#51. SMS Marketing Tactics With Klaviyo | Podcast

Alissa: 0:16

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, sit back and relax as we present to you our highly anticipated podcast episode on SMS marketing.

Vira: 0:50

Hello, everyone. We are email marketers at an email agency called Flowium. We are so, so passionate about email marketing. And because we love what we do, we want to share some juicy insights with you. Flowium is one of the fastest growing email marketing agencies in the world, and we specialize in providing premium full-service e-commerce email marketing experience to all of our clients. And our services are tailored specifically for businesses like you have, and they are designed to help you increase your online retail revenue by 20 to 50. Deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment. That’s our motto, and that’s what we do. And I’m really excited about the guests that we have here with us today. Alissa, take it from here.

Alissa: 1:37

Me too. This is juicy. This is a really good one. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, sit back and relax as we present to you our highly anticipated podcast episode on SMS marketing. Dun dun dun.

Vira: 1:53

I know, we need some dramatic intro here. SMS marketing.

Alissa: 1:58

It feels dramatic. I’m excited about this one. So this is a massive, massive episode because SMS marketing has taken the world by storm. And if you are an e-commerce business owner or you work for an e-commerce brand or you work for a marketing agency, you’ve either heard of SMS marketing and are wondering, is it too good to be true? Or you’ve already started implementing your own SMS marketing and you’re just kind of working your way through it all, right? So have no fear, all of your questions will be answered here today. And if you are an SMS doubter, which I am definitely guilty of feeling that way, maybe, just maybe, our very special guests will change your minds. Email Einsteins, please say hello to Navin and Steph from Klaviyo. Navin is an SMS specialist at Klaviyo, and Steph is actually one of our main points of contact over at Klaviyo. So when we’re working with Klaviyo directly to either troubleshoot through client accounts or make sure that clients are just overall happy with how much money they’re making through revenue and what we’re doing for them email marketing-wise, Navin and Steph are kind of our 2 peeps over at Klaviyo. So we love, love working with them. And we figured if we love working with them, what better way to get all the inside scoop on SMS marketing than to ask the people on the inside? So Navin and Steph, please say hello.

Navin: 3:40

Hello everyone. Thank you for that very, very kind introduction. I am very excited to be a part of this. I think working with your team has been phenomenal. Love seeing the results that your clients are having. And anytime someone asks me about SMS, I I tend to talk too long, so I’m hoping that there’s no hard cap on how long this interview can go because I’m ready to go all night if we have to.

Vira: 4:01

And we might have to.

Alissa: 4:03

Here we go.

Stephanie: 4:05

Thanks guys. Steph here, super, super excited to be recording this podcast with the Flowium team. You guys, it’s always such a pleasure working with you guys. I know we are speaking to our Platinum Master Partners who really manage email and SMS for a variety of Klaviyo clients. So excited to dive deep on the SMS topic. I know it’s new for a ton of e-commerce brands out there. Yeah, I’m so excited to get to it.

Alissa: 4:34

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Vira: 4:36

That’s awesome. That’s awesome. And we do have a lot of really juicy questions to you guys. But before we go there, let’s do a quick Q&A just so we get to know you both better. So I’ll just ask you a few super silly and short questions. Just answer the first thing that comes to your mind. Okay.

Navin: 4:54

Sounds good.

Vira: 4:55

Cool. Navin, first question is to you. East Coast or West Coast?

Navin: 4:59

East Coast.

Vira: 5:00

That’s easy. Stephanie, texting or talking?

Stephanie: 5:04

Texting all the way.

Alissa: 5:06

Nice.

Vira: 5:06

I know, right? Like, why would you call someone? It’s 2021.

Stephanie: 5:11

I’m glad my parents have adopted the texting at this point.

Vira: 5:15

Oh yeah. Gosh, even my grandma adopted texting.

Alissa: 5:19

It’s the texting with the extra large font. I actually helped my mom the other day enlarge the font and it’s like 3 letters on her screen. I’m like, I’m like, “Mom, this is really aggressive.” She’s like, “But now I can see what I’m texting.” I’m like, “Okay, do you, boo boo, do you.”

Vira: 5:34

Navin, that’s the one I’m really interested in. What was your childhood nickname?

Navin: 5:40

Oh, I don’t even know. My childhood nickname was Boney G.

Vira: 5:46

Ooh, so cute.

Navin: 5:46

And yeah, the background for this was I grew up with just my sister and cousins and I couldn’t, ever fight back, so I would just sit on people. And I was, I was a very scrawny little kid, and they just started calling me Boney G after that.

Vira: 6:05

Not a very promising beginning of the podcast.

Navin: 6:09

Thank you.

Stephanie: 6:09

The whole Flowium team is going to be calling you Boney G.

Navin: 6:12

I know, I know. I’m very worried.

Alissa: 6:14

We’re going to email you now and say, hey, Boney G, can you jump on this client together?

Navin: 6:18

All in. I’m happy to help.

Vira: 6:22

Stephanie, Place you most want to travel to?

