Q: Adam, your agency specialises in Klaviyo email marketing for Shopify store owners. What makes Klaviyo a better option than other Autoresponders such as Mailchimp, Active Campaign, etc?
In a nutshell: its ability to drive more revenue than other ESPs.
Whilst I am a strong believer in creativity being a focal point in marketing (and creating stunning content in our emails is what we specialise in as an agency), our work should never be based on hunches and always be combined with scientific insights.
Klaviyo’s ease-of-use to leverage sophisticated data, analyse it and implement strategies to drive more revenue is unparalleled when compared to the other ESPs for e-commerce.
For B2B, I prefer – and use – ActiveCampaign for our own business. But for Shopify store owners, I’ve never seen such a powerful integration between marketing automation software than with Klaviyo. Everything from segmentation to reporting is first-class and relatively easy to implement within the first few weeks of use.
Q: Let’s say a client starts working with you to take over their email marketing efforts. What are the most important sequences you first put in place to help grow their business?
In terms of revenue, it’s usually the abandoned cart email sequence (70% of shoppers abandon their carts online).
I would then progress on to ensure the Welcome Flow is set up to greet new customers visiting your brand in a compelling way. You can drive people on to this sequence using pop-ups for your store upon exit-intent, offering discounts or giveaways to get them on to your email list. The Welcome Flow not only incentivises customers to make their first purchase but crucially, tells your brand’s story and ethics. This is paramount in this day and age where consumers want to feel ‘connected’ to the brands they’re buying from.
The next logical step is optimising the post-purchase sequence: the emails they’ll be receiving after buying from your store. You’ll want to incentivise product reviews during this email sequence, as well as driving up-sells and cross-sells where relevant. It’s much easier to retarget somebody who’s bought once from you than having to acquire new customers, and also, much more profitable for your business.
An important note to everyone who has not yet dabbled too much in email: make sure this core automation is set up before you start mass-mailing your newsletter to subscribers. I have taken control of many accounts where the owner/marketer in charge has damaged their deliverability (open rates) by mass-emailing all people in the database repetitively. This can be hard to fix, but email sequences help improve deliverability and warm up your I.P as they have high open & click-through rates since they’re highly relevant to the customer journey (i.e. an abandoned cart email is likely to be opened by most people since they were shopping on your site an hour before). More info on this can be found here.
Q: We have seen Klaviyo’s ability to push custom audiences to Facebook to be used for ads and Lookalike audiences work very effectively. What are your favourite audiences to push to Facebook to be used in ads?
This is an excellent question, and we normally work closely with other advertising agencies (such as yourself) or in-house teams since we don’t deliver ads.
A few quick-wins that spring to mind:
- Cart Abandoners: retarget these individuals with a coupon code/discount.
- New customers: retarget people who have visited but never purchased, perhaps offering an incentive to sweeten the deal.
- Cross-sell: somebody bought a protein supplement from your store that’s commonly used with creatine? Serve an ad notifying the customer this is a good combination.
- Winback opportunities: bring old customers back to life by reminding them you still exist!
Personally, I like the strategy of remarketing to first-time buyers first and relying on email infrastructure to drive customer lifetime value long-term. But of course, ads play an integral role in the buying process/omnichannel approach for all companies these days.
Q: Do you have any advice for store owners looking to improve their email marketing efforts? How should they approach this, if so?
Yes, hire us!
In all seriousness, if you’re going to go it alone, then I’d recommend the following steps:
- Switch on your core email sequences before sending campaigns (cart abandonment, post-purchase, welcome flow, browse abandonment)
- Only send campaigns to engaged subscribers
- Leverage segmentation using a ‘common sense’ approach to emailing your customers (i.e. don’t send women’s dresses to men who usually buy chinos from your store)
As long as the content in the emails is good, you should get some return following the above advice.
Lastly, while email is a great tool for driving sales, it’s not just a ‘sales channel’. It’s also a medium to share great content and enrich your customers lives with value. Take advantage of this and you’ll keep unsubscribe rates low, click-through rates high and sales excellent.
Q: Lastly, how can somebody contact you if they’d like to enlist your services?
Two places you can always connect with me:
LinkedIn (I’m very active)
Email: adam@magnetmonster.co.uk