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2026.09.29 | TB | Software | Klaviyo & Email Marketing Expert

原标题：E-mail & SMS Marketing Space & Klaviyo – Founder & CEO at a US-based Apparel Retailer

#software

Third Bridge · 2026-09-29

Client-led • 15 Sep 2026

Companies: SHOP US, KVYO US

Expert Founder & CEO at a US-based Apparel Retailer

Agenda

Questions

00:08:06] We're looking at Klaviyo and how it fits with the competitive landscape and Shopify. How has your experience been with Klaviyo as a consultant? What are the pros and cons?

Expert [00:08:58]: We use Klaviyo with all of our clients. In some cases, we get involved a little bit. In some cases, we get involved a lot. We never really set it up from scratch. We just help people strategise about what to do better.

00:10:04] Do you run the marketing campaign if the client already has Klaviyo?

Expert [00:10:16]: We don't run it because, again, we don't want to be a marketing agency. Typically, with one of our larger clients, they had a marketing agency, they were using Klaviyo and I came in and said, "Okay, I want to rebuild all the automations from scratch." Then they would show me the things they wanted to do. I would say, "Yes, no, yes, no," or I would come in and say, "Okay". I would sit in a marketing meeting once a month, and they would present to me the things they were going to do, and I would then just give my opinion on how I wanted to approach that month, so kind of like CMO with the whole marketing team presenting what they're going to do, all having to do with Klaviyo things.

00:12:03] How has your spending with Klaviyo grown over the last four years? How do customers expand with Klaviyo? Do they just send more e-mails and text messages? What does that rate look like?

Expert [00:12:31]: There probably are a large percentage of people that only do that, probably the largest bucket. Then you have some people that use SMS. Most companies use Attentive or Postscript for SMS because it's a little cheaper. The advantage of using Klaviyo is that all your data is in one place so it's a little easier, but it's not cheaper. If you had a really large SMS volume, you're probably not using Klaviyo. Maybe that will change at some point. I think a lot of these companies acquire someone that does something and then they repackage it. Attentive is much more built out. It's designed for SMS first. Klaviyo is designed for e-mail first. They'll probably get there at some point with SMS.

In terms of their loyalty and rewards stuff, that's tricky because I think the trend in software is every company has every product. Every company adds a rewards programme and adds it to this programme and then that programme. It doesn't mean they're good at it. It just means they've added it because they want to bundle as many things together as possible. When you're looking at these software packages and you're trying to figure out which one to go with for what, I think the most important thing is the integrations. What do they integrate with, and how deep is that integration?

The reason you use Klaviyo with Shopify is because they're integrated as closely as things could be integrated. If you're using Klaviyo rewards or loyalty or reviews or any of the things that they may have, I don't know their exact names, those aren't necessarily integrated into everything that you use. Even though they have it, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's good. We use Okendo for reviews because they're the best. If I wasn't going to use Okendo, Klaviyo would probably not even be on my list of choices.

00:16:09] What does Okendo integrate with, besides Shopify, that Klaviyo doesn't have?

Expert [00:16:21]: When you have reviews, a lot of times you just need that data in other places, and you have to customise it. You want to customise the questions you're asking customers because I might ask different questions about underwear as opposed to a T-shirt or some other thing. We wound up using Okendo because you can customise it based on the different categories, and it seemed to work really well for us at the time. We haven't looked for a new product in a few months, but I'm not aware that any of the competitors do the same kinds of things that we need. Okendo is a little expensive for reviews. It just is really good. There's a product out there, I think it's called Judge.me. It's either Reviews.io or I think it's called Judge.me. There's a free version and a USD 25 per month version, and I know it sounds crazy, but that product is probably the product that you should use if you're running reviews unless you need some highly customised thing like we need.

00:17:48] What do you think about Klaviyo's AI products, such as AI Customer Agent or AI Composer?

Expert [00:18:05]: We wouldn't use the Klaviyo version of that. That's where we're investing in more AI on that side of things. [Composer is] much newer. There's some other thing that I forget the name of that's AI-based in Klaviyo. We're playing around with those things, but we're not really using any of that heavily yet.

00:19:16] Are you happy with Klaviyo? Will you continue using it for e-mails and SMS? Will you increase your spend as you send more e-mails?

Expert [00:19:48]: Yes. If they come out with a product that is significantly better than something else that we have, we'll consider it. I don't know. My opinion is that Klaviyo is expensive for what it is, and they're not very flexible with pricing. There are a lot of other companies that are much more flexible. I would like to spend as little as possible with Klaviyo unless I absolutely have to use them for something, and e-mail is definitely a must.

00:20:24] What would prompt you to change e-mail software? At what point would you outgrow Klaviyo?