Stephanie: 6:25

I would say Italy. I was supposed to go there for my honeymoon last year and we had to postpone. So maybe once, once the world starts opening up a bit more, I’ll make it there.

Alissa: 6:37

Did you just get married last year?

Stephanie: 6:38

Yeah, last year.

Alissa: 6:39

Yeah. When? What?

Stephanie: 6:41

In October.

Alissa: 6:42

Okay, cool. Oh, that’s awesome. Congrats. That’s so exciting. That’s awesome. That’s awesome.

Vira: 6:48

Well, Italy is open. So start planning your—

Stephanie: 6:51

Start my planning. Yeah. Look at if I have it on the radar.

Vira: 6:56

Cool. Okay. I have two more. So Navin, Shopify or WooCommerce?

Navin: 7:01

Ooh, that’s— I plead the fifth on that one. I can’t, I can’t. As a Klaviyo salesperson, I’m going to plead the fifth on that one. They both, they both are very powerful. Klaviyo has customers on both platforms. So I’m— we’re agnostic.

Alissa: 7:17

Perfect. Noted.

Vira: 7:18

Stephanie. SMS or email?

Stephanie: 7:20

Ooh. Well, I mean, can I plead the fifth as well? Well, we’ll dive into this more, but I mean, I think overall we’re excited to talk about how SMS can be a very powerful supplementary channel to your email program. So I’m sure Navin and I will dive much, much deeper there, but that’s my answer for that one.

Vira: 7:43

Cool.

Alissa: 7:43

Okay. Awesome. So let’s get to it and we’re pulling out all the stops here, guys. So I hope you’re ready. So first question, and let me give a little context around this too. So when SMS marketing started to roll out, this isn’t just from a Klaviyo like point, but just like across the board, I was, and I still am like a huge doubter. I’m not sure how I feel about SMS marketing. And main reason for that is I’ve received a few texts from brands that I actually really like. And as soon as I get the text message, I’m immediately put off. Like I want to boycott that brand because I’m like, don’t, text me on my personal phone is my private information. So it would be really cool if you guys could kind of sell the concept of SMS marketing to us. And it doesn’t have to be too in-depth, but like, why, why, why should we use SMS marketing? And I know that on the Klaviyo website it says, customers want your texts, why keep them waiting? But the question is, do customers actually want your texts? So hit us with whatever you got in terms of like best way to sell this over to us?

Navin: 8:47

Yeah, it’s a great question, and you’re not wrong. There’s a lot of people that SMS just doesn’t work for, and it can, it can put them off the brand. And I think the biggest thing that I like to highlight to customers and prospective customers that I’m talking to, to individuals that I’m talking to SMS about— there’s no brand that SMS is absolutely perfect for, but there’s also no brand that SMS will not work for. I’m a huge proponent on—

Alissa: 9:11

interesting—

Navin: 9:12

let your customers, let your subscribers decide how they want to communicated with. Like, I always get the question, like, I sell to elder individuals and, you know, does texting work for them? Yes, it does. How can I say that? Because you can test it. The cool thing about SMS and the cool thing about, like, what Klaviyo is doing is we’re not saying this is what you should do. We’re just giving you a tool to let you try it. And that’s why I think SMS is so important and why SMS marketing is growing so quickly is brands are realizing, like, They can just try it, see how it works, and then see the results. The brands that you’re shopping from, you may not like what they’re sending, but they may have 10, 15, 20% of their subscriber base is like, I really wish I got a text message. I really wish I could sign up. So that’s what I like to say is like SMS marketing, it shouldn’t be replacing what you’re doing for email. It shouldn’t be replacing what you’re doing for the owned channels that you have, but you should at least give your subscribers the opportunity to let you know how they want to be communicated with.

Vira: 10:14

Okay. See, I’m one of those people who really want to receive messages from the brands that I like. So there are a few brands like this Vancouver-based brand, Vite Apparel, and they are doing very time-sensitive sales. And since I’m their VIP, I’m probably like on their list of people who receive those messages first. And I’m always like super, super excited to receive the message because message is something that I will open right away. With email, it can take me like, I don’t know, 2 hours, 3 hours to get email. But SMS, it’s something that I open right away and that’s what I appreciate. As a user about SMS.

Stephanie: 10:49

And I think Vira, you hit it on the head with just knowing who your VIP customers are, segmenting a ton and testing with those who are high repeat purchasers. It’s a great way to communicate to customers who are extremely loyal to your brand and you can see a ton of return that way. So although it might not be for your entire customer base, it’s, it’s in more cases than none, it is for your brand loyal customer base.

Vira: 11:17

That’s pretty cool. I never thought about it this way. SMS is like still so new that we are very comfortable with like email segmentation, right? But SMS, it’s like still pretty new.

