Marketing automation is priceless — it streamlines those labor-intensive tasks for your business, so you have plenty of time to focus on the most critical ones. 30% of marketers use automation to minimize manual tasks, allowing them to work smarter, not harder.
Klaviyo is one of the tools businesses, especially those in ecommerce, use to automate email and SMS marketing. It is the go-to option for many Shopify store owners and has carved out a unique niche in the marketing industry.
This detailed review examines Klaviyo’s marketing automation tools, pricing plans, strengths, and weaknesses. We also look at the sentiments of actual Klaviyo users and compare the platform to some of the best alternatives available.
By the end of this review, you will know whether Klaviyo aligns with your business needs.
What is Klaviyo?
Klaviyo is a marketing automation software that helps users automate email and SMS marketing campaigns.
The tool provides much-needed efficiency since it streamlines repetitive marketing tasks like email scheduling and multichannel segmentation. It also personalizes client experience, allowing businesses to obtain, convert, and retain customers — which boosts productivity in the long run.
When Klaviyo came to be in 2012, the mission was to help ecommerce store owners improve their email marketing campaigns. Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen, the co-founders, had noticed a disconnect between how much customer data businesses collected and how much they knew about their clientele.
The two entrepreneurs then developed a system that integrated data, analytics, and marketing. This process led to the creation of Klaviyo. Today, more than 151,000 of the most popular brands worldwide use this product for email and SMS marketing automation.
How does Klaviyo help ecommerce businesses?
Klaviyo helps businesses automate their email and SMS marketing campaigns.
Before we look at how it helps you automate these processes in detail, let’s ensure you understand email and SMS marketing.
What is email marketing?
Email marketing involves using emails to market and promote your products or services. It can play a massive role in helping you generate leads for your business, enhancing brand awareness, and improving relationships with your customers.
Here are some types of emails you can send your clients; they all play different roles during marketing campaigns:
- Welcome emails
- Newsletter emails
- Lead nurturing emails
- Promotional emails
- Survey emails
- Seasonal marketing emails
The main reason why most online store owners subscribe to email automation platforms like Klaviyo is to nurture relationships with their customers. Businesses also use such tools to drive traffic to their social media and blog pages and to run A/B tests.
What is SMS marketing?
SMS marketing involves sending text messages to promote and market products and services. It is one of the easiest ways to connect with your audience since most people always have their mobile phone with them.
SMS marketing is simple and scalable. Most of the work involves crafting well-worded and concise messages and sending them to customers. You never have to use flashy graphics or pay for complex designs.
Business owners can also use text marketing to reach many people simultaneously, often without significantly altering their marketing budgets.
We must add that when starting any email or SMS marketing campaigns, it is always important to comply with regulatory guidelines. Any misstep can trigger profound legal implications or ruin your brand reputation.
We recommend learning more about The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and The CAN-SPAM Act.
Let us now explore what Klaviyo has to offer.
A look at Klaviyo's marketing automation tools
Contact segmentation
Contact segmentation involves separating your customers into groups (segments) based on predetermined criteria like age, occupation, and behavior. It's a tool that lets businesses group contacts with similar characteristics to refine their marketing campaigns.
Here's how segmentation works.
Suppose you are an ebook seller and would like to market your products to customers based on individual demographic or behavioral characteristics. You can segment your audience based on genre preference, past purchases, and purchase history. Segmentation would allow you to personalize your content and only send messages to customers who meet a given criteria.
Klaviyo lets you segment customers exceptionally well. You can create lists that narrow down the scope, which helps you personalize every message you dispatch.
Klaviyo's segmentation features are also quite sophisticated. Forget standard segmentation parameters like location and age — Klaviyo even lets you group customers based on whether they opened your message, subscribed to a list, or marked it as spam.
Once you've integrated your ecommerce store, you can view customers who made and canceled orders, as well as those who had a successful checkout process.
In short, there are lots of segmentation options on Klaviyo, making it a robust marketing automation tool.
Automated email and SMS flows
Flows (also called automations or drip campaigns) are automated actions that arise once a customer performs a specific action. Examples of such actions include when a customer abandons their cart or subscribes to a list.
