It is a universal truth that streamlining your marketing efforts is crucial for both sanity and better outcomes. 

When it comes to email and SMS, why scatter your energy and attention across multiple platforms? After years of experimenting and testing the most popular SMS options, I’d like to share a few benefits that you’ll get from sticking to one tool.

1. Better customer experience

When using the same tool for both email and SMS, you can use readily available information to improve the communication you send customers. 

Easily filter out customers between channels

Let's say, as a customer, I've given you both my email and number. You're launching a new loyalty program, and you send me a text about it. If I click it, I don't need an email telling me the exact same thing. In just a few steps, you can easily create a segment of all subscribers who clicked the SMS in order to exclude them from the email you're sending 2 hours later.

The same can be automated for your flows. 

Flow splits for optimized sends

When you collect emails and numbers in your welcome pop-up, you'll want to send your offer to both devices. Further in the flow, however, you should avoid over-sending. 

Using flow splits you can very easily and reliably avoid sending the same content to customers if they already interacted with it in one type of message. 

You'll also be able to use this information to interact with your customers in their preferred way moving forward. If you find that certain customers ignore your emails in a flow you can set up a system to prioritize texting them in the future. 

On top of your email vs SMS flow splits, you can get even more granular by segmenting messages based on customers' Average Order Value, their location, their lifetime value, and so on. 

All of this adds up to a more intentional, fine-tuned interaction with your list. 

Not only are you 'meeting' customers where they're most comfortable, but you're also engaging in a way that minimizes the risk of unsubscribes. It's about creating a customer-centric communication strategy that truly resonates.

“Fuel Made leverages Klaviyo email and SMS under one roof to generate a holistic view of their client’s data ecosystem. This platform consolidation allows their team to create timely, informed marketing decisions to not only deliver great client results but also a deeply personalized customer experience for subscribers.” - Dan Goldstein, SMS Partnerships Manager @ Klaviyo

2. Ease of use 

Let's talk about how your life can be made easier as well. 

Fewer clicks and mistakes

The beauty of using a single tool like Klaviyo is that it consolidates your efforts. Imagine building out your strategies and seeing every touchpoint in one unified space—no toggling between tabs, no endless clicking. 

It's a game-changer. You're much more likely to send the correct communication at the right time while avoiding mistakes. 

Klaviyo also recently launched an option to turn your Campaign Emails into Campaign SMS. After scheduling your email campaign, a few clicks will give you an equivalent SMS. How easy is that?!

Easily collect emails and numbers together

When building out your lead capture pop-ups, it's much easier to collect all information in a single database. The simplest is to use a two-step Klaviyo subscription form to collect both emails and numbers. 

Moreover, let's say you're using another pop-up tool, such as Justuno, for more advanced designs and strategies. Connecting one form to two different tools becomes tricky and, in some cases, impossible. 

Let's be honest, you're busy, and making your life easier should be a priority. At the end of the day, the simpler it is for you to set things up, the more likely you are to create more advanced strategies that will benefit your customers and your bottom line.  

3. Better data

Let's dive a little deeper into the advanced data you'll have at your fingertips when using Klaviyo for both emails and SMS.

Smart phone number capture

Looking to boost that phone number list? Here's a strategy that's like a double espresso for your sign-ups: 

Any store visitor who has already given you an email will be shown a pop-up asking for a phone number to add to their profile. This is very straightforward to implement in Klaviyo using Segments. 

Now, try pulling that off with separate tools for email and SMS. Other tools can’t effectively know whose email is in your Klaviyo while knowing that they haven't yet consented to SMS. You'd end up missing out on SMS subscribers or, worse, asking already consented profiles to re-sign up. That looks pretty disorganized. 

Making the best of zero-party data

Let's say your brand has a quiz on your site for collecting zero-party data (e.g. shopping for men/women, interested in a specific collection, etc.). You'll likely collect quiz-takers' email addresses at some point in the process and store all this information as custom properties in Klaviyo. 

It would be a real shame if you couldn't use any of this knowledge in your SMS strategy simply because you're using another tool that doesn't access Klaviyo custom properties.

A/B testing

We mentioned earlier that you could use Klaviyo data to understand if customers prefer email or SMS. But there's a lot more you can do in terms of A/B tests and using advanced data. 

In your flows, you can create two branches, organize the content differently (various mixes of SMS and emails), and see the results. You can incorporate tests to see if one sort of SMS works better than the other while seeing how it measures up next to emails. This will help you optimize overall results. 