Expert [00:20:58]: There might be if you have needs that they can't satisfy. If it's a volume thing and you get really big, you're just going to have more leverage to negotiate because they'll then really want your business. There are two things. First of all, the most expensive part of Klaviyo is building out the automation. If I had to go somewhere else and do the same thing, I'm going to have to invest the same amount of money just to redo it, which may not really be worth it. Even if I could save USD 10,000 per year or whatever it is on Klaviyo, in the long run, I'd just be spending more money to have to move all the automations over and also potentially disrupt the business. I think once you're a client, they have you if you have any level of sophistication.

Now if you're doing less than USD 1m per year, it's probably not an issue. If you have a decent-sized business, a subscription business or anything that's sophisticated, you can't really afford to move your automations. I think the risk is very high for business disruption. That's the first thing. Second thing is you asked me about their core product and e-mails and profiles. There's a company out there called Customers.io. No, I think it's Customers.ai, something like that. It's like an enhancement to Klaviyo. It's also an enhancement to Meta. What they do is they take data and they enrich Klaviyo with data that Klaviyo doesn't have and wouldn't have. They do that so that you can attempt at identifying anonymous website traffic because Klaviyo only knows you if you give your e-mail address. There are other platforms that do this, but essentially, they just help identify anonymous traffic. One of the things they do, which is really cool, is they help you optimise your Klaviyo bill. If you have a lot of profiles that are silent, they'll help you suppress those profiles so you're not paying for them, which ultimately reduces your Klaviyo bill. Something to note is there are these other platforms that can help you optimise your bill that would reduce your Klaviyo spend. I don't know if it would reduce it much, but I think you should know that that exists.

00:24:09] What other providers are there besides Klaviyo? What sets Klaviyo apart?

Expert [00:24:29]: When I first started this business, we were using Mailchimp because we had more basic needs. Then once we started to try to do more complicated automations, it just didn't have those capabilities. Then we went to a company called Retention Science, [which] specialised in subscription businesses. We tried that for a while, and I wasn't happy with that. Then we just bit the bullet and went to Klaviyo. They were the most expensive, but they seemed to have the most functionality and the most integrations, and then the integrations they had were very deeply done. I think at my old company, I don't even know what we were using, but it was very, very expensive. I don't even know if it exists anymore.

00:25:27] Does Shopify have a native e-mail offering? How does it compare to Mailchimp and Klaviyo?

Expert [00:25:53]: Shopify e-mail is just super basic campaigns. Let me talk a little bit about how we're set up, and then you can see what the comparison is. Right now, if you order something from us and that order ships, those e-mails originate from Klaviyo. Shopify sends all the data to Klaviyo, and Klaviyo sends them out. These are all the automated ones. If you were not using Klaviyo and you were going to use Mailchimp, it probably means that you're a lot less sophisticated. You're probably using 100% of the Shopify transactional e-mails, and then you're probably just using Mailchimp for the campaigns, or you're using Shopify for really basic campaigns. If you want any kind of automations and integrations to third-party platforms and more sophisticated things, you need an e-mail platform to do that.

Client [00:27:43]: Has Shopify mentioned any enhancements to its e-mail programme?

Expert [00:27:56]: I've never asked.

00:27:57] How large does a company need to be to graduate from Shopify and Mailchimp to Klaviyo?

Expert [00:28:13]: I think USD 1m in annual revenue really separates start-ups, smaller businesses, part-time things. I think Mailchimp is fine, but once you start doing sophisticated automations or if you have a subscription business or if you have a lot of custom things that you do, you need a platform that can do that. Also A/B testing. I remember now that you brought it up, the final reason we left Mailchimp was because we couldn't A/B test the automation at the level of granularity that we needed.

00:29:07] How do Attentive and Postscript compare to Klaviyo on the SMS side?

Expert [00:29:38]: I haven't used Postscript. I just know it's one of the options. It had all the features we needed. It was an SMS-first platform. It was just great and the onboarding was amazing. I still think it's an afterthought of theirs, but it usually takes these platforms a few years to figure out these add-on things that they do. I had a client that used Attentive, and I actually had to negotiate the contract for them. It was a completely different process than Klaviyo. With Klaviyo, you don't even need to talk to a human. They really don't care. They just want your money. With Attentive, there were presentations and slide decks and meetings and whatever.

Ultimately, you're negotiating an annual contract for a bunch of different websites and you're getting some very significant discounts. The Attentive thing was, I don't know, a little more old school in terms of negotiation, but they really partner with you. You have the same people you deal with all the time. It's, I don't know, a little more enterprise, I think. It was a nicer experience. Klaviyo, you click a few buttons and that's about it. If you're lucky, they'll give you a 10% discount, but you pretty much have to beg for it, and it's more expensive.