Klaviyo allows users to create several types of drip campaigns. These include:
- Welcome series: These messages introduce subscribers to your ecommerce brand. Such welcome messages help you convert leads into first-time customers.
- Abandoned cart flows: You can use these drip campaigns to send customized messages to customers based on the items they have in their cart. You can further personalize them based on whether a user is a potential or existing customer.
- Win-back flows: These drip campaigns reestablish relationships with inactive customers.
- Post-purchase: These messages help you send thank-you notes to customers. You can also use them to upsell or cross-sell products.
Klaviyo provides users with easy-to-use and duplicatable flow templates. You never have to start from scratch, which significantly improves efficiency. However, once you clone an existing flow, you cannot transfer the analytics from the original drip campaign.
Campaign tracking and reporting
Like most high-performance marketing automation platforms, Klaviyo allows store owners to track their campaigns. You can use the campaign tracking system to understand the impact created by your messages. For example, it lets you know what happens once customers click on or open your messages.
Some tracking metrics that Klaviyo provides include open rates, conversion rates, click-through rates, and return on investment (ROI). Once you have these KPIs, you can quickly spot trends, change tactics, and optimize your marketing strategies.
One impressive feature we encountered was the ability to set the parameters you want these metrics to measure—like generating more leads or improving sales volumes. Once you start using Klaviyo, we recommend aligning your tracking system with custom objectives and benchmarks. This process will help you effectively measure the return on investment.
When it comes to reporting and analytics, Klaviyo is one of the best in the game. Users can narrow down performance reports to understand how much revenue their messages generate. Reports can also help you understand customer engagement and spending habits.
Klaviyo's reports are visually appealing, well-worded, and highly informative. You will find them very easy to open and understand. Klaviyo also lets you develop new reports or use existing reporting templates, such as message engagement by location, campaign, or flow.
A/B testing for improved insights
Klaviyo allows users to split-test their messages. The process involves experimenting with different versions of your SMS and email messages to establish which ones bring higher open, conversion, or click rates.
A/B testing can substantially boost your business's marketing results when done correctly. We recommend creating a well-laid-out strategy that sets clear and feasible goals from the start.
Here are some best practices to adopt when A/B testing your marketing messages through Klaviyo:
💡 Create a hypothesis about what you think will work. For example, you can hypothesize that using your name rather than your company’s name in an email byline will increase open rates.
⚖️ Test one variable at a time. Business owners who split test more than one variable at a go are less likely to attribute results.
📧 Test the messages you send out the most, then scale from there. Working with your abandoned cart reminders, welcome emails, and promotional campaign messages is an excellent place to start.
💬 Lastly, ask for feedback through personalized emails. Direct feedback from your clients uncovers more insights that help you refine future campaigns.
The Klaviyo email builder
The Klaviyo email builder is an email creation tool. Once you start an email marketing campaign, you can choose between three email creation options:
- A drag-and-drop editor
- A plain text builder
- A custom-coded HTML email designer
You also access a wide range of email-building templates. Klaviyo simplifies the selection process by allowing filters to help you narrow down and customize your options.
Klaviyo's email templates are easy to use and visually engaging. Before settling on a template, preview it on your computer or mobile device and play around with the colors, images, and text. The ability to customize the templates to your liking makes Klaviyo highly flexible and able to match any business's brand identity.
A single portfolio for multiple accounts
If you run multiple Klaviyo accounts, shifting from one to another can significantly affect your workflow. This challenge prompted the company to introduce a portfolio feature to help businesses manage different brands and regions from a single platform.
Klaviyo's portfolio provides a seamless experience. Business owners can now integrate multiple brand or regional profiles in a central location, improving how they manage assets, customers, and billing.
Having a portfolio provides several benefits, including:
- Faster marketing execution
- Deeper insights from the global reporting dashboard
- Better forecasting due to centralized billing
- Smoother operations with multi-account user processing
Klaviyo's peer group benchmarking
Klaviyo's benchmarks tell you how your company stacks up against similar businesses and how you can align it with best practices and industry trends. You can then use these insights to understand your business's strengths and opportunities and know where to allocate resources next.
