How to Use AI for E-Commerce Email Marketing (Omnisend vs Klaviyo)
Email remains the highest-ROI marketing channel for e-commerce, and this guide shows how AI makes it faster to build the welcome, abandoned cart, and post-purchase flows every store needs.
Email is still the highest-ROI marketing channel for e-commerce stores. Research consistently puts the average return at around $36 for every $1 spent — higher than paid social, higher than SEO, higher than almost anything else. The challenge is that doing email well has traditionally required either significant time or a specialist.
AI is changing that. Modern email platforms have AI features that write subject lines, generate copy variations, predict optimal send times, and build audience segments automatically. In this article, we'll cover how to use AI to set up the three email flows every store needs, then compare Omnisend and Klaviyo on their AI capabilities.
Why these three flows come first
Before you send a single promotional email, you need three automated flows running in the background: the welcome sequence (for new subscribers), the abandoned cart sequence (for people who left without buying), and the post-purchase sequence (for customers after their first order). These three flows, set up once, work continuously and generate income without any ongoing effort.
AI makes building these flows faster than ever — even if you've never written marketing email before.
Building your welcome sequence with AI
A welcome sequence typically runs three to five emails over seven to ten days. The goal is to introduce your brand, establish trust, and move new subscribers toward a first purchase.
Here's a prompt that produces a solid three-email welcome sequence:
Write a three-email welcome sequence for an e-commerce store selling [product category].
Email 1 (send immediately): Welcome the subscriber, introduce the brand story briefly, set expectations for what they'll receive, include a 10% discount code.
Email 2 (send day 3): Feature the store's best-selling product with a short description of why customers love it and a clear link to the product page.
Email 3 (send day 7): Social proof focus — share a customer review or two, remind them the discount code expires soon.
Tone: [warm/professional/playful — choose one]. Brand name: [your brand].Run this in ChatGPT or Jasper and you'll have three email drafts in two minutes. Edit to add your specific product details, discount code, and any brand-specific language.
Building your abandoned cart sequence with AI
Abandoned cart emails are the single highest-converting automated emails in e-commerce, typically recovering 5–15% of carts that would otherwise be lost. The standard approach is three emails:
- Email 1 (one hour after abandonment): Gentle reminder, no pressure
- Email 2 (24 hours after): More explicit reminder, potentially add a small incentive
- Email 3 (72 hours after): Final reminder with urgency ("your cart expires soon")
Prompt:
Write a three-email abandoned cart sequence for an e-commerce store. The customer added items to their cart but didn't purchase.
Email 1: Friendly, non-pushy reminder. Acknowledge they might have been busy. No discount yet.
Email 2: Re-engage with product benefits and a small incentive (free shipping or 10% off). Include the product name as a variable: {{product_name}}.
Email 3: Final reminder with mild urgency. Let them know their cart will clear soon. Reiterate the offer from email 2.
Tone: conversational and human, not corporate. Store name: [your store name].Both Omnisend and Klaviyo have drag-and-drop builders where you can set these flows up and insert your AI-written copy directly.
Omnisend AI features: tested
Omnisend's AI writing assistant is built directly into the email editor. Highlight any text block and click the AI button to get rewrite suggestions, tone adjustments, or subject line options. It's quick and works well for short copy — headlines, CTAs, short paragraphs.
Omnisend's AI subject line generator is genuinely useful. Input your email topic and it generates five subject line variants. In our tests, at least two of the five were strong enough to use or adapt.
For segmentation, Omnisend's AI recommends audiences based on purchase behaviour — it will suggest sending a campaign to "customers who bought X in the last 90 days but haven't purchased since" with one click. This kind of targeted sending significantly improves engagement rates.
Standout feature: Omnisend's send time optimisation uses AI to predict when each individual contact is most likely to open email. This runs automatically without any setup.
Free plan: 500 emails per month, all automation features included. This is genuinely generous — most competing tools lock automation behind paid plans.
Klaviyo AI features: tested
Klaviyo's AI capabilities are deeper but require more configuration to unlock. Its predictive analytics model assigns every contact a predicted lifetime value, predicted next purchase date, and churn risk score. These predictions are surprisingly accurate once your store has 60+ days of purchase data, and they enable segmentation that Omnisend can't match.
For example: you can build a Klaviyo segment of "high-lifetime-value customers who are predicted to churn in the next 30 days" and send them a personalised win-back campaign. That level of targeting is genuinely powerful.
Klaviyo's AI subject line generator produces similar results to Omnisend's. Its email copy AI is newer and slightly less polished — for serious email copywriting, you're still better off using Jasper or ChatGPT and pasting the result in.
Standout feature: Predictive lifetime value and churn prediction, which enable the kind of targeted campaigns that drive serious revenue for larger stores.
Free plan: Up to 500 contacts, 500 email sends per month. Less generous than Omnisend at the free tier.
Head-to-head: same abandoned cart email in both
We built the same abandoned cart flow in both platforms using identical copy. In Omnisend, the flow was live in about 25 minutes — the builder is intuitive and the integration with Shopify is seamless. In Klaviyo, the same flow took about 40 minutes, mostly because the flow builder has more options and requires more decisions.
Omnisend's visual builder is cleaner and faster. Klaviyo's is more powerful but has a steeper learning curve.
Our recommendation by store size
New store (under $5k monthly revenue): Start with Omnisend's free plan. Set up your three core flows using AI-written copy from ChatGPT. Check results monthly. You can grow to $20k+ monthly revenue without leaving the free plan.
Growing store ($5k–$50k monthly revenue): Omnisend's paid plan ($16–$59/month depending on list size) gives you more sends and SMS capabilities. Still the right choice unless your email strategy is sophisticated.
Established store ($50k+ monthly): Klaviyo's predictive analytics become genuinely valuable at this scale. The more purchase data Klaviyo has to work with, the better its predictions get, and better predictions mean more targeted campaigns and higher ROI.
Bonus: prompts to use if you just want ChatGPT for email
If you're not ready for either platform, ChatGPT alone can write all your email copy. Save these prompts:
- Subject lines: "Write 5 email subject lines for a [type of email] for a [product category] store. Make them varied: one curiosity-led, one benefit-led, one urgency-based, one question-based, one playful."
- Short email body: "Write a 100-word email body for [purpose]. Tone: [tone]. Brand name: [name]. Key message: [message]. End with a clear CTA button text."