How to Conduct a Klaviyo Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide for Marketers

Introduction to Klaviyo Audit

Magnet Monster's guide on conducting a Klaviyo audit focuses on email deliverability as the crucial first step. This thorough process examines various tools and brands to illustrate diverse strategies beneficial for eCommerce professionals.

Let's dive in!

Assessing Sending Infrastructure

Dedicated vs. Shared IP Pool: Determining whether emails are sent from a dedicated domain or a shared IP pool is essential. A dedicated domain offers greater control over the sending reputation.

Verification Method: You can verify your setup by signing up for your newsletter and inspecting email details through Gmail for signatures indicating the domain type. Emails signed by "carved.com" indicate a dedicated domain, whereas those signed by "Shopify email.com" or "Klaviyo mail.com" suggest a shared service and the need for a switch.

Checking Domain Health and Setup

Domain Policies: The audit involves checking the health and setup of your sending domain, focusing on DMARC, DKIM, SPF, and BIMI policies.
Tools for Improvement: Tools like EasyDMARC provide scores and suggestions, identifying potential issues affecting deliverability.

Performance Insights within ESP

Engagement Metrics: Analyzing unsubscribe rates, bounce rates, and spam complaint rates over the last 90 days is critical to understanding audience engagement. Healthy brands typically maintain unsubscribe rates around 0.3 to 0.4 percent.

Email List Hygiene

Cleaning the List: Using tools like Email List Verify, ZeroBounce, and NeverBounce helps cleanse the list of invalid or risky addresses, ensuring emails are sent to a clean list. This is crucial to maintain trust with ISPs like Google and Yahoo.

Legal Compliance

Adherence to Regulations: Ensuring clear unsubscribe links and compliance with regulations like CAN-SPAM in the USA or GDPR in Europe is essential. Including unsubscribe options and listing the physical address in the email footer signifies compliance.

Scoring

Audit Outcome: The audit concludes with a comprehensive score for email deliverability, aiming for enhancements to boost overall email marketing performance. A brand scoring 79% is considered healthy, but there's always room for improvement.

This walkthrough is the first part of our Klaviyo Audit series, aiming to help eCommerce brands achieve a 90% health score within three months. Read the rest of the blog for more insights.

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Introduction to Flow Automations

The next critical section in our Klaviyo audit for D2C brands is flow automations. Addressing this complex subject requires a nuanced approach since it involves various elements like filters, triggers, email designs, messaging, split paths, and SMS usage, all of which vary significantly among brands and customer lifecycle stages.

Categorizing Flows in the Buyer's Lifecycle

We start by categorizing flows into distinct stages of the buyer's lifecycle:

Pre-Purchase Considerations: Including welcome flows, back-in-stock notifications, low inventory alerts, and price drops.
Purchase Recovery: Targeting individuals who showed intent to buy but didn't complete the purchase, including abandoned cart and checkout abandonment flows.
Post-Purchase and Retention: Focusing on what happens after a purchase and how to encourage a second purchase.
Churn and Risk: Aimed at re-engaging lapsing customers, encouraging resubscriptions, and preventing unsubscribes from your services.

Identifying and Prioritizing Necessary Flows

Identifying the necessary flows for each stage is paramount. This involves mapping out the entire customer journey to understand where each flow fits and its potential impact. Prioritizing these flows correctly based on their impact and alignment with your brand's goals is crucial, recognizing that some flows have a direct contribution to revenue, while others might more subtly influence other business channels.

Deep Dive: Welcome Flow Analysis

Setting the Trigger: The first step is ensuring the trigger is correctly configured, so the right customers enter the flow at the appropriate time. This particular brand has it set correctly.
Evaluating Flow Filters and Conditional Splits: Next, we evaluate flow filters and conditional splits, ensuring they're correctly applied to target both new and existing customers appropriately. For this brand, the absence of unnecessary filters in their welcome flow is a positive sign.
Analyzing Email Components Within the Flow: Analyzing each email within the flow is crucial, involving checks on subject lines, preview texts, coupon codes, hyperlinks, design, messaging, and mobile-friendliness. Assessing the timing between emails is also key.

Scoring the Flow

After examining all components, we assign a general score to the flow. This brand scores 75, reflecting a strong setup with room for improvement, particularly in integrating SMS more effectively.

