8 data-backed ways to improve the customer experience

No matter how differently each segment of your business operates, it’s important to create one seamless experience for all shoppers. Providing customers with the full range of shopping experiences and knowing where they are in their journey can help you send the right communication at the right time, while making it easy for customers to switch between channels.

Apparel brand Marine Layer wanted to create a cohesive brand experience across both their sales channels: brick-and-mortar stores and ecommerce. By consolidating customer data into a single source of truth, they developed a seamless omnichannel experience for in-store, online, and SMS interactions—and grew grew Klaviyo revenue 40.4% YoY in the process.

Marine Layer now activates their email sign-up data in real time with two welcome flows: one for people who subscribe online, and one for people who do it IRL. To help customers understand the full range of shopping experiences available, each flow features slightly different creative:

• The welcome flow for in-person shoppers highlights the extensive online selection, and Marine Layer’s free shipping and returns policy.
• The welcome flow for DTC shoppers is more focused on boosting awareness of Marine Layer’s retail stores and encouraging repeat online purchases.

Gain a competitive edge with a self-service customer hub where shoppers can track their own orders, start their own returns, redeem offers, and manage subscriptions from one place on your website. Because that one place is also where they receive curated offers and create wishlists based on their behaviour and history, you’re setting the stage for repeat purchases. 

When officewear brand Ministry of Supply wanted a more sophisticated, on-brand customer account experience that complemented the shopping experience and showed account information beyond a static order history, they implemented a self-service hub directly on their website.

The hub displays a wide variety of account information in one place: the customer’s recently viewed items; their order history, with product-page links for convenient repurchasing; their order tracking information; personalised product recommendations, powered by AI; and more.

“The most common things we see customers want in a bespoke shopping experience are details on what they got last time and what we think they should get this time,” says Ministry of Supply CEO Aman Advani. “With Klaviyo Customer Hub, they have one-click access to both of those things.”

It works, too: in less than 4 months since starting with the self-serve hub, Ministry of Supply account holders performed 650+ self-serve support interactions. The brand has also seen fewer escalated support tickets from customers requesting basic information.

Improve efficiency and response times even further by giving your customers the option to chat with an AI customer agent to get answers to common product and policy questions as well as personalised recommendations based on their real-time and historical behaviour.

Crucial to this approach is an integrated helpdesk that bridges the gap between marketing and customer service by organising all customer inquiries across email, text messaging, web chat, and social media into a single, unified inbox where all of your agents, whether AI or human, can access full customer context when addressing a problem.

Gain trust with consumers by communicating data policies openly and sharing how your brand upholds your values. If it’s relevant, showcase your brand’s ethical sourcing, fair labour practices, and sustainability initiatives. Leverage storytelling in marketing campaigns to highlight real-world impact.

Values-based messaging is part of the marketing strategy for health and wellness non-profit Balanced Rock, which switched to a B2C CRM to build their subscriber list and engage their community.

Now, a welcome pop-up on Balanced Rock’s Squarespace site offers visitors a free yoga video if they sign up for marketing emails. Balanced Rock then sends a weekly newsletter campaign that blends educational content, like blog posts and recipes, with program promotions. Engagement is rising as a result, with 35.8% YoY email list growth and a 53.7% QoQ increase in active-on-site rate from campaigns.

“As a nonprofit that is all about human connection, it’s important that the systems we use don’t feel robotic or cold,” says Meaghan O., operations manager at Balanced Rock. “Klaviyo is helping us create a better, more personalised user experience.”

Promoting customer loyalty with smart loyalty programs can increase customer lifetime value and lower customer acquisition costs.

Use data to determine which type of loyalty program your audience would prefer. Consider experiential rewards like early access to sales or exclusive content in addition to discounts. Integrate loyalty programs seamlessly into your omnichannel experience, ensuring customers can earn and redeem rewards whether they shop in-store, online, or via your mobile app or self-service portal.

