The year is 1978, and there was a great blast in the marketing world. Emailing had taken a new turn. Gary Theurk, the name fondly associated with success in the email marketing sphere, had sent the first ever recorded bulk mail to over 300 people trying to sell them computers, or better put, trying to sell information about computers.
You may wonder why we referenced an abridged text on Gary Theurk and his affiliations with email marketing; well it’s believed he set the pace for what we know as modern-day email marketing. What our main subjects—Mailchimp and Klaviyo are doing on a large scale!
It would be safe to attribute these platforms as the luminaries in the world of email marketing. Used by several businesses across the globe they have really set a standard.
These tools are platforms where email automations and services are provided. In this post, we will be exploring Mailchimp and Klaviyo in detail from an e-commerce perspective, understanding what they offer, which is most suitable for specific use and generally how to get started with them.
Overview of Klaviyo and Mailchimp
Klaviyo is a marketing automation platform designed to help companies maximise customer relationships through targeted campaigns. It offers features like customer segmentation, automated flows, and product recommendations – all of which work together to create experiences that keep customers engaged.
Mailchimp on the other hand is an email marketing platform that enables businesses to create targeted campaigns that reach their customers on a deeper level. It provides tools for customising content and managing contacts lists as well as creating automated workflows for responding to customer behaviour.
As an e-commerce business, email marketing should be at the top of your priority list! After all, it’s the key to unlocking better customer relationships, increased engagement and most importantly, more sales! Therefore, both Klaviyo and Mailchimp offer powerful tools for e-commerce businesses looking to strengthen their relationship with customers – but which one works best? We will leave you to decide.
Features
The best tool for establishing connections with clients and boosting client loyalty in e-commerce is email marketing. It’s understandable why entrepreneurs and businesses alike are using well-known systems like Klaviyo and Mailchimp to benefit from everything that email marketing has to offer. However, how do these two platforms measure up? Let’s break it down to help you decide which one is right for you.
Klaviyo
Klaviyo is a marketing automation platform designed for businesses of all sizes. The platform offers a variety of features that makes it easy for businesses to create and manage marketing campaigns across different channels.
Here are some of the key features of Klaviyo:
- Advanced Segmentation: One of the most powerful features of Klaviyo is its advanced segmentation capabilities. The platform allows businesses to create highly targeted segments based on a variety of criteria such as purchase history, website behaviour, demographics, and more. This makes it easy to create personalised campaigns that resonate with specific segments of your audience.
- Comprehensive Analytics and Reporting: Klaviyo offers robust analytics and reporting tools that help businesses measure the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. The platform tracks key metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, revenue generated, and more, allowing businesses to make data-driven decisions and optimise their campaigns for maximum impact.
- Robust Automation Capabilities: Klaviyo’s automation capabilities allow businesses to create sophisticated workflows that automate repetitive tasks and trigger personalised communications based on specific actions or events. This can help businesses save time and resources while delivering a better customer experience.
- E-commerce-specific Integrations: Klaviyo offers a range of integrations with popular e-commerce platforms such as Shopify, Magento, WooCommerce, amongst others. These integrations make it easy for businesses to sync their customer and order data with Klaviyo, allowing them to create more personalised and targeted campaigns.
- SMS and Email Marketing: Klaviyo supports both SMS and email marketing, making it easy for businesses to reach their audience across multiple channels. The platform offers a variety of email templates and SMS workflows that can be customised to fit your brand and messaging.
Overall, Klaviyo offers a range of features designed to help businesses create and manage effective marketing campaigns across multiple channels. Its advanced segmentation, comprehensive analytics and reporting, robust automation capabilities, e-commerce-specific integrations, and support for SMS and email marketing make it a popular choice among businesses of all sizes.
Mailchimp
MailChimp is a web-based email marketing platform that enables businesses to create and send newsletters, promotional emails, and other types of emails to their subscribers.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these features.
