Getting started with Klaviyo: The basics you need to know

Klaviyo is one of the most widely adopted marketing automation platforms in eCommerce. If you are running on Shopify or another commerce platform and need more control over email, SMS, and customer data, Klaviyo is often the default choice. This guide breaks down what Klaviyo is, how it works, and what lifecycle teams should know before getting started.

What Klaviyo is and who it is built for

Klaviyo is a B2C CRM and marketing automation platform purpose-built for eCommerce brands. Founded in Boston in 2012, the platform focuses on turning customer behavior and transactional data into personalized email, SMS, and WhatsApp messaging.

Klaviyo is most commonly used by:

• Shopify and Shopify Plus merchants

• DTC brands with high SKU velocity or repeat purchase behavior

• Lifecycle teams that need deep segmentation and automation without heavy engineering support

Unlike traditional ESPs, Klaviyo’s data model is event-based. That means every browse, add-to-cart, purchase, and subscription action can directly trigger messaging. This approach makes it easier to build behavior-driven journeys that move customers from first purchase to long-term loyalty.

For a deeper comparison of where Klaviyo fits in the broader ESP landscape, see Scalero’s guide to the best ESPs for eCommerce brands.

Core Klaviyo features lifecycle teams rely on

Email and SMS automation

Klaviyo is best known for its flow builder. Flows are automated lifecycle journeys triggered by real-time customer behavior. Common examples include welcome series, abandoned browse, abandoned checkout, post-purchase education, and win-back campaigns.

According to Klaviyo benchmark data, automated flows can drive over 30 percent of total email revenue for mature eCommerce programs when set up correctly. This makes automation one of the highest ROI areas for lifecycle teams to focus on early.

You can explore Klaviyo’s automation capabilities directly in their flows overview.

Advanced segmentation

Segmentation is one of Klaviyo’s strongest differentiators. Audiences can be built using a combination of:

• Event behavior

• Purchase frequency and recency

• Product-level data

• Predictive metrics like the expected next order date

This enables highly targeted lifecycle messaging such as replenishment reminders, VIP drops, and churn prevention campaigns. Klaviyo’s segmentation logic is documented in their segmentation guide.

Predictive analytics and AI-driven insights

Klaviyo includes native predictive analytics models such as:

• Predicted lifetime value

• Predicted next purchase date

• Churn risk

These metrics help lifecycle teams prioritize who to message and when. For example, brands can suppress high churn risk users from promotions and instead route them into educational or incentive-based win-back flows.

Independent research from McKinsey shows that data-driven personalization can increase revenue by 10 to 15 percent for consumer brands, reinforcing the value of predictive targeting when used strategically.

Klaviyo outlines its approach to predictive analytics in this product overview.

Integrations and data ecosystem

Klaviyo integrates natively with Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Stripe, and hundreds of other tools across reviews, subscriptions, loyalty, and support. These integrations allow lifecycle teams to centralize customer data without relying on custom pipelines.

Shopify remains Klaviyo’s most common integration, with deep support for product, checkout, and subscription events. This tight coupling is one reason Klaviyo continues to be the preferred platform for Shopify Plus brands. Shopify highlights Klaviyo as a featured partner in its app marketplace.

From a Scalero perspective, we often see the most success when Klaviyo data is paired with a clear lifecycle strategy rather than relying on default templates. This is a common theme we also see with other ESPs, including Iterable, which we covered in the Iterable survival guide.

Reporting and performance measurement

Klaviyo’s reporting is designed for marketers rather than analysts. Teams can easily measure:

• Revenue per recipient

• Flow vs campaign contribution

• Channel performance across email and SMS

However, as programs scale, many brands outgrow Klaviyo’s native dashboards and supplement with BI tools or data warehouses. This is especially true for teams running complex experimentation or multi-region programs.

Klaviyo provides an overview of its analytics capabilities in its reporting documentation.

Beyond lifecycle: Klaviyo’s expanding platform, AI, and agent capabilities

While Klaviyo is best known for email and SMS automation, the platform has been steadily expanding beyond traditional lifecycle marketing. Recent product updates signal a broader shift toward AI-assisted execution, service-led revenue, and tighter connections between data, reporting, and activation.

Here are the key non-lifecycle-focused updates worth understanding.

Klaviyo AI and K:AI agents

Klaviyo AI, branded as K:AI, brings AI-powered assistance directly into campaign creation, customer support, and personalization workflows. Rather than positioning AI as a standalone tool, Klaviyo embeds it across the platform to help teams move faster while staying grounded in first-party data.

