Strategic advice

You know the kind of tip or saying you’ve heard a hundred times:“Test everything.”“Simple messaging usually wins”“No one knows what they’re doing at first”“Done is better than perfect”In the moment, you nod along, but then you never really apply it or understand the value. Then at some point, it finally clicks and you realize why everyone says it. This happened to me recently.I thought it would be fun to hear if others in the community have experienced this. If so, LMK below: What’s a piece of advice you used to overlook or ignore?Could be email/SMS, lifecycle, or just marketing (or work) in general.Sometimes the most “basic” advice hits the hardest - just later than expected. 

"Why are my email and SMS campaigns sending conflicting offers to the same customer?"When email, SMS, and paid media work from different audience logic, they stop reinforcing each other and start cannibalizing each other. Keep reading to learn how to coordinate that layer.TL;DR: When email, SMS, and paid media build audiences independently, they send conflicting messages to the same people at the same time. The fix is a shared segmentation infrastructure: one funnel definition every channel reads from, flow-state suppression that prevents campaigns from interrupting high-intent journeys, and AI channel affinity to route each message through the channel most likely to land. Start with one flow, protect it from campaign overlap, then expand.A customer recently forwarded us a screenshot that said more than any dashboard ever could.At the bottom was an abandoned checkout email offering 10% off. Eight minutes later came an SMS saying, "We miss you. Here's 15% off your next order." And on In

 Ask your questions in the thread below - this thread will be open until April 10th. After the 10th feel free to ask your questions as a new post on the Community so your peers can chime in and share their perspective!Thank you to ​@Jemma! I hope you enjoyed the fireside chat. There were 3 key takeaways that I wanted to highlight below:Social + CRM = Revenue. It’s a tightly connected loop. Kulani Kinis treats social as the entry point, but revenue is driven by how well it connects into CRM Social (organic + paid) to captures attention and intent Website converts to subscriber (via forms) Flows and campaigns drive first purchase and repeat behavior CRM data is then fed back into paid channels for targeting UGC + social signals power segmentation, automation, and content strategy. User-generated content isn’t just creative, it’s operational: Social signals (UGC, posts, engagement) are used to enrich profiles and segment users These segments power ambassador tiers, personalized messa

Why Klaviyo works well as a CDP and the top 5 tools that extend it across marketing channels. Most direct-to-consumer marketers think of their email platform as exactly that: an email platform.When I started in email marketing back in 2013, the system you used to send emails was simply called an ESP — an email service provider. The focus was on that single channel.But the way we think about these platforms has changed. Klaviyo still functions as an ESP, but it’s evolved into something much broader. It includes channels like SMS, WhatsApp, and push notifications directly in the platform, and it also acts as a Customer Data Platform (CDP). That means all of our customer data lives in one place and can power messaging across multiple channels.I'm the retention marketer at Criquet Shirts, an Austin-based menswear brand. I run our retention marketing as a one-person team, which means I need every tool in our stack to work harder and smarter. Over the past several years, I've built an ecosys

If you’re looking to increase your customer engagement and drive more sales, an omnichannel marketing strategy is a must. An omnichannel marketing approach means communicating consistently across different channels, providing a seamless experience for your customers. Email and SMS are two powerful communication channels that enable you to create cohesive, personalized experiences that resonate with your audience and foster loyalty. Properly aligning email and SMS strategies helps your brand reinforce your message, reach a wider audience, and optimize engagement rates.  Below are a few key tactics my team has used to effectively unify email and SMS marketing efforts for the brands we manage on Klaviyo: Use a multi-step form to collect email & SMS consent The first step of any unified marketing strategy is ensuring subscribers have opted in on your core channels. With Klaviyo, it’s easy to collect email and SMS consent all in one go using a multi-step sign-up form. This allows new we

After looking inside a few hundred Klaviyo accounts over the last few years, one pattern keeps repeating: SMS automations consistently drive more incremental revenue than campaigns — when they’re actually built out.Most brands flip on SMS, send a single welcome text, and stop there. Here are the automations I see over and over delivering the biggest revenue lifts (plus real setup tips you can copy/paste).Why SMS automations matter more than people thinkSMS is a high-intent channel. Nobody casually opts in.When someone gives you their number, they’re expecting value quickly and flows let you meet that intent at exactly the right moment.The right automations: Hit key funnel stages Patch revenue leaks you don’t realize you have Convert people while their intent is still hot My top revenue-driving SMS automations (with real examples) 1. Welcome Series SMS (your highest-converting window)Your best shot at converting an SMS subscriber is within minutes of signup.What works well: Short re

You're staring at a Klaviyo dashboard showing 47% open rates on your welcome flow, 2.1% click rates on last week's campaign, and a segment labeled 'At Risk' that grew by 800 profiles this month. Now what? Most marketers using Klaviyo have access to more data than ever before, but building a clear Klaviyo data strategy is often easier said than done. Dashboards are full of metrics, reports update in real time, and attribution models provide clarity. Yet, many teams still feel unsure about what to do next.The issue usually isn’t a lack of information. It’s the gap between metrics and meaningful decisions. When data isn’t translated into strategy, it often leads to over-sending, misaligned targeting, or reactive optimization that treats symptoms instead of causes. As director of email marketing at SmartSites, I’ve seen the same pattern emerge over and over. And I want to help you avoid this. Here’s my advice on cutting through the noise so you can focus on the signals that actually matter

