Here is the right order of operations:

1. Connect your ecommerce platform. Klaviyo syncs Shopify data in milliseconds so every message and insight reflects what is happening in your store right now. The same real-time sync applies to WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento.
2. Authenticate your sending domain. Yahoo and Gmail now require all bulk senders to have a DMARC policy in place on their domain. Set this up before sending a single campaign.
3. Warm your sender reputation. When you first migrate to Klaviyo, send warming campaigns to your engaged customers once a week for four weeks to protect deliverability. This builds your sender reputation from your new domain so inbox providers view you favorably, and starting with engaged subscribers ensures your first emails receive good open and click rates.
4. Build your sign-up forms. Start building your email list by collecting email addresses through forms across your website that offer exclusive discounts, early access to new products, or a behind-the-scenes look at what your company is working on.
5. Configure your core flows before sending any broadcast campaigns (more on these below).

The free plan allows you to create a Klaviyo account, import or sync your contacts and activity data, use the drag-and-drop email and SMS editors, and build automations, segmentation, and reports. It is a legitimate starting point for small lists.

Klaviyo Pricing: What You Actually Pay

In 2025, Klaviyo announced a major change in its billing structure: you are now charged based on the number of active profiles in your account. This matters for list management strategy.

The free plan is available at no monthly cost as long as your account remains under 250 active profiles and 500 monthly email sends. Beyond that:

• Tiers start with Free (250 contacts max), then jump to Email plans at $20/month, with the Email + SMS combination at $35/month.
• At 5,000 contacts, the cost is $100/month. At 10,000 contacts it is $150/month. At 50,000 contacts it is $720/month for the email plan alone, before adding SMS, WhatsApp, Reviews, or analytics tools.

Before February 2025, customers paid based only on the contacts they actively emailed each month. Now, billing is based on total active profiles, meaning all subscribed contacts in your account whether you have emailed them recently or not.

The practical implication: list hygiene is no longer optional. Audit your list monthly or quarterly, remove or suppress low-engagement profiles, and use sunset flows to try re-engaging inactive subscribers before deleting them if they stay inactive.

The Flows That Drive Most of Your Revenue

Flows are automated email sequences triggered by customer behavior. They are where Klaviyo generates the bulk of its measurable ROI.

Performance benchmarks from Klaviyo's Q4 2024 data show the following for core flows: welcome series achieves a 45 to 50% open rate with an 8 to 12% conversion rate; abandoned cart reaches a 35 to 40% open rate with a 15 to 20% conversion rate; post-purchase sees a 40 to 45% open rate with a 10 to 15% repeat purchase rate; and win-back flows generate a 25 to 30% open rate with a 5 to 8% reactivation rate.

The five flows every Klaviyo account should have running before any campaigns are sent:

• Welcome series: If you offer an incentive on your sign-up form, deliver that reward in the first message of the flow. The subsequent messages, typically 3 to 4 in total, should introduce the subscriber to your brand and products and get them excited about your unique brand story, values, or mission. For best practices on building this sequence, see Welcome Email Sequence Best Practices: 7 Proven Strategies.
• Abandoned cart: Abandoned cart emails achieve an average open rate of 50.5%, a click rate of 6.25%, and a conversion rate of 3.33%, with top-performing brands reaching conversion rates of 7.69%.
• Browse abandonment: Triggered when someone views a product but does not add it to their cart. It moves customers who are in the consideration phase toward conversion by reinforcing the unique value of the item they looked at or recommending similar products using an AI-powered product recommendation feed.
• Post-purchase: A behavior-based thank-you flow is designed to build loyalty and extend customer lifetime value. Customers are thanked for their purchase, encouraged to engage further, and in some cases receive additional key details about their purchase.
• Win-back: An automated series designed to re-engage customers who have become inactive, targeting those who used to make regular purchases but have been inactive for a long time. The Klaviyo win-back flow offers these customers various offers to help recover repeat purchases and retain valuable customers.