Women’s health brand Happy V pulls loyalty data into their B2C CRM via a pre-built integration to create 7 different loyalty-triggered flows. Additionally, they run quarterly campaigns targeting subscribers with 100+ points, encouraging them to redeem their rewards. The results speak for themselves: 6.6x YoY growth in loyalty points redemptions attributed to Klaviyo flows. 

Optimise marketing and customer service messaging by channel, audience, and customer journey or recent actions.

You don’t have to cast a wide net—you can use data to drill down to the most effective channels for each consumer and send a personalised message to speak to them at their unique stage. You can also use AI to analyse a customer’s engagement history and determine the best channel to send their next message on.
When heritage apparel brand Filson centralised customer data in Klaviyo, they were able to improve the customer experience for people who subscribed to both email and SMS. Now, the ability to segment on behavioural data from both channels means fewer redundant sends and lower unsubscribe rates. Incorporating SMS into core email flows has contributed to 3.5x YoY SMS revenue growth.

“It’s essential to avoid messages that make our subscribers think, ‘Filson doesn’t know me,’” says Mike Swanson, retention marketing manager at Filson.

“If we have all the data across systems in Klaviyo, and we know how people are interacting with the brand both positively and negatively, whether that’s through customer service or a retail store, we can create a seamless omnichannel experience that feels personalised—and drive more revenue,” Swanson explains.

Offer personalised promotions based on customer purchasing behaviour, or remind consumers to revisit their abandoned cart when they’re ready to buy. Limited-time offers can also drum up a sense of urgency and drive conversions.

Reduce friction at check-out to avoid abandoned check-outs. Clearly display all fees upfront and offer incentives in your self-service customer hub, like free shipping for loyalty members or discounts on bundled products.

Data can help you get discounts or promotions to customers that are more likely to churn. Dog gear brand Ruffwear, for example, sends RFM-triggered re-engagement flows: if a customer enters the “Needs attention” or “At risk” RFM segments, it triggers a retention flow that recommends bestsellers the customer hasn’t yet bought.

In just 6 months, Ruffwear’s discount rate—the ratio of discounts to sales—dropped 10% YoY, while overall revenue grew 9%. “Getting the right discounts to the right people at the right time gives us better margins,” explains Ernie Kucera, digital marketing manager at Ruffwear.

Ongoing engagement with customers helps reinforce long-term customer value. Send customer feedback check-ins at key post-purchase touchpoints to show you’re listening.

Follow-ups and thank-you notes, along with personalised recommendations, can help customers feel valued and understood. You can also start VIP programs for high spenders with exclusive perks and discounts.

Jones Road Beauty, for example, grew their Klaviyo-attributed BFCM revenue 167% YoY with limited-edition holiday drops and relevant communications for different buyer segments, including tailored outreach to VIP repeat buyers with messaging about gifting their favorite product.

“The ease of creating segments in Klaviyo and spinning up personalised emails plays a big part in our BFCM strategy,” says Cody Plofker, CMO of Jones Road Beauty.

Personalisation should extend beyond simply using a customer’s first name in an email. Here are a few ways to do it right:

• Leverage AI and machine learning to analyse browsing behaviour, past purchases, and engagement patterns.
• Create a self-serve hub that personalises the on-site experience with content like wishlists, product recommendations, loyalty points.
• Lean on AI customer agents to serve people with full context about their behaviour and preferences.
• Set up demographic-based and behaviour-based segments, like recency, frequency, and monetary value (RFM), and communicate with customers accordingly. 

Men’s underwear brand 2(X)IST launched an RFM-based promotion strategy with highly targeted messaging through retention flows, Meta campaigns, and direct mail. For the direct mail campaign, the brand sent a targeted promotion to over 6,000 members of their “Needs attention” segment who had opted out of email and were at risk of churning. The campaign earned an ROAS of 3.4x.

“The fact that we can have email, SMS, and CDP all under one hood with Klaviyo helps with aligning data, pulling reports—everything,” says Christopher Peek, digital marketing director at The Moret Group. “I’m not pulling 3 different reports from 3 different platforms and trying to connect the dots. I love being able to go in and see how each message performed with each RFM segment.”