Advanced features and integrations

You can also make the best use of some of Klaviyo's powerful tools – unique discount codes, being one of them. These codes are created uniquely for each profile and can expire on a certain date. When sending texts alongside emails, you'll be able to incorporate the same discount rather than having to either use static codes that might get shared, or give two different codes, one for each channel. 

Klaviyo's predictive analytics tool is another good addition to your texting strategy. By referencing this powerful trigger, you can send texts when they're most likely to have an impact. 

If you want to have access to a large variety of integrations and customer data, Klaviyo has you covered. Let's say you want to send Order and Shipping Updates, or you want to send information about reviews, back-in-stock notifications, and loyalty program notifications… all this is easy in Klaviyo, and you can likely just add your texts within the same email flows you've already built out. 

Moreover, Klaviyo allows you to seamlessly orchestrate omnichannel touch points across your stack. A great example is your ability to create Lookalike audiences in Meta based off of your Klaviyo segments for improved retargeting. You can also connect your Klaviyo lists to Facebook Lead Generation ads for a very smooth and immediate follow up after someone subscribes. 

4. Optimized costs

Finally, what we're all here for… cost saving!

Compared to other tools

Klaviyo's pricing is very straightforward and is based on how many messages you send. In the US, it's 1 credit ($0.01) per SMS and 3 credits ($0.03) per MMS. The platform warns you when you're going above 1 credit so you avoid surprises. 

We've done the math for a few clients now and found that moving over to Klaviyo would save them hundreds if not thousands of dollars. 

If you're interested in having us do this for you, don't hesitate to reach out here.

Klaviyo offers a month-to-month pricing model and makes it very easy to adjust spending (unlike other tools notorious for locking you in and refusing to release your SMS lists). During Cyber week all our brands enabled Klaviyo's auto-upgrade feature to make sure all SMS campaigns would go out as expected. We then very easily downgraded each account to their usual SMS spending needs. No need to battle with support. 

Spend smartly

Based on what we mentioned previously, you know that you can easily avoid overspending, thanks to easy segmentation, tests, and flow branches. This means you'll save a lot of money by not sending to profiles who don't interact with texts or already took your desired actions via email. You can also prioritize sending emails which are cheaper, and only send texts for special occasions to the right people. 

And, lastly, the most important word we'll talk about today: Attribution. 

5. Better attribution

It's already complicated enough to understand if that sale came from your campaign, from that ad, or directly from a Google search. 

What is working? 

If you send emails and SMS from two different tools, attribution for both those channels relative to each other will be meaningless. They will both take credit for the sale, and you'll never know which is actually converting. 

If you send both from Klaviyo, you will have a much clearer idea of how email and SMS work together. You'll know where your budget should go and you'll better understand what kind of content your audience responds to.

It's important to note that Klaviyo's last touch attribution model only credits one message for each sale. Additionally, their default attribution window is set at a reasonable 5-days, but you have the option to change it if you'd like. 

6. Bonus: You can trust Klaviyo

When it comes to managing your email and SMS marketing, choosing a platform that not only delivers in terms of functionality but also ensures compliance and efficiency is crucial. Klaviyo stands out as a top player in this space for several reasons:

Unwavering compliance:

Klaviyo simplifies the process of keeping customer profiles up-to-date. As your contact lists grow, the platform helps you manage email and SMS consent seamlessly.

SMS compliance becomes tricky with subscribers in your list from different countries. Klaviyo helps you easily comply with regional laws and include appropriate opt-out language, tailored to each region.

On top of all that, Klaviyo comes with built-in consent safeguards and features like “Quiet Hours”, "Smart Sending", and "Consent-only Sending", making it easier and safer to manage your marketing efforts.

Efficient and scalable sending:

Klaviyo excels in handling large-scale, personalized email and SMS campaigns. To put this in perspective, during Black Friday 2023 peak times, Klaviyo reports sending 11.6 Million messages per minute and 375 Million messages per hour. 

Longstanding business partnerships have enabled SMS deliverability over 99%. So as your audience grows, Klaviyo ensures fast and dependable deliverability.

So there you have it! From creating a better customer experience to making your life easier, Klaviyo's got it all, plus the data and cost savings to boot. If you're thinking, 'This sounds great, but where do I even start?'—no worries! We've got your back. Reach out for some one-on-one help.