Product Updates
Introducing Predictive Flows, Powered by the All New Backstroke Hero 2
Audience-specific creative for the Klaviyo flows you already run, powered by our newest hero-image prediction model.
Your flows keep running. Their creative deserves regular attention, too.
A new collection launches. Your brand gets a new look. Your audience grows. Meanwhile, the same image keeps greeting customers in an email you last updated six months ago.
Campaigns have deadlines. Flow creative usually waits until someone has time.
Today, we’re upgrading Predictive Flows, a new Backstroke offering that brings predictive hero images to your existing Klaviyo flow emails. Our team helps source the creative, get it live and keep it fresh.
Powering it is Backstroke Hero 2, our newest model for predicting which hero image different audiences are most likely to click.
Together, they give your team a practical way to make flow creative more relevant, and test whether that relevance translates into better results.
Give Different Audiences Different Creative
The hero sets the tone and gives someone a reason to keep reading.
Choosing it often means settling on one image for everyone receiving that email. But different people respond to different creatives.
Consider three approved images for the same product: a lifestyle scene, a clean product shot and a design built around a bold headline. Each presents a different reason to pay attention.
Predictive Flows uses Hero 2 to score those options for different audience groups and select the image each group is predicted to click.
Your team approves the creative. Backstroke helps match it to the audience.
Meet Backstroke Hero 2
Hero 2 evaluates the image itself alongside six demographic features to make its predictions.
That gives it a more detailed view of an audience, serving approximately 28,350 possible audience segments, compared with approximately 300 in Hero 1. Finer age and income bands help it distinguish groups that the earlier model treated alike.
In an internal offline evaluation across 50 past campaigns, Hero 2 selected 92% of the candidate images for at least one segment. A comparison model using Hero 1’s four demographic features selected 71%.
In practical terms, more of the available creative found an audience it was predicted to suit. Those figures describe model selections, not a measured increase in clicks or revenue.
We also tested whether Hero 2 could identify the image with the higher historical click rate. Across 335 image pairs from three brands, it picked correctly 66% of the time, compared with 57% for a general-purpose language model shown the same images and brand.
That’s encouraging evidence, with an important limit: the paired images generally appeared in different campaigns. Offers, timing and other campaign differences could influence their click rates. Live testing is how we evaluate whether the predictions help in practice.
Put It to Work in Your Existing Flows
Predictive Flows brings the model into a process our team manages with yours:
Choose a flow worth refreshing. We identify an existing flow where creative needs attention and there’s enough activity to evaluate a change.
Build and approve the creative set. We can work from your image library or help produce new hero options aligned with your brand.
Predict and install. Hero 2 ranks the options for each audience group. Our team places the predictive hero block into your existing Klaviyo email.
Review and refresh. We review performance and bring in new creative as your brand, seasons, and results call for it.
Your team continues managing flows in Klaviyo, with Backstroke handling the predictive creative inside the emails.
Measure What Happens After the Prediction
Hero 2 predicts clicks on the hero image. Revenue is a separate outcome we need to measure.
For Predictive Flows, we’ll work with your team to compare the predictive creative against your existing version, with a control group receiving the original email. We’ll evaluate clicks, orders and revenue per recipient to understand what changed.
When there isn’t enough activity to draw a conclusion, we’ll say so.
The model also needs meaningful creative options. A lifestyle scene, a product shot and a headline-led design give it different approaches to evaluate. Small color changes to the same image give it less room to personalize.
PEARL iZUMi: Predictive Creative in a Welcome Flow
PEARL iZUMi tested Backstroke’s predictive hero creative in its Klaviyo welcome email for subscribers who hadn’t yet purchased. The test began on July 16, 2026, comparing the existing hero with creative selected for different audience groups.
In the test snapshot shown in the September deck, the version identified as Backstroke recorded a 16.86% click rate, compared with 15.24% for the control. That’s a 1.62 percentage-point difference, or approximately 11% relative click-rate lift.
The snapshot covered 1,728 deliveries across the two versions: 142 recipients clicked out of 842 deliveries in Variation A, compared with 135 out of 886 in Variation B.
It’s an early example of predictive creative working inside an existing flow. This test predates Hero 2, and the snapshot alone doesn’t establish statistical significance or a revenue-lift claim.
Start With Your Next Flow Refresh
Predictive Flows is built for ecommerce teams already running Klaviyo flows and ready to give their creative some attention.
Maybe a seasonal refresh is coming up. Maybe you have a new image library ready to use. Maybe an important flow has been running the same creative for longer than you’d like.
Bring us that flow.
We’ll show you how Predictive Flows and Hero 2 would fit, discuss the creative options, and map out how we’d evaluate the results together.
