Mailchimp vs Klaviyo…Is there a clear victor?

With all the options available for email marketing today, we’ve taken a look under the hood of two of the major players in the industry – Mailchimp and Klaviyo – in order to help you decide what platform best suits you!

We have said time and again that investing in the customer lifetime value is far more important than just acquiring new leads all the time. 

Don’t get us wrong, it is super important to feed the top of the funnel for new business, but the secret to becoming that top 1% of e-commerce businesses that turn over thousands of dollars a month without a problem is taking care and nurturing their return customers.

You have already acquired their trust from the get-go but customer service does not end there. Fostering and Maintaining a great customer relationship is the lifeblood of any lucrative e-commerce business. The question is, how do you nourish and nurture these people?

This is where email marketing comes in and choosing the right email marketing tool is tantamount to your success (or failure) when it comes to after-sales services.

Email marketing can take the form of different goals for different businesses, so for this reason, we came up with a comparison of two of the most popular email marketing tools out there, Klaviyo and Mailchimp.

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

Functions and Features

List Building and Segmentation

Klaviyo prides itself on list building and segmentation, what with its dynamic segmentation that gets updated automatically (which saves you time and energy in doing it manually) plus the detailed structure and customisation that comes with it. 

You can build a list using website activity, user behaviour based parameters or a combination of both, including or excluding segments with different tagging functions for better targeting and optimisation of emails. The possibilities are actually quite incredible.

On the other hand, Mailchimp’s segmentation functions are somewhat lacking in terms of customisation and features. Although, you can still divide your customers into smaller lists, the added customisation that Klaviyo has, has overshadowed Mailchimp on this.

Verdict:

Klaviyo wins this round with its powerful customisation and segmentation features.

Automations

Another feature that you would want to consider when choosing your email marketing platform is the automation capabilities that come with it.

Agency speaking, Klaviyo kills other competitors with its awesome and top-notch customisable automation features. They also have ready to go basic templates to help you get started which allow you to dip your toes into the potential of a fully customised user experience. These basic templates are easy to manipulate and edit according to your business needs and demands. You can also create multiple workflows with a wide range of directions depending on your customers’ attributes and behaviours.  Savvy, right?

Not to mention it is visually super easy to work with.a

Mailchimp on the other hand has a more basic automation process that you can base on your different marketing goals. Their automation customisation might not be as robust as Klaviyo but it does work well for very basic automation. The tool can also be integrated with your e-commerce website to better target customers behaviour with its paid plan of course. 

Verdict:

For e-commerce businesses, Klaviyo is the best option to help more of your customers and get their target sales and lead generation processes. It can be slightly more expensive as compared to Mailchimp but with its highly customisable automation and flows, we think it’s worth every penny.

Reporting / Data Analytics and Integrations

Let’s change things up a bit and reverse the order a bit to be fair.

Mailchimp has a simple and well-organised way of reporting and data analytics. You can easily see everything in a nutshell in the dashboard section once you log in to your account. You can also check for comparisons on which email segments and automation are performing well and those who don’t like A|B testing and such.

In terms of the number of integration, Mailchimp gets the upper hand just because of the massive list it offers HOWEVER, it doesn’t integrate as well as Klaviyo does with one of the most popular e-commerce platforms, Shopify, which can be a major deciding factor for Shopify users. 

“I swear it did integrate with Shopify, this can’t be right”. 

Well, Mailchimp did integrate with Shopify once, but we hate to break it to you; 

Mailchimp and Shopify broke up back in 2019.

As for Klaviyo, its reporting and analytics are not for the faint of heart. Like its other features and functions, it can be massively overwhelming due to the very detailed reporting. But don’t let this scare you, its highly detailed reporting can help you understand so much more of the customer journey and help you make decisions based on them. It may be a learning curve and process to get used to, but well worth it for you to be able to optimise all the details that it offers.

Klaviyo is SHOPIFY approved, user friendly and the number one email platform we recommend for Shopify users.

Verdict:

Klaviyo is the number one option for Shopify e-commerce businesses.

 

Overall, we absolutely love Klaviyo and it’s clearly the winner for us in terms of features, automation and reporting. It might be a little more on the expensive side but it does its job and more.

If you’re not currently on Klaviyo, we highly recommend making the switch. It’s a super easy process from platforms like Mailchimp with its data integration, allowing you to move from your current platform to Klaviyo without having to re-enter any data.

We love helping our clients thrive with their email marketing, so if you would like to learn more or even have us look under the hood of what you are clurrently doing in order to find some clear opportunities we would love to chat. Click below to book your FREE strategy session with one of our digital marketing experts and start your journey to optimising your email marketing.