Designer fashion marketplace italist achieves 10x growth in email segments switching from Mailchimp to Klaviyo

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italist brings Italy’s designer bargains to the rest of the world. By selling luxury fashion straight from Italian boutiques in an online marketplace, this ecommerce brand shares savings of up to 45% on Prada, Bottega Veneta, and more.

Learn how email segmentation helped italist optimize email marketing performance

Challenge

Founded in 2014, italist initially used Mailchimp for its email marketing. But as the marketing team grew, Mailchimp became a constraint. When multiple people collaborated on campaigns, they often ran into saving and versioning issues. Worse, murky reporting made it tough to assess or optimize performance. 

“We were operating in the dark a lot and didn’t feel like we had a lot of ability to tweak and analyze,” says Alex English, head of growth at italist. 

Considering an italist customer can have a six-figure LTV, retention efforts are too important to run on instinct. It was time for a tech change

[With Mailchimp], we were operating in the dark a lot and didn’t feel like we had a lot of ability to tweak and analyze.

Alex English, Head of growth, italist

Solution

English describes Klaviyo, by contrast, as “pretty plug-and-play.” The Klaviyo API made it straightforward to integrate with italist’s existing website and tech stack.

The software also offered an immediate education in email performance metrics, with benchmarks built right into the reporting dashboards. 

English immediately realized italist’s open and click rates needed work—a valuable insight Klaviyo pulled from its vast ecommerce client base.

And it came with a recommended tweak: more segmented sends.

Klaviyo is like, ‘Let us assist you in thinking more holistically about your deliverability, your sender reputation, your open rate and your click rate, and really identifying your best customers,’

Alex English, Head of growth, italist

Strategy

italist has used Klaviyo to build hundreds of custom contact lists based on consumer traits, behaviors, and referral sources. They’ve also implemented evergreen, automated flows that ask recent customers for reviews, and invite customers with social followings to italist’s ambassador program. 

It’s working. italist has 2,200+ TrustPilot reviews (average star count: 4.5), and 500 creators work as italist ambassadors.

Next, English plans to ramp up italist’s A/B testing and creative optimization. He hopes to boost average click rate until it’s “good,” according to Klaviyo benchmarks. 

Klaviyo hasn’t just helped italist hit its goals—Klaviyo helps define those goals. 

“Now we have a good sender reputation. We have a very healthy open rate. We have seen a huge increase in order value.” —Alex English, head of growth, italist