Owning your growth has never been easier: highlights from Klaviyo’s product event

Editor’s note: Learn about Klaviyo’s new features below. Then find out more in the post-event feature walkthrough led by Klaviyo product experts. Watch the recap.

It’s late October. Cold weather is starting to creep in, the leaves are changing, and ecommerce marketers all over the world are preparing for the single biggest event in retail—the winter holidays. 

As holiday spending continues to outpace previous years, you’re probably eager to capture your share of profits—but that’s easier said than done. 

You’re not the only one vying for your audience’s attention. So that means if you want to hit your goals, your holiday marketing messages need to stand out in a memorable way.

Andrew Bialecki, Klaviyo’s co-founder and CEO, shared some reassuring news as he launched Klaviyo’s product event.

He explained, “You already have the most powerful ally in your corner to help you knock this holiday season out of the park—and that’s your existing customers.” 

Klaviyo’s three product layers contain the tools you need to own your relationships—and ultimately, your growth. 

Hear more about Andrew’s strategies for increasing your customer lifetime value and the product updates that’ll help you pull off your most successful holiday season yet. 

Don’t have time to watch the event right now? Here’s what you missed:

Deliver timely, personalized messages from a revolutionary engine that’s scalable

The first announcement was an exploration of the technology behind Klaviyo: A NoSQL database. Val Geisler, head of customer advocacy at Klaviyo, peeled back the Klaviyo curtain and explained:

“Your customers are inundated with more marketing messages than ever before. In order to cut through the noise, you need to pull together everything you know about them into one system that can deliver timely, personalized messages, at scale.”

“Unlike other platforms that use relational databases, which limit the amount of data you can store, Klaviyo uses a NoSQL database.”

What’s a NoSQL database?

You can think of a database as a warehouse that holds information. A NoSQL database is essentially a fancy term for an expandable warehouse that can collect an almost unimaginable amount of data—and adapt easily as you add more data to it.

The best part? Once your customers’ data comes into Klaviyo, in a matter of milliseconds, the platform will power real-time automations (or flows) and segments that you can use to connect with your customers in a meaningful way.

Simply put, a NoSQL database is built to handle incredible scale and speed, without requiring tedious workarounds or frustrating limitations. Stand out from your competitors by personalizing messages using data gleaned from your website’s visitors’ behavior. This includes messages that subscribers clicked on, visits to product pages, orders placed, or a past API event.

A NoSQL database will help you:

• Reliably deliver all your cyber weekend messages. In 2021, we project that Klaviyo will send about 250M messages per hour—and the platform can handle much more than that. Over the course of cyber week, we estimate that Klaviyo customers will send over 16B messages.
• Store your customer data in one location. The more data you have about your customers and subscribers, the smarter and more tailored your marketing can become. The integrations you partner with play a huge role in your ability to customize your messages. Klaviyo has an ecosystem of over 200 integrations with plans to add 25 new ones every quarter in 2022.
• Process your data points into actionable insights. During the holidays this year, we expect Klaviyo to process and combine 6B data points per hour. This means Klaviyo will pump heaps of actionable customer data into your account and profiles when you need it most. This valuable customer data allows you to understand what’s working—and what’s not—so that you can optimize your messages and customer experiences. Ultimately, that means higher revenue and better retention.

Easily create and send relevant messages that will engage your audience across multiple channels

The second announcement was a two-part reveal that highlighted improvements to Klaviyo’s super powers: Messaging and marketing.

Geanna Flavetta, Klaviyo’s manager of customer education, tackled the messaging portion of the event. She began with the improved template editor experience:

“Creating engaging emails can be time-consuming, which is why we’re always looking for ways to make Klaviyo faster, easier, and more intuitive to use—so you can spend less time building emails and more time improving your marketing.”

What’s new with the email template editor?

If you’d like to opt into the updated version of the template editor, you’ll be able to:

• Edit email content in one fell swoop and automatically update your emails wherever that content is used with universal content
• Group related blocks together into a section
• Use the same image for desktop and mobile with the editor’s improved background image functionality
• Easily change the order of your content with the new drag and drop feature
• Undo (or redo) and autosave your work with a click of a button
• Preview how your email will look to your customers—using their actual data—on a desktop or mobile device

But there’s no pressure—if you’d rather start using the redesigned template editor after the holiday hustle and bustle, you can wait and give it a spin later.

Explore how you can easily fine-tune your messages this holiday season. Try out the new template editor

Learn more about the advanced version of template editor 

Geanna also shared the news about Klaviyo’s new signup form library:

“It’s not very helpful to create beautiful, high-performing emails if you don’t have anyone to send them to. That’s why we’ve overhauled our signup form library to make it easier than ever to publish great-looking forms that are optimized for both mobile and desktop.”

“If you aren’t using forms on your site yet, it’s not too late to pick a beautiful new template and turn your holiday window shoppers into subscribers—you can even grow your SMS audience, too.”

How has the signup form library changed?

You’ll find lots of new goodies when you open your signup form library, including:

• Over 50 eye-catching, ready-to-customize form templates
• Templates with built-in side images. Forms with side images have a 32% higher submission rate on average, according to Klaviyo’s data.
• A mobile-optimized view to ensure your site’s mobile experience is user-friendly

Build a list of engaged subscribers. Explore the signup form library

Jenna Crane, director of product marketing at Klaviyo, was up next. She announced the new features Klaviyo added to the marketing portion of its platform—SMS Quiet Hours and the SMS help desk integration.

