EU260: The State of Email Marketing with Jake Cohen from Klaviyo

eCommerce Uncensored - Email Marketing | Facebook Ads | Social Media Marketing

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In today’s episode, Jake Cohen, VP of content for Klaviyo, talks about the state of email marketing. Jake & the guys discuss the evolution of advertising and tracking your insights, building customer relationships, and how to optimize those relationships for better customer experiences.

Mentioned resources:
https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/taboo-brands-marketing
https://showcase.klaviyo.com/sc/
https://www.klaviyo.com/marketing-resources/customer-first-marketing
https://www.klaviyo.com/blog/marketing-attribution

Don’t forget to text us to get your business set up with converting email flows! Text E M A I L to 8 4 4 – 6 4 3 – 0 7 4 5.

This is a direct transcript. Please forgive any grammar or spelling errors.

Jake: Where, when someone comes to your site, the goal, it’s great to get a transaction, but that should be a bonus. Not the goal. The goal should be to get the relationship.

Jason: Now you have to aggregate your customers in one place, because they’re all over the place

Jake: Who shares our products, promise how quickly people can see the product from us and how flexible the platform is to allow for many.

Jen: You’re listening to eCommerce Uncensored with Kevin Monell and Jason

Kevin: Hey everyone. And thank you for joining us on another episode of eCommerce Uncensored. My name’s Kevin Monell, and I’m here with

Jason: Jason Caruso.

Kevin: Today, we’re joined with Jake Cohen. Who is the, what did he say? He was the VP of content. I believe he said he’s a big dog there. Yeah. We’ve known him for several years now.
We interviewed him at the first Klaviyo Boston conference. I went to when I was thinking about it before we got on to Jason, it was like episode 91. So if you want to listen back to some of our old episodes, first time we had Jake on was episode 91. Back in October of 2018. And I remember how nervous I was to go to Klaviyo, Boston and interview people. I remember that morning, we had that breakfast that my brother-in-law made a night. It looked like a bunch of Xanax before I went over to the conference because I’m a freaking lunatic.

Jason: Yeah. I, I miss doing those things.

Kevin: Those are fun, man. Those are really fun. That was fun. That was a good trip. We had a good time, but we had a lot of catching up to do.
Um, and we did on this podcast, just a lot of new things going on. Klayvio we talk a lot about email marketing, SMS, all those things. And speaking of those things, we have this program to help you guys out with your email. And if you text email 2 8 4 4 6 4 3 0 7 4. We’ll reach back out to you. We’ll get some more information about yourself, about your store and we’ll jump in and see how we can help you get your email going and getting your platform going like it should be earning, earning your moral.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, if you’re a struggling with email, if you need help with your flows, if you need help with your campaigns, if you would just actually have someone to reach out to us to the day who doesn’t even want us to do it for her, she actually wants us to, uh, teach. How to do it. So, you know, uh, we have another, we have somebody else that we’re going to actually do it for.
We have two more people reach out to us. You know, a lot of people seem to have problems or need help with emails. So if you’re one of them, shoot us an email, a text message, uh, if you’re a good fit for us and for you. No, let’s see if we can make something happen.

Kevin: Text the word, email to 8 4 4 6 4 3 0 7 4 5.
We’ll go from there. All right. Here’s our interview with Jake Cohen from Klayvio.

Hey Jake.. Thank you so much for joining us again. After a few years, how are you doing?

Jake: I’m very good. Excited to be back.

Kevin: So we were on a good little run a couple of years ago, 2018. We interviewed at Klaviyo Boston, and then 2019, we actually interviewed you and Andrew together.
And, uh, I know you guys have been through a lot, uh, you know, through a pandemic and all the other things that are going on. So why don’t you first, first, before we get started for the people who haven’t heard you on our previous podcast, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and what your role in Cleveland.

Jake: Um, sure. So my name is Jake Cohen. Uh, I have been very lucky to be on this podcast in the past, and I’m excited to be back. I’ve been at Clearview for actually this month is my sixth year, uh, with them, which is kind of crazy. Uh, for most people a long time ago, I led product. Uh, I started our product marketing discipline, and now I lead content for the company.
When did Clayton actually

Kevin: start? When did cleave actually start? I’m sorry,

Jake: December, 2000.

Kevin: Okay. So you’ve been on with them for almost the whole whole run here, right?

Jake: Uh, like more than half. Yeah. Which like, from a very early age, there were not a lot of people when I came on.

Jason: Yeah. And Jake, you know, we, uh, one thing that was, um, it’s like, do you remember the story about.
Us getting the other Jake guy walked us in. You remember that story? Like we thought it was you. And like we were interviewing you. And like, we got to Klaviyo Boston, this guy, Jake, like walked us in and we’re like, wait a minute. We interviewed him. And he goes, no, no, no, no, it wasn’t

Kevin: It’s so much more important Jake, over there.

Jake: I don’t know about that ever. Everyone’s important, but maybe a younger Jake,

Jason: but, but you know, the, the interesting thing about you when we go to Klaviyo Boston, we’ve been to a lot of them. It’s like, you know, we we’ve always talked about the personalities at Klayvio. Right. And I don’t know how much that’s, if that’s changed because you’ve guys gotten so big.
But one thing that was like stood out to us when we went, it’s just like how the personalities of everybody there. I don’t want to say they were the same, but like they had the same characteristics. Like everybody was nice. Everybody tried to help you. Everybody was like, went out of their way and it just seemed like a constant thing.
So like back then, we were like, when we didn’t know, you were like, uh, show us like Jake Cohen. And they were like, he’s kinda like a big deal here. So he’s busy.

Jake: If someone was blowing smoke up, you know, where that was kind of awesome.

