Klaviyo Reviews – Email Marketing Platform For Ecommerce Businesses

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Email marketing happens to be one of the most useful and profitable methods of online marketing โ€“ a fact that few ecommerce store owners would not be aware of. Klaviyo is an email marketing app/service that I have reviewed in this article below. It's one of the top email marketing apps you can find in many app stores, and it has quite a reputation for expediting the email creation process.

Before I begin the review, I'd like to briefly mention another matter that most online marketers and store owners will find useful. While email marketing, as I mentioned earlier, is a very useful marketing method, there are many other methods that can be quite beneficial too, as illustrated in this infographic.

Coming back to Klaviyo, and before going into its full review, you should know that my overall impression of this app is that it is designed to be a great add-on for ecommerce platforms and not necessarily a standalone email marketing tool–especially if you're not running an online store. However, most ecommerce professionals will find the features impressive.

Introducing Klaviyo

Klaviyo, as we mentioned above, is an email marketing tool, designed to give you everything you need to build powerful email campaigns. If youโ€™re looking for a reliable way to connect with your audience on a deeper level through meaningful email flows and messages, Klaviyo can help with that.

Like some of the top-performing email tools on the market today, Klaviyo includes plenty of features designed to make your life easier, including a drag-and-drop email composer, and various attractive templates to make your messages stand out. Thereโ€™s also plenty of marketing automation tools to explore if you need to take your campaigns to the next level.

The features of Klaviyo extend all the way from abandoned cart strategies, to post-purchase follow up with your email marketing software, and email lists that sync with Facebook audiences. You can also unlock various tools that you would expect from similar email automation services like Mailchimp.

For instance, the Klaviyo email marketing software comes with segmentation tools to adjust your messages to suit your target audience, personalized product recommendations, and multivariate testing too. Another big bonus? This tool can enhance your ecommerce business by integrating with leading products like Salesforce, Shopify, and Stripe โ€“ weโ€™ll come back to that in a minute.

Klaviyo Pros and Cons

Pros ๐Ÿ‘

All tools come with their own pros and cons to consider, and Klaviyo is no different. This is an advanced tool with a lot of useful features for beginners and growing business owners alike.

For instance, Klaviyo allows users to:

  • Design attractive emails with great email templates. You can also customize those templates with the in-built drag-and-drop builder.
  • Segment your audience based on behavior and other factors so that you can build deeper relationships with your target audience.
  • Integrate with Facebook custom audiences so you can design a more comprehensive multi-channel marketing campaign.
  • Access marketing automation tools to follow up with your clients after they abandon their cart or make a purchase.
  • Visually transform your email workflows and sign-up forms to collect more leads for your business.
  • Create personalized product recommendations for post-sale engagement
  • Improve your ecommerce performance with Shopify integrations
Cons ๐Ÿ‘Ž

Unfortunately, Klaviyo has its downsides too, which include a pretty hefty price tag when you compare it to options like Sendinblue, Mailchimp, Omnisend and ActiveCampaign.

Additionally, Klaviyo can also be surprisingly difficult to use, particularly when integrating it with tools like Magento and checking out analytics information.

Issues include:

  • High pricing thatโ€™s difficult for smaller businesses to afford
  • Complicated interface in some areas that wonโ€™t appeal to beginners
  • Limited customer support and guidance

Klaviyo Reviews: Price Range

The paid plans are based on the number of email contacts and start at $25/mo. and increase with the number of contacts. Klaviyo also provides a forever free plan that's great for smaller ecommerce stores or those that are trying to test out Klaviyo.

What's nice about the free plan is that you can still take advantage of most of the Klaviyo features without having to pay a dime. The only limitation is the number of contacts and email sends, so Klaviyo grows as your company grows.

Keep in mind that the Klaviyo plans don't have names, since they're simply based on how many contacts you have in your database.

๐Ÿ‘‰ Here's a taste of how the pricing increases with the number of contacts you have:

  • Free – Support for up to 250 contacts and 500 email sends. Most of the standard Klaviyo features are provided with this plan. You will be required to have double opt-ins activated. There's also Klaviyo branding included with your email.
  • 500 Contact Plan – $20 per month for up to 500 contacts, unlimited email sends, and chat and email support.
  • 1000 Contact Plan – $30 per month for up to 1,000 contacts, unlimited email sends, and email and chat support.
  • 1,500 Contact Plan – $45 per month for up to 1,500 contacts, unlimited email sends, and email and chat support.
  • 2,000 Contact Plan – $60 per month for up to 2,000 contacts, unlimited email sends, and email and chat support.
  • 3,000 Contact Plan – $70 per month for up to 3,000 contacts, unlimited email sends, and email and chat support.
  • 4,000 Contact Plan – $1000 per month for up to 4,000 contacts, unlimited email sends, and email and chat support.
  • 6,000 Contact Plan – $130 per month for up to 6,000 contacts, unlimited email sends, and email and chat support.