00:31:30] How much more expensive is Attentive? Is it 20%, 50% or 100% higher?

Expert [00:31:42]: I think it's negotiable. If you're doing significant volume with Attentive, the client that I had was doing significant volume in multiple countries, I think I wound up with a decent double-digit discount. I wouldn't want to go into the specifics, but it was a healthy discount that was meaningful. Every client is going to be different, like negotiations. I happen to be negotiating multiple websites, and they really wanted my business because I had a client with multiple websites that they had for years, so they don't want to lose it. They were spending a healthy amount of money. I think it depends on how much they want the business.

Client [00:32:39]: What about carrier costs? Is Attentive partnered with Twilio?

Expert [00:32:56]: Attentive billed extra for that.

Client [00:32:59]: Are Klaviyo's SMS margins only 50%? How does that compare with Attentive?

Expert [00:33:10]: Yes, but Attentive always charges you extra for the carrier fees.

Client [00:33:37]: When you say half price, do you mean half price as in all in, like-for-like?

Expert [00:33:46]: Yes. I remember all they cared about was that you spent a minimum of USD 2,000 per month. I remember when I signed a contract, they wanted a minimum of USD 2,000 per month, and then we negotiated all the fees for the different countries because there's a client that had different websites in different countries. Then the carrier fees were specified.

00:34:15] What's the cost of running e-mail vs the cost of running SMS? If your D2C brand's e-mail bill were USD 100, what is the SMS bill in relation to that?

Expert [00:34:55]: It's a little more expensive. [Our company] is a bit of an anomaly. I think you have to look at a more traditional D2C business. I would assume that SMS is half of their revenue. The cost is probably similar to the e-mail cost. You're just sending less SMS. It has a higher click-through rate. It's just different. You might be sending hundreds of millions of e-mails. It wouldn't mean you'd send hundreds of millions of SMSs for the same amount of revenue. I meant conversion rate, not click-through rate. Your conversion rate is a lot higher.

Client [00:36:09]: On SMS?

Expert [00:36:10]: Yes, because you're sending less and getting more out of it or the same out of it, but you're just sending less.

00:36:28] Is Klaviyo's SMS product catching up to Attentive and Postscript? Is Attentive innovative enough to keep a similar gap in feature functionality? Will Klaviyo get there?

Expert [00:36:49]: I'm not heavily involved in the Attentive thing. I don't really know what they're doing month by month. Klaviyo has added a lot of functionality to their SMS. They've been keeping up with the product. I would assume that in one year or two, it will be on par.

00:37:13] Have you seen Attentive's e-mail product? What are your thoughts, especially where it might be free?

Expert [00:37:36]: Even if it were free, I wouldn't even waste time with it. There would need to be so many different things that it did in order to want to go through the trouble, the expense and take all that time to move.

00:38:10] Do other brands have an equally complicated set of flows and automations? Does the investment into setup make it more difficult to switch?

Expert [00:38:39]: Mostly for subscription businesses. A regular D2C will have rewards flows, shipping flows, normal flows. Maybe they'll have 10, something like that. Subscription, you're going to have tons of flows just for subscription. Then every single flow that you have is going to have a lot more logic, a lot more customisations.

00:39:07] Would it be easier to move a traditional D2C brand?

Expert [00:39:17]: No. I think a lot of it is very cookie-cutter, and you can do that easily. With subscription, there's just highly customised stuff that has nothing to do with Klaviyo. It's more about the third parties that you use. I would say that most of our customisation in Klaviyo is Recharge stuff. I don't think it's just cut and paste. I think the way each platform deals with third parties would be slightly different, so you'd have to go through 100% of everything and make sure it works. I think if you have a company that's spending USD 50m per year on Klaviyo and they can save a few million dollars, then maybe it's worth it. Otherwise, I wouldn't waste time on it.

Client [00:40:22]: I think their biggest customer spends USD 4m.

Expert [00:40:24]: Even if they're going to save 10% by doing something, it could also cost them millions of dollars in lost revenue if it gets screwed up. It's probably not even worth it to save 10%. Probably too risky.

00:40:44] Did the Shopify sales team push Klaviyo when you were setting up [your company]? Were they only concerned with Shopify? Did they let you choose whoever you wanted?

Expert [00:41:30]: When we went to Shopify, we went to Shopify Plus. When you do Shopify Plus, they'll give you a list of recommended Shopify Plus third-party apps that you can go research yourself. They never said, "You should use this," but they said, "This is the top e-mail partner, and go figure it out for yourself." When Klaviyo was sold to me, ultimately, it was sold to me because it has the deepest integration to Shopify.

Client [00:42:10]: How does that integration show in the product? What do you get that your competitors don't?