Jason: But why don’t you. So you on the product side now you’re on the content side.
Klaviyo’s growing like crazy back when we were, uh, Klaviyo Boston two years ago, we were at like 55,000 customers. Where are we at

Jake: today? Yeah. So, uh, well, that’s, that’s crazy to hear, hear that, uh, sometime. When you’re in the weeds, you don’t think about all of that. Yeah. So we’re, so today we have over a hundred thousand paying customers all over the world.
Um, we opened an office in London and another one in Australia. Uh, we’ve got about 1200 employees. Um, and like all those things aside, probably the most exciting milestone, I guess, that we hit was, um, over the course of this past black Friday, cyber Monday. Um, we hit a cumulative total of $50 billion of Klayvio attributed value.
Meaning. Uh, our customers generated $50 billion for themselves through the use of Klayvio, which was a big deal somewhere around here. I’ve got a pin to commemorate that. Uh, but like, that’s that I, I, you guys probably remember that’s our north star metric. That’s the thing we care most about are our customers succeeding and growing and making money through their use of Klayvio and.
I mean to hit a milestone like that is wild. So we had, we had like a bit of a step back and, um, take it in moment when that happened. It was pretty cool. Well, you guys started that at the last Klayvio right?

Jason: Like Boston, Cleveland, wasn’t you guys started talking about that? I think like the last one I remember.
Um, yeah. And that’s awesome. And you know, the interesting thing Jake is that, you know, I know there are like other enterprise solutions out there and other platforms that. Are out there, but I feel like you guys have such a stranglehold on the market. Like, I’ll give you an example. Like I started this golf business that I was telling you about before we got on.
And you know, when, when you’re in the beginning of any business, you’re trying to just, you’re trying to bootstrap as much as you can because, you know, I want to put all my money into the ads and I want to bring in, so. Uh, I admittedly tried a different platform. I’m like, you know what, let me just try something.
That’s cheap, you know, $15 a month. And I just want to try to like put all my money

Jake: into the marketing side. I did yell

Kevin: at him a little bit. Jake don’t worry.

Jake: Well,

Jason: I quickly realized that there is no other platform. That I’m aware of. And I know like drip and there are some other ones out there, but there is no other platform that I’m aware of that gives you the data in a way that Klaviyo does. And I know that’s like a big part of your thing, right? Like I want to know when I send an email, how much money that frigging email made.
So I could do it again if it worked and not do it again, if it didn’t work. And those are the kinds of things that I appreciate about, about Klaviyo. And I did use another platform and I came right back, obviously.

Jake: Well I’m well, I’m glad I honestly, I’m glad you went out to see what was there and I’m glad you came back.
I lose our sponsorship,

Kevin: Jason.

Jason: Well, I mean, it wasn’t even, it wasn’t that it was that I do want to see, I want to try different things and I want to see what I like about it. And there’s there, there’s a lot of things that I think Klayvio does that I don’t think a lot of. Platforms do I mean between the segments and, uh, you know, those kinds of things.
So you’re not on that side anymore.

Jake: Um, a lot about that side, but it’s true. I’m not doing it every day. Right. Um,

Jason: Which right. You, you, you know, you’re very passionate about the product side, so I’m a little bit, uh, I was a little bit taken aback when you said that you got moved. Cause I’m like, dude, you used to love talking about that.

Jake: Well, D well, and so the funny thing is I got moved because I love talking about it because we need people who can and want to one of the, one of the knocks. So like a little story for you when Klaviyo started back in 2006, It was not intended to be a marketing product for businesses that sell to consumers.
It actually was intended to be an analytics company for B2B software businesses, kind of like Intercom, which became a. And the sort of like insight that, uh, Andrew at the time thought was like, the access is like a story of entrepreneurship, pivoting and all that stuff they thought it would be really cool is, Hey, if you know that at the bottom of a funnel, you can convert a customer and you know what those steps are.
Then it should be true that you can attract attribute value to each of those steps based on what a customer will be worth. So if someone comes to your website, that’s worth 5 cents. If they click on a different page, that’s worth 20 cents. If they download something that’s worth $2. If they engage in a conversation that’s worth a hundred dollars, whatever, and you can use that to build targets for your marketing investments.
So you can make sure that you’re always investing. Right. That was the like, Hey, we should make that. And to do that, you need to integrate all these different sources and unified. It gets customer profiles. So you can see their journey and understand the correlation between things and what the steps are.
It makes sense. Well, one of those sources. Well Shopify. And what happened was when we started taking all the Shopify data, uh, businesses that were using Shopify looked at Cleveland and they were like, holy smokes. I can see so much, this is amazing. Segmentation was part of the product at the time. And they said, thank you.
We’re we’re, we’re going to use this. And so they asked, you know, well, what are you gonna use it for? What are you gonna do next? And they said, oh, we’re gonna, we’re going to export the list and put it in our marketing tool. And so that was the like, oh moment. Where we said, well, why don’t we just build the marketing tool too?
And so that is what turned into the Klayvio the beginning of the Klayvio we know today, which has obviously done quite well. And, um, you know, sort of like the sort of takeaway from that is the thing that makes Klayvio special is exactly what you, Jason said, you love so much about it. It’s the data. And you know, that’s why, in my opinion, um, you don’t find.
The same richness in other platforms, because there’s so much under the hood that nobody knows about or really cares to like dig into that makes everything that Klaviyo does so powerful, so flexible and yet so easy that you just can’t get, you can’t get elsewhere. So anyways, now I get the privilege of.
Telling people that, because we never really did it before, we just were heads down building doing, creating, making things that people need. And we realized that no one knew about it. And so they said, Hey, we need some people that can like frame this, tell the story, get people excited, get people to understand and get people to use it.
And they like immediately came to me and they said, will you help? Of course my answer is always yes. And, and anybody

Jason: who knows Andrew, who is this, I guess he’s still the CEO when he started the business. Like that is so him, like the data side of it. And like, what you were talking about is like, you know, like, like he is such like that

Jake: guy, which is, which is interesting. So yeah. And he’s not, uh, he’s not. His, his personality is not the kind that’s going to go to shout at to everyone. Like we got the best thing. This is awesome. He’s like the proof is in the work. Let’s do amazing things and build amazing things that no one else can do. And that’s where, that’s how we got to where we are.