Opportunities for Enhancement

In summary, our extensive experience allows us to identify areas of strength and opportunities for enhancement in flow automation for D2C brands. After completing our audit, we find that the overall flow automation efficiency for this business stands at 44 percent, indicating significant potential for further optimization. This detailed examination ensures that we can provide actionable insights to elevate our clients' email marketing strategies.

Don't miss: Grab your free copy of our FREE and detailed Klaviyo audit template/sheet.

Auditing Campaign Strategies within a Klaviyo Account

Send Cadence

Determining Send Cadence: The optimal frequency for sending emails or SMS in a campaign format depends on various factors including business size, email database size, and email deliverability performance.
Adjustment Based on Performance: Your Klaviyo cadence should be adjusted based on unsubscribe rates, spam rates, and revenue generated per email. A varied content strategy is recommended to keep the audience engaged.

Content Topics

Variety in Content: Successful campaigns incorporate a mix of promotional, product launch, survey, and educational messages to prevent inbox blindness and keep the audience engaged.
Engagement and Gamification: It's essential to engage the audience with a mix of content that includes opportunities for gamification and the collection of qualitative data.

Message Type

Diversifying Message Types: For D2C brands, employing a mix of both email and SMS messages broadens the campaign's reach. The inclusion of direct mail or WhatsApp may also be beneficial, particularly in European markets.
Revenue Generation: The decision to use various message types should be based on their potential for revenue generation. Brands not currently utilizing SMS but capable of generating revenue through it should consider its integration.

Campaign Design and Messaging

Design Considerations: Campaigns should feature modern, visually striking designs that are optimized for mobile devices, with high-converting call-to-action buttons prominently displayed.
Consumer-Centric Messaging: Messaging should resonate with the consumer, focusing on their pain points, gains, and losses to drive conversions.

A/B Testing

The Importance of A/B Testing: Running A/B tests provides valuable insights, enabling the refinement of campaign strategies. This is contingent upon having a sufficiently large database to yield significant results.

Segmentation, Scheduling, and Exclusion

Effective Segmentation: Tailoring campaigns to specific audience segments maximizes relevance and effectiveness, requiring an in-depth understanding of the business, email database, products, and customer journey.
Strategic Exclusions: Setting appropriate exclusion segments is crucial to ensure campaigns target the most receptive audience, avoiding those who have recently made purchases, logged returns or refunds, or provided negative reviews.

Rounding Up Campaign Strategies

Evaluating Cadence: A fair send cadence is essential to maintain inbox placement rates without causing inbox blindness.
Content Diversity: Ensuring a good mix of educational, promotional, product launches, and gamified content keeps the audience engaged and looking forward to communications.
Utilization of Email and SMS: Where applicable, the strategic use of both email and SMS, along with direct mail in certain markets, can significantly enhance campaign effectiveness.
Campaign Design and Effectiveness: Employing best practices in design and messaging, conducting A/B testing, and correct segmentation are key factors in running successful campaigns that do not compromise email deliverability performance or irritate the audience with irrelevant content.

Core Technical Setup within Klaviyo Backend

Exploring the technical aspects of Klaviyo's backend reveals several areas ripe for optimization. Here's a detailed walkthrough:

Campaign Sending Default Configuration

Send Time vs. Schedule Time: Analyzing whether campaigns are set to 'send time' or 'schedule time' can impact who receives your emails, especially for campaigns scheduled in advance. Opting for 'send time' ensures that any new segment members are included in the send, making this a critical setting for reaching the broadest audience.

CSS Optimization

Improving Email Performance: Enabling CSS optimization compresses the CSS code within emails, aiding in reducing clipping issues and ensuring emails are displayed correctly across all devices.

Attribution Settings and Apple Privacy

Excluding Apple Privacy Opens: With iOS 15 updates, users can opt out of tracking, which might skew your data. Adjusting settings to exclude Apple Privacy Opens helps maintain accurate open and click rates.

Email Tracking Pixel Placement

Optimal Pixel Placement: Moving the tracking pixel to the top of an email content from its default bottom position can prevent data loss from clipped or partially loaded emails, ensuring more accurate engagement tracking.