Alissa: 11:27

I think I’m sold already. Am I an easy sell? Probably. But I think, I think that’s really key when talking about SMS marketing either with your clients if you’re an agency, but also like if you’re just an e-commerce brand is giving your customers the opportunity or giving them the chance to choose how they wanna hear from you. So for me personally, as Alissa the consumer, I probably don’t wanna hear from any of my brands ever via text message, but only because I’m put off by text messages as a whole. But for others who are really genuinely interested, you wanna give them that opportunity to actually be clued in in that way. So I do love that approach a lot.

Vira: 12:04

I have no problem receiving messages from someone I opted in to receive those messages from. Right. I remember when we traveled to Mexico and I purchased this like Mexican phone number, you know, like a local SIM card. Or something and I was receiving like hundreds and I’m not exaggerating, hundreds of SMS per day and I haven’t even like subscribed to receive them. So I think like as long as it’s within some sort of like a legal framework, I don’t, don’t mind it. So guys, Stephanie and Navin, so is SMS marketing replacing email or not? I know you touched briefly on that already, but I like literally just a few days I read this very dramatic blog post about how SMS will replace email and how it’s the end end of the email era. And it happens every time, right? When Facebook Messenger came, they said that, okay, email, you’re done. Now we have Facebook, then Instagram, then it happens every time. So is it the end of email generation or email age or not? And why?

Navin: 13:05

Yeah, I was going to say email is like that cricket that just never dies. You’re never going to kill email. Email is going to be there forever and it’s going to be used in different ways. And I think that that’s the right way to think about it. Like email, you’re right. There’s a lot of fads that came out. Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, like all of these different things. What has been like tested and continued to grow? Email. So I don’t think email is ever going to be replaced, not until like we all have avatars and we can just try everything on through our avatar and our avatar could do VR. Like that’s, that’s coming, but we’re not there yet. I think SMS, and Steph mentioned this, SMS is, it’s a really, really powerful complementary channel to email. I think the best programs are going to see are using both of these channels together. Like Alissa, you mentioned like you don’t like getting messages. I don’t know if it’s a single message or multiple messages, but I have definitely signed up for brands. And like, if I abandon my cart, I get like a couple of text messages because of that. And I’m like, this is annoying. Like sending me one, sure, that’s fine. Like, I don’t mind that. But like, if I’m getting 2 or 3, like when I get an email and my phone buzzes, I can let it be. I can, I know I can check it later. When my phone buzzes for a text message, maybe I’m addicted, maybe I sell SMS marketing every day, so that’s why I think about it. But I look at my phone immediately, and if I’m getting messages about things that like I’ve abandoned, it immediately turns me off. I think the brands that I’m seeing do really well are those that are combining email and SMS together. So that’s a very long-winded way to say no, SMS is not going to kill email, and email just will never will never die. I just think that SMS is a really powerful channel to complement email.

Stephanie: 14:54

And I would say to add to that, I mean, I feel like we just have a lot of people in the industry now starting to think about their overall CRM strategy and objectives. So it’s not relying just on email or just on SMS, but thinking about how you communicate to customers holistically. So I think that is personally a great way to think about it. Maybe there are certain scenarios scenarios where communicating via email makes the most sense, like a product announcement or a very large brand update. But like you had mentioned, a flash sale or a transactional message, those could be great reasons for sending quick and concise SMS messages. So completely, completely agree with Navin there.

Alissa: 15:37

Yeah, the complementary side of things makes a lot more sense. And I think the thing that’s the most off-putting, like right off the bat when you hear about SMS marketing Going back to what you had mentioned, Vira, like people act like this is the replacement for everything. So SMS marketing is now the end-all be-all and that’s the only way that you should be marketing to people. I mean, I hear that and I’m like, well, that’s a rough approach ’cause you lose a significant chunk of your customer base would be my guess. But as a compliment, I think that makes a lot more sense. And especially when—

Vira: 16:06

Just a few more things to add. Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Alissa: 16:08

No, no, go ahead, go ahead, Vira, go ahead.

Vira: 16:09

And just a few more things to add. I hate when people compare email and SMS to like social media or like Facebook ads or something. Come on, you people. And SMS, it’s your own marketing. So you basically are owning those contacts. You have control over like when you send message, what you send, like with Facebook ads or like Google ads or whatever. You don’t always have the full control of it. So that’s why I think it’s, it’s not a fair comparison.

Alissa: 17:04

Yeah, it’s the algorithm, right? There’s no algorithm that you’re working against with email and with SMS, whereas with social it’s like if Google doesn’t like you, you’re done and that’s it. Yeah. Okay. Very cool. So in terms of SMS marketing, actually our CEO, André, he posted about this on LinkedIn. I think he may have tagged both of you, Stephen Levine, in his post, like in the comments about this upcoming episode. But so he wrote something along the lines of like, he doesn’t believe in SMS marketing, but the caveat to that sentence is he doesn’t believe in SMS marketing as a selling tool. He believes in it more as a tool that improves the customer journey or the customer experience. Would you agree with that, or do you think that’s more like on like a situation basis, or how would you kind of— how would, how would you react to something like that?