Kevin:That’s interesting. I kind of noticed that transition happening in your role, like over when the pandemic first started, because we knew you as the product guy. And then all of a sudden I started seeing you doing all these Facebook lives. I believe. It was right when like the benchmark started coming out, which a really cool feature.
And you, you were the one that was kind of showing everybody how, uh, how to use those tools. So I kind of noticed you doing that. I was like, I wonder why he’s doing that now I can.

Jason: So, so Jake, um, enough about the. The NEF bragging about Klayvio we obviously love

Jake: it. Um, thanks. Let’s talk

Jason: about some of the things that you guys are seeing, because one of the, one of the things that I really love about having you guys on the podcast, whether it’s at Klaviyo Boston, or, or now is that you guys are so open.
About what and how you do

Jake: what you do. Like we,

Jason: we sat down with two of your top engineers. I forgot what were their names? I forgot their name

Jake: as WRA and Eric and Aaron. And they leave data science for us. They’re great. Still, right? Yeah. Yeah. So they, they

Kevin: shamed them up to their desk. They’re good. Yeah.

Jason: So we have them, we have them on and like, we were like, like, like, you know, these are these, the guys like are presumably presumably very busy and like, like don’t walk, biasing, Klaviyo, Boston, and we’d like, ask them a question, like, all right, well, let’s sit down.
I’ll show you exactly how we do.

Jake: Really,

Kevin: I thought they were just going to go in the back and like program something right after we talked to them about

Jake: yeah. Like they just

Jason: like sat us down. So I want to talk a little bit about kind of what you guys are seeing, like post COVID and sort of like post iOS, like how has email changed now?
Maybe it hasn’t changed, but from your perspective, from what you’re seeing in the backend of Klayvio, which I love getting insight on it’s like, what are you guys seeing working now during post COVID or during COVID or whatever you want to say compared to what, like things were happening before that time, period.
Is there any change? Are you seeing anything?

Jake: Um, I think, well, I’m seeing a lot. Uh, not necessarily within Klayvio, like, like it is true that consumers engage with email is true. That when you segment and create automations, uh, they efficiently generate revenue and engagement with your audience. Like that’s not different.
Um, you know, I think one Klaviyo specific thing that’s different is our SMS product has like, it’s like night and day from when we, from when I saw y’all and like we announced it, um, at that conference, it’s incredible now. And so we’re seeing a lot more people combine their efforts across email and SMS on our platforms so they can coordinate experiences and that’s working super well.
Um, so we’re seeing a bunch of that. And then like outside of Klayvio, I’m seeing a lot from different businesses around how they think about how they invest their money around how they think about, um, cogs and cashflow around how they’re changing their approach to ad spend in terms of platforms, how they measure.
If they measure her, what they’re optimizing for. Um, they’re seeing like a lot in that capacity, I guess I can go in any and all of those directions, but what about like

Jason: behavioral stuff in terms of. Are you seeing people email more or are you seeing people email less? Are you seeing people rely on Klaviyo more now because we can’t attribute sales as easily through the platforms, even though Klayvio kind of has the same problem, but you can see people going into lists where you couldn’t do that.
Is there any like behavioral things like that, that like our audience could maybe implement to help them grow their, their revenue through. Yeah.

Jake: I, I, I wish I had, I I’d need to go like dust off some stuff and talk to some people to get like something super pointed. Um, but like some, I am seeing a little bit of softness in like total revenue, independent of Klayvio like total revenue to store.
But revenue attributed to KV is either the same or increasing. So like the interpretation of that is it’s a little bit harder to get customers, probably new ones. Like it’s not coming for repeat customers. It’s like harder to get new customers right now. And I think that has to do with increased ad spend decrease, uh, targeting capabilities and decrease efficiency of those ad spends.
So like the same dollars, a hundred dollars that you’ve put in, maybe got 20 customers before maybe only gets 10, something like that. I’m making up those numbers, but, but the amount of revenue that’s coming from through Klaviyo is, is flat or up for most of those brands. So it’s occupying a greater percent of total revenue, which tells me that when you engage with your audience, that, you know, you have a direct relationship with like that continues to work.
Um, So that’s something I’m happy to follow up with some folks on try and get some specific stuff I could send over to you.

Jason: Well, I mean, one of our, and that’s cool, but I that’s that’s that answer’s fine. I mean, that’s what, I’m what I’m S w w how our behavior has changed is like, we, we went from trying to sell so much on the front end.
Two more focusing on growing our list and then using email to make, or, you know, build that relationship and then make sales, whether it’s, you know, using the predictive analysis to see how, you know, like that kind of stuff. So we’re doing a lot. We’re our segments. We’re getting very, very granular now with our segments, like really granular, trying to make our, our messages a little bit more, uh, tailored to the, to the, to the segment.
We’re doing a lot more of building the email list compared to front end sales. That’s how our behavior is changing because we’re really having a hard time making those front end sales like we used to.