Expert [00:42:31]: This is a little example. If you go to an e-mail platform, they might say, "Oh, yes, we send all the Shopify things," but they might just send the basic things. They may not send those detailed things that are optional. I think the devil's in the details in what they do and then how deep they do it and how customisable it is. For example, we were looking at subscription software at some point, and it was between Recharge and one of their competitors. They both said, "We have Klaviyo integrations." Then this other company we're looking at said, "Yes, we do all the same things, but we just don't have that level of detail. We can do the basics, but we can't do all the advanced stuff yet."

Client [00:44:21]: Was Klaviyo singled out when Shopify Plus gave you apps and recommended vendors?

Expert [00:44:45]: This wasn't a very formal document. It was like a spreadsheet with a bunch of links and they said, "Go figure it out."

Client [00:44:53]: Who did Shopify recommend for SMS?

Expert [00:44:59]: I think they had all the different providers. I don't even know if Klaviyo did SMS then.

00:46:43] How much does the average D2C brand grow each year? Is it 1-2% or 10-20%?

Expert [00:47:07]: It's just a function of if the business is growing. Are you saying if the business is growing, how does it increase or if the business is flat, how does it increase?

Client [00:47:16]: Does the usage grow in line with top line?

Expert [00:47:29]: I don't think it's a 1:1 because I think the more you send, you do have efficiencies when you hit scale. I don't think it's increasing directly how sales are increasing, but I think it's proportional and increasing. If your business was flat and you were just looking at your Klaviyo spend, I don't think it would really change much. Maybe it would be that 1% or 2%. I don't think I've ever really looked at what their fees are YoY in terms of what does it cost to send one million e-mails year one vs year two?

00:48:17] Does Klaviyo have a learning curve? How does the e-mail ramp work? How long does it take to set up the flows?

Expert [00:49:11]: I would say that if you're using Klaviyo vs just some basic e-mail set-up, whether it's Shopify or something else, yes, over time, you're going to have more flows. After you get through the phase of do-it-yourself and you hire an agency, they're going to identify different opportunities for more automation, and they're also going to push for more weekly e-mail campaigns depending on the size of the business.

00:49:41] How long does it take a new client to reach run rate e-mail sends with Klaviyo? Is it two months? Is it a year?

Expert [00:50:05]: I think it depends on their revenue. I think once they get to USD 1m in revenue, then they start thinking seriously about e-mail as a channel. Up until that point, they're probably spending as little as possible if it's a start-up. I think after they get to a certain point, then they'll hire an agency to run all their performance marketing. Then part of that will be e-mail, and then they'll start building out e-mail to do more things. With the clients I've seen, sometimes it's not even the USD 1m mark. Sometimes it's a USD 2m mark. If you're going to pay an e-mail agency to only do e-mail, it's probably going to cost you, I don't know, USD 100,000 per year, let's say, or USD 75,000 per year minimum. You just have to be at a certain point in order to afford that. There's a guy on Instagram that you should talk to. I don't know him, but he's an e-mail expert. He is a Klaviyo guy, and he pushes out tons and tons of content. His Instagram is wellcopymax. He has an agency that runs e-mail for various clients. He claims to be pretty big. I have no idea, but it might be interesting to talk to someone like that.

00:51:53] Will Klaviyo be replaced with AI? Do you think that could be done in the near future? How soon could that happen?

Expert [00:52:31]: I think everyone wants to replace humans, but realistically, you're just going to do things smarter with the same amount of humans. We're building a lot of AI things ourselves internally to be able to automate things, but I don't think we're there yet. I think a lot of companies are going to try to do things like that, but Klaviyo is better off building AI tools that you can use to use them as the AI platform. It depends on the business. If it's multi-brand vs single brand, I think your needs are very different, or if it's subscription or not subscription, your needs are very different. I don't know. It would be nice to automate everything. I just don't know if it's practical.

00:54:07] Have you heard any tidbits about Klaviyo or any other emerging companies in this space?

Expert [00:54:40]: I don't think so. There's another thing that people are trying to do, which is inbox placement. A lot of your e-mails just go to a marketing folder in Gmail or even to spam. Customers.ai is one of them, but there are companies out there that are trying to get your e-mail into the main inbox, and they do it by dumping some code in your e-mails. It helps to trick Gmail or whoever the platform is to prioritise yours in the inbox. Then there are certain ways that they send e-mails. This third-party platform, Customers.ai, that we've been using for a while, not only do they add data to Klaviyo that Klaviyo doesn't have, they also help you segment your e-mails and send them differently. That way they're more likely to hit the inbox. That's a really interesting one. There's another company called Revenue Roll, which does a similar thing. I wound up firing them and bringing in Customers.ai on a bunch of clients.