waterdrop® Australia increases retention 79% YoY with Klaviyo

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waterdrop® is on a mission to help people drink more water using dissolvable and delicious fruit and plant extracts, making everyday hydration more appealing. Since launching in Australia in 2023, the business has grown to over AUD $1 million in sales per month through ecommerce, retail activations, and B2B channels. During that time, they’ve used Klaviyo to power smarter digital relationships.

Learn how waterdrop® Australia drives profitable growth with an omnichannel approach in Klaviyo

Challenge

When waterdrop® launched in Australia, they recognised early on that customer retention would be key to growth. Delivering a great experience from day one was a top priority.

The team used Klaviyo for email and to unify customer data from various touchpoints, including their Shopify-based ecommerce platform and retail activations with partners like the Australian Open. For a short stint, they also opted for a separate SMS provider, but that caused all kinds of headaches, including technical issues and a low SMS deliverability rate.

“We thought we’d save money by using a cheaper SMS platform, but it was a nightmare,” says Catherine Dix, managing director at waterdrop® ANZ. “The customer experience was terrible, deliverability rates plummeted to around 10%, and our team were constantly troubleshooting technical issues.”

“What we saved in fees, we lost in time, frustration, and customer engagement,” Dix adds. “It was a classic case of ‘you get what you pay for.’”

Solution

waterdrop® moved SMS to Klaviyo so the team could manage all customer communication from one platform. As Dix puts it: “We quickly learned that a reliable, integrated platform like Klaviyo is worth every penny.”

SMS deliverability bounced back to near 100%, and thanks to the platform’s ease of use, the team significantly reduced the amount of time they spent troubleshooting. What’s more, Klaviyo SMS integrated easily with LoyaltyLion, waterdrop’s loyalty platform, and Meta, enriching customer data and improving audience targeting for SMS campaigns.

“Klaviyo is the absolute best place to store your customer data from all of the tools in your tech stack,” says Diana Bacinger, customer lifecycle strategist at Webprofits, waterdrop’s ecommerce agency partner. “What makes it powerful is how seamlessly it enables us to create a consistent customer journey, which we tap into for communication on all relevant touchpoints.”

Strategy 

Klaviyo quickly became waterdrop’s core customer data and marketing engine, helping them acquire new customers, drive repeat purchases, and foster deep brand love and community spirit. In 2024, waterdrop® saw a 79% increase in YoY retention rate, with 60.2% QoQ ecommerce revenue growth in Q1 2025.

The team achieved these powerful results by:

• Making advertising more efficient with Klaviyo data: With Klaviyo’s Meta integration, waterdrop® can deliberately exclude existing customers from ad campaigns that are aimed at acquiring new customers. This ensures the right audiences see the right ad campaigns, and that waterdrop® doesn’t waste ad budget on customers they can target through email.
• Driving first-time purchases with free shipping: When potential customers sign up for waterdrop® email comms, they receive a welcome message (from a Klaviyo flow) including brand education and a percentage-off discount. After 21 days, if they don’t go on to make a purchase, they receive a plain-text email with an offer for free shipping on waterdrop’s taster pack. This tactic has helped to re-engage nearly 10% of waterdrop’s inactive customers.
• Reminding loyalty members to buy again with points: Another flow sends loyalty program customers a reminder email and/or text each month showing them how many loyalty points they have and what they can spend them on. This encourages repurchasing and drives more revenue per customer. In Q4 2024, this flow had a 42% QoQ increase in conversions. 

“For waterdrop®, Klaviyo is not just a platform. It’s the place where we communicate across all customer touchpoints, and it’s where we drive essential business outcomes like repeat purchases and retention,” Dix says.

“The platform’s intuitiveness allows us to test different campaign approaches, like whether offering certain customers vouchers over a percentage discount leads to more sales,” Dix adds. “And we can do all of that without getting bogged down in technical complexity.”