The journey, not the send. This funnel tracks people moving from subscriber to first purchase to repeat purchaser, which is a different question from whether one email got opened.
At a glance
Lifecycle Funnel plots the customer journey through lifecycle stages, for example subscriber, engaged, first purchase, and repeat purchaser, stage by stage. It is deliberately DIFFERENT from the Engagement Funnel, which is a per-send mechanic: sent, delivered, opened, clicked. The engagement funnel asks “what happened to this email”; the lifecycle funnel asks “where is this customer in their relationship with the brand”. The drop-off between lifecycle stages tells you where customers stall: a wide subscriber-to-first-purchase gap is an activation problem, while a wide first-to-repeat gap is a retention problem. Stages are derived from profile and order history rather than from any single campaign.
| What it counts | The count of customers at each lifecycle stage (for example subscriber, engaged, first purchase, repeat purchaser), shown as a descending funnel. |
| API endpoint + statistics field | Derived from profile state, engagement events and Placed Order history via GET /api/metrics and GET /api/metric-aggregates, bucketed into lifecycle stages. |
| Attribution model | A customer-state funnel, not a per-send attribution metric, so the 5-day click and 1-day view window does not gate stage membership. |
| Email vs SMS aggregation | Channel-agnostic. Stage membership reflects the customer’s overall relationship, not which channel reached them. |
| Chart type | Funnel (descending stages, one bar per stage). |
| Time window | Selected period (default 30 days) for stage transitions; some stages reflect cumulative profile state. |
| Alert trigger | A widening drop-off at any single stage transition versus the prior period, for example first-purchase to repeat shrinking. |
| 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
An illustrative homeware brand on Shopify using Klaviyo. The 30-day window covers 14 Mar 26 to 12 Apr 26. Figures are illustrative and chosen to show stage shape.| Lifecycle stage | Customers | Stage-to-stage conversion |
|---|---|---|
| Subscriber (on list) | 80,000 | - |
| Engaged (opened or clicked recently) | 28,000 | 35% of subscribers |
| First purchase | 6,200 | 22% of engaged |
| Repeat purchaser | 1,500 | 24% of first-time buyers |
- This is not the engagement funnel. No sent, delivered, opened or clicked rows appear here. These are people at stages of a relationship, derived from profile and order history, not the fate of a single email. Keep the two funnels mentally separate.
- The subscriber-to-engaged drop is the activation gap. Only 35 percent of subscribers are engaged. A large dormant base drags the whole funnel; a welcome flow and re-engagement programme widen the top.
- Engaged-to-first-purchase at 22 percent is the conversion stage. This is where browse-abandonment and first-purchase incentive flows do their work. A weak number here is a content and offer problem, not a list problem.
- First-to-repeat at 24 percent is the retention stage. This is the same loyalty signal that Repeat Purchasers counts as an absolute number. A narrow transition here is the most expensive leak, because re-earning a lost first-time buyer costs more than nurturing them.
- Find the narrowest transition and fix that. Effort spent widening an already-healthy stage returns little. The lifecycle funnel exists to point you at the single stage where customers stall.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Read these alongside Lifecycle Funnel to understand each stage and to keep it distinct from the per-send funnel.| Card | Why pair it with Lifecycle Funnel |
|---|---|
| Engagement Funnel | The per-send funnel (sent, delivered, opened, clicked). Read it to avoid confusing email mechanics with customer lifecycle. |
| Active Subscribers | Sizes the top of this funnel, the subscriber and engaged stages. |
| Predicted CLV Tiers | Adds a value dimension: which lifecycle stages hold the high-CLV customers. |
| Repeat Purchasers | The absolute count behind this funnel’s deepest stage. |
| Top Segments by Revenue Send | Surfaces which segments map to each stage so you can target the narrowest transition. |
Reconciling against Klaviyo
Where to look in Klaviyo: Klaviyo does not ship a single lifecycle funnel chart, so this card composes it from segment counts. Build segments under Audience → Lists & Segments for each stage (all subscribers, engaged in last 30 days, has placed one order, has placed two or more orders) and read each profile count. Klaviyo’s Analytics → Customers and any RFM dashboards offer adjacent cohort views. Why our number may legitimately differ:| Reason | Direction of divergence |
|---|---|
| Stage-definition choices. “Engaged” and “repeat” depend on thresholds (engagement recency, order count). A segment built with different rules counts differently. | Direct function of the definitions used |
| Time zone. Klaviyo evaluates dates in the account time zone; Vortex IQ defaults to UTC. Boundary transitions can shift. | Small count difference at the window edge |
| Cumulative vs windowed stages. Some stages reflect cumulative profile state and some reflect transitions in the window. Mixing the two when comparing to Klaviyo segments causes apparent gaps. | Either direction, definition-dependent |
| Profile merging. Duplicate profiles not yet merged can place one customer in two stages until Klaviyo reconciles them. | Either direction until profiles merge |
| Event coverage. Stage membership depends on engagement and order events reaching Klaviyo. Integration gaps undercount the lower stages. | Lower stages can understate |