Businesses that wish to start email or SMS benchmarking must have sent at least 25 emails in the previous six months. They are then required to update their primary industry of operation to receive industry-level benchmarks.
Multi-language support
Klaviyo provides support in seven languages: English, French, Brazilian-Portuguese, German, Korean, Spanish, and Italian. This feature allows businesses to scale internationally and enables marketers from different regions to automate their marketing activities through Klaviyo.
Cross-platform integration
Klaviyo users can make a wide range of integrations to enhance their workflows. You can integrate most of your ecommerce platforms, including Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Wix, and OpenCart.
The types of events you can pull from your ecommerce shop depend on the particular platform you're using. Syncing a customer’s purchase history or other behavioral data might work for one ecommerce platform and fail in another.
Klaviyo also integrates with Facebook Ads and Google Analytics, giving you a seamless marketing experience. If you want more, you can hire a developer to build custom integrations that support your workflow.
Klaviyo AI
Klaviyo now uses artificial intelligence (AI) to provide AI-driven insights and analytics. Klaviyo AI has four main roles:
- Review sentiment analysis
- Predictive analysis
- Creating personalized product feeds
- Providing industry-specific benchmarks
The company deploys artificial intelligence across most features. Examples include Flows AI, Email AI, SMS AI, and Reviews AI. You can also use AI when personalizing campaigns, A/B testing your messages, scheduling your messages, and optimizing form display.
How much does Klaviyo cost?
Klaviyo's pricing depends on the number of active profiles you want to be included — the more contacts there are, the more charges there will be. It comes with three pricing tiers: a free plan, an email plan, and an email and SMS plan.
Here's what you get for each plan.
Klaviyo Free:
- Up to 1000 active profiles
- 500 monthly emails
- 150 free monthly SMS/MMS credits
- Email support for the first 60 days
Klaviyo Email Plan starting at $30/month:
- 501 - 1,000 active profiles
- A minimum of 10,000 monthly emails
- Mobile push notifications
- 150 free monthly SMS/MMS credits
- Email and chat support
Klaviyo Email and SMS Plan starting at $45/month:
- 501 - 1,000 active profiles
- A minimum of 10,000 monthly emails
- Mobile push notifications
- Email and chat support
- 1250 monthly SMS/MMS credits
Reviews and ratings: What are users saying about Klaviyo?
Klaviyo maintains relatively high ratings on most software review sites. It has a 4.6/5 rating on G2 from 1046 reviews, 9/10 on TrustRadius from 235 ratings, and 4.5/5 on GetApp based on 449 reviews.
Most positive reviews come from customers impressed by Klaviyo's ease of use, helpful user interface, and ability to help them with marketing automation. Taylor Hall is one of those happy customers.
In his review of Klaviyo on Trustradius, he lists ease of use, straightforward pricing, and the ability to learn on the platform as some of its main benefits. Taylor uses Klaviyo for email and SMS marketing, which he says is streamlined.
In his Getapp review, Javier states that Klaviyo is “one of the best SMS and email marketing tools available.” He praises the user interface, the ease of creating flows, and the completeness of customer profiles.
He adds that although Klaviyo has a steep learning curve, the company provides plenty of documentation to improve customers’ knowledge.
Deshea shares similar sentiments. She’s impressed by Klaviyo’s standout customization features. However, segmentation can prove challenging for users with a limited understanding of digital marketing flows.
Despite Klaviyo having a majority of positive reviews, there are a few dissatisfied customers. These reviews are about Klaviyo’s poor customer support and price increments now and then.
One of the negative reviews we encountered was from a user called Vladimir. He complains about Klaviyo’s poor customer support, saying that customer service agents struggled to understand his questions and didn’t offer the help he needed.
In his Getapp review of Klaviyo, Trevor says he's unhappy with the platform’s email deliverability. He further complains about constant payment hikes and the inability of the support team to offer human responses, which perhaps echoes what Vlamidir said in his review.
Based on these actual user reviews, Klaviyo’s positives outweigh its negatives. In the next section, we’ll look at Klaviyo’s Pros and Cons in detail.
