Simply put, if you want your company to grow, build lasting customer relationships, and become a juggernaut in your industry, Klaviyo is the secret weapon you’ve been looking for.
Here’s a quick overview explaining why Klaviyo is not just another email marketing software, but rather the ultimate growth tool that separates the dropshippers from the RFB’s. (Real Flippin’ Businesses)
Like email marketing itself, Klaviyo is an extremely underutilized – and incredibly powerful – revenue source. When used properly, this marketing machine can not only become an evergreen source of revenue, but can also set you apart from the competition.
Unlike other ESPs, Klaviyo lets you hyper-target your messaging, ensuring that every contact receives the appropriate messaging for their current step in their customer journey.
Gone are the days of “Newsletter Blasts”; the era of customers actually opening and engaging with your emails (and texts) has arrived. With paid advertising platforms censoring, suspending, and banning accounts with no reason or warning, your brand needs a way to effectively communicate with your audience if it’s going to survive – and Klaviyo is the best way to do this.
On the surface, Klaviyo is an email & SMS marketing platform. What sets it apart is its ability to utilize these unique data points to send emails and texts that contacts will appreciate receiving. Through this, new marketing opportunities take shape, and you can begin making data-driven decisions – no more hunches or guesses.
Absolutely. The traditional definition of an ecommerce CRM is a tool that can be used to manage a business’ relationship with customers. Through sign-up forms, messaging channels, analytics, and much, much more, Klaviyo lets you initiate, effectively engage with, and nurture customer relationships through the following features.
Although website behavior tracking apps are useful to see trends, they lack the capability to contact customers or prospects based on these trends. Through web tracking snippets, Klaviyo uses a subscriber’s email address allows to track the following behaviors out-of-the-box:
See when contacts are browsing your store as well as what they were looking at for how long.
Klaviyo tracks which products the profile viewed, the time it was viewed for, actions taken on that product page, and any other products that were viewed in chronological order. (This requires minor additional installation, outlined in more detail here.)
You can also track custom behaviors such as Added to Cart (When a contact clicks the ‘Add to Cart’ button), Viewed Collection, Viewed Blog, Submitted Review, and many others. NOTE: Submitted Review can be broken down further depending on the app installed. I recommend stamped.io or Loox.
Get individuals’ website & purchase behavior insights by plugging their email address in the search bar. This will pull up that person’s Klaviyo profile, where you can see all of their behavior on your site.
Using these behaviors, you can use Klaviyo to create segments around these behaviors, so you can send a more relevant message.
Customer data that syncs into Klaviyo depends on the ecommerce platform you’re using for your store. For a full list of native integrations, including Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento 1 & 2, head over to their Ecommerce Integrations page.
With all of these integrations, Klaviyo makes it easy to identify contacts that carry out various purchase behaviors and send them or prevent them from receiving messaging.
NOTE: There is a detailed overview of Shopify towards the bottom of this article.
Kalviyo offers powerful segmenting tools that allow you to identify profiles that have (or have not) carried out certain behaviors. Many other ESPs have limited segmenting abilities, take a few minutes to pull up the profiles who match the parameters, or limit you to a certain amount of segments you can have at one time.
For example, Mailchimp only allows you to choose engagement based on whether they opened an email campaign within a predetermined time frame. This is very limiting and does not account for email automation engagement. Klaviyo doesn’t put you through any of those headaches, and has spectacular segmenting capabilities beyond opened, clicked, bounced, or dropped email, including:
Choose any event tracked by Klaviyo within any predetermined time frame. (The time frame feature really comes in handy, and most other ESPs either don’t have the capability or have predetermined time frames.)
Identify people based on default or custom properties.
Target profiles based on their country. If they’re in the US, EU, or Canada, you can target within a certain radius of a zip code.
If you have multiple lists, easily include or exclude these profiles.
By aggregating multiple data points, Klaviyo can predict genders, CLV, churn risk, and more attributes or behaviors about your customers. (More about Testing and Predictive Analytics here.)
For the full list of segmentation capabilities, head to Klaviyo’s Guide to Creating Segments.
As you can see, you can get very granular with this. Segmenting is not just limited to campaigns, however; you can also prevent or ensure people receive messaging within an email automation using these same parameters.
For the most popular ecommerce platforms, Klaviyo can be set up within minutes. It’s as simple as downloading the app onto your store with a quick & easy integration process.
To top it off, all Klaviyo accounts come with pre built flows, email templates, and basic segments. You can see success just by integrating the app and turning the premade flows live. There is also a library of form and email templates to choose from & easily customize using a drag and drop editor.
