Klaviyo make it too easy to become a ‘partner’

There I said it, but why do I say it? Well for multiple reasons….

Klaviyo has made email an essential commodity but most agencies (or freelancers) focus on activation and not on the customer journey.

It’s become a bolt on upsell for various agencies across the ecommerce space rather than a real specialism and that brings a risk that all ‘Klaviyo agencies are the same’.

Not all Klaviyo partners are the same

Klaviyo has 10k partners globally, but not all are equal. The phrase ‘Klaviyo partner’ covers a broad spectrum from tech resellers, technical specialists, agency upsellers (who will be specialists in their own field), freelancers through to dedicated agencies who live and breathe customer data.

As part of my advisor work with smaller brands, I’ve seen Klaviyo agencies suggest ‘Win back’ flows for brands trading under a year with less than 600 records. Why do they suggest this? Because they are just focusing on tick box activation. Birthday flows are another one? Why do you need this if you’re not capturing date of birth? What value is it going to give a customer?

This tick box activation is going to lead to a divide in the space, a race to the bottom pricing wise for the activation agencies and a longer sales process for the agencies that focus on bespoke offerings for their customers.

What does it mean for the future?

Like all businesses, Klaviyo has a big focus on AI and delivering a commodity ‘out of the box’. PAASE have been working with Klaviyo for the last five years and we’ve seen a fundamental shift in how we work with the platform, a lot of the best practises that we used to have to configure are now the default settings.

Some might say this is frustrating, but for PAASE it’s a good thing, it means we can accelerate out Phase 2 of our best practise, rather than having to spend time on ‘getting the basics right’. It means we can focus more on the working relationships we have with our clients and getting to know their customers.

My view is that we’ll see a large number of partners attracted by the market share of Klaviyo and ease of activation, fall by the wayside as they just don’t understand customer data and the customer journey.

Agencies that partner with brands, have flexibility in their commercial agreements and are bespoke in their offerings, will succeed. Most importantly they need to be experts in customer data and customer journeys! 

Get in touch today to find out how we can help your brand drive more ROI from your existing database.