Navin: 17:57

Yeah, I mean, I personally think I see that point. I think in an ideal state, that’s the right way to think about SMS marketing. Like SMS marketing is a great tool to build brand loyalty. Like one of my favorite things to recommend to customers is like, if you have a new product launch or promotion going on, like send a text to your VIP customers like, let’s say, like early morning if the drop is like a noon or afternoon one, just so like they feel special and like connected to the brand. So I think it definitely like it builds that brand loyalty, that brand affinity, and drives that customer journey. So I definitely agree with that sentiment. However, and I think maybe it’s because SMS is still fairly new for a lot of brands, but I think that SMS— not I think, it is very, very powerful for flash sales, like immediate promotions. Like back in stock type of announcements, which are high revenue driving messages. So like, I don’t want to say SMS isn’t a channel to help sell because at the end of the day, like we’re all trying to grow revenue for our customers and clients. So I can, I can appreciate like the idealistic way and it’s very true. But I also think like maybe right now where we are from a knowledge perspective of SMS, I think it is used and it is used still effectively to drive spike in sales.

Vira: 19:20

Okay.

Alissa: 19:21

What would you say is kind of like, and gosh, I’m putting you a little bit on the spot here, but like just a very generic, like high-level ballpark figure, what would you say is kind of like an estimated ROI on SMS marketing, whether it’s like on one message? And I mean, let’s, okay, let’s give a situation, right? ‘Cause that’s so generic. There are so many different situations. So like on a flash sale that happens and you’re sending it to your VIP customer base, what would you say could potentially be the ROI of a single text message that you’re sending out?

Navin: 19:52

Yeah. Like Klaviyo’s BI team. So I’m going to just go Klaviyo because I know these, this data a little bit more. Klaviyo’s BI team has put together some statistics that have said the average ROI on a Klaviyo SMS is 24x.

Vira: 20:06

Wow.

Navin: 20:06

Customers— this is a stat that I absolutely love— customers that add SMS to their Klaviyo accounts have increased revenue by 12% within the first 30 days. Wow. So I think it’s one of those channels where you will see immediate results. That’s why, that’s one of the reasons why, like, to the first question that was asked, like, does SMS work? It does. And you can see those results really quickly. Like, there’s a lot of channels that one can use that, like, you can try, but it’ll take time to see results. With SMS, because of how urgent this channel is, you’re gonna see results a lot faster, which is why I think it is really cool to, like, just try it.

Stephanie: 20:48

Yeah. And I think the setup time within Klaviyo, and this is just me speaking of Klaviyo SMS, SMS is so quick as well. So to Navin’s point, that even adds to kind of just the quick return a lot of brands are seeing because it is such a great process to get that channel set up within our product.

Vira: 21:08

Well, yeah, it’s super, it’s super smooth. Like on average, how much time do you as a new business need to set up to send your first SMS? Can you briefly explain the process to those of our listeners who’ve never done it before?

Navin: 21:21

Yeah, absolutely. In Klaviyo, and I don’t want to make it seem too simple, but like I’ve had customers go live in an hour, like having SMS set up in their flows really easily. So high level, Klaviyo has, has set up our system so any customer can turn on SMS in their Klaviyo accounts. We built out the infrastructure so you don’t have to do a lot if you’re net new. We have the numbers, everything there so that way you can get started really quickly. What’s really cool is in the Klaviyo platform, especially if you’re already using us for email, you don’t have to go in and build a separate like SMS flow or journey or sequence, whatever you want to call it, you could just add it to the one you’re currently using. That’s been something that like I’ve almost had to like repeat to customers because they’re like, wait a second, like you’re telling me I could just take what I’m using today and just add SMS? Yes, you can. That’s like, I’ve set up customers’ accounts in 15 minutes before, and just by literally like dragging over an SMS card in our flow builder and adding a single SMS to an abandoned cart and an SMS to a welcome flow. So it doesn’t take a long time. Klaviyo has done really as much as we can up until this point. We’re continuing to work on it, but just to make the onboarding process as seamless for our customers as possible, because we’re in full belief that there is no customer that can’t see value from SMS, and we want everyone to try it. So it’s definitely really easy to get set up, to get launched. We have a team here that helps our customers get up and running. There’s support everywhere. We have so many help articles. I don’t know, like, how big our academy team has gotten, but there’s so many help articles and videos and everything. We’re really confident that customers can get up and running within an hour because you don’t have to start from scratch. That’s what Steph was talking about. Like you can just use what you’re using today. And this is again, what we’re talking about, like complementing, like a lot of times customers think like, oh, I need to have two separate flows, like one for email, one for SMS. And that’s the problem because a lot of brands are just thinking of like email and SMS are just two different tools, two different systems. In Klaviyo, Klaviyo is a marketing automation solution and we have email and SMS together. So just create one flow. Close so that you can have like, because I don’t know if this has happened to you, it’s happened to me plenty of times. I’ve gotten an email and a text message at the same time when I sign up for a brand or when I abandon my cart. And that’s an immediate opt-out. Like I’m definitely opting out of one of those channels, probably both, just because I’m like, this is just annoying. And with Klaviyo, like you can easily see and make sure that that doesn’t happen.

