Klaviyo was already a great customer data and marketing automation platform, but on March 30, 2021, they unveiled some new updates, including two new products consumers had been asking for. These new releases allow customers to scale by adding another marketing channel, Conversational SMS, to their marketing recipe.
The second product, Personalized Benchmarks, allows eCommerce brands to see how they stack up to businesses just like theirs when it comes to growth and brand reach. But how can your brand add these products to your marketing mix and grow your business? Let’s dig right in.
Sweet Conversational SMS
While email has been the go-to communications tool for interacting with customers, short message service (SMS) has some distinct advantages. You can carry on two-way conversations easily and send links on mobile devices where customers do most of their shopping anyway. In fact, did you know that SMS customers are much more loyal and convert at much higher rates than email subscribers?
The beauty is that with Klaviyo, the process is simple to automate. Instead of starting from scratch to develop your own process, there are existing templates that you can easily customize to meet your needs. Responses based on customer activity mean your messages arrive at just the right time. They include:
- Sales events
- Cart reminders
- Order confirmations
- Tracking information and delivery notifications
You can also send emails in the same thread and even offer subscribers the option to choose their preferred communication channel.
However, probably the most valuable thing Klaviyo generates for customers is data. It’s like filling in an éclair – your SMS wouldn’t be the same without it. All of your consumer data from email and SMS in one thread allows you to understand several things:
- What messages convert and what messages don’t
- How long your customers take to make a purchase (Impulse purchase vs. lead nurturing)
- What's most likely to work in your campaigns going forward. Predictive analytics gives you the answer.
The key is in the conversation, and that is exactly what the Conversational SMS update gives you. This product alone makes Klaviyo even more invaluable for eCommerce brands. But the update doesn’t stop there.
Personalized Benchmarks: A Quick Taste Test
What if there was a tool that assembled all kinds of data and let you compare yourself to your competitors? How much would that be worth? What if you knew ahead of time which key performance indicators (KPIs) and projects provided the best opportunity for growth?
That’s exactly what Personalized Benchmarks offers you. For example, it's often difficult to assemble the data you need to determine how well your welcome sequence is engaging customers when compared to other brands. Is your open rate decent? Are customers responding to your offer more or less often than your competitors?
For example, let’s say your conversion rate is 0.97%. That's only one piece of the data. Is that good or bad? If you look at 100 competitors in your field and the mean conversion rate on similar campaigns is 0.85%, you may be in good shape.
However, if your numbers are around a 0.67% conversion rate compared to that same mean of 0.85%, you know that your competition is doing something better than you are. And it pays to look closely at what their secret ingredient is.
Klaviyo does the hard work for you. They gather a benchmark anonymously from the data they have, comparing your company to hundreds of others with similar growth rates and revenue attributes. This will help you gauge how you're doing in your marketplace.
This type of data is difficult, if not nearly impossible, to gather easily on your own. Comparison helps you understand who your peers are, where you're doing well, and where you can stand to improve. You can compare:
- Flow conversion rates
- Welcome series open rates
- Unsubscribe and bounce rates
- Email revenue per recipient
- Other vital eCommerce metrics
A welcome series open rate of 40% might seem good, but if other companies like you are getting results closer to 50%, you know you can grow. Maybe you need to change something simple, kind of like altering the oven temperature or adding an extra spoon of sugar.
If you're strong on campaigns but weak on flows, you know where to put in more work. This tool provides the data eCommerce marketing teams need to make smart, data-driven decisions that drive results.
No matter how good you think your marketing mix might be, sometimes a pinch of this or a teaspoon of that can make all the difference in the world. Check out Klaviyo and their new updates and tools, and request a personalized demo.
And if you have questions about where these tools might fit for you, let one of our eCommerce strategists look at your digital marketing and customer engagement recipe. We’d love to help you find the missing ingredient that could take your brand from good to great. Contact us today!
