Ruffwear uses Klaviyo CDP to drive incremental revenue and improve margins

Ruffwear makes durable outdoor gear for dogs. So it’s no surprise the brand began on a mountain biking trip. Watching a friend struggle to give her dog a drink from a plastic bag, founder Patrick Kruse had the idea for Ruffwear’s first product: a collapsible cloth dog bowl.

Since then, the brand has expanded into other SKUs, from harnesses to dog boots, all while prioritizing sustainability. Customers can currently buy Ruffwear gear in national retailers like REI, and online in Ruffwear’s Shopify store.

Learn how Ruffwear used Klaviyo CDP to focus their marketing efforts on what works

Challenge

The Ruffwear team wanted to increase customer lifetime value. But they had already implemented every retention best practice in the book.

“Our email program was pretty substantial,” recalls Natalie DeRatt, ecommerce communications coordinator at Ruffwear. “We had a billion different flows doing all sorts of things.”

Our email program was pretty substantial. We had a billion different flows doing all sorts of things.

Their next LTV growth lever would need to be pretty sophisticated.

Specifically, they wanted fresh insight into their disengaged customers, who were all receiving the same standard re-engagement flows at the same cadence.

But which customers were most valuable? Most likely to return? If the team knew, they could focus their retention efforts (and discounts!) on them.

To sort that out, they wanted to model their customer behavior more precisely and build smarter segments — which Klaviyo’s main platform didn’t fully support.

Solution

Ruffwear decided to implement Klaviyo CDP, and use its powerful RFM segmentation capabilities to shine light on their disengaged customers.

It’s helped the team discount more efficiently to improve their margins. “Getting the right discounts to the right people at the right time gives us better margins,” says Ernie Kucera, digital marketing manager at Ruffwear.

Getting the right discounts to the right people at the right time gives us better margins.

In the past 6 months, Ruffwear’s discount rate—the ratio of discounts to sales—has dropped 10% YoY, while overall revenue has grown 9%.

Strategy

So far, Ruffwear uses Klaviyo CDP for 3 core strategic needs:

• To send RFM-triggered re-engagement flows: If a customer enters the “Needs attention” or “At risk” RFM segments—for high- and low-LTV customers who haven’t bought recently, respectively—it triggers a retention flow. Personalized based on purchase history, the flow content recommends bestsellers the customer hasn’t yet bought. “Compared to our other post-purchase flows, these ones are doing really well,” says DeRatt.
• To ramp up reach on major campaigns: DeRatt often sends campaigns about major sales and bestselling SKUs to an engaged segment plus “Needs attention,” “At risk,” and “Inactive” RFM segments—to reach more of the list and try to re-engage those cohorts.
• To evaluate sign-up channels by revenue: Ruffwear often partners with other DTC brands on giveaways to grow their list, and now uses Klaviyo CDP’s funnel analysisto track how sign-ups from each giveaway convert over time. This empowers them to discontinue partnerships that drive sign-ups, but not revenue.

With Klaviyo CDP, Ruffwear can ultimately access more customer data, more efficiently, than before.

“Klaviyo CDP opened doors to data that we probably should have been using all along, right where we want it,” Kucera explains. “Email is our No. 1 marketing channel—nothing even comes close. It’s great for our lean team that we can just go ahead and utilize data from Klaviyo CDP to send emails, without any additional synchronization or webhooks.”

Now we’re taking a more personalized approach to retention. It feels like we’re getting an extra edge with Klaviyo CDP.

CDP has also opened up new horizons of personalization.

“We’ve done all of the out-of-the-can approaches, and now we’re taking a more personalized approach to retention,” DeRatt says. “It feels like we’re getting an extra edge with Klaviyo CDP.”

Note: Certain CDP functionality, like RFM analysis and funnel analysis, are also found in Klaviyo’s Advanced Analytics offering.