From MailChimp To Klaviyo: 51% Email Revenue in 60 Days, An eCommerce Case Study

HI, THIS IS KC CHOW HERE. TODAY I’D LIKE TO SHARE WITH YOU HOW YOU CAN EFFECTIVELY UTILIZE EMAIL MARKETING TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

As your eCommerce business grows, so should your email marketing. Driving more revenue to your store means making more data-driven decisions to maximize organic sales on the backend of your business. Doing so requires more in-depth access to customer data, complex segmentation capabilities, and AI behavioral data tracking – all the key features that outperform the limits of what basic ESPs are capable of doing. 

Upgrading to a more advanced Email Service Provider such as Klaviyo can offer many features, not just email marketing.

Klaviyo provides in-depth business insight, SMS marketing, Push Notification marketing, and custom sign-up forms as well.

Before transitioning to Klaviyo for the first time, you must first know how to perform the delicate process of migrating your email list from your old ESP to the new one, and begin the warmup process. If done correctly, you’ll be given the edge towards maximizing the revenue of your backend email marketing efforts.

Migrating your email list from MailChimp to Klaviyo may seem like a delicate and tedious process because it is. If you fail the process or skip a step, you risk reducing your email sending reputation to rubble. Rebuilding your email list and sending reputation from the ground up can be a time-consuming process that will also cause you to miss out on potential sales you could’ve been earning had your sending reputation not taken a toll from poor list migration practices. Don’t shortcut the process or go in blindly without a helping hand. Schedule a consultation to have a team of email experts guide you through the process of proper list migration.

Read on to see how an eCommerce store brought onboard KC Chow Agency to expedite the email list migration process, warmed up their email list of 40,000 subscribers, and generated as much as 31% revenue from email within 30 days. 

 

Migration From MailChimp To Klaviyo

When one of our clients decided to transition from MailChimp to Klaviyo, a big move had to be made and well planned.

As the client was still sending email campaigns out to a warm list within MailChimp, the process wasn’t as easy as exporting and importing an entire list of 40k subscribers CSV files into a new platform. 

The direct API integration of MailChimp into Klaviyo was exactly what we used to transfer email subscribers and data from one directory to another. 

MailChimp Klaviyo API Integration

(Screenshot Of MailChimp Klaviyo API Integration)

Not only did we pull all of the email addresses from MailChimp, but we’ve even retrieved historical data like placed order dates, open email frequency, customer lifetime value, etc. 

All of this data is now populated and stored in the profiles contained in Klaviyo. 

Having integrated with MailChimp, it was time to start building out the necessary segments to hyper define the audience that we would be targeting moving forward. Segments that we’d create would be segregating various hierarchies of engaged profiles and groups of inactive profiles. 

These segments in Klaviyo would rest at a population of zero for the time being. The reason is that once Klaviyo has gathered more data, through more campaigns sent over time, Klaviyo’s own data would begin to properly divide the profiles across the corresponding segments that you’ve created, just like how a dealer deals a deck of cards.

After a month of a conservative sending cadence, at about 1 or 2 campaigns per week, we’re quick to learn that this particular email list as a whole was incredibly warm and highly engaged.

What’s left was to increase the sending cadence after a few weeks to determine if the engagement was keeping up with our higher sending cadence of about 2 to 3 emails per week.

Case Study MailChimp VS Klaviyo Open Rates

(Screenshot Of Client’s Email Broadcast Campaigns)

Mixing in sales and value-based content emails in an attempt to send out a diverse portfolio of email types, we’ve begun to notice that the open rates and click rates have remained consistent. This is a clear indication that the email list is warm and highly engaged even during a  major migration period between ESPs. 

As we’ve taken over the email sending process, and are waiting for segments to populate with sufficient data within Klaviyo, there were other priorities that must’ve been met to ensure that we were on track to generate the most revenue from email marketing. 

Our goal was to hit at least 15% revenue from email in Month 1, 20% in Month 2, and 25% in Month 3. Since this was during the third quarter of the year, where many businesses around the world notice a drastic downward trend in sales and engagement in the summer months, these modest benchmarks that we’ve been aiming for would be more challenging for us to reach. So we had to do everything we could to skyrocket the growth of backend sales as quickly as we could. 

Aside from sending email campaigns, there was more to put in the works. We started off with the basics – signup forms and the core foundational flows. 

Flows are journeys or automations that are triggered by a behavior or an event of an email subscriber. And because of how flows are triggered, it’s typical to see them yield very high open rates and click rates. Depending on the type of flow, they may even yield very high placed order rates as well. All of this engagement also in turn boosts inboxing rates and sending reputation in the eyes of ESPs. 

Highly attractive and captivating signup forms were built and activated on the website to encourage more website visitors to sign up to an email list. During this first month, there was a lot to optimize and refine; design, copy, timing, incentive, etc. 

Both flows and signup forms must go through a tremendous amount of A/B testing during the first months and branch off to different tests in later months. 

It was only a matter of time before the segments have populated entirely, some slower than others. Segments of unengaged populations would populate just as quickly as the engaged segments. 

As we’ve begun to send more emails, Klaviyo is able to dictate who is who at this point in order for us to begin the next steps of email list cleaning. Email list cleaning is one of the most important steps to take on a regular basis to maximize the engagement of an already engaged email list. This is a combination of deleting profiles and suppressing them which not only allows our emails to inbox better, but to cut costs from sending emails to populations of subscribers that we can be wasting money on emails being sent to these profiles.

(Screenshot Of Client’s Klaviyo Email Marketing Results)

Following these steps our client was not only successful in the first month with Klaviyo, but has achieved double what was expected of our benchmark goal, exceeding past 15% revenue from email and achieving 31% revenue from email. 

In the following months, the client has reached 51% email revenue during the lowest point of sales engagement for most businesses, including this one during Q3. All thanks to the efforts made with basic email marketing principles and thorough list migration practices.

Moving forward, we’ll continue to provide more advanced and personalized email marketing strategies and methods to not just this client, but to more eCommerce brands that we serve. 

With the current ongoing challenges in the eCommerce space, the new Facebook iOS 14 update, and the up-and-coming iOS 15 update in Q4, we’re open to delivering more organic sales by encouraging repeat purchases and customer retention on the backend for business owners like you. 

Schedule a consultation with us today. 

Don’t let paid ads keep you up at night, let email marketing help you automate sales so you can rest easy knowing that our agency has your back around the clock.

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