I’ve been hearing about Klaviyo for months, years even.
The email service provider began to dominate the eCommerce email space with solid affiliate marketing and a niche focus.
Everyone talked about Klaviyo.
So, when it was time to upgrade to a new ESP, I moved from MailerLite to Klaviyo.
I left MailerLite as they weren’t fulfilling my eCommerce needs and they released a whole new v2.0 platform and didn’t grandfather their faithful customers from v1.0.
About now I’m starting to sound like a whinger.
I’m not. I give credit where credit is due.
Is Klaviyo powerful? Yep, it’s pretty good. I’d still take Listrak any day but, it’s good.
But it’s not always easy.
They’ve done two things right to grow.
1: Strong affiliate programs and advertising
2: Integrate with everything – especially Shopify.
They were smart and tied themselves closely to the fastest-growing SMB e-commerce platform in the world.
The nature of this focus almost guarantees success thanks to the whale your attached to.
Number 2 is why I went with them.
They have literally integrated with every eCommerce plugin on the planet (exaggeration).
So, frustrated?
Here is why.
1: They don’t provide sales metrics where it matters.
You should be able to view a sign up form and be able to view the sales attributed to that form.
Instead you have to go to Metrics > $source > value.
And when you do select a date range, it’s super unclear what days/range it includes.
Frustrating.
2: Auto resend
Should be able to set up an auto-resend to unopened after XX days.
But you have to clone the campaign, create a segment and then send.
Long winded solution. Time is money.
3: Bugs.
I had an email with a dynamic coupon in it. I wanted to restart the flow by putting everyone in the list back into the flow.
Computer said, no. I had to remove the dynamic coupon.
So I did.
But it still thought I had a dynamic coupon.
So I went code nuclear, edit the HTML and removed any hint of a dynamic coupon. I left just naked, cold, alone HTML.
Still, it told me there was a dynamic coupon in it.
I emailed support.
They said, you might need to clone the flow and then try again. It does it some times…
Really…?
So, I did. It solved it but I really shouldn’t need to.
4: Editor
The editor is terrible. Editing text in WYSIWYG text boxes.
So much can go wrong here.
I did like MailerLite as it worked more with blocks. A little like Gutenberg editor in WordPress but, if you need code level you can get it.
Half the time if you change the color of a font and then leave before the backend can figure out what you’ve done, you’ll lose the color change.
It’ll change, and then when you click out to do something else and come back, it’ll be back to the old color.
Still frustrated. More buggyness.
5: Image optimization
With most email and CMS platforms you might work with, if you upload a nice big fat juicy image (e.g. 2000 x 2000px @ 72dpi) it will then CDN it, optimize it and serve the right-sized image.
With Klaviyo it was a no….
So, when our Shopping Cart Abandon email fires out, it loads the full-sized image from Shopify and then loads it into the email.
It loads like an 80’s IBM on dial-up. Line, but line, by line, by line.
But, even Shopify doesn’t serve those images – they serve optimized images.
Email to support. “Sorry, you’ll have to upload the correct sized files”…
Frustrating.
6: Cost
Beware the cost of Klaviyo if you are growing fast.
What starts like a cute sleeping Labrador soon becomes a ravenous Komodo Dragon.
Sucking money from you for every small subscriber increase you get.
I’ve had to upgrade our plan every month since we started.
And it’s not just email limits, it’s SMS limits too.
So you’re not only upgrading your email account, but your SMS account too.
About every 500 subscribers that’s another $25 thank you.
How did I miss this…
Should have gone with Bento, who only charge be about 1c for every subscriber I sign up. Instead of these big steps every 500.
Sorry, Jessie. I chose wrong.
7: Heatmaps and Click maps
Really, no heatmaps or click maps built in? I have to use UTM tracking to get what I need?
This really bites.
When I’m A/B/n testing emails and click-through is a major design factor, I want to visually see the outcome of where people clicked.
Did A design work or did B design work?
Yes, links can tell me this but it’s not very awesome.
You can integrate third-party tools to do this but it should be standard.
8: Value of a specific List or Segment
If you want to know what the value of a list is, or a segment you can’t just look at the list and say ‘how much has this list made me all time or in the last xx days?’.
You have to go here: Analytics > Metrics > Placed Order Metric you go to the ‘Best People’ link in the top right and select download. Then it asks you to select a list or segment.
You have to download the CSV file and see what people have purchased.
It works.
I just don’t like CSV files, or downloading stuff.
Now…breathe….
There’s more but this is where I am at today. And that’s all I have time to be trusted with.
I have to get an email sent today…with Klaviyo.
Powerful, yes.
Good for newbies. No.
Room for growth? Yes.
Other platforms catching up? Yes.
Good choice for those on Shopify. Yes, but prepare for the learning curve.
Email is a commodity so choose wisely.
Klaviyo is not a bad choice at all. It’s got skills, but it just makes me grumpy at times.
Questions? Want to fight it out in the comments? Let’s go!
Rant over.
Almost…
9: Can’t manually add customer profiles into segments, or tag them.
The other thing that is driving me crazy is the inability to manually add a customer record in to a segment. I can’t search a profile and add a tag to them, or add them to a segment manually.
It has to be done dynamically or based on a set of rules.
This is annoying as I would like to add all staff in to a segment or tag them. But I can’t. But why not?
Seems like a reasonable case.
Now, rant over.
Mark