Introduction
Klaviyo is a marketing automation platform that automates eCommerce SMS and email marketing to help businesses acquire, retain, and grow their customers by sending marketing emails. It has over 70,000 paying customers and has become one of the most popular email marketing platforms in the world.
It’s built for Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magneto stores and has a lot of advanced features such as email segmentation, email automation, pre-built reports, and drip campaigns.
7 Reasons you should use Klaviyo for your email marketing
1. Klaviyo has the most features for eCommerce stores
One of the many advantages of Klaviyo is how data-centric it is. It generates powerful data about your email campaigns and then gives actionable info (and the features) that help you create better campaigns.
It supports robust automation and has a huge variety of targeting and segmentation options.
2. Klaviyo has every integration known to man
Speaking of integrations, Klaviyo virtually integrates with every eCommerce platform and app you’ll ever need. It has over 200+ pre-built integrations to customer support tools, SMS tools, loyalty programs, user-generated content, subscription tools, payments, and virtually any app you have in your tech stack.
3. Predictive analytics
Klaviyo has a predictive analytics feature that combines data science and machine learning to get you a lot of insights into your data. Klaviyo’s AI can tell you not only the past and total lifetime value of a customer but it can predict their future lifetime value, estimated next order date, churn risk, and even gender.
4. Easy to create customizable reports
You can group your data or filter them based on different criteria. Klaviyo can pull in data from emails, SMS, sign-up forms, your eCommerce platform, or your custom integrations. You can easily create segments based on the customer profile that you could then use to retarget your new leads, loyal customers, and anyone in between.
And if you want to compare your stats to your competitors, Klaviyo has a benchmarking system that compares your numbers to industry averages. It also tells you which of your KPIs are underperforming compared to industry averages.
5. Klaviyo is a better tool for growth
Klaviyo helps businesses uncover growth opportunities just with the sheer volume of data and insights it offers. From what I’ve seen working with dozens of businesses, eCommerce brands that use Klaviyo get higher delivery rates, open rates, click rates, and attributable revenue. Klaviyo has a strong email-sending infrastructure compared to other email automation companies.
6. SMS marketing + lead generation
Besides email, you can build several sign-up forms and set up your SMS marketing using Klaviyo. For example, you could build a special holiday campaign and send an email promotion, a text message, and a push notification. You could also create flows with all three channels and set up rules that determine what gets sent and when.
7. Segmentation and custom automations
No need to reinvent the wheel. Klaviyo offers several built-in automations that help brands scale revenue without having to hire a team of email marketing experts or service partners. This platform can help you create better email flows, automated workflows, and transactional emails.
Examples include:
- Welcome series
- Browse abandonment
- Win-back and cross-sell campaigns
- Happy birthday messages
- Transactional emails (shipping notifications, delivery notifications)
- Integrations with payment, customer loyalty, product reviews, surveys, and support ticket tools.
Klaviyo has made significant enhancements to Klaviyo AI by incorporating new must-have features. These AI tools that bring your marketing dreams to life:work faster, unleash your creativity, and dream up possibilities like never before. With powerful new features, Klaviyo AI is your marketing dream machine.
Pricing
Klaviyo offers three tiers for email marketing:
- Email & SMS plan
- Email plan
- Free plan
The enterprise option, Klaviyo One, won’t be discussed here, but keep in mind that its price is 20% of your total monthly spend. If you spend more than $10,000 per month on your monthly plan, it will be mandatory to join Klaviyo One.
Klaviyo’s Email and SMS pricing plan: Decent for pre-enterprise brands
If your company is in an awkward transition phase between SMB and enterprise, the Email and SMS plan may be what you’re looking for. But be warned: you won’t have access to unlimited emails, so you’ll still pay in full for all your active profiles.
Email and SMS plan features
- 1. Monthly SMS credits that scale with your brand (up to 450,000 per month)
- 2. Access to Onboarding Specialists and Customer Success Managers
- 3. Up to 150,000 contacts supported
- 4. 10 email campaigns to every active profile
- 5. Priority customer support
This is the most robust plan offered by Klaviyo. You can access all of their features at once — including customer success managers and onboarding specialists.
But that doesn’t mean this plan is free from restrictions. You won’t be able to get unlimited email sends as in previous years, so your brand might be inadvertently punished for growing too quickly.
This plan also has the potential to get expensive fast. SMS credits are priced separately from email costs, which means your final price depends on the number of texts you send per month.
Klaviyo’s Email pricing plan: Best for SMBs
This pricing tier works well for mid-sized brands that already have their feet on the ground. The features are robust and relatively accessible, but it’s still more expensive than other comparable plans on the market.
Email plan features
- 1. Up to 150,000 contacts supported
- 2. 5,000 monthly email sends
- 3. 150 free monthly SMS/MMS credits (at a max of 500 contacts)
- 4. Live email and chat support
- 5. Access to company benchmarks
Klaviyo’s Email plan lets your brand effortlessly scale with a contact list that grows alongside you. You can send 10 different campaigns per month, which is far better than the two you get from the Free tier.
The Email plan also lets you investigate campaign results alongside industry benchmarks. This helps you evaluate your campaign’s performance alongside other brands in your niche, which can be very insightful as you hunt for a competitive advantage.
Free Klaviyo pricing plan: Best for upstart brands
As a newer brand on the email scene, there’s virtually no downside to Klaviyo’s free plan. But keep in mind you won’t have access to all available features. If you have a contact list greater than 250 active profiles, you’ll need to upgrade.
Free plan features
- 1. Create an account
- 2. Import and sync your data
- 3. 150 free SMS and MMS credits
- 4. Customize templates and emails
Access to 500 emails per month isn’t all that bad for a relatively new brand. But if you hit the limit too early, you’ll be barred from sending emails for the rest of the month.
Cons
But there are a few concerns you should consider when deciding to send transactional messages:
1. Cost: Klaviyo can be expensive compared to other transactional email services, especially for businesses with high email volume. For most eCommerce retailers, transactional notifications such as order confirmation come as a part of the eCommerce platform functionality. WISMOlabs email and SMS notifications are included with the service.
2. Learning Curve: The platform can be complex and may require significant time to understand and utilize its features and capabilities.
3. Limited Design Options: While Klaviyo provides a wide range of templates, some users may find the design options limited. WISMOlabs notification messages are fully matched to your brand. Your customers will know that emails come from your brand.
4. Undesirable unsubscription: During the transactional phase, the consumer may choose to opt out of your marketing communications, leading to a decline in email engagement, future marketing ROI and potentially damaging your brand’s reputation.
Conclusion
Klaviyo is an excellent marketing tool for e-commerce brands, enabling you to interact with customers seamlessly through email and SMS. With this platform, you don’t have to stress about managing your marketing activities to drive sales. The few disadvantages are that Klaviyo is pretty expensive, especially for small retailers, and the complaints about poor customer support.