Vira: 23:52

Wow. Yeah.

Alissa: 23:53

So in terms of, so now that we’re kind of going down like this side of things with setup and So obviously it’s very easy to get SMS set up and you don’t really have to make a ton of changes in what you’ve already got going automation-wise when it comes to your emails, like your flows and everything. But can you create like different flows altogether for SMS? Like can you create or trigger event-based SMS or SMS messages? Well, I don’t even know how you would say this ’cause I know SMS does have messages in it, but can you trigger event-based text messages or like create separate automations? Are there flows that you can do with SMS? What does that look like?

Navin: 24:32

Yes to all.

Stephanie: 24:33

1000%.

Navin: 24:34

Yes.

Vira: 24:34

Yeah.

Navin: 24:35

Yes. Yes to all. The easiest way that I’ll describe this is if you’re sending an event to Klaviyo and an event in Klaviyo is just basically like if someone signed up or made a purchase coming from like your e-com platform, as long as those events are coming into Klaviyo, you can trigger an SMS-specific flow, an email-specific flow, or an SMS email flow together off of those events. Like what are One of the biggest questions that I get, one of, one of the most prominent use cases is like shipping updates. People want to send text messages around shipping updates because like shipping is an urgent matter and you want that, you want them to know it in SMS. That’s exactly what that’s there for. You can do that as long as you’re sending the events to Klaviyo, like fulfilled order, shipped order, whatever you want to, you can absolutely trigger an SMS-specific flow off of that.

Vira: 25:19

That’s awesome.

Alissa: 25:20

Yeah.

Stephanie: 25:20

And then from a user-friendly perspective, I know Alissa and Vira, you’re very familiar with this, but I mean, Klaviyo makes it easy if you go into our flow builder and just browse ideas. We have a ton of pre-built SMS flows available for those who are just kind of starting off and venturing this new channel for the first time.

Vira: 25:42

Yeah, that’s super cool. One more question. I’m a very rookie when it comes to SMS. I just started learning it myself a few months ago. So how would you say, like, when should I focus more on emails and when should I focus more on SMS? How should I know, like, what to send first? Say, like, for for the sale or for the abandonment cart? What are sort of like the principles you use to decide what is like more important in a way?

Navin: 26:09

Yeah, I think the way that I like to think about it, like email is best for like long-form content or image-heavy content, something that like people might want to save to be able to go back to or like definitely like content like that you want to like share with others. SMS is perfect for like, like we’ve been talking about, like time-sensitive messages, reminders or like notifications. And one of the other really big things about SMS and like Klaviyo has a functionality called like SMS conversations. It’s that personalized conversation with a brand. So like, I don’t know if you’ve done this, I’ve definitely done this. You get a text message, you can reply back and then the brand is conversing with you directly. That’s huge. You can’t do that with email. With SMS, you can do that and you can do it with Klaviyo. That is a game changer. So that’s done. I mean, you can’t do it with email. So that’s when SMS makes the most sense.

Vira: 26:58

Right, right.

Alissa: 27:00

Yeah. And that like replying back and forth functionality is huge. Like as soon as that got rolled out, our clients were like, okay, we need to hire someone who’s going to be answering text messages and doing this. And I’m like, oh my gosh, here we go. The complexity continues. But yeah, that’s awesome. That’s awesome.

Vira: 27:21

Cool. So guys, we started briefly talking about how Klaviyo can be in a way omnichannel platform for SMS and email. But what What about other SMS marketing platforms? A lot of my clients, they use like other platforms like Emotive in the past. Do you think they should like keep using it or like move to Klaviyo? Like what are the pros and cons of using the third-party app?

Navin: 27:44

So you’re talking to a salesperson. So it’s really hard for me not to just like jump, jump on this one. But no, but no, in all honesty, I think a lot of the SMS solutions that are out there are really good for like testing SMS because a lot of customers are just like, let’s just see what’s out there. And they’re just like trying the solution. I think the way that Klaviyo has built our SMS program and some of the new features that we’ve released have helped brands realize like they can test it in Klaviyo even easier and faster and get things launched really quickly. So I think like a couple of months ago, like those are really good tools to get started with. Now we’ve made some changes with like, like you talked about the SMS conversation. Notifications, consent at checkout. Those are some of the big ones and two-step signup forms. Now we have a lot of those things just prebuilt in the tool. So I’m seeing a lot of customers who are brand new to SMS just get started on Klaviyo. So I think that you can definitely see that. The reason why so many— and there’s a lot of different reasons why customers will choose Klaviyo’s SMS functionality over some of the other platforms that are out there. But I really like to sum it up in 3 key points. The first one is just subscriber experience. Like I talked about, I hate I hate, I loathe getting an email and an SMS at the same time. And I’m sure that the majority of people feel the same way. With Klaviyo, you could build a flow like I talked about, and you can see, okay, if this person gets an SMS, don’t send them an email. If this person gets an email, don’t send them an SMS. The other really cool thing is like in Klaviyo, you could set up like a conditional split that says if someone has engaged with an email recently, don’t send them a text message because maybe they are email engagers. So that, that’s the number one reason is a subscriber experience. You just want your subscribers to hear from you in the channel that they want to, and that’s really important. The second reason why customers choose Klaviyo is just segmentation. Klaviyo has grown as quickly as we have because we ingest data so well and so quickly and in a way that our customers can use it really effectively. So you can get very granular in Klaviyo. And that’s really important because you don’t want to be blasting your entire list the same SMS message because again, SMS is so personal. Like you want to break it down based off of like, does— is Is someone shopping for polos or shorts? Like, are they located on the East Coast or the West Coast? Because maybe there’s different seasons and clothing that you like. There’s a lot of different things that you want to segment off of. And that segmentation is so important to create that granular grouping. So that’s the number 2 reason. The 3rd reason is attribution. I know a lot of brands use GA for—