During our fireside chat on brand building during BFCM, host Jess McMahon, Senior Digital Strategist at Klaviyo, was joined by Nathan Yun, co-founder at Paire, and Nicole, head of ecommerce at Koh, to share strategies on using BFCM not just for sales spikes, but as a launchpad for loyalty.  If you want to get more than a short-term sugar high from BFCM, here are five pieces of advice to building your brand up while driving dollars: 1. Treat BFCM as a brand-building momentBFCM is one of the biggest acquisition windows of the year — nearly a quarter of e-commerce GMV happens in November and December. Many brands approach it as a discount-driven event, but Jess cautioned that this creates “rented attention,” where new customers are only there for the deal.Instead, BFCM should be the starting line of the customer relationship. For many shoppers, it’s their first introduction to your brand, meaning your onboarding flow, post-purchase experience, and follow-up communication are critical to w

In our February 2026 Fireside Chat, Zac Fromson, Co Founder of Lilo Social, shared how he and his team think about AI as a force multiplier for modern retention strategies, helping brands focus their effort where it matters most. Drawing on his experience working with brands like Half Magic Beauty (check out their Klaviyo case study) Humantra, Bauer and others, Zac discussed how AI-powered personalization, unified customer data, and automation are changing how loyalty and retention programs are designed and scaled. Key takeaways What’s changing in ecommerce (why retention matters more now) Rising CAC is forcing a retention-first mindset. Customers cost more to acquire, so brands can’t afford leaky post-purchase experiences or slow iteration. Data is fragmented across tools which creates silos and weakens personalization. Subscription churn is a major pressure point. Many brands “have subscriptions” but aren’t optimizing the levers (offer, buy box, dunning, frequency options, etc.).

What’s the best way to build a winback strategy for inactive customers? The best way to build a winback strategy for inactive customers is to base timing and messaging on real purchase behavior, not arbitrary delays. When winback is grounded in product category and customer data, brands can re-engage customers at the moment they’re truly at risk without annoying active buyers or relying on unnecessary discounts.You’ve already invested time and money to acquire every customer on your list, so when someone stops buying or engaging, it’s rarely a signal to give up on them entirely. More often, it’s a sign they’ve drifted. Maybe they’re exploring alternatives, their needs have changed, or their last experience didn’t give them a strong reason to return.Winback campaigns exist to diagnose and reverse that drift, and they’re one of the most efficient levers in retention marketing. But while winback is powerful, it’s also easy to get wrong—especially when it’s treated as a basic automation in

Short answer: To build a successful newsletter program in Klaviyo during your first 30 days, focus on consistent cadence, valuable content over promotions, and engagement-based sending rather than only emailing around discounts. Regular newsletters help keep your brand top-of-mind and avoid training subscribers to only open during sales.If email newsletters feel harder than promos, you're not alone. Most teams never struggle to send a sale, but struggle with everything in between. The blank weeks. The weeks where nothing's launching. The weeks where you know you should email, but you're not sure what to say.Here's what usually happens: you only email when there's a discount, which accidentally trains subscribers to ignore you until there's a sale. Then newsletters start to feel pointless or low-performing.This guide fixes that. Not with theory, not with perfection, but with a realistic 30-day plan you can actually ship. The goal is to send consistently, stay relevant between promos, an

In the Community’s recent Fireside Chat, I sat down (over video meeting) with Ben Parr, President and Co-Founder of Octane AI, to explore how ecommerce brands can use zero-party data to create more personalized, high-converting customer experiences. From debunking common myths about data collection to sharing real examples from leading brands, this conversation unpacked practical strategies you can apply right away, especially if you’re using Klaviyo to power your email and SMS. Whether you’re just getting started or looking to level up your segmentation, this session was full of actionable insights.Here are the top five takeaways from the chat:1) Zero-party data wins because it powers real personalization (and better customer experiences).Ben defined zero-party data as info customers directly volunteer (usually by answering questions)—vs. first-party behavioral signals you infer, or third-party data you buy. The payoff is that you can personalize email/SMS/site experiences in ways tha

One of our community members, ​@RachelF  from Happy Wax, shared a great example, in advance of the Jan. 2026 Fireside Chat with Octane AI, on how they’re using zero-party data in Klaviyo to improve personalization and make it easier for new customers to convert.Here’s how they’re approaching it:“A major win for us in 2025 was using a quiz as a top-of-funnel entry point, allowing customers to engage before they were ready to buy while giving us better data in Klaviyo to personalize from there.We sync quiz data into Klaviyo, and when we email customers their results, we include a ‘make it a kit’ link. Using Klaviyo webhooks, we generate a dynamic, UTM-driven link that pre-builds the starter kit from their recommended scents and sends them directly into our final step of our kit builder, which is our primary entry point for new customers. This removes friction and allows for an easy path to purchase.”What stands out here is how intentional the experience is end-to-end: The quiz acts as a