Segmentation Strategy: How to Use Klaviyo's Data Advantage

Segmentation is where email marketing with Klaviyo separates from bulk-send tools. Klaviyo allows you to segment customers with any piece of data, from any source, across all time. Segments update in real time, so you are always messaging the right audience.

The most effective segmentation framework for ecommerce is RFM analysis: RFM stands for Recency (how recently someone bought), Frequency (how often they buy), and Monetary (how much they spend). Klaviyo auto-assigns scores for each factor based on your own customer data, so the model calibrates to your specific brand rather than industry averages.

Beyond RFM, use predictive segments. According to Klaviyo's 2025 State of Email report, brands using AI-driven predictive segments saw revenue per recipient increases of 18 to 45% compared to traditional demographic segmentation.

Deliverability-focused segmentation is equally important. The general rule is to send to your most engaged subscribers most often, and send to your less engaged subscribers less often. One of the most effective ways to improve email deliverability is to focus on segmentation. By segmenting your email list, it is easier to create hyper-relevant, targeted content that subscribers are more likely to interact with. Split your email list into groups with similar characteristics, create content designed to appeal to each segment, and aim for at least 8 or more unique segments sent highly targeted campaigns at least once a week.

For a deeper look at how segmentation lifts revenue across the full funnel, see Email List Segmentation Strategies That Boost ROI by 760%.

Personalization and AI Features

Brands that use personalization increase email ROI by nearly 260% (43:1) compared to those who never or rarely personalize (12:1), according to Litmus.

Klaviyo's built-in AI tools, branded K:AI, handle a practical range of tasks:

• Subject line assistant: Generates and tests subject line variations. Personalized subject lines can increase open rates by 20 to 26%.
• Predictive CLV and churn scoring: Predicted Customer Lifetime Value projects each customer's future value based on behavior. You can build segments of high-predicted CLV customers and treat them with VIP intensity even before they have hit that spending threshold. Churn risk flags customers with high predicted churn probability before they actually lapse.
• Product recommendations: Dynamic feeds that surface relevant products in automated flows based on individual browsing and purchase history.

For specific techniques to apply inside Klaviyo's editor, see 7 Email Personalization Techniques That Boost Conversions 47%.

Working with a Klaviyo Email Marketing Agency

Some teams get more from Klaviyo by working with a specialist agency, particularly during initial setup or when building complex flow architectures. Enterprise implementations require 3 to 6 months from initial assessment to full deployment, with stakeholder alignment consuming more time than technical integration.

A good Klaviyo email marketing agency will typically handle:

• Account migration and domain authentication
• Flow architecture including welcome, cart abandonment, and post-purchase sequences
• Advanced segmentation and list hygiene
• Ongoing A/B testing of subject lines, send times, and email content
• Revenue attribution reporting

Over 125,000 Shopify stores have made the shift to Klaviyo from other email CRMs and reported an average 46% increase in total revenue from email marketing. That lift does not happen automatically; it reflects accounts that are properly configured and actively managed.

If you are evaluating whether Klaviyo fits your stack, it is also worth reviewing how it compares to other marketing platforms. For a broader look at email tool options, see HootSuite Email Marketing: Features, Pricing and Better Alternatives.

Measuring ROI: The Metrics That Matter

Klaviyo makes revenue attribution straightforward. You can see how many people purchased a product after your email campaign. Klaviyo shows you this as a percentage of your overall sales, enabling you to evaluate the efficacy of your email campaigns in relation to alternative marketing channels.

The metrics to track actively:

• Revenue per recipient (RPR): The most accurate measure of email program health. Focusing only on total email revenue often leads to poor practices like batch-and-blast. These may produce short-term gains, but low open rates and damage to sender reputation have long-term negative consequences.
• Flow vs. campaign revenue split: Automated flows generate 41% of total email revenue from just 5.3% of sends. If your flows are underperforming this benchmark, that is where to focus first.
• Placed order rate by flow: The median placed order rate across all flows is 1.42%, while the top 10% achieves 4.93%. Knowing where your flows sit relative to these benchmarks tells you where optimization effort will return the most.
• Open and click rates by segment: Use these to identify which segments are losing engagement before they damage deliverability.