There are also plenty of other pricing options if you go past 6,000 contacts. It seems to go up about $25 per month for every thousand contacts you add to your list. Klaviyo has a great slider on its website for you to figure out exactly how much your company will end up spending.

The maximum pricing option is $1,700 per month for up to 146,000 contacts. Some of these higher tiers get you a dedicated account manager. After that plan, you have to contact the Klaviyo sales team to figure out a custom price.

Click here to register for the free plan.

Read our Klaviyo pricing guide for more info.

Klaviyo Reviews: The Best Klaviyo App Features

It's tough to walk through all of the features from Klaviyo, but we'll try to cover our favorites and touch on the most important items, especially in terms of ecommerce.

The first thing that you need to know about Klaviyo is that itโ€™s comprehensive. There are tons of ways to gather information about your consumer goods and customer experiences on the Klaviyo.com platform. Youโ€™ll also have access to endless reports, which integrate with your ecommerce tools like Shopify too.

Although Klaviyo lacks some of the usability of other email marketing tools on the web today, it still has a few of the basic essentials, like a drag-and-drop builder thatโ€™s easy to use when you want to customize your emails or forms. Additionally, Klaviyo content blocks also ensure that you donโ€™t make any mistakes with your formatting either.

Whether youโ€™re building an email design from scratch or using one of Klaviyoโ€™s sensational templates, youโ€™ll find that this tool has everything you need to stand out online. Just bear in mind that you might need to spend a little more time learning how to use Klaviyo than something like Mailchimp.

Klaviyo App: Contact Manager and Forms

Klaviyo - signup form

This is one of the most basic features from Klaviyo, but it's worth mentioning because all e-commerce stores should have some sort of functionality to collect email addresses as well as other information. Several types of forms can be created in the Klaviyo dashboard. For instance, the e-commerce company might decide to have a pop-up box or an embedded form for customers to fill in their personal information.

After that, your contact management is handled in the Klaviyo dashboard as well. You can see which subscribers are your VIPs, along with information on which of your customers open up your emails and click on links inside of those emails. Overall, the interface for collecting and managing your contacts is intuitive enough for even the most basic user.

List Segmentation in Klaviyo

Klaviyo - Lists & Segments

The list segmentation is one of the strongest tools from Klaviyo, and it should be implemented by just about every online store out there. In Klaviyo, you receive a few default lists that separate your subscribers into those who are more engaged with your emails and those who might find only your newsletters interesting. You can also create your own lists and segmentations based on what the customer has done on your website or even if they fall into a certain purchasing group.

From the moment you log into your Klaviyo dashboard, youโ€™ll be presented with plenty of ways to divide your customer list. You can segment based on behavioral and transactional data, pulling information from Shopify or any other CRM you want to integrate.

Additionally, you can make your groups as complicated as you want, choosing multiple different tags and targeting options at once. You can even build groups based on people who buy certain products, or always buy using coupons.

Klaviyo also has a unique set of data science tools to take your segmentation strategy to the next level. This allows you to figure out which of your shoppers are most likely to become repeat customers, so you know where to focus additional marketing attention.

The Klaviyo Template Selection

Klaviyo provides a decent selection of templates for you to choose from. This way, there's no need to build from scratch and you don't need to be a web developer to make it look nice. Many of the templates are themed, meaning that you might be able to find a pre-built template that fits your industry perfectly.

Otherwise, you can choose from basic templates that are often more suitable for the average e-commerce store. The reason for this is that the elements are all built into the templates, and all you have to do is fill in your own content. I also like the fact that Klaviyo includes templates for newsletters as well as e-commerce product selections. There are even a few templates that combine these two, so you can include maybe a link to one of your most recent blog posts and a few of your newest products.

Klaviyo - Templates

Klaviyo App Template Editor

This is probably one of the strongest features provided by Klaviyo. The design area is a drag-and-drop interface that is easy to understand. It includes options for styles and block elements to build your emails properly. What's more is that an integration with your e-commerce platform will help you pull some of the products into your emails without having to type in the content yourself.

Some of the drag-and-drop elements include split columns, buttons, social links, and images. You can also include a logo from your store and some links at the top of the header so that people can click and go directly to your website.

Image Hosting on Klaviyo

Klaviyo offers an image library so that you can upload any image of your choice. All of these media items are stored and hosted on Klaviyo, meaning that you won't have to upload images to your own website.