Analytics and Metrics

Accuracy of 'Added to Cart' and 'Viewed Product' Metrics: Ensuring these metrics are correctly set up and working, especially with Shopify integration, is vital for tracking customer engagement accurately.

Anonymous Visitor Tracking

Leveraging Site Visits for Retargeting: Enabling anonymous visitor tracking allows for the retrospective association of historical page views with newly signed-up users, enabling more personalized retargeting strategies.

Preference Pages

Customization and Data Collection: Ensuring preference pages are branded correctly and collect relevant zero-party data, like birth dates or sending preferences, optimizes user experience and marketing efforts.

Smart Sending Time Period

Balancing Message Frequency: Setting an appropriate smart sending time period, like the default 16 hours, helps avoid overwhelming your audience with too many messages while ensuring transactional emails are always delivered.

Form Overlap

Preventing Simultaneous Triggers: Activating settings to prevent multiple forms from triggering at the same time enhances user experience by avoiding confusion and distraction from overlapping calls to action.

Optimizing Klaviyo's Technical Setup

Ensuring the Klaviyo backend is optimized involves a meticulous review of settings from campaign configurations to analytics and visitor tracking. By adjusting these settings, brands can significantly improve their email marketing performance, engagement accuracy, and ultimately, the effectiveness of their campaigns in driving conversions. This thorough approach not only addresses low-hanging fruits but also sets a solid foundation for advanced marketing strategies tailored to the unique needs of D2C brands.

SMS Setup in Klaviyo for D2C Brands

This section delves into optimizing SMS settings within Klaviyo's backend, focusing on elements crucial for D2C brands.

Initial Setup and Company Information

Company Info Completion: Ensuring the company's information, including the organizational avatar, is fully updated in the backend settings.
Accessing SMS Settings: Navigating to the SMS panel within the settings reveals options for phone number activation and company details like the street address.

Configuring SMS Preferences

Organizational Prefix and Opt-Out Language: Setting a recognizable organizational prefix and a clear opt-out language (e.g., "STOP" for opt-outs) enhances sender identification and complies with user preferences.

Sending Timeframes and Quiet Hours

Smart Send Time: Adjusting the smart send time to ensure SMS messages are distributed at intervals that avoid overwhelming the recipient. The default 24-hour setting is a benchmark, with adjustments recommended based on specific brand needs.
Quiet Hours Setting: Establishing quiet hours (e.g., not sending SMS messages from 8 PM to 11 AM) respects the recipient's time, avoiding disruptions during unsociable hours.

Attribution and Subscription Keywords

Attribution Window Setting: Keeping the attribution window for SMS to one day by default, ensuring data accuracy without overextending the tracking period.
Keyword Configuration: Customizing subscription keywords like "JOIN" to streamline the opt-in process, linking directly to the desired newsletter list.

Legal Compliance and Custom Links

Mobile Terms of Service and SMS Opt-In Disclaimers: Confirming that mobile terms of service and SMS opt-in disclaimers are published and accessible to maintain legal compliance.
Short Link Customization: Encouraging the use of branded short links for SMS messages enhances brand recognition and trust among recipients.

Best Practices and Recommendations

Review and Update: Regularly reviewing and updating SMS settings in Klaviyo to align with the latest compliance standards and marketing strategies.
Customization for Engagement: Leveraging the flexibility of Klaviyo's SMS settings to create personalized, engaging messages that resonate with the target audience.
Legal and Brand Compliance: Ensuring all SMS communications adhere to legal requirements and reflect the brand's voice and identity.

This overview highlights the importance of a thorough setup and continuous optimization of SMS settings within Klaviyo, directly impacting the effectiveness of SMS marketing campaigns for D2C brands.

Subscriber List Growth and Pop-Ups Strategy

Subscriber list growth and the strategic use of pop-ups play a crucial role in expanding your email subscriber base. This section provides insights into optimizing pop-ups for maximum engagement and opt-in rates. Here are the best practices for pop-up design and deployment:

1. Accessibility and User Experience

Desktop and Mobile-Friendly Forms: Create separate pop-ups for mobile and desktop users to control the sizing of fonts, visuals, buttons, and form fields effectively.
Device-Specific Optimization: This approach allows for performance reporting on a device level, ensuring optimal user experience across all platforms.