What are the benefits of using Klaviyo for email and SMS marketing automation?
✔ Signing up is pretty straightforward
Klaviyo’s user-friendly interface makes it easy to get started. All you have to do is provide details such as your phone number and email address, and you're in. All the features are well arranged, making switching from one tool to another easy.
Klaviyo’s onboarding process is simple once you connect it to your ecommerce site. The system will ask about your marketing objectives and prompt you to state how many contacts you want to work with.
After you're done with this process, you can start automating your SMS or email marketing campaigns.
Again, we retaliate the importance of getting acquainted with all the tools before diving in. A solid background understanding of Klaviyo’s features can significantly enhance your efficiency. One of the best ways to learn is by watching training videos and checking out Klaviyo Academy.
✔ Klaviyo offers multichannel customer support
Klaviyo subscribers have access to multiple customer support channels. These include live chat support, email support, and the help center.
Businesses on the free plan can only receive help through email support for the first 60 days, but this is serviceable. You will typically get responses through email within one or two days.
Because Klaviyo doesn't offer phone technical support, your queries are best handled through live chat, which provides the fastest responses. However, the live chat is not available 24/7.
And if you still need more help, you can get answers through the Klaviyo Academy, interactive live training, and Community forums.
✔ Klaviyo's ecommerce features are impressive
Another factor that sets Klaviyo apart is its robust automation features. It has various applications, from campaign tracking and reporting to messaging flows and contact segmentation.
Klaviyo’s ability to provide powerful and actionable data about your email and SMS campaigns is unrivaled. There are many KPIs to work with, giving you a comprehensive understanding of your business’s performance over time.
What are Klaviyo’s limitations?
✘ There are no dedicated account reps
Klaviyo might offer multichannel support for its users, but it can get disappointing the more you use the platform.
As a first-time user, you receive over-the-top help from the support team. Onboarding is easy, but no dedicated account representatives can help you with issues after you become a seasoned user.
There is also no technical support over email, which prompts most business owners to rely on the live chat for assistance.
✘ Klaviyo has a steep learning curve
Klaviyo fails to provide dedicated technical support, meaning that most users end up doing almost everything by themselves. A quick solution to this problem is hiring an experienced developer to offer post-onboarding help. However, this comes with additional operating costs.
Which Klaviyo alternatives are available?
Mailchimp
Mailchimp is another popular email marketing automation tool with features similar to Klaviyo’s. Users can create email campaigns, drive new sales, and automate client communication.
However, Klaviyo's tools are more comprehensive in terms of customization, analytics, reporting, automation, and segmentation.
Another key difference between the two platforms pertains to pricing. Like Klaviyo, a free plan is available for Mailchimp users. However, the latter’s paid plans are more affordable for small and medium-sized enterprises.
The free plan allows you to send up to 1000 emails to 500 contacts monthly and free email support for 30 days. However, you cannot automate customer journeys, undertake A/B tests, or schedule emails. Pricing ranges from $10 p/m for the Standard plan to $175 p/m for the Premium plan.
Customers can also get help through email and live chat support. However, unlike Klaviyo, Mailchimp has an advanced social media support system.
ActiveCampaign
ActiveCampaign has been in the market since 2003. It is a tool that helps businesses automate their sales, marketing, and transactional messaging.
It has better automation, integration, segmentation, and reporting tools than Klaviyo. ActiveCampaign also has a simple contact segmentation feature, provides detailed reports, and allows you to migrate from another provider for free.
However, you might find the learning curve is a bit steep once you get started.
Another downside is that ActiveCampaign has no free plan. Users must subscribe to one of the following tiers:
- Starter plan - $15/mo
- Plus plan: $49/mo
- Pro plan: $79/mo
- Enterprise plan: $145/mo
ActiveCampaign’s ecommerce integrations are only possible in the Plus, Pro, and Enterprise plans.
Dotdigital
Dotdigital is a marketing automation software that also comes with limited CRM features. Like Klaviyo, the onboarding process is relatively straightforward.
The company provides a support team to help users during onboarding, which makes it stand out in this area. Even after you have become a regular Dotdigital subscriber, the company will still provide top-notch customer support.