Marketers who A/B test their emails often increase email ROI by 86% (42:1) compared to those who never test (23:1), according to Litmus. Build testing into your regular workflow, not as an occasional experiment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Klaviyo worth it for small ecommerce businesses?

The free plan is best suited for small businesses, startups, or brands just getting started with marketing automation who have contact lists under 250 active profiles. It allows you to test Klaviyo's platform, integrate your data, run automations, and experiment with segmentation and SMS without paying upfront. For businesses generating consistent revenue from email, paid plans typically pay for themselves quickly given the ROI benchmarks the platform enables.

How long does it take to see ROI from Klaviyo?

Expect 4 to 6 months for positive ROI, with 30 to 50% email revenue increases within the first year with proper setup. The caveat is that setup quality determines the outcome. Accounts that skip segmentation and run only broadcast campaigns rarely reach those numbers.

What are Klaviyo flows and how are they different from campaigns?

Unlike campaigns, automations called "flows" in Klaviyo respond to customer behavior and are triggered by certain actions, such as creating a new customer account or abandoning checkout. Campaigns are manually sent to a list on a schedule. Flows run automatically in the background and, because they are behavior-triggered, consistently outperform campaigns on revenue per recipient.

How does Klaviyo's 2025 pricing change affect my list management?

Klaviyo pricing now runs on your total active profile count. Every contactable profile in your account counts toward your tier whether you emailed them this month or not. The direct implication is that keeping unengaged or inactive contacts in your account now has a direct cost. Build a sunset flow, suppress profiles that do not re-engage after a defined window, and audit your list quarterly to keep your billable count aligned with your actual marketing audience.

Here is the right order of operations:

1. Connect your ecommerce platform. Klaviyo syncs Shopify data in milliseconds so every message and insight reflects what is happening in your store right now. The same real-time sync applies to WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Magento.
2. Authenticate your sending domain. Yahoo and Gmail now require all bulk senders to have a DMARC policy in place on their domain. Set this up before sending a single campaign.
3. Warm your sender reputation. When you first migrate to Klaviyo, send warming campaigns to your engaged customers once a week for four weeks to protect deliverability. This builds your sender reputation from your new domain so inbox providers view you favorably, and starting with engaged subscribers ensures your first emails receive good open and click rates.
4. Build your sign-up forms. Start building your email list by collecting email addresses through forms across your website that offer exclusive discounts, early access to new products, or a behind-the-scenes look at what your company is working on.
5. Configure your core flows before sending any broadcast campaigns (more on these below).

The free plan allows you to create a Klaviyo account, import or sync your contacts and activity data, use the drag-and-drop email and SMS editors, and build automations, segmentation, and reports. It is a legitimate starting point for small lists.

Klaviyo Pricing: What You Actually Pay

In 2025, Klaviyo announced a major change in its billing structure: you are now charged based on the number of active profiles in your account. This matters for list management strategy.

The free plan is available at no monthly cost as long as your account remains under 250 active profiles and 500 monthly email sends. Beyond that:

• Tiers start with Free (250 contacts max), then jump to Email plans at $20/month, with the Email + SMS combination at $35/month.
• At 5,000 contacts, the cost is $100/month. At 10,000 contacts it is $150/month. At 50,000 contacts it is $720/month for the email plan alone, before adding SMS, WhatsApp, Reviews, or analytics tools.

Before February 2025, customers paid based only on the contacts they actively emailed each month. Now, billing is based on total active profiles, meaning all subscribed contacts in your account whether you have emailed them recently or not.