Social Media Marketing through the Klaviyo App

In terms of social media, I've definitely seen better tools from other email market platforms. That being said, Klaviyo includes a few features that give you an advantage in the world of social media. The first is a Facebook advertising tool that segments your Facebook followers and any potential customers that are targeted by your Facebook advertising campaigns. You can also quickly link to all of your social media pages during the setup process in Klaviyo.

Klaviyo Autoresponders

Klaviyo features an impressive collection of autoresponders and triggered emails that are imperative to have if you plan on running an e-commerce store. Klaviyo calls these triggered emails “flows.” The flows can be created based on real-time behavior from your customers online. For instance, if one of your customers signed up for your email newsletter, you could create a triggered email that sends them a welcome message along with a series of informational emails after that.

Klaviyo - Flows

For automated e-commerce emails, the abandoned cart series is a good example of how you can continually bring back customers to your store. The abandoned cart automated email detects when a customer types in their personal information but then ends up leaving the shopping cart without buying. After that, Klaviyo sends an email to this customer reminding them of the products left in the cart. You can even include a coupon to try and coax the customer into making a purchase.

One particularly useful thing about Klaviyo, is that it can help you out with your automation strategies too. If youโ€™re new to email marketing and you need some extra guidance, you can click on the โ€œBrowse Ideasโ€ section in the user interface to get dozens of pre-made templates.

These templates can help you with building any kind of autoresponder you can think of, from promotions for your webinars, to abandoned cart emails.

Klaviyoโ€™s data analytics technology can also provide real-time information that triggers automations based on the specific routes that customers take in their buyer journey. For instance, with conditional splits, you can add multiple different auto responders to your mis depending on whether someone marks an email as spam, returns to a website page, or buys a certain product.

The amount of data and automation opportunities that you get with Klaviyo is one of the things that makes this product such an appealing option for email marketing.

Klaviyo Integrations

 

Klaviyo - Intergrations
The Klaviyo platform is filled with several integrations for things like ecommerce platforms, marketing tools, and help desk software. Most ecommerce professionals will be happy to know that you can integrate with popular platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce. There are also plenty of integrations for CRM platforms, rewards programs, and more.

Klaviyo Review: Integrations with Shopify

Though Klaviyo has a few issues with ease of use and isnโ€™t the least expensive email builder in the world, it does have some features that make up for itโ€™s learning curve. One of those things is an excellent integration with Shopify.

Klaviyo has integrations available with a bunch of user-friendly ecommerce tools, including BigCommerce, Magento, and WooCommerce. However, itโ€™s the connection with Shopify that really makes Klaviyo shine. Designed to form a crucial part of the growth engine for Shopify store users, the Klaviyo app is all about helping you understand your customer journey and make the most of it when tailoring your strategy to your ecommerce clients.

With Klaviyo email marketing campaigns, you can instantly respond to a customer when they leave your cart or improve the customer experience by delivering personalized recommendations based on their previous purchases.

Thereโ€™s no need for any complicated Zapier integrations, you can link your eCommerce platform and your email marketing campaigns in seconds. This also means that you can collect a ton of amazing data on your audience and what they need from you, including:

  • ย  ย  ย  ย  Which products customers buy
  • ย  ย  ย  ย  Which customers leave products in their cart
  • ย  ย  ย  ย  How often people use discount codes
  • ย  ย  ย  ย  Where your customers come from
  • ย  ย  ย  ย  How people respond to your forms

Using Klaviyo for your form builder and customer lists with Shopify could really take your business to the next level.

Klaviyo Analytics and Reporting

A/B testing is one of the best ways to make sure that your email marketing strategies are really paying off. If you want to ensure that youโ€™re getting the optimum results from every message you send, then Klaviyo can help with that. Just go into your Flows section and check the metrics you want to track.

You can A/B test your campaigns based on things like bounce rates, unsubscribe rates and more, allowing you to see first-hand which campaigns are delivering the best results. You can even link in predictive-analytics to check which customers are more likely to make purchases in the future based on their previous activities.

Along with A/B testing information, Klaviyo has ROI based reporting to get a deeper understanding of how many sales are coming in from your email marketing. You can also link up with Google Analytics.

The built-in website tracking allows you to figure out visitor behavior in real time and the impressive collection of reports is bound to help you out when comparing and analyzing sales from the past and for the future.

Klaviyo - Dashboard

Klaviyo might take a little longer to figure out when youโ€™re trying to determine which of your email campaigns are performing the best. However, once you know how to use the analytics tools in this system โ€“ itโ€™s well worth the effort.

There are plenty of metrics to check, and you can access a customizable analytics dashboard ideal for giving you an instant overview of how certain campaigns are performing. For instance, you can have your homepage tell you as soon as you log on whether your emails are being sent to spam, or whether youโ€™re improving your sender reputation.