K:AI supports use cases such as:

• Generating campaign strategies and launch-ready messaging

• Powering always-on AI agents that answer customer questions around the clock

• Personalizing interactions across channels based on real-time behavior

The key distinction is control. Marketers still define strategy and guardrails, while K:AI handles executional lift. This makes AI more practical for lean lifecycle teams without sacrificing brand or data ownership.

Klaviyo Service and revenue-focused support

Klaviyo Service extends the platform into customer support by combining AI agents and live service workflows with marketing data. Every service interaction becomes another opportunity to personalize, recommend, or recover revenue.

By unifying service and marketing data, brands can:

• Personalize support experiences using purchase and behavior history

• Route high-value customers differently than first-time buyers

• Turn support conversations into conversion moments rather than cost centers

This is a notable shift from viewing service as separate from lifecycle marketing, especially for high-volume eCommerce brands.

A rebuilt reporting experience with Report Builder

Klaviyo’s new Report Builder, currently in public beta for MA and AKDP customers, introduces a more flexible and unified reporting layer. Teams can now group, filter, and compare performance across campaigns, flows, and products in a single view.

This reduces reliance on manual exports and spreadsheet stitching, helping teams move faster from insight to action. For growing programs, this is a crucial step toward achieving more scalable performance analysis without requiring a full BI stack.

Cleaner omnichannel execution with exit conditions

Omnichannel campaign exit conditions allow profiles to automatically exit campaigns once they convert. This removes the need for manual exclusions and helps prevent duplicate or unnecessary messages across channels.

For teams running coordinated email, SMS, and WhatsApp campaigns, this update improves customer experience hygiene and reduces over-messaging risk.

Richer mobile messaging with product and contact features

Klaviyo continues to close the gap between email and mobile channels with several updates:

Product links and images can now be attached directly to SMS, RCS, and WhatsApp messages using catalog data, eliminating manual URL handling.

Contact card download links can be sent via SMS in both campaigns and flows, allowing subscribers to save brand contact details directly to Apple devices running iOS 26.

These enhancements streamline execution while making mobile messages more visual, actionable, and brand-forward.

More actionable segmentation and funnel insights

Several updates focus on tightening the loop between reporting and targeting for MA and AKDP customers:

• Event-based funnel segmentation now supports ordered event sequences, enabling advanced logic like checkout drop-off or post-click conversion windows.

Funnel Analysis actionability allows teams to build segments directly from funnel reports, turning insights into audiences in seconds.

A new Segment Library provides pre-built, recommended segments to help teams adopt healthier and higher-ROI targeting practices faster.

Together, these features reduce the distance between analysis and activation, which is a common bottleneck for lifecycle teams.

Expanded enterprise data connectivity

For enterprise brands, Klaviyo now supports direct data imports from Databricks via its Databricks connector. This expands reverse ETL capabilities beyond Snowflake and BigQuery and makes it easier to activate warehouse data at scale.

This update reinforces Klaviyo’s push upmarket while maintaining accessibility for smaller teams.

Limitations to consider before committing

While Klaviyo is powerful, it is not without tradeoffs:

• Pricing scales quickly with list growth and SMS volume

• Custom object modeling is more limited than enterprise CRMs

• Global brands may find timezone and localization controls restrictive

These limitations are not deal-breakers for most mid-market eCommerce brands, but they are important to factor into long-term platform decisions. Scalero has outlined common inflection points in our post on reasons to migrate from your ESP.

Klaviyo is a strong choice for eCommerce brands that want to move fast with personalized email and SMS powered by real customer behavior. Its Shopify-native data model, flexible segmentation, and automation capabilities make it a reliable platform for growing lifecycle teams.

That said, Klaviyo alone does not guarantee results. The brands that see sustained performance gains are the ones that pair the platform with a clear lifecycle strategy, disciplined experimentation, and thoughtful journey design. Without that foundation, even the best tooling can underperform.

At Scalero, we help eCommerce teams turn platforms like Klaviyo into measurable growth drivers. From building high-impact flows and segmentation frameworks to optimizing deliverability and testing strategy, our team works alongside yours to make sure your lifecycle program scales intentionally.

If you are evaluating Klaviyo or looking to get more out of your existing setup, get in touch with the Scalero team to see how we can support your next stage of growth.