Alissa: 30:16

This is a big one.

Navin: 30:17

Yeah, it’s a good— definitely is. I know a lot of brands use GA for analytics and attribution, and I’m not taking anything away from it. Most of my customers use GA. However, there’s always that small chance that you get like an executive, the owner, the head of marketing that just goes into like the platform and they’re like, wait a second, like what happened to all of our revenue? Like, where is this going? I actually have a customer that was using like another SMS solution and their, I think it was a CFO jumped on the call and was like, what happened? Like, where did all of our money go? And I was like, okay, let’s look at this. Like I went through all of their emails, their flows, everything. They didn’t make any changes. It’s like I signed up on their website and I got a text message. And I was like, like, you’re cannibalizing one channel with another. If you don’t have one system, it’s impossible to see that. And with Klaviyo, what’s really cool is we have what’s called last touch attribution. So we can tell you, was it an email or was it an SMS that drove that sale? Whereas if you’re using a point solution, someone could click on a text message, not buy, and then click on an email and purchase. And that SMS solution is going to take credit, rightfully so, because the technology that they’re using says if you click on it and buy, we’re going to count that revenue, but you know that it was the email that drove that sale. With Klaviyo, the last-touch attribution easily shows you that.

Vira: 31:35

Yeah. So in other words, when you use like an omnichannel platform, you’re not risking losing your sales and accurate reporting, which is very, very important and obviously the ideal customer experience as well. So that’s, that’s nice.

Alissa: 31:50

So in terms of like dos and don’ts, right? So we have an idea of like the dos, right? Do it, try it. But in terms of the don’ts, I know because SMS marketing is still relatively new, there isn’t a ton of information out there about what you should or shouldn’t do. But let’s talk about the don’ts of SMS marketing. Is there anything that falls within that realm? Like, is there any such thing as like sender’s reputation in SMS marketing, or like the best sending hours or the worst sending hours? Like, what does that look like when when it comes to SMS marketing?

Stephanie: 32:25

Before we even get into sending hours, I would say don’t communicate to your customers the way you want to. Really ask your customers how they wanna be communicated to, and from there you can really segment and just communicate in a way that’s acceptable to them. So I think that’s kind of like the first rule out there that brands should really follow when they’re testing are requesting SMS and you can ask them that question within their email signup forms, for example. So I would definitely start there.

Vira: 32:59

Yeah. How would you ask that? Like, what’s the sort of like the mechanics behind it?

Stephanie: 33:03

Literally within a signup form, there’s an option to kind of request a customer to input their phone number. So if someone’s doing that, then they’re kind of, kind of giving that okay. Whereas if you have a customer base who’s not engaging with that question, then that’s kind of a major red flag there.

Vira: 33:24

Right, right. And that’s interesting because we split tested the forms like with and without the phone number, and I was like pleasantly surprised how many people actually want to receive SMS from the brand. So that was interesting to see.

Alissa: 33:37

So in terms of sending hours, is there anything on that?

Vira: 33:42

That’s a good one.

Navin: 33:44

Yeah, I think there’s definitely like there’s been a lot of discussion around like sending hours, quiet hours, things like that. I think like personally, I don’t want to get text messages like when I’m sleeping, like middle of the night. Like that’s, that’s really frustrating. But I was talking to a brand, I forget which brand it was. And they’re like, you know, that makes sense, Navin. But like, we have customers that buy at 2 o’clock in the morning and like, if they buy and we have a transactional SMS message going out of like, like expect a order confirmation to your phone, like they don’t want to wait until 8 AM. So like, it’s really tough to say like, yeah, you need to enforce like quiet hours. I think you could ask this in a signup form. You could ask this like a preferences page, but like you can ask ask a lot of ways, like how you want to be communicated, when you want to be communicated with, and you can set that in the flows or campaigns that you’re sending out. It’s like quiet hours, don’t send hours. I think it’s one of those each brand is going to decide on their own. I think that there’s some, there’s some validity to both sides of that argument. So I think that that’s there. Some of the other, I think the overall question was like, don’t— and Steph mentioned, she was absolutely right, like don’t just assume you know what your customers want, ask them what they want. But some of the hard and fast Don’t send multiple messages in an abandoned cart flow. You just don’t want to do that. People are going to unsubscribe. It’s not a good practice. It’s like you don’t want to do that. And there are carriers that are now looking at really enforcing, like, you send one message in an abandoned cart flow. So I think that that’s something that’s really important. A big thing that a lot of customers don’t realize is character limits. Like an SMS message allows for 100 characters and an SMS message is text, link, or emojis. An MMS message allows for 1,600 characters. You can include an image or a GIF there. I’ve had customers that have sent paragraphs as an SMS and it turns out to be like 5 or 6 text messages to each person they’re sending. And that’s a definite don’t. Yeah, you can’t, because I think what happens is a lot of a lot of brands like, okay, I’m sending really good emails, I’m just going to take that email and send it as a text.

