According to internal Klaviyo research, agencies who leaned into Klaviyo as a full CRM platform last year saw 60% more multi-product opportunities, win rates climbed to nearly 50%, and deal sizes grew double digits. Those numbers reflect something real: the agencies pulling ahead are not working harder on implementation. They’re evolving from email and SMS operators to owners of their clients’ revenue systems. That shift leads to larger engagements, stickier relationships, and higher-value retainers.
AI is what makes this moment so important. It’s changing the economics of execution: production work is getting faster, repetitive work is getting automated, and CRM systems themselves are becoming autonomous.
For decades, software required humans to operate it step by step. Now, that’s shifting. The execution layer is moving from humans to agents. These systems don’t just assist, they generate and carry out work across the customer journey based on defined goals and guardrails.
Rachel Jacobs, a leading authority in scaling ecommerce agencies and founder of Ecommerce Agency Growth, is already seeing this shift play out: those who are taking AI seriously are seeing results, which means those who don't will be left behind, much sooner than most realize.
But for the agencies ready to move, it creates something bigger: the opening to own true CRM strategy and agent orchestration services, and to build a future-proof business in the process.
When AI takes over production, strategy becomes the edge
When production becomes easier with AI, the real value of agencies shifts to strategy. I’m seeing this across the ecosystem: the agencies feeling pressure are the ones still leading with execution, and the ones growing are the ones who’ve changed the conversation. We’re hearing it firsthand from leading voices in the industry.
Alexandra Palau, Founder at All About Email Marketing, puts it plainly: “Email and SMS have become delivery mechanisms that support the customer journey, and we don’t talk about this enough. We have to help agencies move from ‘we send email and SMS’ to ‘we create and support your customer journey.”
That impacts how you scope work, how you price it, and how hard you are to replace. Instead of “we run your email and SMS,” the positioning becomes “we architect and optimize your revenue system across the entire customer journey.”
Brands are asking bigger questions than they were two years ago:
- How do we use AI across the full customer journey?
- How do we activate our CRM data more effectively?
- Who manages and optimizes AI agents once they’re live?
Most agencies aren’t confidently answering these questions yet, but the ones that will lead this shift are.
We have to help agencies move from ‘we send email and SMS’ to ‘we create and support your customer journey.'
5 questions that reveal CRM opportunities in client accounts
Agencies that already manage email and SMS are often closer to CRM leadership than they realize. The opportunity appears when you ask the right questions in discovery, strategy conversations, or monthly review calls.
Here are questions that you should be asking yourself to identify exactly where the gap is:
Where are customer conversations happening today, and does marketing have visibility into them? | Support tickets, live chat, social DMs, and loyalty questions tell you things campaigns never could. |
Which customer signals are informing your lifecycle strategy, and which are missing? | Most brands use purchase and engagement data but overlook support interactions, refunds, and product questions. |
How are customer support conversations connected to your lifecycle marketing strategy? | If support conversations live in separate systems, marketing misses critical customer signals. Customer Hub, Customer Agent, and Helpdesk bring those interactions into Klaviyo so they can inform segmentation, personalization, and lifecycle strategy. |
If a customer has a support issue today, would marketing know before the next campaign goes out? | Disconnected service and marketing teams often create poor customer experiences. |
When customers stop buying, do you know whether it’s a marketing problem or a service experience problem? | Churn is often attributed to marketing performance when the real cause is a support or product experience problem. |
These questions often reveal that the biggest opportunities in CRM don’t live inside campaigns but in the connections between marketing, service, and customer data.
Service is a crucial part of CRM ownership
When service runs on the same platform as marketing, data, and AI, it becomes one of the most valuable signal sources a brand has, allowing every service interaction to inform segmentation, personalization, and lifecycle strategy.
If you want to move up the value chain, Klaviyo Service needs to be part of that move. It gives you a larger strategic footprint and more surface area to influence revenue.