Jake: Yeah, my so like, That makes a hundred percent sense. My hypothesis. This is like Jake wacky land, but like my, my guests on one of the things that’s happening and we’re going to see more of this is, uh, Six like, right.
Uh, maybe like three or four months into coven when everyone was home. Um, we started seeing people like continue to make money. Um, a lot of cash got put into, uh, consumers, a lot of cash got put into the system and they have like fewer things to. And so I think a lot of that energy and attention, uh, and disposable income went to entertainment.
And one of the entertainment, one of the ways that people stayed entertained was like swiping up. I honestly, like I was talking to, uh, another, uh, founder of a business about this. I genuinely believe that the, like the serendipity of new products that seem cool when you have extra cash in your pocket, like literally is entertaining.
And now that, um, it’s harder to target and there’s a little bit less certainty on like where things are going in the economy. I think people are still buying stuff like consumer spending was up last quarter, still, even though the economy slowing down. But I think the nature of that spending has changed.
I don’t think people are just like buying to be entertained anymore. I think they’re buying the things they couldn’t buy before. And so when you translate all of that back to e-commerce businesses, it means that your hit rate of ad to sale in the same session, it’s going to go way down. And so our, our guidance forever, I mean, literally since like before COVID, but like continues to end, I think is even more relevant.
Is not tooting your horn too hard, but like to do exactly what you’re talking about, where when someone comes to your site, the goal is great to get a transaction, but that should be a bonus. Not the goal. The goal should be to get the relationship because once you have the relationship, you can nurture that relationship and turn it into one or more transactions over time and or referrals.
So your, your evolution is super logical. I agree with. It’s what we’re seeing the most successful brands do. And it’s what we, we at Klaviyo are preaching to our, our network like that. This is the way to not only sustain when ad networks are a little bit trickier or like less, um, formulaic. Uh, but it’s also the way to be more like durable as a business to weather.
Good and bad times, uh, over the long run.

Kevin: I think the, I think the attribution of everything too, has just driven everybody nuts, especially when you’re looking at such a granular approach, trying to find where every dime is coming from. Every dollar you spend is just, you know, it’s not something you can do and it’s evolving.
I can almost see it evolving almost like, you know, any other medium like TV, like you can’t track back any kind of sales necessarily. I’m sure you can on YouTube and TV and things like that. But regular TV, it’s just. For the awareness to try to build that kind of relationship. So I feel like that’s kind of what’s happening with social media ads and things like that.

Jake: Well, it’s funny. So funny you say that literally yesterday I read an article. I don’t know if it was like Harvard business review or economist or something like that. I could date up, we can put it in the show notes, but it was literally saying that advertisers are turning back to broadcast media away from digital for the first time in a long time.
And leading the charge are direct to consumer businesses that sell online. And I think the interpretation of that is the opacity of online ads. Plus the like, uncertain, like the shifting and the increased difficulty in measuring plus the decreased demand in broadcast media makes for exactly what you’re talking about.
Like, it’s, it’s hard to measure. So like if we can’t measure that, let’s just open up and look at everything and like, you know, for the larger brands, if we can take a bunch of that cash and stick it somewhere, that’s like frankly, cheaper for the eyeballs, which is now how we look at it over here. We should just try that and see how it goes.
And you actually can measure. Off of TV or radio by using promotion codes, which don’t have to be discounts. They can be like free shipping or like a extra gift or something. And you can literally measure on a per advertisement basis, like what the ROI is as a result of that.

Jason: Yeah. I mean, um, the other thing is it’s, I don’t know why this is, but like somebody once said this, they said, even though you’re, even if you’re internet famous, You’re really not famous, right?
Like, so like somebody on TV who’s famous on TV seems to be more famous than even famous people on the internet. Like, let’s say a Gary V right. Gary V has a gigantic audience, but you’re not going to get the same. He’s not going to get the same sort of, uh, like, you know, Attention as somebody who’s in movies.
Right. It’s just, for whatever reason, I don’t know what the reason is because online you’re hitting just as many people, maybe it’s like, maybe it’s just attention that, you know, like, I don’t know, but that’s also changing as well. Like in terms of like what all these new platforms like Tik TOK and FA you know, you’ve got Facebook and Twitter and Instagram.
It’s like everybody’s spending their time in different places and they’re, they’re carrying less. About what you have to sell and more about trying to entertain themselves like you spoke about, which makes it even trickier. Yeah. But I, I think it,

Jake: I think it’s just another thing we were talking about a lot right now.
I think the expectations of consumers are, is changing fast. Um, whereas before it’s like, yeah, if you have a cool thing, like I’ll buy it. I’ll give it a shot. I think to your point. People do want to be entertained. And I think they’re looking for like connection, especially now that like, we can’t just like be ever where we want to be.
That’s changing a little bit, but like it’s hard. It’s still hard to travel. It’s still hard to be anywhere you want. I don’t know about y’all, but like there’s still people wearing masks all over where I am. It’s just it’s

Jason: okay, man. Maybe I got to go down there. I don’t think we all do. This is nothing that you won’t even know COVID even is a thing.
Well, I forget about 80 degrees, but I’ve been down here since August. I literally, there’s probably like, you know, I think most of the people where the masks are coming from the Northeast, because

Jake: that makes sense. Anyways, I think, I think people like they’re just expecting more. I think the barrier to purchase has gone up.
I think people do want to support the brands that they love, but they’re not just like throwing dollars out, you know, the way that they used to. And so I do think that that’s going to hurt a lot of businesses that don’t know how to storytell, that don’t have something to say. But I think for those businesses that do have something to say, do you have an interesting angle, do care about what they’re doing and what they’re selling.
If they can create programs like y’all are doing. Where they can tell their story so people can feel connected to the brand. And it doesn’t have to be like a big, long thing, but even just like, if in the welcome email, it’s like a note from the founder of like, why we started and why we think you’ll care.
Just even little things like that, that aren’t so transactional. I think they’re going to go a really long way

Jason: Yeah. But it also, everything we’re talking about also makes the case for how important email is, even though everybody is trying.
I mean, like we’ve heard for years, email email’s dead emails. I don’t ever see that happening. And there’s a number of reasons why I don’t think that’s happening. I mean, you can’t create any account these days without an email address. So as long as you have to create an account and use an email address or telephone number, I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere.
So, but that being said, I feel like. Now you have to aggregate your customers in one place, because they’re all over the place because they’re here and they’re there. That was like my original point with Tik TOK and all the other things is like, you have to find a place to bring them all and kind of like communicate with them.
And I think that’s where, you know, it’s funny cause Clairvia was an econ. I don’t know why you guys, what you guys call it anymore. We used to get yelled at for calling it a marketing platform. I have no, I’m sorry, an email prep platform, but I mean,

Kevin: I had to call it a relationship a sophomore, I think, or so

Jake: we call it a unified customer platform. Now, there you go.

