Consolidating data sources

Personalizing customer experiences

Scaling omnichannel efforts

Automating marketing

Building loyalty

Offering self-serve support

Creating omnichannel journeys

Analyzing marketing and proving ROI

1. Consolidate all in-store and online data sources into one place

To get a full view of what’s going on with your customers and subscribers, you need to link up every place you’re collecting data into a single single source of truth. That includes your:

• Ecommerce store
• Brick-and-mortar stores
• Point of sale (POS) system
• Loyalty and referral programs
• Email, text messaging, and WhatsApp marketing
• Mobile app
• Social media
• Shipping, fulfillment, and post-purchase tracking tools
• Gift card management tool
• Customer service systems

Think about it this way: in a single day, the same customer might make an online purchase from a social media ad, respond to a WhatsApp message asking for help with a return, and reach a new loyalty tier. When all of your data lives under the same roof and both your marketing and customer service teams have access to it, your brand can take a more informed approach to communicating with that customer.

A B2C CRM with a built-in customer data platform and a robust integrations ecosystem empowers you to see new customer patterns you may have missed, be more proactive in your marketing and customer service, and personalize every marketing message for more tailored experiences.

Apparel brand Marine Layer, for example, uses their CRM to link in-store and ecommerce experiences and encourage customers to shop across different channels. They track engagement across ecommerce, retail, email, and text messaging in one platform, then customize online experiences based on that data.

Marine Layer’s welcome flow is a great example of what this looks like in practice. The welcome flow for in-person shoppers highlights the extensive online selection and the brand’s free shipping and returns policy, while the welcome flow for DTC shoppers is more focused on boosting awareness of Marine Layer’s retail stores and encouraging repeat online purchases.

2. Personalize marketing for every customer using segmentation

In your CRM, you can build any number of segments of your customers and subscribers. But creating more personalized marketing that generates sales is about:

• Finding the right combinations of your audience’s shared behaviors, demographics, and interests
• Creating dynamic segments that update automatically

This process used to be fairly complex and time-consuming and required a lot of work to figure out who meets hyper-specific criteria, like “has engaged with emails within 30 days,” and “is a member of the list of customers who have shopped in person,” and “whose location is within 50 miles of 02134.” And it was challenging to manually keep up with updating static lists.

It’s much simpler now, thanks to dynamic segments that update automatically based on customer and subscriber behaviors and preferences. And when your B2C CRM is equipped with AI, you can use plain language to identify segments that you think may be valuable cohorts to target, like, “Create a segment of people who recently shopped in-person at our Chicago store and also engaged with email in the last 30 days.” 

Try messaging segments in your CRM like:

• Recent browsers for new item announcements
• Customers who live within a certain geographic area for in-store event announcements
• Big spenders for VIP sales
• Customers with shared interests for educational content
• Mobile app shoppers for app-only or mobile-only promotions

Handcrafted watch brand Shinola uses strategic segmentation to target specific audiences in their CRM database with relevant promotions. Here are just a few of the effective ways they segment their audience:

• Subscribers who have engaged with or purchased certain product categories
• Disengaged subscribers who usually shop sales
• Non-openers of key campaigns

After sending, the Shinola team reports on each campaign by segment to see which messages resonate with whom.

3. Automate marketing to engage customers at scale

Part of the beauty of a CRM is its ability to tap into your audience’s preferences and activities, then automate marketing accordingly. 

In the time it would take to look up when an individual customer made a purchase, then reach out and ask them how it’s going, automation empowers you to send thousands of personalized messages based on even more detailed information.

Here are just a few key use cases for automating retail marketing with a B2C CRM:

• Sending automated flows based on subscriber behaviors: Follow up and nurture your subscribers when they’re actively engaging with your brand using automated flows like welcome series, post-purchase, browse and cart abandonment, replenishment reminder, win-back, and more. Lean on marketing templates for emails, texts, and flows to speed up the process even more.
• Making personalized product recommendations: Use the data you have on each subscriber to enhance your marketing messages with personalized suggestions for someone’s next purchase, like items that complement their past purchases or those related to recent browsing activity.
• Delivering messages when and where customers are most likely to open: With built-in AI, your CRM can analyze when subscribers are most likely to open your messages, which message variation is most likely to resonate with each individual recipient, and even which channel they’re most likely to engage on. Then, it can adjust and send messages accordingly.

Apparel and accessories brand Rebecca Minkoff, for example, uses their CRM with marketing automation to send out text message flows to welcome subscribers, follow up after cart abandonment, and alert customers when items are back in stock. Part of what has made the flows so successful: incorporating multiple channels and smart logic, like following up with an email if a customer doesn’t click on a text message.

4. Build loyalty and drive repeat purchases

What drives loyalty for modern shoppers? Klaviyo’s 2025 BFCM forecast found that the top 3 reasons consumers will stay loyal to their favorite brands in the current economic climate are consistently great prices or overall value, special deals or discounts, and consistently great product quality.

In other words, people want to feel like they’re getting a great deal, and like what they’re buying is worth what they’re spending. They also respond well to relevant offers, according to the forecast, and are likely to be influenced by getting better value for their money, via approaches like referral programs, loyalty programs, and VIP offers.