Having that said, Klaviyo is much, much more than a set-and-forget tool; it’s a machine that helps your business grow by helping you make data-driven decisions. Although it can be set up and running in just a few minutes, you can get so much more out of it by learning how to use the platform.
If you don’t have time to learn all of this but want to begin using this powerful growth tool, work with the Samadhi Marketing team. We’d love to help your company grow to the next level.
Every Klaviyo account comes with a library of pre built flows (flow = email automation triggered by a behavior) to work with. These email flows range from basic automations such as Welcome Series, Abandoned Checkout, Customer Thank You and Product Review/Cross Sell, to more complex automations – and all are completely customizable.
You’re not limited to just the email flows in the library however; you can create nearly any email automation you want by using one of the following flow triggers:
This trigger queues a profile into a flow when a profile subscribes to a list. This can happen whether a person subscribes themselves, or you import their profile into a list yourself.
Profiles will enter a segment-triggered flow when they join a specific segment. For example, when someone enters an ‘Unengaged’ segment, they can be queued into an “Re-Engagement” email flow. The possibilities are truly endless with this flow trigger.
This flow can be triggered by a multitude of metrics, such as any Klaviyo, ecommerce platform, API, or integrated app events.
For example:
Metric-triggered flows are especially useful for getting important post purchase messaging across.
People will enter a Date Property triggered-flow is they have a specific date property attached to their profile. Common use cases of this include a Birthday Reminder and First Purchase Anniversary.
It’s also important to learn the “Flow Filters” feature, which checks if a profile did or did not carry out an event before sending the next email in the flow. The most common example is a traditional Abandoned Cart flow; before someone is sent the next Abandoned Cart email, Klaviyo checks to see if the profile has made a purchase since starting the flow. If they have made a purchase, they will be removed from that flow.
Your imagination truly is the limit, and the more you familiarize yourself with Klaviyo, the more you can tailor your messaging. Head to this Flow Filters and Triggers help page for a more detailed overview.
Where email flows are triggered by subscriber behavior, email campaigns are sent to subscribers manually. This is commonly known as an email newsletter, and this is where Klaviyo’s segmentation shines.
To hit the inbox, your open, click, bounce, unsubscribe, and spam complaint rates must fall within certain parameters consistently. Doing so lets inbox providers know that you are sending quality content to your subscribers. Sending campaigns to engaged segments yields substantially better deliverability metrics than blasting your entire list. Think critically; why would you send an email to somebody who hasn’t opened or clicked an email in the last 30, 60, or 90 days?
These segmenting tools allow you to pull your most engaged subscribers, increase your deliverability, and build your sender reputation. Most other ESPs don’t allow for such granular segmentation, and therefore hurt your deliverability efforts.
Don’t know where to get started with email designs? Send a compelling newsletter using their library of pre built email templates.
Klaviyo is and always will be an email marketing software at its core, but has quickly evolved into a CDP. (Customer Data Platform).
Every account has a dedicated ‘Analytics’ dashboard where you can see trends, graphs, and patterns of every tracked event. Utilizing these insights is what allows you to remove the guesswork and make decisions on where to invest capital and attention. You no longer have to have multiple 3rd-party data apps that all report different data; get real-time, accurate, and actionable insights all under one dashboard.
Without any email capture set up on your site, you are dumping money into the paid advertising machine; it’s the only way you can retarget site visitors or existing customers. If you lose your ads manager, you have no way to contact your audience.
But it’s more than just capturing emails and chucking them into a generic welcome series, only to contact them on Black Friday or Memorial Day. You want to be the first brand your audience thinks of when your vertical comes to mind, and the best way to do that is to effectively engage with your audience. You can burn capital by paying only Facebook, or you can divert some capital into email marketing. Doing so also lowers your CPA, giving you more wiggle room to scale.
General customer acquisition and retention marketing states prove time and time again that “acquiring a customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer.” With a robust email marketing strategy combined with behavior-triggered flows and segmented campaigns unique to Klaviyo, you can re-sell existing customers at a fraction of what it would cost you through paid advertising.
If you really want to take your Facebook targeting to the next level, Klaviyo offers a direct integration with Facebook Advertising, where you can sync segments & lists as custom audiences in Ads Manager.
Integrating Klaviyo with Shopify stores is painless and can be done in minutes. Once the integration is complete, you can then segment & target your subscribers using the following native Shopify events:
See the items in a profile’s cart, the amount of each item, the value of each item, the collections that the items are in, total cart value, any discount codes applied, and various other key metrics about the profile’s cart all within this email marketing software.
Pull up all of the product information of items purchased, date of purchase, discount codes used, and other order information.