- User-friendly interface: MailChimp’s interface is designed to be user-friendly and easy to navigate. The dashboard provides a quick overview of the subscriber list, campaigns, and reports. The platform also offers drag-and-drop functionality, making it easy to create and design emails without the need for HTML coding skills. Additionally, MailChimp’s interface is mobile-friendly, allowing users to manage campaigns on the go.
- Versatile template options: MailChimp offers a wide variety of email templates to choose from, ranging from simple text-based templates to more complex designs with images and graphics. The templates are fully customisable, allowing businesses to add their own branding, images, and content. Additionally, MailChimp offers landing page templates and social media ad templates, providing businesses with a complete marketing solution.
- Email, landing page, and social media marketing: MailChimp’s email marketing capabilities allows businesses to send newsletters, promotional emails, and other types of emails to their subscribers. The platform also offers landing page templates, making it easy for businesses to create custom landing pages for their campaigns. Additionally, MailChimp provides social media ad templates, enabling businesses to run ads on platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
- Built-in CRM: MailChimp offers built-in customer relationship management (CRM) features, allowing businesses to manage their subscriber list and track their engagement. The platform provides subscriber profiles, which include information such as subscriber activity, location, and preferences. Furthermore, MailChimp offers segmentation options, making it easy for businesses to target specific groups of subscribers with tailored campaigns.
- Marketing automation: MailChimp’s marketing automation capabilities enable businesses to set up automated campaigns that are triggered based on subscriber behaviour. For example, businesses can set up welcome emails that are sent automatically when a new subscriber joins the list. MailChimp also offers automation workflows, allowing businesses to create complex automated campaigns that include multiple emails and triggers.
Overall, with MailChimp’s user-friendly interface, versatile template options, email, landing page, and social media marketing capabilities, built-in CRM, and marketing automation features, MailChimp provides businesses with a complete marketing solution.
Now that we have these knowledge of it’s feature, we’ll be comparing these tools base on the following:
Automation and Personalization
Klaviyo stands out when it comes to automation. They have an easy-to-use drag-and-drop workflow builder that makes setting up automated campaigns a cinch. What’s more, they also offer advanced personalization options, allowing you to easily segment customers with ease.
Mailchimp allows for automated email campaigns as well, and may be termed more user-friendly that makes it easy to create and send emails quickly as Klaviyo. On top of that, their segmentation capabilities are limited compared to Klaviyo’s.
Email Template Design and Customization
The design of your emails can make a huge difference in the effectiveness of your email marketing campaigns. So how do Klaviyo and Mailchimp stack up when it comes to email template design and customisation?
Klaviyo offers an extensive library of customisable templates for you to use, as well as dozens of themes that you can use to create a consistent brand identity. You can also customise the HTML and CSS to tailor the emails to your exact needs and specifications. But Klaviyo’s real selling point is its drag-and-drop editor, which makes crafting professional-looking emails easy.
Mailchimp also offers a wide selection of customisable templates, but where it really stands out is its ability to personalise emails based on customer data such as purchase history or location. You can also create dynamic content that updates each time customers view the email, ensuring they always have fresh content and relevant offers. Plus, Mailchimp offers custom HTML for those who want even more control over their designs!
Efficiency
Klaviyo offers a wide range of automation options that allow you to easily personalise emails based on customer behaviour or preferences. It’s fast and easy to create newsletters or automated campaigns, meaning you can get your message out without any delay.
On the other hand, Mailchimp requires a bit more manual effort because its automation feature is less comprehensive than Klaviyo’s – but its simple interface makes this process reasonably straightforward.
Pricing
The pricing structure for both Klaviyo and Mailchimp is similar. As opposed to Mailchimp, which requires you to buy the premium price plan in order to access all the features, Klaviyo includes all features in all of its pricing plans.
Both Mailchimp and Klaviyo provide a selection of price tiers to accommodate organisations of various sizes and financial constraints. Businesses with up to 250 contacts can use MailChimps’s free plan, while subscriptions with 500 contacts or more can be purchased for as little as $20 per month. Based on the quantity of contacts in your database and the functionality you need, Klaviyo’s price tiers are determined.