With a B2C CRM, retailers can connect with customers and boost retention, identify key audiences, and find ways to promote value and highlight what makes your brand stand out. Here’s what it might look like:

• Identify VIP customers. Use CRM data like lifetime value, purchase frequency, and marketing engagement to understand who your top customers are, then send them exclusive offers, access, and promotions.
• Proactively reach out to customers before they churn. A CRM with predictive analytics can help you figure out when someone is most likely to make their next purchase, so you can reach out ahead of time to keep them interested.
• Send personalized offers to customers for milestones or celebrations. Use date property-triggered flows to send promotions or discounts for birthdays, anniversaries, wedding or due dates, or any other key milestones you have stored in your CRM database.
• Collect social proof from happy customers to use in your marketing. Create automated review request flows and user-generated content (UGC) request flows to gather social proof you can use in your marketing. This can help elevate your brand’s perceived value, increase conversion rates, and reduce returns.
• Share loyalty program updates to promote engagement. Reach out to customers when they hit new loyalty program tiers, if they have unused points, or if there are special promotions, like 5x points on a certain category or during a certain month.
• Promote referrals to people who leave positive reviews. If you have a program where you offer incentives to those who refer others to your brand, send updates reminding key audiences to take part, and encourage word-of-mouth referrals to grow your brand.

5. Set up self-serve options and automate customer service

The power of automation extends beyond marketing for retail brands. Today, marketing and customer service have blended into each other, since customers reach out across all channels for help, including marketing channels like social media and text messaging.

According to our state of B2C marketing report, 75% of marketers say that customer service makes up more than 10% of their role. The same report found that brands that handle 61–80% of customer service via self-service are 133% more likely to significantly exceed their marketing goals, compared to brands that handle under 20% handled via self-service.

Customers expect quick responses to their questions, whether that’s while they’re initially browsing, after they’ve placed an order, when they want to make a return, or when they have questions about their loyalty points.

Your B2C CRM can help you streamline efficient retail customer service by:

• Allowing customers to manage orders, subscriptions, returns, and marketing preferences from a self-service customer hub
• Offering 24/7 automated support via AI service agents that have access to your product catalog, marketing channels, and customer profiles
• Sending automated service follow-ups after customers make a purchase, when they leave positive or negative reviews, or after you resolve support tickets

6. Create omnichannel journeys that keep up with customers across every channel

Omnichannel is the new reality for brands. Customer journeys are anything but linear, and people expect you to follow them (and their preferences) wherever they are, at all times. As omnichannel expectations become the norm, brands need to get smarter about how they operate, and make sure all their systems and teams are integrated.

If a location in St. Louis is running a special end-of-season sale, but a customer goes to return the item either online or at a different store from where they bought it, is your tech prepared to handle it? If a customer frequently engages with your text message marketing and only buys during special in-store promotions, will an email about a flash sale even reach them in time?

Use channels like email, text, mobile push notifications, and WhatsApp together, but don’t overwhelm customers with multiple messages across channels all at once. Manage your omnichannel marketing from a single platform so you can design cohesive multi-segment, multi-message activations.

Here are just a few ways a B2C CRM can coordinate and automate your omnichannel marketing to help you reach customers where they’re most active:

• Send automated follow-up emails or WhatsApp messages after customers make a purchase in-store.
• Promote in-store events to subscribers in a particular region via email, then follow up with a day-of text reminder.
• Send an email reminder when someone abandons a cart, then escalate to a text if they don’t open the email.
• Notify customers via mobile app push notifications when out-of-stock items they’ve browsed on your website become available.
• Announce new sales and promotions via email and in-app message, then follow up with a text or WhatsApp message when sales are ending.
• Pause promotional messages when someone has an open customer service ticket.
• Notify your customer service team to reach out directly to customers who leave a negative review, offering a free gift or additional support.

Flame-free home fragrance brand Happy Wax, for example, used their B2C CRM to create a sophisticated review follow-up flow. If a customer leaves a review with less than 3 stars, the flow pings the internal customer service team to reach out and offer a new scent, free of charge.

7. Analyze marketing and service outcomes with connected analytics

If you look at your data in a vacuum, you won’t see the big picture of how each marketing and service activity impacts your revenue. When your CRM has access to every possible interaction point your customers have with your brand, you can see the true ROI of each effort you take.

To better understand the relationships your customers have with your brand and find new opportunities across your marketing and service efforts, visualize customer experiences across the funnel. Explore where customers are coming in from, where they’re dropping off, how they engage during the purchasing and customer service process, and what’s tied to your most valuable customers. 

A B2C CRM can automate your analytics and reporting via real-time dashboards that track key metrics. To stay on top of every customer journey at scale, use your CRM to:

• Create custom reports that deep dive into campaigns, flows, and product performance.
• Discover what’s driving purchase behavior with advanced tools like funnel and cohort analysis.
• Track every shopper’s on-site behavior, conversions, and check-outs, all in one place.
• Uncover opportunities with personalized benchmarks that show how your metrics stack up against similar retailers in your industry.
• Fine-tune tactics through iteration, AI-driven A/B testing, and global holdout groups.
• Get personalized recommendations on best practices for marketing, deliverability, and targeting.
• Set up auto-monitors that alert you when there’s a dip in key metrics so you can make changes before issues impact your revenue.

Start building better customer relationships with Klaviyo B2C CRM

Klaviyo’s future of consumer marketing report found that 74% of consumers expect more personalized experiences from brands in 2025. What sets top brands apart? They take the time to understand their audience, then tailor every interaction to each individual customer. 

These 1:1 relationships are what turn good brands into great brands that customers stay loyal to for a lifetime. And the behind-the-scenes differentiator is a unified tech stack centered on a B2C CRM made for the modern retail brand.

A B2C CRM built for retail helps brands align marketing, service, and analytics to build lasting relationships by:

• Enabling connected omnichannel experiences
• Supporting data-powered personalization
• Using AI to improve performance and optimize marketing
• Empowering teams to work faster with pre-built templates and flows
• Gathering and highlighting the data that marketing and service teams need
• Consolidating every customer activity into a single profile
• Measuring the full customer experience

Klaviyo is the first (and only) B2C CRM designed for today’s customer experience.