Three components make that possible:
Customer Hub gives brands a personalized onsite destination where shoppers can manage key parts of their relationship with the brand in one place. That can include product recommendations, favorites, order visibility, loyalty activity, subscriptions, and self-serve actions. For agencies, that means more ownership over onsite experience, customer retention, and purchase momentum. | |
Customer Agent gives brands a way to guide shoppers toward a purchase, answer common questions quickly, and handle routine support moments without adding friction. For agencies, AI becomes part of conversion strategy and lifecycle design with guardrails in place to ensure responses stay aligned with brand voice and guidelines. | |
Helpdesk brings service conversations into one workspace tied to full customer context. Agents can see more of the story, respond more personally, and move faster. For agencies, that means service data is no longer isolated from marketing strategy. It becomes a signal source for segmentation, personalization, and smarter lifecycle decisions. |
Taken together, Klaviyo Service gives agencies more surface area to influence revenue, with every service interaction feeding the same real-time customer profile used to personalize future experiences.
That doesn’t just improve retention. It sharpens acquisition too, helping brands build better audiences, personalize first-touch experiences, and close the loop between acquisition and lifecycle strategy.
We’re hearing that from partners in our program.
Strategically, K:Service is solving how we deepen our relationship with clients, moving us further into the heart of their business operations.
“Strategically, K:Service is solving how we deepen our relationship with clients, moving us further into the heart of their business operations,” says Justin Ragsdale, CRO at IM Digital. “It’s really solidifying our role as their indispensable, comprehensive commerce advisor.”
Ben Zettler, founder of Zettler Digital, reports that “clients have driven tens of thousands of dollars of real revenue simply by enabling Customer Hub and having some fairly simple flows in place based on actions taken within Customer Hub.”
Clients have driven tens of thousands of dollars of real revenue simply by enabling Customer Hub and having some fairly simple flows in place.
What the upgraded agency model looks like
Agencies focused only on deliverables are easier to replace. Agencies shaping CRM architecture, AI performance, and customer journeys are not.
This isn’t about reinventing your agency. It’s about upgrading how you frame what you already do, and building out the areas that command the most value going forward.
Full-platform CRM strategy. A brand using Klaviyo for email only gives AI a partial customer picture. Using it across marketing, service, and data gives it the full context it needs to perform. For agencies, that means expanding how you audit accounts and frame opportunities: not just campaigns and flows, but the broader CRM, including service and the data layer that powers it.
AI agent orchestration. Marketing Agent and Customer Agent require brand voice, business context, campaign guidelines, and ongoing performance review. As the execution layer shifts from humans to agents, this becomes the work that matters most. Someone has to define the inputs, set the guardrails, and ensure those agents are driving the right outcomes. That role should belong to a partner who understands the brand deeply.
Outcome-based retainers. When you’re managing CRM architecture, AI performance, and service-connected lifecycle strategy, you’re not delivering campaigns. You’re delivering revenue outcomes, and you should price and package your services accordingly.
How to make the shift
Start with one client: the relationship where you already have the most context and trust. Have one conversation, not about deliverables, but about what their CRM system is missing.
Use the above questions as your guide. Look specifically for 3 signals: customer data that lives outside the CRM, service conversations that marketing never sees, and AI tools that have been deployed without anyone owning the inputs or optimization. Those gaps are where your agency’s strategic role begins.
From there, think bigger than the current retainer. Expand into the full customer journey: data strategy, AI agent management, service-connected lifecycle design. You are probably closer to that than you think. The gap is in scope, framing, and what it's priced at.
Leading the next era
Lean into this moment, and build something your clients can't imagine working without. That's the kind of partnership worth being known for.
We believe our partners are best positioned to lead this shift. For those that already are, we want to celebrate your impact! Apply for the 2026 K:Partners Awards Program today for a chance to be recognized at K:BOS 2026.
The opportunity is here. Let's go get it.
A special thanks to Rachel Jacobs, Founder of Ecommerce Agency Growth leading authority in scaling ecommerce agencies, and Alexandra Palau, Fractional Lifecycle Strategy Leader & Founder of All About Email Marketing, for the conversations and perspectives that helped shape many themes in this piece.
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