The practical implication: list hygiene is no longer optional. Audit your list monthly or quarterly, remove or suppress low-engagement profiles, and use sunset flows to try re-engaging inactive subscribers before deleting them if they stay inactive.

The Flows That Drive Most of Your Revenue

Flows are automated email sequences triggered by customer behavior. They are where Klaviyo generates the bulk of its measurable ROI.

Performance benchmarks from Klaviyo's Q4 2024 data show the following for core flows: welcome series achieves a 45 to 50% open rate with an 8 to 12% conversion rate; abandoned cart reaches a 35 to 40% open rate with a 15 to 20% conversion rate; post-purchase sees a 40 to 45% open rate with a 10 to 15% repeat purchase rate; and win-back flows generate a 25 to 30% open rate with a 5 to 8% reactivation rate.

The five flows every Klaviyo account should have running before any campaigns are sent:

• Welcome series: If you offer an incentive on your sign-up form, deliver that reward in the first message of the flow. The subsequent messages, typically 3 to 4 in total, should introduce the subscriber to your brand and products and get them excited about your unique brand story, values, or mission. For best practices on building this sequence, see Welcome Email Sequence Best Practices: 7 Proven Strategies.
• Abandoned cart: Abandoned cart emails achieve an average open rate of 50.5%, a click rate of 6.25%, and a conversion rate of 3.33%, with top-performing brands reaching conversion rates of 7.69%.
• Browse abandonment: Triggered when someone views a product but does not add it to their cart. It moves customers who are in the consideration phase toward conversion by reinforcing the unique value of the item they looked at or recommending similar products using an AI-powered product recommendation feed.
• Post-purchase: A behavior-based thank-you flow is designed to build loyalty and extend customer lifetime value. Customers are thanked for their purchase, encouraged to engage further, and in some cases receive additional key details about their purchase.
• Win-back: An automated series designed to re-engage customers who have become inactive, targeting those who used to make regular purchases but have been inactive for a long time. The Klaviyo win-back flow offers these customers various offers to help recover repeat purchases and retain valuable customers.

Segmentation Strategy: How to Use Klaviyo's Data Advantage

Segmentation is where email marketing with Klaviyo separates from bulk-send tools. Klaviyo allows you to segment customers with any piece of data, from any source, across all time. Segments update in real time, so you are always messaging the right audience.

The most effective segmentation framework for ecommerce is RFM analysis: RFM stands for Recency (how recently someone bought), Frequency (how often they buy), and Monetary (how much they spend). Klaviyo auto-assigns scores for each factor based on your own customer data, so the model calibrates to your specific brand rather than industry averages.

Beyond RFM, use predictive segments. According to Klaviyo's 2025 State of Email report, brands using AI-driven predictive segments saw revenue per recipient increases of 18 to 45% compared to traditional demographic segmentation.

Deliverability-focused segmentation is equally important. The general rule is to send to your most engaged subscribers most often, and send to your less engaged subscribers less often. One of the most effective ways to improve email deliverability is to focus on segmentation. By segmenting your email list, it is easier to create hyper-relevant, targeted content that subscribers are more likely to interact with. Split your email list into groups with similar characteristics, create content designed to appeal to each segment, and aim for at least 8 or more unique segments sent highly targeted campaigns at least once a week.

For a deeper look at how segmentation lifts revenue across the full funnel, see Email List Segmentation Strategies That Boost ROI by 760%.

Personalization and AI Features

Brands that use personalization increase email ROI by nearly 260% (43:1) compared to those who never or rarely personalize (12:1), according to Litmus.

Klaviyo's built-in AI tools, branded K:AI, handle a practical range of tasks:

• Subject line assistant: Generates and tests subject line variations. Personalized subject lines can increase open rates by 20 to 26%.
• Predictive CLV and churn scoring: Predicted Customer Lifetime Value projects each customer's future value based on behavior. You can build segments of high-predicted CLV customers and treat them with VIP intensity even before they have hit that spending threshold. Churn risk flags customers with high predicted churn probability before they actually lapse.
• Product recommendations: Dynamic feeds that surface relevant products in automated flows based on individual browsing and purchase history.

