As an Account Manager or someone who’s involved in the email-marketing world you will understand how choosing the right platform ensures the perfect path for your online business success. 

In this blog post, you will have the chance to get to know a bit more about the features, pros and cons of two marketing tools: Klaviyo and Mailchimp. Both platforms offer powerful features to support businesses strategies, however there are differences between the two, of course depending on your needs, budget or target this information will help you to create a clearer opinion in which tool fits best for you and your business. 

Features

1. Customer Data

A detailed profile for each one of your customers based on useful information allows you to better understand how to optimize your next campaign by personalized emails.  Customer data can be acquired thanks to the integrations each platform has access to. 

Mailchimp has over 240 integrations included, versus Klaviyo with 110. Despite doubling the number,  Mailchimp only has access to ShopSync, which syncs information from Shopify. Klaviyo in the other hand has a tight integration with Shopify directly and this helps to drive sales in a more targeted and relevant way through email marketing.

2. Segmentation

This feature divides a powerful platform from an average tool and it’s because the use of personalization when it comes to getting to know your customer outsells the feeling you want them to perceive. 

Klaviyo allows you to segment using special events and behavior activity for each profile through automatically updates. The use of dynamic segments and lists helped to highly target. Mailchimp provides pre-built segments based on campaign activity, history of purchases and allows reaching profiles with similar characteristics. Advanced segmentation is not included in basic plans as Klaviyo, and doesn’t let you play around with information because it only keeps location and signup source as based while Klaviyo uses unique behavior per customer’s events. 

3.  Automation

Building your customer’s journey ensures receiving the perfect message at the perfect time.  Mailchimp meets the ease to use function with pre-built journeys and guidance for custom experiences, it’s a very friendly and helpful platform with easy features like drag and drop, which offers basic email automation like abandoned cart and retargeting. 

Klaviyo is a more robust platform, allows to set up automated triggers emails based on behaviors, like a promotion engagement or if a profile viewed the site lately. You can virtually create unlimited number of automated flows in Klaviyo, the usual number being 10 and going upto 50 for a single store!

This platform leverages customer lifetime value with the use of A/B testing to help understand the customer in types of content, subject lines and smart sending.

4. Reporting 

This feature does not represent difference between the 2 platforms. Both cover revenue tracking per campaign, open and click rates, how many unsubscribed and a comparison from past campaigns.  Klaviyo has a dashboard view with basic metrics like total Store revenue, Revenue From Klaviyo, and a breakup of revenue from Flows and Campaigns. Klaviyo allows more narrowed down reports with metrics on both campaigns and flows.

5. Price

Both Mailchimp and Klaviyo calculate a monthly pricing based on the number of contacts in your email list. For upto 20,000 contacts Mailchimp costs $420, while Klaviyo costs less at $375. But after 50,000 contacts, Klaviyo costs $700 per month, while Mailchimp is cheaper at $625/mo.

For a store with a >50k list, Klaviyo does come at a higher cost, however it’s very transparent when it comes to zero hidden fees, you pay for the creation of an account, import and sync data, and customize templates and emails.

Conclusion

Evaluating the variety of email marketing tools available is the best advice I can provide in case you are looking for a platform to start your eCommerce business. As an Account manager with over 3 years in experience and someone who has used both platforms I can tell the importance of considering the features is high in order to accomplish the goals you set to start, remember that what works for one is not exactly what other one needs. I would dear to say Mailchimp is a friendlier tool for beginners and small businesses, and Klaviyo in the other hand is the perfect package for growing businesses and data driven marketers. Expectations are mentioned but decisions are made up to you.