What is Klaviyo, and is it the right platform for your shop?
A marketing platform built for online shops: email and SMS, run on what each customer has actually done. We're an official partner, so here's the fair version.
- 069Klaviyo
- The leading email marketing platform designed for ecommerce businesses, offering advanced segmentation and automation.
- Built around
- A profile for each person, with everything they've done attached
- Channels
- Email and SMS first, with push notifications for shops that have an app
- Charges on
- The profiles you can email, with SMS billed separately
- Our interest
- We're an official Klaviyo partner, so weigh this page accordingly
How Klaviyo works: a timeline for every customer
Every person Klaviyo can identify gets a profile. Every action lands on it as an event: viewed a product, started a checkout, placed an order, opened an email, clicked a text. Over time each profile becomes a timeline.
Everything else in Klaviyo reads that timeline. Segments are questions asked of it, and they update as people qualify. Flows start when a new event lands. Campaigns go to the segments you pick. So the data arriving matters more than the templates do.
What a Shopify shop gets from Klaviyo on day one, and what it builds
Connect Shopify and the integration brings in your customers, orders and products, plus browsing once site tracking is switched on. That part takes an afternoon. The rest is the actual work.
- Authenticate your sending domain, so Gmail and Yahoo trust the mail
- Build sign-up forms that collect consent properly
- Switch on the core flows: welcome, abandoned checkout, browse, post purchase, winback
- Decide what engaged means, and make it the default campaign audience
- Pick the attribution window you'll report on, and leave it alone
Klaviyo's own help centre documents every setting. It can't tell you which ones matter for your shop. That part's judgement.
Who Klaviyo suits, and who'd be fine on something simpler
We're an official Klaviyo partner and it's what we build in, so read this with that attached.
It suits shops where the next email should depend on what the customer just did: several product lines, a real repeat purchase pattern, enough orders that segments have people in them.
For a small list, one product and a monthly newsletter, a simpler tool will do the job, and you won't miss what you never used. There's a straight comparison in Klaviyo vs Shopify Email.
What Klaviyo charges for, and why an old list costs twice
The bill grows with the number of profiles you can email, and SMS is charged on top. So a list full of people who stopped opening years ago costs you twice: on the invoice, and in the inbox placement they drag down for everyone else.
Suppress them and both costs fall. A sunset flow does it on a schedule, so nobody has to remember.
Related terms
FAQs
Is Klaviyo only for Shopify shops?
No. Klaviyo also integrates with WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Adobe Commerce, among others, and anything else can send it data through its API. Check what your platform's integration actually sends before you commit, because the events arriving decide which flows you can build.
How long does a proper Klaviyo setup take?
Connecting the shop takes an afternoon. Doing it properly takes weeks: authenticating the domain, building forms and the core flows, writing the templates, and warming up sending if you've moved from another platform. Rushing that last part is how a new account starts life in the spam folder.
Do we need a Klaviyo partner to run it?
No. Plenty of shops run it well themselves. A partner gets you the build finished and somebody watching it, plus a faster line to Klaviyo when something breaks. Whether that's worth paying for depends on whether anyone inside has the hours. We're biased, and we'd still tell you if they do.
Rather we explained it on your own account?
Bring your Klaviyo account to a growth consultation. We'll walk through what this means for your numbers, in plain English, and what we'd fix first.
Half an hour with Theo, our founder.
We're all about relationships built on trust, mutual respect and a shared vision for success. If that sounds like your vibe, let's make some waves together 🌊