But first, Jenna shared why it’s vital to unify your owned marketing channels under one roof:

“Not all SMS marketing is created equal. Because texting is such an intimate channel, it’s even more critical that your messages are personalized, timely, and relevant—meaning you need to have email & SMS live together within the same platform.”

“Not only does this allow you to build flows that span both email and SMS, but when you have a unified view of how your subscribers are interacting with both marketing channels, you’ll have more accurate order attribution, more control over your customer journey, and more informed segmentation.”

What are SMS Quiet Hours?

Imagine you have a platform integration that sends order tracking links to your customers via text. This integration can pass information into Klaviyo at all hours of the day—including when your customers are fast asleep.

Instead of accidentally sending your customers a text message in the middle of the night and potentially waking them up, Quiet Hours prevents them from being disturbed.

With SMS Quiet Hours you can:

• Deliver messages at relevant times. If you want your texts sent between the hours of 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Klaviyo will check the timezone of your recipient and only send texts to them during your designated hours.
• Stay compliant. Government regulations stipulate that you can only send text messages to customers between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the recipient’s time zone. Some US states have additional mandates.
• Create a positive customer experience. If you send your texts at a time that’s convenient for your audience, they’ll be less likely to unsubscribe from your content.

Klaviyo will automatically turn on Quiet Hours for all SMS accounts and apply this new feature to any sends in an SMS flow.

Learn more about SMS Quiet Hours

The new SMS features didn’t end there. Jenna was also excited to announce Klaviyo’s SMS help desk integration:

“You can text back and forth with customers from within your customer service platform. We’re starting out with Gorgias, and have other popular integrations coming soon.”

“Once you integrate Klaviyo with Gorgias, all of your text message conversations will be automatically logged on customer tickets and your agents can work inside of Gorgias to reply to customer texts.”

What are the benefits of an SMS help desk integration?

If you’ve wanted to test out SMS as a new channel, but your separate, already existing workflow for handling customer support inquiries created a roadblock, then I’ve got good news.

Klaviyo’s SMS help desk integration will help you:

• Save time and work more efficiently. You can minimize the back-and-forth between separate platforms and respond to your customers directly through SMS Conversations in Klaviyo.
• Respond to customer questions seamlessly. Inbound customer messages in Klaviyo will automatically create a support ticket in Gorgias so your team can provide a solution from there.
• Increase customer satisfaction. When you create a quick and helpful support experience, you’ll build a loyal base of customers who’ll come back even after the holidays have ended.

Connect with your customers on a channel they prefer. Try Klaviyo SMS today

Learn more about the SMS help desk integration

Get inspiration from top-performing email and SMS content from industry leaders and brands like yours

The final two product announcements are tools that can help you learn new insights and easily apply them to your own marketing strategy to improve your performance: Scheduled reports and Showcase.

Devin Patel, one of Klaviyo’s product managers, explained:

“We’ve dedicated an entire product area to insights, reporting, and analytics, helping you continually send smarter and better-performing messages, with minimal work needed on your part.”

What are scheduled reports?

At the last Klaviyo product event, we announced a reports library that presents you with common questions asked by marketers and pre-built reports that detailed the answers.

The only problem was that you still had to manually run and download your weekly and monthly reports. Not anymore! Scheduled reports will automate your reporting process and deliver your valuable insights directly to your inbox.

Scheduled reports will allow you to:

• Save precious time in the day. You don’t have to set reminders or allot a certain amount of time to run the same reports time and time again.
• Streamline your reporting and productivity. You can easily track your performance and identify areas of improvement when your results are delivered to you, on your schedule.

Make reporting and analytics a breeze. Schedule your first report

Learn more about scheduled reports

But your ability to learn shouldn’t be limited to  your account. True discovery comes when you can blend your own insights with the analysis of others. Enter, Showcase.

As your new favorite way to find holiday—better yet, year-round—campaign inspiration, Devin explained:

“To create Showcase, Klaviyo’s data science team wrote an algorithm to search through the billions of messages sent through our platform, identifying top performers based on customer engagement. For an extra layer of quality control, we even hand-checked the messages the algorithm selected and then gathered permission from the brands that sent them.”

What’s Showcase?

Showcase is a curated library of the best email and SMS campaigns from other Klaviyo creators—your one-stop shop for creative inspiration.

You can trust you’re looking at the true top performing campaigns because Klaviyo has access to their performance metrics. The stats in Showcase are backed by cold, hard data science facts—which is something other 3rd party sites can’t guarantee.

Showcase can help you:

• Find inspiration at the click of a button. With thousands of campaign examples at your fingertips, you never have to slough through blogs or other websites to find your creative spark.
• Maximize your search. Campaigns are categorized by relevance which means you can filter by industry, use case, holiday, or metric.

Explore the learning component of Klaviyo and become a smarter marketer.Check out Showcase for yourself

Learn more about Showcase

Maximize your customer lifetime value through your owned channels

Your audience leaves a trail of data breadcrumbs behind them as they interact with your online business—like viewing product pages, clicking on your messages, or placing orders.

If you follow those breadcrumbs, you’ll discover the best ways to communicate meaningful messages that’ll build long-lasting customer relationships.

• Klaviyo’s made it easier than ever for you to build personalized emails and text messages. This allows you to discover insights that’ll help you refine your marketing strategy and make smarter decisions.
• We’ve upped our marketing and messaging game so that you can build your ideal customer experience in minutes, not weeks.
• We’ve also explained the technology that’ll ensure your messages make it to your customers’ inbox and messaging apps.

Follow Andrew’s words of encouragement and “send away this holiday season.” The surge in site traffic you’re about to experience is an opportunity to build a loyal customer base that you can engage with long after the holidays have passed.