The support team is quite helpful as they empower you to identify and resolve issues on the fly. Users also have access to customer success managers to help them analyze their campaigns and generate valuable insights.
Dotdigital's landing pages and forms come with a drag-and-drop builder, which enhances the user experience. You can use different criteria to divide your contacts into smaller segments and social media extensions to re-engage clients and drive sales.
Other notable features include advanced analytical reporting, live chat support, personalized campaigns, AI-driven recommendations, data-driven communication, and dynamic content creation.
Regarding pricing, Dotdigital will only disclose how much they will charge you after requesting pricing information, which limits transparency and can lead to unexpected costs.
Bloomreach
Bloomreach is an ecommerce personalization platform designed to help businesses personalize customer digital experiences, increase engagement, and improve conversion rates. Setting up and integrating with other platforms and grouping customers based on attributes is easy.
The main difference between Klaviyo and Bloomreach is that Bloomreach offers customers service level agreements (SLAs). These contracts ensure you get what you pay for and help maintain high-performance levels.
However, like Dotdigital, Bloomreach only discloses how much they will charge you after requesting pricing information.
HubSpot Marketing Hub
HubSpot is a robust all-in-one marketing platform businesses use for lead generation, audience targeting, and boosting conversations.
While HubSpot is more of a CRM platform, it does have some marketing automation features. Business owners can automate their marketing by segmenting contacts and sending drip campaigns.
The platform allows you to build automations from scratch or use ready-to-use templates that address common scenarios like out-of-stock product updates or sending abandoned cart emails.
Nevertheless, we found Klaviyo's form and email templates more visually appealing than HubSpot’s. HubSpot's pricing is also relatively higher, with the lowest plan going for $20/user/p/m and the highest requiring a subscription fee of $3,600/month. Another drawback of using HubSpot is that the free plan has no customer support access.
Should you use Klaviyo in your business?
Klaviyo is one of the best email and SMS marketing automation platforms available, especially if you run your business on Shopify. When getting started on the platform, you can subscribe to the free plan and then pay for a higher tier if you need access to more features.
Klaviyo's robust features are its main selling point. Onboarding is straightforward; new users can get help through email and live chat if they encounter challenges.
However, we recommend using the Klaviyo Academy, interactive live training, and community forums to understand the platform better. Klaviyo has a steep learning curve. So, use these support features to maximize your marketing potential.
Level up your ecommerce business with Whop
As an ecommerce business owner, you understand that connecting with your customers is key. While you can do with with newsletters, SMS marketing, and other digital marketing solutions, the best way to connect with customers is via an online community.
With platforms like Whop you can create your own internet hub, aka your whop, and host your community within it. With your whop you can sell digital products (like online courses and ebooks), create a private community space, send emails with integrations like Mailmodo, and paywall part or all of your whop.
In addition, Whop’s unique custom relationship management tools help you retain customers and manage leads, with advanced reporting and customer segmentation for personalized marketing campaigns.
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FAQs about Klaviyo
What types of businesses use Klaviyo?
Any business that wishes to improve its marketing processes can use Klaviyo for email and SMS marketing automation. Ecommerce businesses mostly use Klaviyo to track user behavior, enhance the customer shopping experience, communicate special offers, and personalize communication.
Is Klaviyo worth the cost?
Klaviyo reports that it increases the average client business income by 45% in the first six months and a 62x return on investment. If these reports are anything to go by, Klaviyo is worth the cost.
What are some best practices for using Klaviyo?
Klaviyo is an email and SMS marketing automation software. We recommend segmenting your audience, setting up targeting campaigns, A/B testing your flows, and aligning your strategies with generated insights to get the best ROI.
Are Klaviyo sign-up forms compliant with data privacy laws?
You can make your sign-up forms compliant by selecting the Enable Data Protect Fields box when creating them. Klaviyo will automatically attach compliance-focused messaging to help keep your marketing campaign compliant with data protection laws.
Is Klaviyo GDPR compliant?
Yes, Klaviyo provides GDPR-compliant forms. When customizing your forms, always do so appropriately to ensure that your business operates within the confines of European data protection laws.