For specific techniques to apply inside Klaviyo's editor, see 7 Email Personalization Techniques That Boost Conversions 47%.

Working with a Klaviyo Email Marketing Agency

Some teams get more from Klaviyo by working with a specialist agency, particularly during initial setup or when building complex flow architectures. Enterprise implementations require 3 to 6 months from initial assessment to full deployment, with stakeholder alignment consuming more time than technical integration.

A good Klaviyo email marketing agency will typically handle:

• Account migration and domain authentication
• Flow architecture including welcome, cart abandonment, and post-purchase sequences
• Advanced segmentation and list hygiene
• Ongoing A/B testing of subject lines, send times, and email content
• Revenue attribution reporting

Over 125,000 Shopify stores have made the shift to Klaviyo from other email CRMs and reported an average 46% increase in total revenue from email marketing. That lift does not happen automatically; it reflects accounts that are properly configured and actively managed.

If you are evaluating whether Klaviyo fits your stack, it is also worth reviewing how it compares to other marketing platforms. For a broader look at email tool options, see HootSuite Email Marketing: Features, Pricing and Better Alternatives.

Measuring ROI: The Metrics That Matter

Klaviyo makes revenue attribution straightforward. You can see how many people purchased a product after your email campaign. Klaviyo shows you this as a percentage of your overall sales, enabling you to evaluate the efficacy of your email campaigns in relation to alternative marketing channels.

The metrics to track actively:

• Revenue per recipient (RPR): The most accurate measure of email program health. Focusing only on total email revenue often leads to poor practices like batch-and-blast. These may produce short-term gains, but low open rates and damage to sender reputation have long-term negative consequences.
• Flow vs. campaign revenue split: Automated flows generate 41% of total email revenue from just 5.3% of sends. If your flows are underperforming this benchmark, that is where to focus first.
• Placed order rate by flow: The median placed order rate across all flows is 1.42%, while the top 10% achieves 4.93%. Knowing where your flows sit relative to these benchmarks tells you where optimization effort will return the most.
• Open and click rates by segment: Use these to identify which segments are losing engagement before they damage deliverability.

Marketers who A/B test their emails often increase email ROI by 86% (42:1) compared to those who never test (23:1), according to Litmus. Build testing into your regular workflow, not as an occasional experiment.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Klaviyo worth it for small ecommerce businesses?

The free plan is best suited for small businesses, startups, or brands just getting started with marketing automation who have contact lists under 250 active profiles. It allows you to test Klaviyo's platform, integrate your data, run automations, and experiment with segmentation and SMS without paying upfront. For businesses generating consistent revenue from email, paid plans typically pay for themselves quickly given the ROI benchmarks the platform enables.

How long does it take to see ROI from Klaviyo?

Expect 4 to 6 months for positive ROI, with 30 to 50% email revenue increases within the first year with proper setup. The caveat is that setup quality determines the outcome. Accounts that skip segmentation and run only broadcast campaigns rarely reach those numbers.

What are Klaviyo flows and how are they different from campaigns?

Unlike campaigns, automations called "flows" in Klaviyo respond to customer behavior and are triggered by certain actions, such as creating a new customer account or abandoning checkout. Campaigns are manually sent to a list on a schedule. Flows run automatically in the background and, because they are behavior-triggered, consistently outperform campaigns on revenue per recipient.

How does Klaviyo's 2025 pricing change affect my list management?

Klaviyo pricing now runs on your total active profile count. Every contactable profile in your account counts toward your tier whether you emailed them this month or not. The direct implication is that keeping unengaged or inactive contacts in your account now has a direct cost. Build a sunset flow, suppress profiles that do not re-engage after a defined window, and audit your list quarterly to keep your billable count aligned with your actual marketing audience.