From Zero to Hero: How to Use Klaviyo for Email Marketing

Why Email Marketing Remains a Revenue Powerhouse

Summary

• Klaviyo is an eCommerce-focused marketing automation platform for email and SMS.
• It uses customer data from an eCommerce store to send targeted communication.
• The platform has two main message types: one-time 'Campaigns' and automated, triggered 'Flows'.
• Core automated flows include welcome series, abandoned cart, and post-purchase messages.
• Performance is tracked with metrics like open rate, click rate, and revenue per recipient to guide adjustments.

How to use Klaviyo for email marketing is a question we hear from eCommerce leaders looking to increase their revenue. Here's the quick answer:

1. Connect your store - Integrate Klaviyo with your eCommerce platform (Shopify, BigCommerce, etc.)
2. Set up core flows - Start with automated Welcome Series, Abandoned Cart, and Post-Purchase emails
3. Build your list - Use sign-up forms and incentives to collect subscribers
4. Segment your audience - Group customers by behavior, purchase history, and engagement
5. Send campaigns - Create one-time promotional or content emails to targeted segments
6. Measure and refine - Track open rates, click rates, and revenue per recipient to improve performance

According to Klaviyo data, effective email programs can generate 30% of a brand's total revenue, and automated flows can produce up to 30 times more revenue per recipient than manual campaigns. These results come from combining the right platform with a clear plan.

Klaviyo is built specifically for eCommerce. Unlike general email tools, it pulls in real-time customer data from your store—what people browse, what they add to cart, and what they buy. This data is used for precise segmentation and personalization, which helps create targeted messages that are more likely to convert.

This guide explains the practical steps of using Klaviyo, from initial setup to advanced automation. I'll cover the difference between campaigns and flows, which automated sequences to set up first, how to segment your list, and how to measure performance. The process is the same whether you are migrating from another platform or starting fresh.

As Steve Pogson, I've spent over two decades helping eCommerce businesses build their stores, and I've seen how effective email marketing separates growing brands from stagnant ones. Here at First Pier, we've guided dozens of clients through Klaviyo implementation, and we know how to use Klaviyo for email marketing to encourage repeat purchases.

Understanding Klaviyo's Core Components

To explain how to use Klaviyo for email marketing, I start with what it is: a marketing automation platform built for eCommerce businesses. It helps brands acquire, retain, and grow their customer base by automating email and SMS marketing. It is a data-driven platform designed to understand customer behavior.

Klaviyo is a leading platform for eCommerce email marketing because of its integration capabilities and focus on customer data. It pulls data from your eCommerce platform, customer service tools, and other parts of your tech stack. This gives it a comprehensive view of each customer's history, which allows for personalized and targeted communication. As an agency that specializes in Shopify development, we find its integration with platforms like Shopify to be very effective for our clients. The Shopify and Klaviyo Integration provides a real-time data flow that informs all marketing efforts.

The core features of Klaviyo help businesses create effective email marketing campaigns. These Klaviyo Features include:

• A Unified Customer Profile: A central place for all customer data, providing a complete view of each individual. As a Klaviyo CDP (Customer Data Platform), it combines information from various sources.
• Segmentation Tools: The ability to divide your customer base into specific groups based on their behavior, purchase history, and demographics.
• Automation (Flows): Pre-built and customizable sequences of emails and SMS messages that trigger based on specific customer actions.
• Campaign Management: Tools for creating and sending one-time emails for promotions, newsletters, or announcements.
• Predictive Analytics: Features that forecast future customer behavior, such as next order date or churn risk.
• A/B Testing: Capabilities to test different elements of your emails to find what resonates best with your audience.
• Reporting and Analytics: Detailed dashboards to track the performance of your campaigns and flows.

Klaviyo integrates with over 200 other platforms, making it a flexible solution for most eCommerce businesses. This integration network means you can connect your business tools and have customer data flow directly into Klaviyo for use in personalized marketing.

Campaigns vs. Flows: The Two Types of Klaviyo Messages

Understanding the difference between campaigns and flows is fundamental to knowing how to use Klaviyo for email marketing effectively. I often explain it like this: think of campaigns as your scheduled broadcasts, and flows as your automated conversations.

Klaviyo Campaigns are one-time email sends to a chosen list or segment. These are perfect for:

• Announcing a flash sale or new product launch.
• Sending out your weekly or monthly newsletter.
• Promoting seasonal offers.
• Sharing company news or blog updates.

They are immediate and typically involve a broader audience within a defined segment.

Klaviyo Email Flows, on the other hand, are automated, triggered messages. These are the workhorses of eCommerce email marketing, designed to respond to specific customer behaviors in real time. They are always on, always working. Automated emails generate over 14x higher revenue per recipient (RPR) than manual campaigns, which makes them a critical part of an email plan.

When should you use each? Use campaigns for broadcast messages that need to go out at a specific time. Use flows for automated, personalized sequences that react to customer actions.