2. Trigger Configuration and Incentives

Display Trigger Configuration: Determine the ideal timing for pop-up appearance. Whether immediate or after browsing, the trigger should align with the goal of increasing email list growth without compromising the user experience.
Incentive Clarity and Appeal: Offer clear, compelling incentives for opt-in, such as discounts or exclusive content. Ensure the incentive is prominently displayed and backed by social proof or testimonials.

3. Engaging Content and Messaging

Creative Messaging: Craft messages that resonate with the audience's needs and interests. Utilize marketing psychology to create impactful and relevant content.
AB Testing: Implement A/B testing to refine pop-up effectiveness, focusing on variations that could influence opt-in rates. Ensure significant visitor volume for accurate test results.

4. Segmentation and Exclusions

Excluding Specific Pages: Strategically exclude pop-ups from certain pages where they may not be relevant or could disrupt user experience, such as checkout or quiz pages.
Targeting and Collecting Opt-Ins: Confirm that opt-ins are directed to the correct list within Klaviyo, enhancing the effectiveness of future campaigns.

5. Advanced Strategies for Subscriber Growth

Multi-Step Forms and Data Collection: Utilize multi-step forms to collect email addresses and possibly SMS opt-ins, tailoring content based on the data collected during the opt-in process.
Qualitative Research and Zero-Party Data: Engage users by collecting preferences, needs, and behaviors through interactive questions within pop-ups, setting the foundation for personalized marketing efforts.
Follow-Up Sequences: Ensure a seamless integration with follow-up sequences, such as welcome flows, to immediately engage new subscribers with relevant content.

6. Leveraging External Channels for Growth

Social Channels and Co-Marketing Initiatives: Explore opportunities to promote newsletter sign-ups through social media, YouTube channels, and partnerships with other brands, expanding your reach and subscriber base.

Focusing on subscriber list growth through thoughtfully designed pop-ups and targeted strategies is integral to expanding your email marketing capabilities. By tailoring the user experience, offering clear incentives, and leveraging both on-site and off-site channels, brands can significantly enhance their subscriber base, laying the groundwork for successful email campaigns that resonate with their audience.

Klaviyo Audit: Rounding it All Up

Here's a quick summary of what we've learnt so far during a Klaviyo audit:

‍Sending Infrastructure: Assessments include determining whether emails are dispatched from a dedicated domain or a shared IP pool, with a preference for the former to improve sending reputation.
‍Domain Health and Setup: The audit checks domain policies like DMARC, DKIM, SPF, and BIMI, utilizing tools like EasyDMARC for improvements and troubleshooting.
‍Performance Insights: Engagement metrics like unsubscribe rates, bounce rates, and spam complaint rates are analyzed to gauge audience engagement.
‍Legal Compliance: Compliance with regulations like CAN-SPAM and GDPR is verified, emphasizing the necessity of clear unsubscribe links and the inclusion of physical addresses in emails.
‍Flow Automations: A detailed examination of flow automations tailored to various stages of the buyer's lifecycle, identifying flows critical for pre-purchase considerations, purchase recovery, post-purchase retention, and churn risk management.
‍Campaign Strategies: Evaluation of campaign strategies including send cadence, content diversity, messaging types, and campaign design, emphasizing the importance of A/B testing, effective segmentation, and strategic exclusions.
‍Core Technical Setup: The guide reviews Klaviyo's backend for optimization opportunities, covering campaign sending configurations, CSS optimization, attribution settings, email tracking pixel placement, and the setup of analytics and metrics.
‍SMS Setup: Optimizing SMS settings within Klaviyo focuses on completing company information, configuring SMS preferences like organizational prefix, smart send time, quiet hours, attribution window, and ensuring legal compliance with mobile terms of service.
‍Subscriber List Growth: Strategies for subscriber list growth include designing accessible, user-friendly pop-ups for desktop and mobile, employing engaging content and messaging, conducting A/B testing, and leveraging external channels for promotion.

The summary outlines the multifaceted approach of a Klaviyo audit, aiming to enhance email and SMS marketing strategies for eCommerce brands through systematic evaluation and optimization of infrastructure, flow automations, campaign strategies, technical setup, and subscriber growth tactics.

How to Conduct a Klaviyo Audit: A Step-by-Step Guide for Email/SMS Marketers