In the last couple of months, it seems as though every single digital marketing platform we need to use for our Ecommerce businesses have all been rolling out major updates.

And Klaviyo is no exception. And whilst new functionality is designed to deepen the integration with your online store and help you make more money, the changes do tend to disrupt performance in the short term.

The automated flows in most, if not all, Klaviyo accounts I’ve reviewed in recent weeks have taken a downward turn.

Flows like your New Subscriber Welcome flow and your Abandoned Cart flow – usually the biggest money spinners – have declined.

And that is not a situation you want to allow to continue! 

So in this article, we will discuss 4 steps you can take to increase your Klaviyo ROI using automated flows.

Step 1: Analyse your flows to figure out if they need to be revised or optimised:

The first step to improving your Klaviyo ROI is to identify what (if any) flows need to be updated by determining any gaps, missed opportunities or errors that need fixing.

1. Look at your current results – your total revenue generated as well as placed order rate and revenue per recipient – compared to your previous results. If these have declined, then now is the time to update your flows so that you can increase your ROI from Klaviyo.

2. Look at your current results compared to your benchmarks (making sure to compare flow by flow, not overall account averages).

If your placed order rate and/or revenue per recipient is down, then it’s time to revise the flow. 

If only total revenue is down, but the other metrics are on par, then you need to take a look at the volume of new contacts entering the flows.

Step 2: Get more people into the flows:

The next step you need to take to increase your Klaviyo ROI is to get more people into the funnel!

1. Review your list-building. How many and what types of opt-in forms are you using? Do you have forms for new subscribers, abandoned cart forms, SMS forms, birthday forms, popup forms, embedded forms… 

Review what you’ve got, what might be missing and identify any opportunities.

2. What is the form submit rate on each form? Especially those that typically convert the most new subscribers (like your welcome popup)? If it’s significantly less than 5% submit rate, you want to revise it.

3. Split test different incentives. Test %-off vs $-off, or a discount vs a free gift with purchase. See what grows your list the fastest as well as converts to purchase at a higher rate.

4. Update the form creative. Try a new and different design (layout and imagery), in particular try to make the form design stand out from your website behind it (so that it actually looks different).

5. Optimise for mobile & desktop. On desktop the form should be wider, whereas on mobile it should be tall. You also don’t want to cover the entire website behind the pop-up form or make it difficult for the visitor to dismiss the form.

6. Write new, more compelling copy. Test out new heading text, sub-heading text and button text. (A link beneath the submit button that says “no thanks, I don’t like discounts” can be a cheeky way to increase conversions!)

7. Add a teaser tab. This is the tab that sits at the side, the corner or along the bottom of the browser window. It’s useful to have there, so that if a visitor dismisses the form but then decides they actually do want to subscribe, they can click that teaser tab and open the form back up again.

8. Test a 2-step form. A 2-step form is best used when you want to make sure that you do collect their email address first, but then want to try to collect SMS’s as well. It’s generally better not to ask for all those details together in one step, because the more information you ask for the lower the conversion rate goes.

9. Test different timings. Is it better to trigger your form quickly or slowly? Try both options for a month and see what wins out.

10. Add an exit intent form. An exit intent form is still a pop-up form, but it’s triggered when the visitor looks as though they’re about to leave your website. This one is useful to add in at the cart stage: if someone adds a product to cart but doesn’t proceed to checkout, you can show them a form that takes the visitor into a cart abandon flow.

Step 3: Convert more new customers from your welcome series:

The next step to improving your Klaviyo ROI is to increase your new customer conversion rate. This starts with the Welcome Series.

1. Review metrics on each email. How many emails in your flow? (What’s necessary?) Are you using SMS as well? Set up a segmented flow if running a split test on your opt-in incentive.

2. Split test the sending email name: The ‘From’ name is the name that appears next to the email address. I’ve seen a number of brands testing different emails going from either the brand name or the founder’s name, or even a more fun name they give their VIP subscriber list. 

3. Split test the ‘From’ email address: A really, really BIG no-no is to send your marketing emails from a ‘no reply’ email address! Don’t make it harder for your customers to get in touch with you by forcing them to click through to your website contact us form.

All this serves to do is to make people feel unwanted and unwelcome, like you don’t want to talk to them. Nine times out of 10, people won’t bother – instead, they’ll go and shop elsewhere.

So, dead obvious solution here – send it from a real email address and encourage people to hit ‘reply’ if they want to ask you a question!

I’ve seen a number of brands testing sending from different company email addresses as well as sending names.

4. Review subject lines and preview text to improve open rates: Let me ask you – what is the point of having a huge list of email subscribers if no-one opens your emails?

As advertising guru David Ogilvy once said, “On average, five times as many people read the headline as the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

The same goes for emails – the subject line is your heading.