For eCommerce businesses, there are several essential flows you should set up right away. These are the Best Klaviyo Flows that consistently generate significant revenue:

1. Welcome Series: This flow introduces your brand to new subscribers. It's the second-highest converting flow, with a 1.97% average placed order rate. It's your chance to make a great first impression.
2. Abandoned Cart Flow: This is arguably the most critical flow for any eCommerce business. With studies showing cart abandonment rates around 69.9%, this flow helps recover potentially lost sales. Cart abandonment is a serious issue. Abandoned cart flows have the highest average RPR ($3.07) and highest average placed order rate (2.68%) of all flows.
3. Post-Purchase Flow: This nurtures new customers, providing order confirmations, shipping updates, product care tips, and recommendations for complementary products. Post-purchase flows have the highest average flow open rate (59.77%), showing customers are eager for this information.
4. Browse Abandonment Flow: This flow re-engages customers who viewed products but didn't add them to their cart. It has an impressive average click rate of 4.74%, indicating strong interest from these prospects.

Setting up these core flows is a fundamental step in building an effective email marketing plan with Klaviyo.

Building and Sending Your First Email Campaign

Once you understand the difference between campaigns and flows, the next step in how to use Klaviyo for email marketing is getting your first campaign out the door. It's a straightforward process, and Klaviyo's interface makes it quite intuitive.

Here's a step-by-step process for building and sending a new email campaign:

1. Go to the Campaigns Tab: In your Klaviyo account, find and click on the 'Campaigns' tab. From there, you'll select 'Create Campaign' and choose 'Email'.
2. Set Up Your Campaign Details: You'll give your campaign a name, select a type (e.g., "Newsletter," "Promotional"), and add any relevant tags for organization. This helps keep your campaigns tidy.
3. Add Recipients and Manage Targeting: This is where you decide who gets your email. You'll choose an existing list or segment. I always recommend targeting your most engaged subscribers first, especially when you're starting out, to help with deliverability. You can also exclude certain segments (e.g., recent purchasers) using the 'Don't send to' option. Klaviyo's Smart Sending feature is also helpful here; it prevents you from sending too many emails to the same people within a short timeframe, which helps prevent subscriber fatigue and unsubscribes.
4. Create the Email Content: Klaviyo provides several options:
   • Drag-and-Drop Editor: This is my go-to. It's user-friendly, allowing you to build beautiful emails without any coding. You can use saved templates, choose from Klaviyo's email library, or start with a blank canvas.
   • Text-Only Editor: For simple, plain-text emails.
   • HTML Editor: If you have custom HTML designs.The goal is to create clear and effective content. Here at First Pier, we emphasize Klaviyo Email Design that is visually appealing, on-brand, and easy to read. The average time spent reading an email is only 9 seconds, so scannable layouts and clear calls to action are essential.
   • Mobile-Responsive Design: Most of your customers will read emails on their phones, so ensuring your emails look great on mobile is not optional. Klaviyo's editor helps with this, but always preview your emails on different devices. Considerations for designing effective and mobile-responsive emails in Klaviyo include using single-column layouts, large fonts (14-18px for body text), and ample spacing around buttons.
   • Dark Mode: With more people using Dark Mode, it's important to design with it in mind. Use transparent backgrounds for images, and ensure your logos and icons are visible against dark backgrounds (a thin white border can help!).
5. Review and Test: Before sending, always send a test email to yourself or your team. How to Send a Test Email in Klaviyo is a simple click away. Double-check everything: subject line, sender name, links, images, and mobile rendering.
6. Schedule and Send Your Campaign: Once you're confident, you can choose to send the campaign immediately or schedule it for a later date and time. Klaviyo also allows for Klaviyo A/B Testing on elements like subject lines, content, or send times to find what gets the best results. I always suggest testing one element at a time to clearly understand what's making the difference.

Advanced Strategies for How to Use Klaviyo for Email Marketing

Beyond the basics, using Klaviyo for email marketing involves using its data for more personalized and automated communication. This is where you can start to see significant returns.

Effective List Segmentation for How to Use Klaviyo for Email Marketing

The core of effective email marketing with Klaviyo is segmentation. If you're sending the same message to everyone, you are likely missing sales. Building an email list is the first step, and Klaviyo offers excellent tools for this, such as customizable sign-up forms and pop-ups. Getting started with sign-up forms will help you build your audience.

Once you have a list, Getting started with segments becomes crucial. Klaviyo's data platform helps with very precise segmentation based on:

• Behavioral Data: Who opened which emails, clicked what links, viewed which products, added items to cart, or started a checkout.
• Purchase History: What they bought, how often, how much they spent, and when their last purchase was.
• Engagement Levels: How recently and frequently they've interacted with your emails. Klaviyo even comes with pre-built 30-, 60-, and 90-day engaged segments to help you get started warming your account and understand activity levels.
• Demographic and Geographic Data: Location, age, gender (if collected).
• Customer Properties: Custom properties like VIP status, preferred categories, or specific interests collected via quizzes or preferences centers.