Jason: Okay. So now, but, um, uh, I forgot

Jake: what I was gonna say. Yeah.

Kevin: Got it. No, no. I was just saying, like, to that point is like, I feel like the, the, the wind, the time window is just continuing to grow from the first time someone sees you to, when they’re going to buy, we’re seeing it clearly 15 days, 30 days, 40, 90 days, we’re seeing people buying.
So it’s almost impossible to run an ad to something, not impossible, but it gets very costly to run an ad to someone for 90 days straight until they finally buy. And that continues to.

Jake: Yeah. And I think the other, like the way I think about it is like, um, th well, okay, so like, uh, I know Jason, you said you’re, you’re a golfer in tennis and all sports.
There’s this notion of a sweetie. Right. And so like when you’re putting an ad out there, there is a sweet spot match for an audience that like is like literally ready to buy your products. The easiest way to think about it is like, if you’re buying a car, if you’re ready to buy a car and someone shows up and says, I have the car that you want at a great price, you’re like, well, I’m done.
But especially if it’s a brand,

Jason: especially if it’s the exact brand

Jake: that you’re looking at. Right. Right. And so, like, I think what happened is like, before. Consumers were a little bit less discerning or like they had a wider, sweet spot or they were willing to accept a little bit off of like what they wanted.
They’re just curious to try stuff. And I think now people are just very focused and very tight. They’re only going to buy if it’s like exactly what they need. That doesn’t mean that over time they may not change their needs or they may evolve their preferences. Uh, and I think that’s kind of, what’s playing out.
If they see an ad, that’s exactly what they need. They’ll click and buy, but by and large, they might express curiosity, seek to connect with the brand, learn more about the brand, which will either evolve their preferences and needs or not. But at that, but anyways, they can stay close to that brand. So when that need comes up, there’ll be able to like, know where to go to, to get it done.

Jason: And on that point, are you seeing in Klayvio? Uh, like. Like copywriting and like, are you seeing like this, like you said, storytelling, are you seeing like the importance of that stuff? Sort of, you know, because what we find with email is like, you, you pay for it once. Like you paid to acquire the customer once, and then if they buy in 90 days, you’re not still paying for them other than the cost of the platform, but you should be making that money in other ways.
But anyway, um, so. Are you guys seeing like the brands that have more of a long game sort of approach where they’re trying to quote unquote, build a relationship, tell stories, copy me. Cause I’ve, I’ve been studying copywriting lately and Jake, I can’t tell you. How much quicker you can go from a business that is, is, is in your head to a business taking in money.
Like for example, we did this golf business and I, I created it like out of thin air and like we’ve already in the first 30 days have gotten like 33 orders. Like amazing. It’s only because of copywriting though. Right. And it’s only because of the storytelling and the email. So I’m just wondering, are you keeping it

Jake: on my desk,

Jason: son of a gun?
Wait a minute. Here’s another one, Dave, you seen this one by Ray Edwards?

Jake: No, but they’re all same idea. Like understanding the emotion that buys, use that kind of language to trigger that emotion. Make sure that it’s present. There you go.

Kevin: I feel dumb. I got books open up my audio audible app and show you

Jason: here’s another good one.

Jake: No, I don’t have that one. That’s cool. Yeah. This is really good. Alex. Hormoz eat really good, but well, so we, so like knowing how important this is and how hard it is. We actually, I don’t know if y’all saw, there’s a new feature that we released, which is the subject line generator using this. Yeah. Yeah.
That’s great. Have you used

Kevin: it? I have. Yeah, absolutely. I used it once. No, I think

Jake: it’s great. I love it. We’re getting a lot of positive feedback on that because I get stuck there.

Kevin: And then that spot. So, yeah.

Jake: So yeah, that’s been super successful. I’ve seen a lot of uptake in use on that, but I think, I mean, like I don’t, I have to, you know what, here’s actually an ask.
I have. Okay. You’ve asked me a lot of good questions then. Unfortunately, I don’t have like the entire dataset of all of Klayvio in front of me to go rip some SQL and get you some answers. But if we can come up with like a list of questions or hypotheses like this, like, Hey, is it true that I don’t know the average age of, of a, of a customer profiles longer or from first touch to sale is getting longer.
If you send me all those things, I will go get those answers. I will write a piece on Klaviyo cause I’m in content. Now that shares the sort of changing nature and evolution. And I will give a drop on your podcast first, look on all the answers of like what we will publish later so that we can let everyone know what’s going on.

Jason: Oh, that’d be awesome. That’d be awesome. I mean, look, man, I, I realized that, uh, you know, we’re going to ask you kind

Jake: of crazy questions cause like we,

Jason: you know, we, uh, this is what we think about like when we’re dealing with Klayvio or like, oh shit, man, this is like, awesome. Like how does this work? Like why, why are they.
So I, I appreciate it. Then I realized that like, you’re not going to have all the answers so that that’s, that’s awesome.

