Klaviyo Email Marketing: The Ultimate Guide to Growing Your E-commerce with Klaviyo

If email marketers had a penny for every time someone asked "Wait, is email still used as a marketing channel?", they'd have...a lot of pennies. Boxes of pennies over-flooding from the attics of whatever haunted houses everyone else thinks email marketing lives in.

For all those who think we attended the collective funeral of email marketing in the 2000s, we have news: it's the Mandela effect playing tricks on you.

In fact, if you ignore email channels, you're leaving money on the table. And when it comes to email marketing tools, Klaviyo is a definite winner - by a landslide. To be more specific, in 2022, Klaviyo email marketing generated more than $2.2 billion in sales.

Just to put things in perspective, that kind of money could buy about 35 new Falcon 9 rockets.

It's unlikely that Klaviyo agencies, email marketing consultants, and eCommerce businesses will ever pool all their money to buy spaceships, but that doesn't make the numbers any less impressive.

Klaviyo is just plain and simply good - and for a lot of reasons too.

Here's how you can use this powerful email marketing platform to skyrocket your eCommerce business.

The Klaviyo email marketing automation platform: What's all the fuss about?

Long story short, Klaviyo collects data from a lot of eCommerce tools, such as your website, social media, and even your POS. The same isn't true with other email platforms, like MailChimp, for example.

This degree of data collection and integration helps you build advanced email marketing strategies, email campaigns, and dashboards, based on how people interact with your brand online. Klaviyo does more than just send automatic emails.

It offers you a data-driven 360 view of who your customers are, so you can build a personalized experience for them. Powerful email marketing tools, like Klaviyo, let you increase engagement through tracking and analytics.

That's pure marketing gold right there. What business owner wouldn't want to be at the right place, at the right time -- when we're all competing for attention more than ever before?

If you're looking for a marketing automation platform that allows you to send execute a highly targeted email marketing strategies, Klaviyo is for you. It comes with:

• A lot of eCommerce workflow templates you can adjust and send to your email list in minutes
• Drag and drop responsive email templates you can just grab, edit, and use
• Advanced segmentation so you can send personalized emails
• The option to send automated SMS messages
• ROI-based reporting
• Ability to display dynamic product recommendations and user-generated content
• Abandonment cart emails, post-purchase emails, browse abandonment automation, and email newsletters
• Pre-built integrations to connect your email marketing with other tools (like Facebook, Google Ads, Shopify, and 260+ others)
• Many other features meant to optimize your customer engagement, journeys, conversion rate, retention, and loyalty.

3 Types of Klaviyo email marketing campaigns to try

Klaviyo email marketing campaigns can help you convert more customers and improve post-sale metrics like customer loyalty and customer retention.

1. Cart abandonment

Cart abandonment campaigns aim to draw back potential customers who have added products to their shopping cart but didn't check out. Klaviyo can help you customize your cart abandonment emails and make it enticing for customers to come back and complete the checkout process. This increases customer engagement and conversions.



2. Welcome flow

Welcome flows are essential to building fruitful relationships with your new contacts. You can use email automation to transform your contacts into customers. Just think of it: would you ever befriend someone who doesn't even say "Hello?". Likely not.

Triggering the right welcome flow at the right time can help you get a jump start on building loyalty with new customers - and Klaviyo helps you do it.

3. Post-purchase upsell campaign

If you want to scale your business, you need loyal customers. Therefore, it’s important to keep them engaged after they make a purchase. Klaviyo's post-purchase upsell campaigns can help you increase customer loyalty by suggesting items related to the ones they've already bought.

This can help you increase your customer lifetime values (CLV) and experience steady growth.



Klaviyo SMS marketing ideas

Klaviyo recently launched its eCommerce SMS marketing features. Depending on your business goals, sending automated messages to SMS contacts might help you draw your customers' attention.

1. Send a welcome text

Sending your eCommerce business customers a welcome SMS is a good way to break the ice and start building a relationship. Make sure your message makes it clear who you are, what you do, and why they should stick around.



Also, make sure your SMS subscribers have an "unsubscribe"/ "Stop SMS" option as well, particularly if you work with customers protected by GDPR, CCPA, or other data privacy regulations.

2. Use SMS to generate referrals

Klaviyo can help you generate referrals through automated SMS campaigns that incentivize your customer base to recommend your store and your products to their peers.

According to a study run by Ogilvy Cannes, 74% of consumers say word of mouth is a key influencer in buying decisions - so the more people you incentivize to refer you to others, the more you will sell.



And even if you don't end up making instant sales, you'll still collect more email addresses that you could retarget with your various flows and sequences.

4. Send SMS reminders

Quick SMS reminders can help you reduce cart abandonment and encourage customers to complete their purchases. You can also use SMS reminders to let people know when a sale or promotion you're running is about to end and help them make sure they don't miss out on a great deal.

5. Send a thank you

Nothing beats good ole' fashioned politeness. A simple "Thank you for your purchase" can go a long way in creating loyal customers. Plus, it’s a great way to make sure your first-time purchasers feel appreciated for their business. In your thank you email, you can include a P.S. asking for customer reviews to increase social proof.