And it’s been proven over and over again – if there is ONE part of your marketing emails that you should spend the MOST time finessing – it’s your subject line.

Avoid Sales-y Words

As much as we know that scarcity or fear of missing out is an incredibly powerful tool for generating sales, there are a couple of big problems in using words such as ‘Free’, ‘% off’ and so on.

Firstly, it’s highly likely words like these will be flagged by your recipients’ spam filter, causing your email to end up in their spam folder rather than inbox.

And secondly, it’s pretty hard to stand out from the crowd if you’re saying the same thing as everything else. Bear in mind that the average adult receives 147 emails PER DAY, so to cut through the noise you need to be different!

Mix it Up

As my clients and students have heard me bang on about until I am hoarse – people do not subscribe to email newsletters anymore. So please, please, do not call yours that OR have subject lines that are like a series – for example, ‘Newsletter update #58’ (and so on).

Similarly, don’t re-use subject lines or make them too similar to each other. Email programs and spam filters look out for things like this, so it can affect deliverability. Not to mention, being too same-same will not continue to capture the attention of your audience over time!

A few other things to remember with subject lines:

Shorter is better (50 characters or less)

Have you tried asking questions?

Don’t be in a rush to promote something (no ALL CAPS, exaggerated promotional phrases, and go easy on the exclamation marks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

No click-baiting – if you mislead your audience once, they probably won’t forgive you…

And use urgency, but if you over-do this tactic (like being always on sale), then that will be the shortest road to training your audience to wait to buy until your next sale.

5. Review the pre-header text: Do you know what a pre-header is? This is the text that appears in your email inbox next to your subject line. Most people would read this immediately after reading your subject line, so it plays an important role in determining whether they’ll open the email, so you want to get it right.

Unfortunately, a HUGE proportion of business owners leave the words “View email in browser” as the only pre-header text! Not overly enticing, right?

Do yourself a massive favour – delete that line of text and replace it with something that makes sense to your audience.

6. Review the content and design: Is the incentive very easy to spot (hero image, heading, obvious CTA button)? Are you using dynamic product content?

Do you have some actual content of interest in the emails? Dont just give them a code and show them some product – too many recipients will still be left scratching their heads thinking “what’s in it for me?” 

Have you included all the sales conversion elements? Is it obvious how to actually buy? Your email contents must pass the squint ? test, even on mobile!

Step 4: Convert more of your warm leads – your cart abandoners

Increasing your Klaviyo ROI also means recouping any lost sales through the cart and checkout stage.

1. Create a true ‘Abandoned Cart’ flow. Recently, Klaviyo removed the automatic ‘Added to Cart’ metric. To track it now,  you need to actually add a snippet of code to your website, much like with the Browse Abandon.

Historically, Abandoned Cart flows were triggered by adding to cart but not checking out. Now they’re triggered by Abandoning the Checkout but not completing the purchase.

Consider the steps in the sales funnel – way more people will add to cart than to initiate checkout, especially if you’re using the Mini Cart function on your Shopify store, and these customers are still very warm leads. 

Add the snippet of code to your website and set up a true Abandoned Cart flow. Edit profile filters to make sure you exclude purchases, and also exclude initiate checkout if you still have that flow running.

Also review open rates, click rates and placed order rates against benchmarks. 

2. Test the segmented cart abandon flow. Split test different incentives around the free shipping threshold order value. Or, test an incentive for high AOV’s and incentivise the low AOV’s to spend more by telling them what the offer would be for the higher AOV.

3. Keep these emails short, but don’t just stick to the flow template content – it’s very boring.

Have a bit of fun injecting your brand personality into them, and make sure you communicate your brand promise. How soon do your customers want to experience the benefits your products provide? 

4. Reduce risk. Don’t forget social proof as well as other risk-reversal content.

Step 5: Total Klaviyo contribution

Finally – when you calculate your Klaviyo ROI, you should be aiming for your Klaviyo account to contribute 30%-40% of your overall revenue. And ideally I like to see the majority of this coming from your automated flows (rather than campaigns). 

Generating the bulk of your email revenue from automated flows frees up your time and gives you peace of mind that your business will always bring in a predictable amount of money each month!

Hopefully you’re feeling super motivated to make more money from your automated flows, and really get the most value from your Klaviyo and your email marketing channel. 

Speed up your time to master Klaviyo and improve results!

If you’d like to speed up the process of learning or implementing and getting results faster, please reach out to me because there are a variety of ways I can help you depending on the stage of business you’re at.

This is what I do and love to do every single day. Whether you’re looking for coaching to help you to learn and implement these things, or if you’re looking for a team of experts to outsource to, just click the button below to find out about working with me.