Klaviyo ecommerce email marketing: benefits and limitations
Despite predictions that it would be displaced by social media, email remains one of the most profitable marketing tools for ecommerce. Several platforms promise that they can help marketers manage email campaigns, but Klaviyo is one of the most intelligent and globally recognised services available today.
So is Klaviyo the right solution for your ecommerce store? In this article, we’ll explore the benefits and limitations of this platform in more detail to help you reach a better understanding of whether Klaviyo is the best email marketing solution to support your ecommerce brand. Click on one of the links below to jump to that section:
- What is Klaviyo?
- Benefits of Klaviyo
- Limitations of Klaviyo
- Deciding whether Klaviyo is right for your business
- Frequently asked questions
What is Klaviyo?
Klaviyo is an email and SMS management and marketing automation software specifically designed for ecommerce brands. You can have an email or SMS subscription, or combine the two into one subscription. The platform helps business owners and marketers automate their communication strategies using smart machine learning algorithms to segment customers and drive engagement.
A smart email marketing campaign can increase revenue spending and reduce cart abandonment rates. This is achieved by better segmentation and tighter integration with shopping cart software such as Shopify and Facebook. Personalised emails can be automatically triggered based on metrics such as buying history, items in cart, time on site and much more so that your customers feel that you value their support.
Benefits of Klaviyo
Klaviyo has become the leading email marketing platform for ecommerce brands because it offers a variety of excellent features that help store owners improve their email marketing campaign performance. Key benefits of Klaviyo include:
Segmentation capabilities
Segmentation allows store owners to send more targeted emails based on intuitive customer data. The days of blanket sending ‘spamming’ bulk emails to customers are long gone. Today’s customers want brand marketing communications that are relevant to them or they will unsubscribe.
Segmentation is proven to boost campaign performance. A recent survey by Klaviyo that analysed more than 2.5 billion emails showed that the more segmented an email list is, the better it performs.
Automation options
Automation workflows are key for email campaign performance, especially if your store operates across multiple time zones. Automated campaign management saves time, improves the customer experience and allows you to grow your email list faster.
Passing these important administrative tasks over to Klaviyo not only guarantees their completion but also allows you to spend time on more profitable activities, such as developing new products or providing exceptional customer support.
Range of integrations
Your choice of email management platform should offer tight integration with your shopping cart and back-office systems if it is to successfully support your business’s growth. The better you can integrate, the more targeted and profitable your email marketing campaigns will become.
Klaviyo offers excellent and efficient integration with most leading ecommerce platforms, including Shopify and Shopify Plus, Salesforce and WooCommerce. The platform can also be integrated with Facebook and CRM software to provide a complete 360º view of your customers' activity both online and offline.
Reporting and robust tracking system
Klaviyo’s comprehensive reporting and analytics suite allows store operators and marketers to micro-analyse campaign performance in real-time.
Analysing performance in this way allows you to refine marketing campaign metrics, such as send times, email titles and more. Open rates, click-through rates and flow lists can also be analysed to improve campaign performance.
A/B testing
A/B testing is one of the most effective ways of optimising individual campaigns. Klaviyo allows marketers to A/B test subject lines, special offers, calls to action, images, send times and much more. The easy-to-use platform allows A/B tests to be configured by anyone. No coding knowledge is required, and the Klaviyo dashboard allows quick and simple analysis of results in real-time.
Range of templates
Any successful email campaign includes several different types of email. Most ecommerce campaigns include transactional emails, promotional emails and customer surveys, at the very least. This requires several templates to be created.
Klaviyo includes a comprehensive range of beautiful templates for all types of campaigns. Each template can also be easily tailored using the drag-and-drop automation editor without the need for coding knowledge.
Limitations of Klaviyo
Klaviyo is a powerful platform that offers a wide range of benefits to ecommerce business owners, but there are some limitations to the software that you should consider as well.
It may be a steep learning curve for advanced functionality
Klaviyo is an extremely powerful software platform, but learning and getting to grips with its extensive list of features may require a lot of time and training. Thankfully, a specialist agency such as Milk Bottle Labs can help.
May be more expensive than alternatives
Depending on the subscription you require (i.e., how many contacts and emails you wish to send), Klaviyo’s pricing may be more expensive than other email marketing platforms, such as ActiveCampaign and Campaign Monitor. It’s free to set up a Klaviyo account and the free subscription covers 250 contacts and 500 emails. Once you exceed these limits, there is a subscription fee based on your total number of contacts but you can send unlimited emails.
Deciding whether Klaviyo is right for your business
Klaviyo is one of the most comprehensive email marketing automation platforms out there right now, and there are many reasons why it could support your business as it grows. Ultimately, deciding whether to use this service comes down to your current and forecasted business performance, your customer engagement targets and the development opportunities you see for your brand and staff.
Reasons to choose Klaviyo:
- If you have quite a diverse range of customers and contacts that you would like to segment based on different attributes such as location and buying behaviour.
- If you are new to email marketing but don’t want to start from scratch—templates, automation and workflows would tick all of your boxes.
- You want smart marketing campaigns through a robust integration with your ecommerce platform and social media, such as Facebook Custom Audiences.
- You’ve got big plans for growth but don’t want to compromise on customer service.
Reasons not to choose Klaviyo:
- It may be more expensive than alternative services, so you need to consider whether your budget can accommodate the pricing plan to access its full feature set.
- Do you have good technical skills? Klaviyo offers a lot of advanced features that may take some time to learn and use with confidence, which may be a challenge for very small businesses and start-ups with limited in-house resources.
Frequently asked questions
What is UTM tracking in Klaviyo?
UTM stands for Urchin Tracking Module. It essentially allows you to track how potential customers reached your site's URL. This data can then be used to give a comprehensive view of customer behaviour across multiple marketing channels.
Can I upload fonts to Klaviyo?
Yes, you can add fonts from Google Fonts and Adobe. You can also upload your own custom font. These fonts will then become available in the online editing suite, where they can be embedded in both emails and sign-up forms.
Can you use Klaviyo as a CRM?
Yes, Klaviyo has built-in CRM functionality that is specifically designed for ecommerce operations. The platform can also be integrated with other popular CRM solutions, such as Salesforce, Olark and Zoho.
If you would like to know more about how the Klaviyo email marketing platform can help scale your ecommerce store, get in touch with Milk Bottle Labs today. We are Ireland's leading Shopify and Klaviyo experts, with over 87 years of combined experience delivering profitable ecommerce stores to clients across the world.