Jake: But this is like, this is super interesting. And, and I want those answers too. So like, it’s useful for me to know what people are thinking about. Cause it’s not just you with these questions.
Like everyone has a lot to do on these questions. Let’s get, let’s get them and let’s share, and let’s tell people.

Kevin: Yeah, you guys can anybody out there who has these kinds of questions, do we go to our website and you can submit, there’s a question and answer area on our website. You can just send us a request and we can, we’ll send it to Jake and keep him busy for awhile.

Jake: Yep. I have

Jason: another question for you, Jake. I hope you hope you can answer this. What would you, what would you, um, attribute Klaviyo’s. Rapid growth too. And I don’t mean from a standpoint of like, yeah, we built an awesome software. Like I, I get that. You did, but that’s still a very organic kind of growth.
What would you say you guys have done that’s different. That’s really made you guys like, like, I mean, you, literally, every time we went to Klaviyo Boston, it was literally like, oh my God, we got 55,000 like customers. And like two years later, Oh, my God, we have 110,000 paying customers. Do you guys attribute that to how you treat your customers?
Do you attribute that to listening to your customers? What exactly. And you obviously have a lot of data to look at and then you guys can make that, but what do you guys attribute that growth to?

Jake: I think it’s, um, three things, um, Basically like how quickly people, like who, who shares our product, promise how quickly people can see the product from. And how flexible the platform is to allow for many promises basically. And I’ll explain these things, but that’s what I think. So the first is, so every product in the world has a promise, right?
So like, what’s, I know we haven’t talked about this before, but we’ll do a little exercise. What is Nike’s product promise when you buy Nike, what do you feel like you’re doing. The most cutting

Jake: edge, like best equipment in whatever you’re at, which by the way they sell literally teachers.
So like maybe they have cutting-edge t-shirts but the point is the promise that they have that’s built into their brand is that like they make products for AF. And if you put on their product, you’re going to be the best athlete. You can be. Holy smokes. I want that. Right. And you put on the shirt, the materials, great.
And shoes lace up and snug fit. And you’re like, I feel that right. And so like next time when someone’s like, yeah, I need shoes. Like, I’m not what, I don’t know what to get. And you’re like, I’ll tell you what to get, check out my kicks right here. Right. And so like, that’s someone sharing the product from.
To someone else, which is the most powerful thing in marketing and in business growth that can exist when a lover of your product can share with someone else that they love it and why they, why they love it. And so that happened a lot for us, a lot of color, perfect examples, like you see success. And so you’re able to tell other people looking to solve similar problems to you of your success.
And so then people are curious to try Klayvio. So that’s that’s magic thing. Number one. Magic thing. Number two is we made it really, really easy to try Klayvio and be successful. And we removed as many barriers as possible. And that was very intentional because we believe that when someone has this inclination to try something, they’re at their sort of like highest state of interest.
And there’s a moment when they try something that either makes them more interested cause it worked or less interested because it. And so actually, uh, before I joined Clavey I was looking at actually a competitor of Klayvio who shall remain nameless. Uh, but one of the things that I was really, really, really curious about was the attitude and disposition of the founders on onboarding, because onboarding is one of those things that can totally destroy momentum and enthusiasm.
Or totally accelerated. And one of the big reasons that I decided to join Klayvio, which I’m grateful to have been able to contribute here is the whole idea of onboarding was we should remove it. And the end of onboarding should be when someone makes. And so like as a result now, think through what happens with those, like Nike comparison, you all say, yeah, Cleveland is amazing.
Like we use it to power. All of our emails, all of our SMS. It makes us so much money. Wow. How does it work? Go try it. You go to the website, you click you integrate, you choose a template, you customize the language, you send it, you make money. What? Like that’s insane. And so what ends up happening is when people then try it and see success.
They’re like, all right. Like I, I found what I need now. I’m going to use it all the way and like go make it happen. Yeah. I think that,

Jason: yeah, I think the biggest, I think one of the biggest things to, to your point is how easy it is to integrate whether it’s Shopify or even will commerce. Cause I think like that’s where people struggle the most is like, once you.
It pulls the data in that, you know, right away. And it could talk to each other. So I think that’s, that’s, that’s nice,

Jake: easy. So that, and so that segues to the third thing, which is the extensibility of that, those promises, those products promises. We have like 50 people that work on integrations, like 50 humans that just to make sure that is awesome all the time.
But if you think about it, We mentioned Shopify, but we integrate with Shopify, big commerce, WooCommerce, PrestaShop Magento, one Magento to Salesforce, a click of a button, all of them. And so like, and like they’re changing their platforms. We have to evolve, whatever. So like now when you think about, you know, one person saying this is, I use Klaviyo, it’s amazing.
We can do all these things. One of the objections that someone might have is like, oh yeah, I use big commerce and use Shopify, or I have a custom platform. Like it doesn’t work for us. And we are able to say like, yeah, totally. And you can have the same quality experience, no matter what you’re trying to achieve, what your message is or what your tech stack looks like.
We will make it easy. And so like the combination of those three things, people sharing our product promise because they’re successful really easy to try. And basically any scenario makes it like work for you. A really magical combination of things that I think has allowed us to also listen to our customers and also really care about their success and also push the boundaries of what’s possible and also shout their success stories from rooftops and also hire people who really, really care and want to advance the way people market to consumers and all of those things together turn into, you know, so far, what has been a really special once-in-a-lifetime experience for.