By segmenting your audience, you can adjust your messages to be more relevant, increasing engagement and conversions. For instance, sending a flash sale announcement only to customers who've previously purchased from that category, or a loyalty offer to your top-spending VIPs.

Personalization and AI for How to Use Klaviyo for Email Marketing

Klaviyo's data platform is very effective for personalization. My clients at First Pier use Klaviyo Personalization to send emails that feel like they were written just for the recipient. This goes beyond just using a customer's first name. It includes:

• Dynamic Content Blocks: Displaying specific products a customer viewed, items from their abandoned cart, or personalized recommendations based on their purchase history or browsing behavior.
• Product Recommendations: Using Klaviyo's algorithms to suggest products a customer is likely to be interested in.

Klaviyo's predictive analytics takes this even further. This feature helps businesses understand and forecast customer behavior by analyzing historical data to predict:

• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Identifying your most valuable customers and those with high potential.
• Next Order Date: Predicting when a customer is likely to make their next purchase, allowing you to send timely re-engagement campaigns.
• Churn Risk: Flagging customers who are likely to stop purchasing, so you can send win-back campaigns before they're lost.

Beyond predictions, Klaviyo's AI features are regularly updated to help improve email marketing. Klaviyo AI can assist with:

• Subject Line Generation: Brainstorming and improving subject lines for better open rates.
• Content Creation: Generating on-brand email copy and even entire templates. How to Use AI for Email Marketing Campaigns is a rapidly growing area to explore.
• Deliverability: Automatically repairing sending reputation and refining campaign audiences to ensure your emails land in the inbox, not the spam folder.
• Smart Send Time: Determining the best time of day to send emails to each individual for higher engagement.

Integrating SMS Marketing

Combining email and SMS marketing is effective for eCommerce. The benefits of using Klaviyo for SMS marketing together with email are clear: it allows for communication across both channels. Klaviyo SMS Marketing lets you:

• Build Cross-Channel Flows: Combine email and SMS within the same automated flows. For example, an abandoned cart flow might send an email first, and if there's no response, follow up with an SMS message.
• Reach Customers Instantly: SMS is ideal for urgent messages like flash sales, shipping updates, or time-sensitive offers.
• Diversify Communication: Not everyone prefers email for every message. SMS provides an alternative, often more immediate, touchpoint.

When deciding when to use SMS versus email, consider the urgency and length of your message. SMS is best for short, timely alerts, while email allows for more detailed content, images, and storytelling. Always ensure you have proper consent for SMS messages, as regulations are strict.

Measuring Success and Finding Resources

The final step in how to use Klaviyo for email marketing is knowing if your efforts are paying off. Klaviyo provides Klaviyo Reporting tools to help you track key performance indicators (KPIs) and understand your impact.

Here are the essential metrics I track for my clients:

• Open Rate: The percentage of recipients who opened your email.
• Click Rate: The percentage of recipients who clicked a link in your email.
• Revenue Per Recipient (RPR): How much revenue, on average, each recipient of your email generated. This is a critical metric for eCommerce. Automated emails generate over 14x higher RPR than manual campaigns.
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of recipients who completed a desired action, like making a purchase.
• Unsubscribe Rate: The percentage of recipients who opted out of your emails. A high unsubscribe rate can signal issues with your content or targeting.

It's important to note the impact of Apple's Mail Privacy Protection (MPP), which can affect open rate metrics by pre-fetching emails. However, Klaviyo handles this by helping you identify which emails have been opened by Apple iOS users, allowing you to still understand your data.

When it comes to the pricing model, Klaviyo offers flexibility, including a free tier for users to get started. Beyond that, pricing is based on the number of active profiles you have, meaning you pay for the contacts you are actively marketing to. This model adjusts as your contact list grows or shrinks.

Finally, Klaviyo provides extensive resources and support for learning:

• Klaviyo Academy: This is a useful resource with courses on everything from email deliverability to setting up flows, campaigns, and segments.
• Live Trainings: Klaviyo hosts over 60 live trainings each month, designed to help users use the platform effectively. You can find live trainings on specific topics and get your questions answered in real time.
• Help Center: A comprehensive knowledge base with articles and guides on every feature and function.

I always encourage my clients to use these resources. They are useful for continuous learning and improvement.

To Sum Up

To effectively use Klaviyo for email marketing, you need to combine customer data, precise segmentation, and automated communication across email and SMS. Start with the basic elements, like a welcome series and abandoned cart flow, then continuously test, analyze, and refine your campaigns. This process helps ensure you are sending relevant messages that reach customers at the right time.

Here at First Pier, we've seen businesses in Portland, ME, and beyond increase their revenue by using Klaviyo for email marketing. Our experience with eCommerce and Shopify helps us guide brands in putting these methods into practice to encourage repeat business. If you need help building an email marketing program that generates results, we're here to help.

Contact First Pier for expert Email & SMS Marketing services.