Data-backed steps to grow faster: An analysis of 40K ecommerce brands
We reviewed over 40K brands to better understand the actions that are driving growth and success. Now, we’re giving you the data-backed best practices and next steps you can use to drive impact right away.
Best practices from top-performing brands
If you don't have SMS, launch it
Brands that don’t have SMS set up see the biggest revenue jump by launching this channel. Set up a welcome series and send 1 campaign per week. Launch a pop-up form targeted to your email subscribers encouraging them to join your SMS list.
Get more out of campaigns
Top performing brands send 8 campaigns per month. You can drive more growth with even just 1 campaign per week. Campaigns with urgency work best, like product launches and limited time offers. Gut check your campaigns by asking: “Would I want to get this?”
Segment your campaigns
Segmentation increases click rates, order rates and deliverability. Your active profiles are the most important part of your list (i.e. folks who have engaged in the last 180 days). Keep that part of your list growing, and active, with segmentation.
Grow your list
The bigger your audience, the more revenue you can make. Have at least 2 forms live, but don’t stop there. Get your email folks on your SMS list, and build a VIP audience. Use forms to grow your list, and to build your 1st-party database to segment further.
Add more automated flows
Flows drive the most revenue per recipient because they trigger based on their behavior. Get the most revenue from flows by having more. Start with email and SMS welcome flows, post-purchase, browse and cart abandonment, win-back, sunset, and VIP flows.
Send at least 1 SMS campaign per week
While top brands execute multiple tactics to see results, adding SMS as a channel is a top strategy to accelerate your KAV growth. If you aren’t already, start sending at least 1 SMS campaign per week.
Setting the stage matters
When adding the SMS channel, make sure you have an SMS welcome flow turned on. It’s a critical early step to launching your SMS marketing program, and sets proper expectations with your audience.
Not sure what to send?
Get actionable SMS copywriting tips, or use SMS AI to generate optimized, compliant SMS copy suggestions in seconds.
The top 10% of brands send 2 campaigns per week
The fastest growing brands send an average of 8 campaigns per month across email and SMS. Examples include flash sale announcements, new product drops, holiday-specific offers, company wins, or community highlights.
Campaigns optimization matters
The top 10% of brands have a 2.54% median click rate, and a 0.52% order rate from their campaigns. A/B test, segment, and optimize to make your campaigns more impactful.
Need help planning your calendar?
Follow our strategy guide for best practices on building your campaign calendar.
Segmentation is a signal for long-term health
The top 10% of fast growing brands make segmentation a critical part of their campaigns, which keeps their spam and bounce rates low.
Segment by engagement level matters
Steal a page from the top performing brands, which often implement a tiered engagement segmentation strategy that looks like this: send 70% of campaigns to engaged profiles, 20% to a broader audience, and 10% to the whole list.
Not sure where to start?
Pick high value segments to start with like repeat purchasers, new shoppers, and high value customers, and craft campaigns specifically for them. For more ideas, check our best practices guide.
Publish at least 2 forms to expedite list growth
High-growth brands have at least two forms live on their site—typically one pop-up and one embedded form.
Form conversion rate matters
The top 40% of brands have a 2.8% form conversion rate. The top 10% have a 3.6% conversion rate––and they grew their form conversion rate .6% YoY.
What to do next
Have at least two forms on your site, one for new visitors and another targeting email subscribers, encouraging them to join your SMS list. Then, A/B test offers to increase conversion. Learn how.
Automated flows drive results: Aim for 7 or more
Top performing brands have at least 7 automated flows live, including: a welcome series for both email and SMS, browse and cart abandonment, post-purchase, win-back, sunset flow, and price drop flows.
Automation breadth matters
Automation complexity—like splits & experiments—while useful, wasn’t as impactful as other tactics. Adopt flow breadth, and then annually audit and update existing flows. Spend the rest of your time on campaigns or adding additional automations.
What to do next
Take a look at the flows you have live already, and identify places along the customer journey that you could automate by launching a new flow. Need inspiration? See examples of the top automations that drive strong engagement.
Ready to grow faster this month? Follow the checklist below.
The more you check off the list, the more your account will look like the top tier of brands.
Send two more campaigns this month, selected from the following: sale announcement, new product drop, company announcement, community highlights, or a message from the founder.
Send at least 1 SMS campaign per month. A product drop campaign or a VIP campaign are great options to start.
A/B test and optimize your sends to increase order rate by .03%
Increase your audience size by 10%. A good place to start is to create a lookalike audience on Facebook using your VIP segment in Klaviyo.
Create and send messages to three new segments: repeat customers, new shoppers, and VIP customers
Launch more automations to increase your flow count to at least 7. Use the flow library to start, and find 1-2 you want to launch.
Publish more live forms, increasing your total form count to at least 2
See the best practices in action
Bearpaw grows their email list 48%
Targeted pop-ups increase form conversion rate to 2.7x the median for their closest 100 peers, and a custom SMS welcome flow helped contribute to a 40% growth in KAV.
Marine Layer drives $80K from first SMS campaign
Combine email & SMS flows, campaigns, and 46% YoY growth in subscribers, and Marine Layer has the recipe for success down to a science.
Need more sends? Upgrade your account today
How did we conduct this research?
The team analyzed product usage and revenue differences between August of 2022 and August 2023, removing accounts with less than three months of Klaviyo usage to reduce the noise caused by onboarding. A year of data was used to manage seasonality.
We then looked at several factors to determine growth: Klaviyo attributed value growth (KAV)–– the amount of revenue driven directly by Klaviyo messages, gross merchandising volume growth (GMV), KAV to GMV ratio, and median Klaviyo ROI.
We found that the fastest growing brands have 245% median KAV growth YoY, 80% median GMV growth YoY, 46% median KAV to GMV ratio, and an 87x median Klaviyo ROI.