Kevin: I found something today. I was just like looking around on or what I was looking for, but I clicked on something and it pulled up like a whole like email library of creative. Like, I don’t know. How did I get there? Do you need somebody to
Jake: catch? I could get back to so that’s showcased. So like that’s an example of like one of the things that we’re pushing ahead that like we can now do, because we send billions of messages a month.
Now we, and we connect with all of the sales transaction data and all the interaction data. We can look at performance and we can do that by vertical. We can do that by size of business. We can do that by time of day. And so what we’ve done is we’ve mined all of that data and we’ve made it filterable and sortable for our customers.
And so now you can go to showcase and you can be like, I want to see sale emails sent in October. In the beauty space in the, in the, in the sporting goods space. And I want to see what those emails look like that had the best click-through rate, best sales rate, best open rate, whatever. And you could draw inspiration from that to apply it to your brand and make it work.
Kevin: Kind of how do I get there? Cause I can’t remember how to get there. Oh my God. And

Jake: we’ll do it together now. No templates maybe, probably

Kevin: yes. Email templates and then view showcase.

Jake: There’s a few ways to get there. You can go from templates for sure. Oops.

Kevin: Let me just log in. I’m not even like the creative too.
It’s just like there’s you can check there. The offers that are people are, have run and headlines and everything in there. It’s really cool. I just stumbled upon it this morning. Yeah.

Jake: Yeah. So it’s like, that’s constant. That’s one of the challenges. Like we have so much coming out now because we have invested so much in our R and D teams.
That’s like, how can everyone even like, keep up, you have you, you got to look at what we’re doing over at SMS. It’s like bananas. We changed our reporting features. Those are improved. I

Kevin: was going to ask you about that. Cause that was the last time we spoke. And you were like the head guy to
announce the whole, the whole program.
How has that been going? Cause awesome. We’ve been bounced around between other SMS platforms too, you know, and we use actually Klayvio for this podcast for people to come in and text us. So how is that going? And how is the, uh, the revenue from that.

Jake: Uh, unbelievable. We like, I think we have like 5,000 businesses or more now using, uh, Klaviyo for SMS.
Um, growth has been ridiculous. A bunch of people are switching from other platforms in because they’re seeing that the experiences that they want to create or that they had before. It’s very easy to replicate in Klaviyo, but more because it’s a unified platform and it’s the same database of customers and performance.
They can coordinate between the two channels. Because it turns out that consumers don’t want the same email on the same SMS sent at the same time to them, it’s like enough, right? They want to be, there are different channels and they need to be worked differently and they need to be aware of what’s happening in one channel or another to make sure you’re not over or under sending.
And so people are coming because they can see that they can orchestrate in flows and the same view where an SMS goes, where a email goes and they can set conditional logic on which one to use. Depending on certain criteria and they can see how those two things stitch together to generate revenue. One of the big problems that people have that I’m sure y’all have had is when you use a different platform, depending on their attribution model, they may over attribute revenue to.
And so as a result, you, like, if you add up email attribution, email attributed revenue, and the SMS attributed revenue from different platforms, it’s literally two X, your actual revenue in your bank account. And you’re like, well, what the hell? What you’re telling me. Right. And so going to one place, uh, people can see really, really simply and elegantly, like literally where’s it coming from and why?
So like it’s people are like rolling in. It’s great. I’ll tell

Jason: you one. And I know we’re running longer than we told you, Jake,

Jake: sorry guys. You know, this is my favorite thing. It’s hard. Yeah. Well, one

Jason: of, one of the things that I’ve noticed from people who’ve contacted us is, uh, and I know you guys have done a lot of work on this and that is the flows people get.
So. Excited about the automation aspect of it, and so intimidated by how to make it work. And we have recently started a new program where we’re helping people, um, with like, they’re there with, Klayvio like we’re helping them with email. And the biggest thing that we’re hearing from people is that. They they’re flows.
They just can’t figure it out. And I know you have like a flow library now, and I know. But that is like the biggest thing that we hear over and over and over and over again is the flows. And like, they don’t really understand that. And I know you guys are working towards that, but yeah, I just wanted to give you some feedback.

Jake: I appreciate it. We, in my experience, um, the hardest part about flows is figuring out like what you want. Um, once, once people know what they want, uh, I’ve seen in, in my experience, it’s like, okay, cool. I get where to drag things to make that the case. But it’s hard to look, I don’t know. It’s kind of like writer’s block or like artists block.
Like you look at a blank canvas and you’re like, what do I do with this? You know? And so we actually wrote, um, I’ll send you all the link, but we wrote a playbook, uh, for posts for iOS 14, five post COVID where like cookies are becoming a problem to help people, these exact problems, these exact questions, and our guidance in this playbook, as it relates to flip. Is actually to start outside of the Klayvio platform, start by talking to your customers and understanding the ideal experiences or interactions that you think they should have with your brand. And literally draw it on a piece of paper. Like literally draw a flow chart, literally draw the steps of like what message you want to give them along the way.
It doesn’t have to be super elaborate and detailed, but make a plan. Once you have that plan. That’s when you go into clinic. Because then you can start to feel out. Okay. Cool. Well, when someone comes to my website and looks at a product, but doesn’t buy it, I do want to send them something. But what do I actually want to say?
I might want to say, Hey, look at this, but also if you’re not ready to buy, that’s fine. Here’s a cool story about our brand. Just having that thought exercise. It makes it really easy that when you go into make a flow, you know, what the configuration has to look like, and you know, what content you want in the email.
So executing that becomes like a little bit more rote than like, oh my God, what do I do with this whole thing? And it all begins with understanding the experience that you want your customers to have mapping that out, and then just going through and creating those things. Once you have figured out, it’s

Jason: a weird, like I have white boards around my room in here, and it’s just, even though when you go into flows, It’s the same thing, just like a blank canvas, just like my whiteboard, but for whatever reason, when you write it down the journey, you’re thinking more about the journey rather than the tool, right?
Because when you’re in credit, you’re thinking about the tool like, oh shit, like I could trigger this. I could trigger that, oh, there’s a delay. I can do this. I can do that. We’re on the board. It’s just like, okay, what do I want them to see? When do I want to see how I want to say it? So

Kevin: complicate the shit out of it too.
Like when you go in there and I’ve been there and I can imagine the things that you’ve seen, but like, we go into some people that reach out and I’m like, what if they did this go over here? If they did that go over there, it can be a complete mess. And I think people get tied up in that and then they just kind of like walk away from it.