Alissa: 35:45

Oh my gosh.

Navin: 35:47

Yeah, exactly. Like, what you need to do is really, really think about it, really dial it back, and just get really laser focused to try to— or not to try to fit it into 160 characters to send. That’s, that’s a big don’t. Like, don’t send text message that has 5 messages because it’s going to look bad.

Alissa: 36:06

Jeez. Louise, so this isn’t necessarily a don’t, but is there like a functionality where you could do like— I’m just pulling this from what I know about how, like, how we send emails, but is there a way to do like exploratory sends so that you can understand what the best send time is for SMS?

Navin: 36:21

We do have customers that are like manually tracking this just because again, SMS marketing is still like, like they’ll send something in the early day, midday, afternoon, things like that. I know we’re talking SMS overall. I’ll narrow it down to Klaviyo. Klaviyo’s data science team is actively working on some really cool features for SMS. When I talked about Klaviyo being a marketing automation platform and email and SMS being channels that we run. The way that I like to explain this is what we’re doing for email, we’re going to have for SMS. So like send time optimization, that’s something that we’re absolutely developing. Our data science team, who I absolutely love, like they do great work. They’re working on this, they’re scoping it out, they’re building it out. So we will have that. But like right now our customers are— because again, it’s kind of new and it’s still new.

Alissa: 37:03

It’s still new.

Vira: 37:04

Yeah.

Navin: 37:05

Sure.

Alissa: 37:05

But that’s exciting.

Navin: 37:06

Yeah, yeah, their list might be small. So like, our data science team are true scientists. Like, I’ve gotten in trouble being like, hey, can you just give me some answers? Like, we don’t have enough data for it to be statistically significant, so like, you need to wait. Um, so they’re doing, they’re doing great work and it will come. But yeah, you can test it on your own.

Alissa: 37:23

That’s awesome. That’s very cool. That’s good to know that it’s coming.

Vira: 37:26

I love your data science team, these guys. Oh my goodness, I’m waiting for their reports every month, you know, this like Benchmark reports, it’s like I’m throwing a party every time I receive them because they’re like so detailed and like so much valuable insights there. That’s insane. That’s why we love this platform just because of the amount of data you can get from Klaviyo.

Alissa: 37:47

Yeah, truly, truly. And then in terms of this is going, so we’re flashing back over to the don’ts. So this is the last one. I know of someone who wants to do this and I’m like, please don’t do it. But in In terms of not even having SMS or not even having text messages go out as a complement to what they already have in the flows. But what do you say to like SMS campaigns twice a day, 5 times a week? Is that a don’t?

Navin: 38:14

Definitely don’t. I mean, I can’t tell a business how to run their business, but you’re going— how do I put this? I know it sounds weird for like a salesperson to be saying this, but you’re You’re just gonna be charging yourself so much money for not getting like the ROI that you’re looking for. Like, in my opinion, like sending 1 or 2 campaigns a week might be pushing it. Again, it depends on the brand. I have the big thing here. Here’s what I’ll say. I do have brands that send like 3 or 4 campaigns out per week, but they are sending targeted campaigns. And I would say 80% of their messages are lifestyle, educational. They’re not promotional. So they’re really using SMS as that way to build a customer journey and to build brand loyalty, which 1,000%, that’s, that’s a great way to do it. And you can definitely send messages and it’s a phenomenal way to kind of build up your customer. But if you’re sending 2 messages a day, 5 days a week with like, just like buy now, buy now, buy now, like you’re not going to see the return you’re looking for. And you might get a spike for like the first week, but then people are going to be tuning you out. And if people like, how many times have we talked about fighting for the inbox with email? Think about fighting for someone’s phone. If they tune you out, like I opt out of text message, SMS marketing, like ridiculously fast just because it is such a part. Like this is like, and again, it’s bad, but like I am on my phone all the time. I don’t want to have to look at my phone for something that doesn’t matter to me. And if you’re sending me 10, 15, 20 messages a week, I’m definitely not paying attention to you anymore.

Alissa: 39:46

Yeah. Yeah. I’m with you there. I’m 100% with you there.

