The Willow Tree Boutique grows Klaviyo revenue 44.6% YoY with predictive analytics

The Willow Tree Boutique got its start in 1992, as a brick-and-mortar women’s clothing boutique in Northeast Alabama. Founder Kim Kidd and her team have spent the past 30+ years expanding: The boutique now has multiple storefronts, plus an online shop and a free mobile live-selling app.

The digital side of the business launched in 2019, and it’s been a key growth lever in the 2020s. That’s thanks to support from digital marketing agency EK Creative, and the platform that powers smarter digital relationships: Klaviyo.

Learn how Klaviyo’s AI-powered predictive analytics “opened up a whole new world” for The Willow Tree Boutique

Challenge

In 2023, The Willow Tree Boutique had a list of loyal email subscribers, and plenty of behavioral data about each of them—a robust mix of engagement and purchasing data, stored in Klaviyo.

But for Jade Richardson, EK Creative’s email strategist, it was still hard to email customers like she really knew them.

She could easily segment and target customers based on their engagement with email, the online store, and the boutique’s mobile app, thanks to Klaviyo’s pre-built Comment Sold integration.

But she struggled to segment based on purchase data —like how much and how often a customer bought with the boutique. Richardson knew price-sensitive shoppers got emails about items way outside their price range, and infrequent shoppers could get overwhelmed by messages.

There had to be a better way.

Solution

In June 2023, Klaviyo’s predictive analytics sparked Richardson’s curiosity.

She started sending her campaigns to a new segment—customers whose AI-predicted next purchase date was in the last or next 30 days.

“That segment did really well,” Richardson says. She created more predictive segments, and saw more success.

Since starting with Klaviyo’s predictive analytics, I hardly ever send a campaign without them.

Revenue from email campaigns grew 53.1% HoH in H2 2023—The Willow Tree Boutique’s first 6 months using predictive analytics.

These new, AI-powered metrics make it easier to turn purchase history data into messages that resonated in the now. Richardson was hooked.

“Since starting with Klaviyo’s predictive analytics, I hardly ever send a campaign without them,” she says.

Strategy

Here are a few especially impactful ways Richardson has leveraged predictive analytics segments for The Willow Tree:

• Promoting luxury items to big(ger) spenders: The boutique sends campaigns highlighting pricey apparel to segments with demonstrated spending power, Richardson says—customers with a predicted CLV over $500, or an average order value over $150.
• Boosting day-to-day campaign reach—without batching and blasting: By sending to predictive analytics segments as well as “tried and true” engaged segments, the boutique reaches more customers without reading as spammy. “Performance overall has improved since adding more subscribers to the emails,” says Ashley Christenberry, COO of The Willow Tree Boutique.
• Going big for BFCM: Typically, Richardson sends campaigns to customers whose average time between orders is less than 30 days—but in Q4 2023, she changed that to less than 60 days, to reach more eyeballs. It helped power the boutique’s highest-revenue BFCM ever.

Ultimately, Klaviyo AI helps The Willow Tree Boutique reach their most loyal subscribers at the right time—and get to know their customers on a deeper level.

“After we started sending campaigns to segments created with Klaviyo’s predictive analytics, all our metrics improved, and our revenue improved drastically,” Richardson says. “It taught us so much about the subscriber base—when they shop, how they shop, etc. It has been fundamental to nailing down best practices for the brand. It really opened up a whole new world to us.”

After we started sending campaigns to segments created with Klaviyo’s predictive analytics, all our metrics improved, and our revenue improved drastically. It taught us so much about the subscriber base—when they shop, how they shop, etc. It really opened up a whole new world to us.