Jake: Yeah. And I think, honestly, it’s like, um, you know, the old adage, like if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you. I think it’s a little bit like that. And so, you know, when people, like I had the great opportunity to do some consulting for a brand where I help them think through what their full journey looked like and how flows would map into that.
They were like, well, we have this flow and we have that flow and I’m like, time out back, like, can you show me a drawing of like, you know how these things are supposed to fit together? What it feels like? And they’re like, oh no, we never thought to do that. And I’m like, all right, let’s get a whiteboard.
Let’s dream a little, let’s have some fun what would be cool? Things that like, we want people to have as experiences. And literally in 45 minutes, we drew out the whole thing. We turned each of those things into flows and they had a plan. Within a one-hour meeting of all the things that they wanted to go make, set it up in like the next, like literally that week, that all of it up.
And then week over week, we were able to look at performance and add all of that stuff. Like, oh, well maybe we should put a branch in here if whatever, or, Hey, we should add one more email because we think we’re losing people here. Or like, whatever, all those things are, but you can iterate on. But it all started with stepping back, thinking about your audience, thinking about your customer and like what would be a cool experience for them to have most people skip it?
We

Jason: tell everybody, and I, I don’t know where Klayvio stands on this, but even now after 20 years of doing this or 18, 19, whatever the hell the number is after, after doing this and like finally being in a place where like, I feel like I know how to start a business. I feel like I know how to honestly, man, like.
I am. I’ve come to the realization that simplicity is really like, even though Klaviyo can do all these things on the flows, simplicity will always win. And I know that it’s cool to see comp complexity, but honestly, if people were to look at our flows, they’d be very under impressed because we don’t complicate it.
It’s like this, this, this, okay. If they say no to this, okay, you’ll go over here. You go over here and then that’s it. Let’s move.

Jake: Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, that’s just human nature. We have a people, ambitious people have a tendency to obsess over problems that live in the margin because, because like they’re more complicated and they’re like chewier to wrap your head around.
And so, you know, I had an old boss that used to say, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good, uh, where, like, if you’re trying to solve a hundred percent of, of opportunities, then like, yeah, you need all these millions of branches, but that consumes so much time to optimize for the last 10%. Why don’t you just start with what works for 80% of the cases and just see how that goes.
And you’d be shocked because a vast majority of your revenue is going to come from that until you’re doing 5, 10, 20, 50 million a year. Like those little marginal things like aren’t going to make or break your business and they are going to make or break the time that you have, that you could be focusing on talking to your customers, answering support, tickets, working out your inventory, making sure your suppliers are on, on point, changing your shipping or your packaging doing R and D for subsequent products that you want to do.
You want to sell or improve the products you have long list of stuff to do. Like you don’t need to overdo your flows until you’re at a. Yeah. And I think

Jason: that some of it, sometimes Jake, honestly, like this is just like a theory. I don’t know how true it is. I think some of it is like finding comfort in the procrastination, right?
Like you’re scared to launch it. So like you procrastinate purposely. In these details so that you don’t have to launch it because you’re like, no, no, I can’t do it now because I still got to finish the flow. Like I, so, like I see that Alexa, I do it too sometimes where I’m like, Kevin kind of, I need, like, I got to go write this email and then like three hours later, he’s like, Hey man, that email go out.
I’m like, nah, I got caught up in this like procrastinated because like, I don’t, like, I don’t want to do it like kind of thing. So I think of some of that.

Jake: Just just ship it. That’s what we say. Just

Jason: ship it. Cool, man. Cave. You got anything
else,

Kevin: buddy? Thank you so much, James. Sorry. I

Jake: talked a lot, but I get excited about this shit.
It’s great to see y’all this is my favorite thing to talk about. I am so grateful that y’all have been with us for so long and that it can, that your continues to serve your needs better than all the other stuff you’re dating with. And, uh, I’m, I’m grateful to be able to come back and share more with you.
I hope we can do it. Yeah, that’d

Kevin: be awesome. Thank you so much, man. Thanks a lot, man. Totally appreciate it. Really good. Catching up with Jake again, man. He’s a really, really great guy. Um, and he’s just involved in so much over there in Klayvio. I love everything they’re doing over there. So it was really nice to speak with him again, for sure.

Jason: Yeah. You know man, like it just reminds me of like the experience we had at Klaviyo Boston and you know, I don’t, I know a lot of people get on these podcasts. You know, they talk about products and they’re trying to sell them. And like literally they do sponsor the podcast. We don’t make any money from them otherwise.
Um, so like, we truly love the platform. I mean, if they don’t sponsor the podcast, we’re still gonna use the platform really has nothing to do with that. So

Kevin: they’re just very authentic too. And Jake especially is just very authentic about like, just trying to help. You know, it’s just like, if you want to use Klaviyo, that’s great.
That’s awesome. That’s a bonus. Just like he said, like with everybody’s like paid campaign should be like, the sale is a bonus, but for him it’s about the experience and it’s like that for everybody over there. So it’s like, they really just want to help businesses be successful. So that’s really cool.
That’s right. Anyway, thank you guys so much for listening. We have some of those, uh, Jake sent us over some of those resources that, uh, we spoke about during the podcast. So there’ll be on our podcast notes. So you can always check that out that e-commerce on sensor.com and we’ll talk to you guys real soon.

Jason: later

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The post EU260: The State of Email Marketing with Jake Cohen from Klaviyo appeared first on eCommerce Uncensored.