Pro tip: you should proudly display all the various ways the customer could reach out to your customer support team (their email address, phone number, chat, and social media support handles) and encourage them to do so.

Looking for thank you email templates? Check out the article in the link and get inspired!

Top 8 ways to grow your brand with Klaviyo

If relying on social media and ads is the equivalent of building a house on rented land, email marketing is somewhat like, well, owning the land.

This is precisely what makes Klaviyo such a powerful tool. It provides you ownership over your first-party data (or customer-first data) and helps you send out personalized, relevant content to your subscriber list.

Here are some of the best ways to grow your brand using Klaviyo:

1. Create brand awareness

Creating an easily recognizable brand is the first step to growing your business. You want customers to remember you by more than just your name. You want them to remember you by how you made them feel - and that's precisely where branding comes in.

Growth happens when good email marketing can help you bridge the gap between you and your customers.

No algorithm changes, no social media platforms changing the rules of the game. It's just you, a channel of communication, and your customers.

2. Segment your audience

When you segment your customers, you can better target their needs and interests. For example, you could segment your audience based on:

• What kind of products they're inclined to buy
• Whether or not they're likely to buy products for the entire family
• Whether or not they react to a quirkier tone of voice



This level of segmentation allows you to create email sequences that target to a specific customer type and deliver more personalized content.

Example sequences include:

• Back-in-stock automation
• Product launch
• Higher-value items for your VIP customers

3. Integrate with other eCommerce platforms and tools

If you want to create a successful eCommerce strategy it's essential you integrate your Klaviyo account with other eCommerce platforms and tools (such as Shopify Plus or Magento).



Integrations like these give you access to valuable data like customer purchase histories and communication preferences. With custom integrations you can connect all of your various tools with Klaviyo to make data-driven decisions. All this information will allow you to create hyper-personalized campaigns that really move the needle.

Want to learn how to use Klaviyo in Shopify? Here’s a quick guide to help you get started.

4. Send follow-up emails

When someone makes a purchase they should always receive a follow-up email from you. It doesn't have to be something complex. Just make sure your customers are happy with their purchase and thank them for buying from your store.

This is a great opportunity to get their feedback on your products and service. Even a simple NPS survey can go a long way in making you understand what you're doing well (and where you can improve.)

5. Use behavioral targeting

Behavioral targeting is almost like magic - except you won't need a wand, a cape, or any kind of magic potion. Essentially, behavioral targeting allows you to tap into the best resource of all: human psychology.

By understanding how users interact with your store, you can maximize your email marketing efforts with tailored messages and offers specifically to them.

Example email flows:

• Shopping cart abandonment flows
• Browse abandonment emails
• Customer reviews of their most viewed products
• Upsells and cross-sells for one-time purchasers

Pro tip: Check out our guide with 100+ browser abandonment subject line ideas.

6. Increase brand loyalty

In 2021, 39% of customers attributed their brand loyalty to incentives. Sure, people are loyal to eCommerce brands they love and can relate to. But long-distance relationships don't work if you don't communicate with your partner - and the same applies to customer relationships.

You need to keep the conversation going to build loyalty. This is where Klaviyo can help, as it allows you to create targeted campaigns that help you keep your customers close.

7. Use personalization

Nobody wants to be just another entry in an endless spreadsheet. Despite digitization, we want the internet to make us feel closer to the brands we like, not to feel treated like a number.



That's why personalization is so important. Use Klaviyo to create dynamic content that speaks to specific customers and makes them feel part of a story, rather than another faceless name in your email list.

8. Launch an omnichannel strategy

Omnichannel marketing is quickly becoming the best way to reach customers. By engaging with them on multiple channels, you can create a cohesive experience that will keep your customers coming back to your store.



Email marketing is an essential part of any omnichannel strategy. With Klaviyo, you can create dynamic campaigns that help customers move from one channel to the other seamlessly - almost like you'd keep the conversation going with an old friend.

Klaviyo Email Marketing: The Takeaways

Klaviyo is a next-level eCommerce marketing tool that can help you optimize your store's performance, improve customer experience, and increase brand loyalty. Unlike other email platforms, Klaviyo is comprehensive, data-driven, and comes with all the features you need to create a successful eCommerce strategy.

In a world where social media and search engine algorithms are getting increasingly unstable, email's the beacon of light we all look to. And Klaviyo might just be the energy source needed to fuel that beacon.

With Klaviyo, you can send personalized emails, integrate with other platforms and tools, send follow-up emails, use behavioral targeting and personalization, increase brand loyalty, support your omnichannel strategy, and much more.

All these features combined will help you reach, convert, and retain more customers - all in a fully automated, hyper-segmented, data-driven way.

Obviously, Klaviyo is not perfect. The pricing might seem a little high if you're just looking for something basic, and you'll need a solid marketing strategy to get the most out of it.

Looking to hire a Klaviyo email marketing specialist or email marketing agency? We got you. Find a hand-picked, vetted expert with proven experience in your niche. Get started right here.

Not sure Klaviyo is the best tool for you? Here’s a quick Klaviyo vs Drip guide to help you decide.