Klaviyo even lets you choose how you want to view your data, with options like bar graphs and line charts that make your progress more visually engaging. Combine this vast selection of reporting features with the integrations that Klaviyo offers with things like Shopify, and you can create a comprehensive end-to-end view of everything thatโ€™s happening in your customer conversations.

The biggest downside of Klaviyo for most companies will be the fact that itโ€™s so packed full of features, that itโ€™s difficult to know where to start. For instance, you can even collect information about everyone on your list, to make sure that you have an insight into who your most important VIP customers are.

If youโ€™re a beginner, thereโ€™s likely to be so much data that you end up feeling overwhelmed.

Klaviyo Reviews: Customer Support

When problems happen with your onboarding strategy or email personalization, itโ€™s important to know that thereโ€™s a member of the Klaviyo team there to help.

The Klaviyo customer support team gets potential customers started by scheduling a free demo. This is a great way to see exactly what Klaviyo offers in terms of its feature set and to see a visual representation of how the system works. You can also contact the sales team through email and a listed phone number on the website. As for other sales questions, the website offers an FAQ page and a free trial so that you can play around with the system yourself.

The primary way you will get customer support from Klaviyo is by going to the help center. Here, you can search any keyword or topic for to see a wide range of articles, videos, and courses. The company also posts slides and resources from user conferences, so you'll never miss an opportunity to learn more about the platform. The help center is also nicely categorized for you to select certain problems that you might have. For instance, there is an “ecommerce integrations” category to learn how to integrate with systems like WooCommerce and Shopify. You'll also find categories for things like the Klaviyo API, advertising, and sign-up forms.

Klaviyo doesn't have a phone support line for technical problems. The only phone number you can find on the website is for the sales team. However, the majority of pricing plans have email support and chat support for regular business hours on Eastern Standard Time. If you have thousands of contacts in your database, it would be wise to check if you qualify for a dedicated customer support representative.

Finally, the Klaviyo blog also serves as a form of customer support by offering tips and tutorials on topics like email marketing and customer acquisition. You also might follow Klaviyo on places like Facebook and Twitter, since I know that some people like to get the customer support through social media.

Overall, I would like to see a phone support line on Klaviyo, but at least they have a chat box and email support that seems to be very responsive to messages. Not only that, but the help center is filled with enough articles for you to complete your own research.

Is Klaviyo the Right Email Marketing Platform for Your Ecommerce Store

Like I mentioned at the beginning of this review, I find Klaviyo to be a suitable email marketing service for many ecommerce shops. It's not quite as streamlined as other competitors, but the templates are modern, the flows work well, and you can segment like a boss.

Itโ€™s safe to say that Klaviyo is a powerful tool for email marketing, and a top-notch way to get a better overview of your marketing results. However, if youโ€™re looking for a simple and straightforward marketing solution for small businesses, this might not be the product for you.

It is lacking in some of the more fun features–such as surveys and interesting signup forms–but there are some integrations to help you out there. I definitely wouldn't use this as a standalone email marketing tool without an online store.

Itโ€™s also worth noting that the complexity of this tool can make it difficult to grasp at first. That, combined with the high price tag means that Klaviyo is going to be pretty intimidating for some business owners.

If your ecommerce store is hosted at any of the platforms mentioned in the integrations, you might want to check Klaviyo out.

It offers a fantastic integration with Shopify, and the range of analytics and segmentations you get with Klaviyo is truly incredible. If youโ€™re looking for something really advanced to enhance your eCommerce experience, then it might be worth giving Klaviyo a go.

Joe Warnimont

Joe Warnimont is a Chicago-based writer who focuses on eCommerce tools, WordPress, and social media. When not fishing or practicing yoga, he's collecting stamps at national parks (even though that's mainly for children). Check out Joe's portfolio to contact him and view past work.

Comments 7 Responses

  1. minal says:

    great information thanks for posting

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Thanks Minal!

  2. Amy says:

    The pricing schedule here is incorrect. up to 1000 subscribers is $30 USD, 1500 is $45 USD. I recommend checking the Klaviyo website for pricing and not basing your decision on what is represented here.

    1. Bogdan Rancea says:

      Thanks for the heads-up Amy!

  3. Manuel says:

    Hey guys, thanks for the review!
    I am about to start using a similar service (tirggmine). Did you have a chance to test it? It would be great to hear your opinion.
    Thanks

  4. Jason Nguyen says:

    Be careful with Klaviyo. When I did not want to use Klaviyo anymore, I let my credit card expire. Klaviyo then automatically updated my credit card expiration date and kept charging me without letting me know. Iโ€™m fighting to get a refund on those charges.

    1. Manuel says:

      Hi Jason,
      Thank you for the warning!

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