A subscription plan with Klaviyo starts at $45 per month for up to 1500 contacts, and there is also a free plan available for companies with up to 200 contacts. The features you need and the quantity of contacts in your database are also factors in the price plans for Mailchimp.
Both platforms offer value for money, with comprehensive features and scalability for growing ecommerce businesses. However, Klaviyo’s pricing plans can be more expensive than Mailchimp’s, particularly for larger businesses.
Design Tools
When it comes to design, both Klaviyo and Mailchimp have some great options for creating eye-catching emails. Both have a set of templates that can be customised with images, text, and even HTML code; however, if you’re looking for more creative freedom then Klaviyo just may be the better choice. Their design tools allow you full control over your email’s look and feel – meaning no more cookie-cutter emails!
Integration with Ecommerce Platforms
In terms of ecommerce integration, both MailChimp and Klaviyo offer similar features, such as pre-built automation workflows and integration with popular ecommerce platforms. However, Klaviyo is designed specifically for ecommerce businesses and offers more advanced segmentation options and predictive analytics, which can be particularly useful for businesses looking to target customers based on their purchase history and behaviour.
On the other hand, MailChimp offers a range of ecommerce-specific features, such as product retargeting ads, which can be useful for businesses looking to increase their revenue from ecommerce sales.
Reporting and Analytics
Both Klaviyo and Mailchimp offer comprehensive reporting and analytics tools.
Klaviyo’s reporting dashboard provides real-time analytics, segmentation, and detailed metrics on revenue, engagement, and campaign performance. Klaviyo’s data visualisation tools make it easy to track the performance of individual campaigns, segment audiences, and optimise future campaigns.
Similarly, Mailchimp offers a range of reporting and analytics features, including a comprehensive dashboard that displays data on campaign performance, subscriber activity, and audience growth. Mailchimp’s data visualisation tools include graphs and charts that make it easy to analyse data, identify trends, and track key metrics.
Ecommerce businesses can derive a wealth of insights from these reports, including data on customer behaviour, engagement rates, revenue, and ROI. These insights can be used to optimise future campaigns, improve audience segmentation, and increase revenue and customer engagement.
Customer Support and Resources
When it comes to email marketing needs, who can you turn to for help? Customer support and resources are essential, especially when you’re starting out. Mailchimp and Klaviyo both offer excellent customer support options, with tutorials and how-to guides to help you get on track with your email marketing strategy.
Klaviyo’s customer support options are particularly comprehensive – offering round-the-clock chat and email support plus a resource library with step-by-step tutorials addressing common tasks and use cases. Furthermore, they provide webinars and offer an academy of e-learning courses to make sure every customer has the tools they need in order to get the most out of their platform.
Mailchimp also offers a wealth of resources such as guidelines and tutorials, online forums, virtual training events and free assessors who can provide personalised advice.
Which Should You Choose? Mailchimp or Klaviyo?
So, you’ve decided to invest in an email marketing platform for your e-commerce business. But which one should you choose? Mailchimp or Klaviyo?
It’s important to understand the potential of email marketing in the e-commerce sphere. Email campaigns are an effective way to increase customer engagement and loyalty, increase sales and grow your brand visibility. It also helps build trust between you and customers, while providing timely, relevant information. You can even use it to segment and personalise your messages to better target different customer audiences.
But, when it comes down to choosing between Mailchimp and Klaviyo for your e-commerce business, which one should you go for? By comparing the features available on both platforms and assessing how they fit with your individual needs, you’ll be able to make the best decision for your business.
So which platform is the best fit when it comes to customer support? We’ll leave it up to you decide. It really depends on your individual needs and goals! Both Klaviyo and Mailchimp provide different features, benefits and capabilities that can help you reach your e-commerce goals.
At the end of the day, you’ll want to weigh the strengths of both tools and decide which one meets your needs and budget best. With the right platform, you can ensure your efforts will be successful and profitable!
