Knowledge base
Email marketing, answered
Practical answers on Klaviyo, flows, deliverability, list growth, SMS and working with In-box. Search or browse by topic.
Getting started
Email is your owned sales channel. Ads rent attention; email keeps it. For most ecommerce brands it should drive 25 to 40 percent of total revenue through a mix of automated flows and weekly campaigns, at a fraction of the cost of paid media.
A healthy Klaviyo account contributes 25 to 40 percent of total store revenue. If you are under 15 percent, the gap is usually a mix of missing flows, thin campaign cadence and poor list health, all of which are fixable inside a quarter.
Most stores see a meaningful lift inside the first 30 days once the core flows are live and campaigns start going out weekly. Compounding gains come as segmentation, sign-up forms and deliverability improve over the next 60 to 90 days.
Expect the essential flows contributing double-digit percent of revenue by day 30, a lifted campaign click and conversion rate by day 60, and total email revenue share climbing 5 to 15 points by day 90. Bigger jumps come from bigger starting gaps.
Klaviyo & platforms
Klaviyo is built for ecommerce data. It reads product, order and browse events natively, has the strongest segmentation engine, and its deliverability is consistently better than the generalist tools. For a serious ecommerce brand it pays for itself quickly.
It is where we do our best work, but no. If you are on Mailchimp, Omnisend, Attentive or another platform we will handle the migration end to end as part of onboarding, including flows, segments, templates and historical data.
A typical Shopify to Klaviyo migration takes two to three weeks. That covers list import with consent status preserved, the core flows rebuilt, brand templates, segmentation, deliverability set-up and side-by-side testing before we cut over.
Yes. Klaviyo has a native two-way Shopify integration and supports WooCommerce, BigCommerce and Magento. Product, cart, checkout and order data all flow in automatically, which is what powers the segmentation and flows.
Flows & automation
At minimum: welcome, browse abandonment, cart abandonment, checkout abandonment, post-purchase, winback and a VIP flow. Together these are usually 20 to 30 percent of total email revenue and run in the background without more work from you.
Three is the sweet spot. Send the first around one hour after abandonment while intent is hot, the second at 24 hours with social proof or a reason to come back, and the third at 48 to 72 hours if you use an offer. More than three usually just annoys people.
Browse abandonment triggers when someone views a product but does not add to cart. Cart abandonment triggers when they add to cart and leave. Browse converts less, so keep it lighter and product-focused, and reserve any incentives for cart and checkout.
If you offer a sign-up incentive on your form, the welcome flow delivers it. If not, use welcome to introduce the brand, hero products and social proof. Discounts train some buyers to wait, so higher-margin brands often skip them in favour of a stronger brand story.
It thanks the buyer, sets expectations for delivery, asks for a review at the right moment, and gently moves them toward a second purchase. Run it over the two to four weeks after the order, timed around the actual product experience, not just the order date.
Campaigns & strategy
One to two campaigns a week is the right range for most ecommerce brands. Fewer and you leave revenue on the table; more and unsubscribes and spam complaints climb. Cadence should track your buying cycle, not an arbitrary calendar.
Not if you segment properly. Send full-frequency to your engaged 90-day segment and reduce cadence for less engaged profiles. Fatigue almost always comes from sending the same message to everyone, not from volume itself.
Keep them under 50 characters, lead with a specific benefit or curiosity gap, and skip the marketing clichés. Preview text should extend the subject line, not repeat it. Test two options on every send and let the winners inform the next month.
Yes. Warm the list in October, tease the offer a week out, run a tight three to five email BFCM sequence with clear urgency, then follow up with a Cyber Monday and last-chance send. Segment hard so buyers do not keep getting sale emails after they order.
Deliverability & list health
Usually a mix of unauthenticated sending domain, poor engagement, image-heavy templates and a stale list. Fixing SPF, DKIM and DMARC, sunsetting cold profiles and tightening your engaged segment fixes it faster than any subject-line change.
They are DNS records that prove your emails really come from you. SPF and DKIM authenticate the send, DMARC tells inbox providers what to do if a message fails. Gmail and Yahoo now require all three for anyone sending more than 5,000 emails a day.
Yes, but gradually. Run a winback flow first, then sunset profiles that have not opened or clicked in 90 to 180 days. A smaller engaged list beats a big cold one every time because inbox providers reward engagement rates, not raw volume.
Never buy a list, it will destroy deliverability. Grow with well-designed sign-up forms on your site, an incentive tied to first order, and post-purchase opt-in. A good on-site form should convert 3 to 6 percent of visitors, well above the 1 percent industry average.
Watch three numbers weekly: open rate above 30 percent on engaged segments, spam complaint rate under 0.1 percent, and bounce rate under 1 percent. Google Postmaster Tools and Klaviyo's deliverability dashboard show it directly.
SMS
Add SMS once email is running well. It is not a replacement, it is a complement. SMS wins for time-sensitive moments like abandoned checkout, back-in-stock, drops and BFCM. Email keeps carrying the storytelling, cadence and margin.
Shorter, sharper, and much more expensive per send, so it has to earn its place. Keep it under 160 characters, one clear call to action, and reserve it for messages that genuinely benefit from being read in the next few minutes rather than the next day.
Yes, with proper consent. In New Zealand the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act requires clear consent, sender identification and an unsubscribe path. Australia's Spam Act is similar. We set up compliant collection and unsubscribes as part of any SMS build.
Working with In-box
Growing ecommerce brands ready to treat email and SMS as a real revenue channel, typically doing at least NZ$50k a month in store revenue. Below that the biggest wins usually come from the store itself, not the email program.
As little as you want. We plan the calendar, write, design, send and report. Most clients spend under an hour a week reviewing next week's calendar and approving campaigns. You stay in charge of brand voice and offer decisions.
A deep review of your Klaviyo account: flow coverage and performance, deliverability set-up, list health, segmentation, sign-up forms, campaign cadence and missed revenue, plus a clear plan to fix the biggest gaps. No obligation, no pitch deck.
Flat monthly retainer scoped to your account and calendar, month to month. No lock-in and no percentage of revenue models. You get a dedicated strategist, copywriter and designer for that fee.
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