Claude for email marketing: six workflows, in order
What Claude can do for a DTC email program, which decision each workflow makes, and the order to run them in.
Claude for email marketing works best as six workflows run in order: find where your list leaks, fix the welcome flow, design the emails, write the subject lines, QA every send, then turn what you learned into a LinkedIn post. Each workflow makes one decision with your real data and hands you a first draft to review. Order matters because each step feeds the next: a sharper subject line can't save a list that leaks at signup, and a good-looking email can't rescue a welcome flow that loses people on day one.
This guide is the map for Shopify and other ecommerce brands. For each workflow you get what it decides, what you give Claude, what you get back, and a link to its own guide and its skill. You can use the method with or without the skills: each guide explains the steps and gives you a prompt, and the skill runs the same steps the same way every time.
Many public pages on Claude for email are lists of prompts. A prompt list gives you output, but it doesn't tell you which problem to solve first or how to check what comes back. This guide adds the two missing parts: a method for each step, and a review step before anything reaches a subscriber.
01What Claude can do for email marketing
Claude reads what you give it, reasons about it, and writes. For an email program that covers diagnosis, planning, copy, HTML and review. It doesn't know your numbers, your margins or your customers unless you tell it, so every workflow below starts from your own data. Here are the six, with the decision each one makes:
List leak finder decides whether your list leaks at acquisition, conversion or retention.
Welcome flow decides how many welcome emails you send, what each one says, and who gets which version.
Email designer decides the layout, blocks and copy of a Klaviyo-ready email built from your own site and photos.
Subject lines decides which subject line and preview text go out, and what to A/B test.
Pre-send QA decides whether an email is ready to send, check by check.
Email to LinkedIn decides which real lesson from your program becomes a post, and its one CTA.
Claude can also connect to your email platform. Klaviyo's blog says its MCP server lets you build editable templates from Claude. Mailchimp has a help page for its own Claude connector. Those connections handle the plumbing. The workflows here handle the thinking: which problem to fix, in which order, and how to check the result.
Five of the six skills are free: you get them by email when you join the Margarita Creative newsletter. The list leak finder costs $2 on its own page. All six are on the resources page.
02Workflows 1 and 2: find the leak, then fix the welcome
1. List leak finder. Use this when signups feel flat and you don't know why. It asks where the list is losing people before it suggests any fix, because more popups won't help if the real problem is people leaving after they join.
- What it decides: whether the leak sits in acquisition (too few of the right people reach your signup), conversion (they reach it and don't join) or retention (they join, then unsubscribe or go quiet). Each stage needs different fixes, so this call comes first.
- What you give it: signups over a set period, form or popup views and submissions if you have them, unsubscribes for the same period, and where your forms appear on the site.
- What you get: a diagnosis of where the list is actually leaking, the reasoning behind it, and targeted fixes for that stage. If a number is missing, ask Claude to name it instead of guessing.
Guide: Why your email list is not growing. Skill: / ($2).
2. Welcome flow. Once you know people are arriving, the welcome flow is where they decide whether your emails are worth opening. It runs on its own once it's built, so time spent here pays back on every new subscriber.
- What it decides: how long the sequence should be, the angle of each email, and the routing logic: which segment gets which version.
- What you give it: your signup offer, where subscribers come from, the segments you can actually tell apart (for example, first-time visitors versus returning ones, or a quiz answer), your bestsellers, and a few lines on your brand voice.
- What you get: a 3 to 7 email welcome sequence with per-segment copy angles, subject lines, and routing logic you can build in Klaviyo.
Guide: How to build a Klaviyo welcome flow with Claude. Skill: / (free).
03Workflows 3 to 5: design, subject lines and QA for every send
3. Email designer. This workflow produces the email itself, for campaigns and for flows.
- What it decides: layout, blocks, visual style and copy for each email, based on your site and your brief.
- What you give it: a brand link, a folder of product photos, and your hex colors. Add a campaign or flow brief if you have one.
- What you get: finished, Klaviyo-ready emails: subjects A and B, preview text, copy in your brand voice, client-safe HTML for Gmail, Outlook and dark mode, a Klaviyo import zip, and notes on anything it inferred. Every product, price, offer and review comes from your site or your brief, or the block is dropped.
The skill has 13 visual styles, 31 blocks, 56 niches, welcome, abandoned checkout, browse, post-purchase and winback flows, and 8 popup designs. It runs in Claude, Claude Code and Google Antigravity, and it is free and open source (MIT) on GitHub. Guide: AI Klaviyo email templates with Claude. Skill: /, with a live before-and-after demo.
4. Subject lines. Write these after the email exists, because a subject line has to describe what's inside honestly. It's also the easiest part of an email to test, so it's a good place to build an A/B testing habit.
- What it decides: which subject line and preview text pair goes out, and what to test against it.
- What you give it: the finished email or its main message, the segment it goes to, and past subject lines with their open rates if you track them.