Similar to Placed Order, this separate event tracks detailed data about the products someone purchases, allowing for even deeper segmentation.
This Klaviyo event syncs when an order is fulfilled on your Shopify store, and is especially useful for Shipping Confirmation flows, or preventing messaging from being sent to customers until their order is fulfilled.
Syncs when a customer cancels their order on your Shopify store before it is marked as fulfilled.
Seperate from Cancelled Order, Refunded Order is tracked when a customer requests a refund. NOTE: Klaviyo only tracks full refunds, not partial.
Visit Klaviyo’s Shopify Integration page for a more detailed review of the aforementioned Shopify events.
Get started for free by creating a Klaviyo account. Once you fill in basic contact information, it will ask you to connect your Shopify store via your .myshopify URL, and Shopify will confirm that you want to install Klaviyo. The Setup Wizard will walk you through the rest of the steps
Aside from an integration with Shopify and other top ecommerce platforms, Klaviyo offers dozens of other direct integrations with some of the top ecommerce apps on the market. Some of these apps come with prebuilt events that you can use for segmentation, flow triggers, and flow filters. Going this extra mile yields better results ensuring that apps aren’t interrupting or repeating each other, for both email and SMS.
I recommend the following apps that with a direct integration with Shopify and Klaviyo:
Pull brand interactions from email, SMS, phone calls, Facebook messenger & comments, Instagram DM’s & comments, and their native live chat all under one dashboard.
Trigger and filter flows with the “Loox Review Posted” event to ensure that you don’t send review requests to a customer who already left a review, or tailor post purchase review requests and offers to repeat customers.
Pull in more detailed review events such as “SubmittedPhotoReview”, “SubmittedVideoReview”, “SubmittedReviewNegative”, and more to incentivize customers to leave more detailed reviews and prioritize which type of review requests are sent.
Send point balance reminders, encourage subscribers to join your rewards program, and incentivize customers to earn more points using the various smile.io events pushed into Klaviyo.
Encourage customers to become brand ambassadors and make it easier than ever for Ambassadors to earn by sending emails that dynamically populate their unique affiliate ID and
For a complete list of apps with direct integrations, head to Klaviyo’s Integration Directory.
Even the smallest change to a subject line, image, copy, or call-to-action can make a significant difference in your email’s performance. But Klaviyo’s A/B Testing capabilities go far beyond campaign subject lines; some of the split test features include:
Split test time delays within flows and the time of day campaigns are sent.
A/B test any variation you can think of within a flow using either variations of individual emails or adding a “Random Percentage Sample” conditional split within a flow.
Create up to seven different variations for one campaign send. After a percentage of the recipients are equally sent the variations over a time frame of your choosing, the remaining percentage of subscribers will be sent the winning variation.
See which time of day your audience engages with the most by sending identical messaging at different times.
The possibilities for split testing is really up to you, but I recommend heading to this Best Practices for A/B Testing guide.
A common mistake e commerce store owners make is sending an email as a company selling a product to a group of people. It’s important to understand that there is a real person on the other end of the email you’re sending, and by contacting them, you’re initiating a conversation. Would you feel more cared about if “Company X” emailed you, or if “Dan, Customer Service Representative from Company X” sent you a personalized message?
Klaviyo allows personalization beyond First Name and Last Name; you can hide or display blocks within an email based on a profile’s properties, dynamically display past products purchased, dynamically display products they would most likely be interested in with product recommendations, and much, much more.
In a nutshell, Klaviyo allows you to automate personal conversations with your customers, and developing these relationships is what gives you a competitive advantage.
If you’re planning on growing your brand with data-driven decisions and nurturing lasting customer relationships, yes. Mailchimp is for setting up basic automations & sending unremarkable newsletters. Klaviyo gives you the tools to become a titan in your industry.
With the social media giants unscrupulously deciding who does and doesn’t get a voice in the public forum of the 21st century, your ecommerce stores need marketing tools like Klaviyo that allow you to constantly have contact with your audience. If that isn’t enough, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Twitter users are leaving the platforms in droves.
Klaviyo not only establishes a secure connection with your audience, but it also comes loaded with tools for you to make data-driven decisions, provides customer & website behavioral insights, and if utilized correctly, can be an evergreen source of revenue.
The opportunity for you to utilize this game-changing marketing solution is waiting. Will you ride this wave of strategic brand dominance, or be lost in the sea of infinite spam messages?
Take your business and customer experience to the next level. Work with the team at Samadhi Marketing. We consistently generate an additional 24-51% of revenue for our clients through our robust CRM, content, email, and SMS strategies.