Vira: 39:50

And this was supposed to be our last question, but I have one last, last question. How do you actually track how successful your campaign is? Obviously the revenue, but does it make sense to track the open rates at all? Because like, I don’t know about you guys, but I like read probably 99.9% of my SMS messages. So does it make sense at all to track the open rates?

Navin: 40:13

Because the way that SMS is set up, Klaviyo actually doesn’t track open rates just because that number is so like— you’re right, like if someone opens their message, like, does that even count? No, because they could just be looking at another text message. They could look at their phone because it buzzed, expect it to be like a friend texting them for dinner, and they got your message and they technically opened it, but they don’t— like, it’s actually annoying them. So Klaviyo does track engagement data. I do think it is really valuable to track engagement data, like click rates. I actually recommend to customers to like create segments in Klaviyo around engagements or engagement rates. Like if someone has clicked on a text message, you know, at least 3 times in in the last week, 2 weeks, depending on whatever your sending strategy is, maybe put them in a different type of campaign because you know that they’re engaging with your content. Maybe it’s one where instead of sending them like a promotional message, send them a question, let them reply to you, and then have a conversation with them. So I, I do think it is really valuable to like track engagement data. I mean, I think revenue is probably the big one right now that a lot of our customers are focused on, but I do that click and engagement data is really powerful.

Vira: 41:18

Right, right. Well, thank you so much, Stephanie and Navin.

Alissa: 41:22

Yeah. Thank you, guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Vira: 41:25

You answered like a ton of questions. We would love to have you again on our podcast because I have approximately like 2 pages more of questions. Seriously, where people can find you if they have more questions? Where can our listeners go to find you?

Navin: 41:41

Yeah, I’m on, I’m on LinkedIn. I’m Navin Jain. I’ll make sure that, um, or I get my information out to the, uh, to the Flowium team. You can tag me, you can share my email, my LinkedIn. I— here, I’ll put it out there— I am consenting to people to text me. I’ll give you my phone number. Um, so listen, if I’m selling SMS, I like to, I like to have conversations with people through SMS. I’ve done it. Um, that’s great. So there’s a lot of ways you can connect with me. I’ll make sure that we get this information, and, and your team can absolutely share this.

Vira: 42:10

Awesome. It’d be nice if sometimes you can just like reply stop to people that you don’t want to hear from, right? Stop.

Alissa: 42:17

To your friends, like, please stop. I’m opting out. Thank you.

Vira: 42:21

Steph, how can people find you?

Stephanie: 42:24

Yes, I’m on LinkedIn as well. People can email me at steph.flynn@klaviyo.com. And I, in addition to Navin, am also consenting to SMS messages.

Vira: 42:39

But you guys don’t ask like too much questions, just like be, because otherwise they can just like respond stop. Yeah, that’s how Klaviyo works.

Alissa: 42:48

Don’t text stop to opt out. Thank you guys again so much. Honestly, this was awesome and you made it through the hot seat and we appreciate that. We were a little harsh in the beginning, but I mean, this is great and it’s very helpful for us, especially when we work with our clients and it’s helpful for all our listeners out there. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Vira: 43:04

You sold SMS to Alissa, and that’s a big one.

Alissa: 43:07

Me, of all people, to me, of all people, before we have—

Vira: 43:11

She was the biggest skeptic in our team.

Alissa: 43:15

Yeah, people talk about it and I’m like, here we go, now we have to talk about SMS. Let’s go, let’s get it done. Um, but thank you guys so much. For all of you listening out there, please don’t forget to subscribe and share this podcast with your friends. And if you like like what we do, please leave us a review. If you do wanna get involved in a community, join us over at flowium.com/community. We talk about a lot of things related to Klaviyo as well. So, and sometimes you’ll even see some of the Klaviyo crew kind of hop in there too. So if you want more from Steph and Navin, don’t forget to check the links in the podcast description where you can find more information on how to connect with them. If you’re interested in finding out more about SMS, they are very clearly SMS MS Einsteins. So make sure that you, you take advantage of the resource that, that they are to us.

Vira: 44:04

Yeah, it was really nice having you today, guys. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

Navin: 44:08

Thank you for including us. Um, always happy to have these conversations.

Alissa: 44:12

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Vira: 44:14

And you guys, come back next time. It’s our— it’s going to be our 52nd episode, to those who are listening to us for a year. So we’ll be celebrating a whole year.

Navin: 44:24

Congratulations. Amazing work.

Vira: 44:26

So yes.

Alissa: 44:27

So you guys, Vira is the worst to work with. So it’s been, it’s been a hard year for me, but it’s been a hard year for us.

Vira: 44:34

Alissa is terrible to work with. That’s why. Yeah, but we survived. So celebrating one year next week and next week we will be talking about the proven e-commerce conversion rate optimization hacks. What’s the best way? What the better way to celebrate the birthday or anniversary? Right, right. So come back. Next Tuesday and we’ll have something fun for you guys.

Alissa: 44:58

Awesome.

Vira: 44:58

Thank you so much for listening.

Alissa: 45:00

Thank you, guys.

Navin: 45:01

Thank you.