- What you get: 5 to 10 lines under 50 characters, grouped by approach (curiosity, value-forward, specific, personalization, direct), preview text, and an A/B test recommendation. It also critiques lines you already wrote.
Guide: Ecommerce email subject lines with Claude. Skill: / (free).
5. Pre-send QA. The last check before anything goes out, and the step most prompt lists leave out.
- What it decides: PASS or FAIL per check, so you know whether to send or fix.
- What you give it: the HTML email or the draft, with its subject line and preview text.
- What you get: a plain note for each check: one primary CTA, no fake urgency, footer and legal, subject honesty, a dark-mode logo note, and no invented facts.
For a fast mechanical pass, the free in-browser Email QA Checker on the resources page runs 8 checks, including dashes, alt text, unresolved merge tags and dead links. Use both: the checker catches typos in the build, the skill reviews judgment calls like urgency and honesty. Guide: The pre-send email QA checklist. Skill: / (free).
04Workflow 6: turn what you learned into a LinkedIn post
6. Email to LinkedIn. After a few weeks of running the first five, you will know something real about your list that you didn't know before. This workflow turns that into a post that sounds like you, which is useful for founders and email marketers who want to build an audience without inventing results.
- What it decides: which observation is worth posting, and the one honest CTA that goes with it.
- What you give it: a real observation from your own program, for example where the leak finder said your list was leaking or which welcome email got replies, plus two or three of your past posts so Claude can match your voice.
- What you get: a LinkedIn post, a note outline, and one honest CTA, in your own voice.
The rule here is the same as everywhere else: the observation has to be true. If you didn't see it in your own numbers, don't post it. Guide: Turn email lessons into LinkedIn posts. Skill: / (free).
05Where to start
If you're starting from zero, run the workflows in the order they're numbered. Each step makes the next one worth more.
- Find the leak first. Run the list leak finder once, on real numbers, before you change anything else. It tells you where to spend the next month.
- Then fix the welcome flow. It is the first impression for every new subscriber, and once it's built it keeps working without you.
- Then make design, subject lines and QA a weekly habit. Every campaign goes through the same three steps: design the email, pick the subject line and preview text, run QA before it's scheduled.
- Then write one post from what you learned. Once a month is enough. Take one real finding and turn it into a LinkedIn post.
Run the leak finder again a month after your changes go live, with the same kind of numbers, so you can see whether the leak moved.
06The prompt
Every workflow starts the same way: name the skill (or paste the method from its guide), attach real data, and tell Claude to list what's missing instead of filling the gaps itself. Copy this and fill in the brackets.
Use the [SKILL NAME] skill to [TASK].
My brand: [BRAND NAME], [WEBSITE URL]
What I sell: [PRODUCTS AND PRICE RANGE]
Attached: [YOUR REAL DATA, FOR EXAMPLE A 90-DAY EXPORT OF SIGNUPS AND UNSUBSCRIBES]
Rules:
1. Use only the data I attached and my website. Do not invent numbers, products, prices, offers or reviews.
2. Before you start, list any input you need that I have not given you. Ask for it instead of guessing.
3. Mark anything you inferred so I can check it.
4. End with the one decision you recommend and why.Without a skill, replace the first line with the method from that workflow's guide. The rules stay the same. If Claude comes back with a list of missing inputs, that's the prompt working: get the data, then run it again.
07Three rules for using Claude on your email program
- Keep private data out. Don't paste customer names, email addresses, phone numbers or order details into Claude. Use counts, rates and anonymized exports. A list diagnosis only needs the numbers.
- Every fact comes from you. Products, prices, offers, reviews and numbers must come from your site, your email platform or your brief. If Claude can't point to where a fact came from, drop it.
- Treat output as a first draft. Read it, edit it, and run QA before anything reaches a subscriber. You own what gets sent.
How to check the output, for any of the six workflows:
- Every number in the output matches a number you gave it.
- Every product, price and offer exists on your site today.
- Anything Claude inferred is marked, and you've confirmed or removed it.
- The output ends with one clear decision you can act on this week.
- Any email it produced passed pre-send QA before you scheduled it.
08Quick answers
Does Claude connect to Klaviyo or Mailchimp?
Yes, through each platform's own integration. Klaviyo says its MCP server lets you build editable templates from Claude, and Mailchimp has a Claude connector. The workflows in this guide work either way, because they start from data you export or attach.
Do I need the skills to use these workflows?
No. Each workflow has a guide that explains the method and gives you a prompt you can paste into Claude. The skills run the same method the same way every time, so you don't have to rebuild the prompt.
Which workflow should I start with?
Start with the list leak finder. It tells you whether your list loses people at acquisition, conversion or retention, and that decides where the rest of your effort goes. Fix the welcome flow next.
Are the skills free?
Five of the six are free and arrive by email when you join the Margarita Creative newsletter. The list leak finder costs $2 on its own page. The email designer is also open source under the MIT license.
Will Claude make up facts in my emails?
It can if you let it. Give it your real site and data, tell it to drop anything it can't source, and run pre-send QA, which includes a no-invented-facts check.