaves you with a group small enough to treat properly, such as early access or a handwritten note in the parcel. source, checked 28 September 2026

5. Build a lapsed customer segment

Use two conditions joined with AND: Placed Order at least once over all time, and Placed Order zero times in the last 120 days. Set the number of days from your own reorder cycle. If Klaviyo's predictive analytics are switched on for your account, profiles show an average time between orders, which is a better starting point than a guess. source, checked 28 September 2026

Predictive fields only appear once your store has enough history. Klaviyo lists the requirements, including a minimum number of customers who have ordered. source, checked 28 September 2026

6. Build segments for a product or collection

Add a Placed Order condition, then filter it by a property of the order, such as the item names or the collection. This is how you find everyone who bought the starter kit but not the refill. Only the top-level properties of the event appear in the filter list, so if a detail you need is missing, it is nested inside the order data and cannot be used. source, checked 28 September 2026

7. Split high and low order value customers

Klaviyo's predictive analytics include each profile's average order value, and you can segment on it directly. Work out your store's own average order value first, then use it as the dividing line. Klaviyo's example uses $100. source, checked 28 September 2026

High-value customers see new and premium products. Lower-value customers see bundles and the offers that lift a basket past your free shipping line.

8. Add a consent condition to every segment you email

A segment pulls from every profile in the account, including customers who bought but never agreed to marketing. Before you send a campaign to any of these segments, add the condition that the person can receive email marketing. Leave it off only for segments you use for reporting or ad audiences. source, checked 28 September 2026

Never purchased + can receive email marketing
One-time buyers + can receive email marketing
Repeat, VIP and lapsed buyers + can receive email marketing

9. Check the counts add up

Never purchased plus one-time buyers plus repeat purchasers should equal everyone in the account. If the total is off, one segment has an OR where it needs an AND, or a time window where it needs over all time. Fix it before you send anything to it.

A worked example

For a coffee roaster store with 14,000 profiles in Klaviyo
Worked example (an invented store, with invented numbers)
The roaster's never-purchased segment holds 8,200 profiles, one-time buyers 3,900 and repeat purchasers 1,900. 8,200 + 3,900 + 1,900 = 14,000, so the three segments cover the account with no overlap.
Of the 1,900 repeat purchasers, 450 have at least four orders and go into the VIP segment. Predictive analytics show an average of about 34 days between orders, so the lapsed segment uses 90 days without an order: 1,300 of the 5,800 buyers fall into it.
Adding the email consent condition trims the never-purchased segment from 8,200 to 7,600, because 600 of those profiles came from a wholesale import with no marketing consent. Those 600 stay out of every campaign.

Common mistakes

Sending to a segment the moment you create it. Large segments take time to fill, and a campaign scheduled too early goes to a fraction of the people it should. source, checked 28 September 2026

Using a list where a segment belongs. A list only changes when people join or leave it. A lapsed buyer who orders again should drop out of the lapsed group on their own, and only a segment does that. source, checked 28 September 2026

Setting the lapsed window without looking at your reorder cycle. Thirty days is lapsed for a coffee subscription and perfectly normal for a winter coat. Start from your own time between orders, not from another store's example.

Building ten segments and emailing none of them differently. A segment is only worth building if at least one email or offer changes because of it. Write down which campaign each segment is for before you build it.

Doing this with Tilly

Tilly does not build Klaviyo segments. What it does next to this job is describe the people inside them: its free audit needs only a store URL, reads your storefront, reviews and marketing, and builds customer personas, which help you decide what each segment should be sent. See how to find your Shopify customer personas.

When the email marketing agent writes a campaign, it costs 10 credits and lands in Klaviyo as a draft, so you choose which of your segments it goes to before anything is sent.

Questions people ask

Can I build a segment for a product nobody has bought yet?

Yes. The value list only shows products that have already been ordered, but you can paste the exact product name into the value box and use it. Once orders for that product arrive, the segment fills. source, checked 28 September 2026

Should I build a segment or a flow for this?

Use a segment for one-off campaigns to a group. If you want an email to go automatically when someone does something, such as buying a particular product, a flow triggered by Placed Order with a filter does the same job without the segment. source, checked 28 September 2026

What do I send to the lapsed segment?

Start with a short, low-pressure email and hold any discount for a second one. The guide on winning back lapsed customers walks through the sequence.

See this on your own store

Paste your store URL. The first pass takes about a minute and needs no account. Save a card (nothing is charged) and Tilly reads the whole store and works out who buys from you.