Klaviyo and Mailchimp are popular email marketing systems with unique features for improving online business communications across several industries. Both marketing solutions allow business owners to connect with different audiences, engaging customers with relevant emails to build profitable relationships.
If you’re a business owner looking to consider an eCommerce system like Klaviyo or a robust marketing automation tool like Mailchimp, this article is for you. We’ve explored several distinct features and areas that make them tailored to specific businesses.
At the end of this piece, you will be able to identify the most suitable email marketing platform for your business as we cover the key features, pricing, ease of use, and reviews from real users.
Table of Contents
Klaviyo Overview
Klaviyo is a cloud-based marketing automation tool for eCommerce brands. In addition to email marketing as its core offering, it supports expanded functionalities for SMS and mobile push notifications, as well as other AI-powered solutions.
Klaviyo is also a customer data platform with robust data management and processing capability for providing valuable customer insights and reports. The CDP functionality is separate from the email marketing solution. However, it enables seamless data sync to give you a comprehensive view of your customers.
Klaviyo was launched in 2012 by co-founders Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen to help companies drive revenue with data-driven and personalized marketing. Built for eCommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, etc., Klaviyo empowers over 143,000 companies with advanced features for creating personalized customer experiences.
Key Features
Here are some details about the marketing features offered by Klaviyo.
Mobile push notifications
Klaviyo offers unlimited push notifications to keep customers engaged on mobile. This feature allows you to convey important messages, share updates, make announcements, promote special offers, or win back inactive users.
Moreover, using your customer data, you can create more personalized designs relevant to your audience. The messages appear as a pop-up on the home screen or notification center. They are usually short, straightforward, and captivating.
Contact segmentation
With contact segmentation, you can fragment your list into smaller audiences with similar attributes and predefined criteria. The segmentation builder uses real-time customer data to target customers based on location, purchase history, engagement, product/page views, etc.
Also, your segments update in real-time, so you can always send relevant and timely emails to recipients regardless of their behavior and interactions with your brand.
Automated workflows
Klaviyo lets you scale your marketing campaign efforts by offering tailored features that eliminate repetitive, time-consuming, and mundane tasks. Workflow automation enables you to build unique customer journeys that trigger timely responses to user actions.
Even more, Klaviyo offers over 60 pre-built, customizable flow templates for multiple instances. With refined segmentation and well-crafted emails, you can set up triggers to deliver the most appropriate message whenever a subscriber takes a corresponding action.
Examples of these emails may include welcome series, abandoned cart reminders, price drop reminders, birthdays, post-purchase follow-ups, etc.
Advanced reporting
Klaviyo provides a robust reporting tool for tracking key metrics, analyzing customer data, and gaining insights from trends and patterns. In addition, it lets you understand your customer behavior, providing enough information to help you optimize your strategies and improve your performance.
The data visualization software supports one-view reporting, consolidating data from multiple sources in a single dashboard. This gives you a comprehensive view to uncover trends, monitor performance, and close marketing gaps.
Email marketing
Klaviyo’s email marketing feature lets you create high-quality emails that reach the primary inbox. There are over 100 customizable templates to suit your brand style and needs, thus helping you create engaging emails in minutes, even if you don’t know how to code.
The email marketing solution is also powered by AI, enabling you to add dynamic product recommendations, personalize emails using real-time customer data, and generate compelling subject lines that attract email opens.
SMS marketing
In addition to email marketing, Klaviyo lets you engage your customers through SMS or MMS messages. Although a different channel, it is much more similar to email marketing.
Klaviyo’s SMS assistant lets you craft short, compelling copy to boost conversions. The Suggested Response tool provides quick recommended replies to enhance your response time and keep your recipients engaged.
Pricing Plans
Klaviyo’s pricing plans are straightforward, offering tailored features for different business needs. It doesn’t support free trials; however, it has a free plan that allows 500 email sends and 150 SMS/MMS credits monthly. But you’re limited to 250 contacts.
The two major pricing plans include (for up to 1,500 contacts):
- Email and SMS: $60 per month for 1,250 SMS/MMS credits and 15,000 email sends
- Email: $45 per month for 150 SMS/MMS credits and 15,000 email sends
While the email features are available worldwide, Klaviyo SMS is currently available in nine countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Ireland.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Klaviyo supports advanced features for eCommerce brands
- It has in-depth data insights and email analytics
- It has great list management and segmentation capabilities
- It offers seamless integrations with eCommerce platforms like Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, etc.
Cons
- The customization features are limited
- It has a steep learning curve
- It may not be an affordable option for businesses on a low budget
- Customer support is not available on all tiers
User Reviews
Capterra rating: 4.7 (426 reviews)
See what real users are saying about Klaviyo:
Read also: Top Klaviyo Alternatives to Propel Your eCommerce Business Growth
Mailchimp Overview
Mailchimp is an all-in-one marketing automation platform that empowers businesses to create lasting customer relationships. It achieves this by offering specific email marketing and automation features to run targeted campaigns across multiple channels.
Unlike Klaviyo, Mailchimp is not a customer data platform. However, it supports more robust features for crafting and delivering timely and relevant emails. It also offers advanced marketing automation solutions for nurturing customers and enhancing personalization, regardless of their positions in the funnel.
Mailchimp was founded in Atlanta, Georgia, in 2001. It was built to help digital marketers engage customers across social media, emails, and other channels. Over the years, Mailchimp has optimized its features to suit large and small businesses alike.
Key Features
Here are some details about the marketing features Mailchimp offers.
Customer journey builder
Mailchimp’s Customer Journey Builder uses automated processes to engage and nurture customers with messages that appeal to their needs and interests. It enhances email personalization, as you can set up trigger automation based on preset conditions using your customer data.
You can either build your customer journey map from scratch or use a library of fully customizable pre-built journeys. This map lets you visualize the different routes your contacts can take before converting. With this insight, you can craft personalized, targeted campaigns to enhance customer engagement while aligning with your overall marketing goals.
Content studio
With Content Studio, you can manage digital assets like images, documents, graphics, products, and other marketing files in one place. This simplifies email creation and enables streamlined data sync to store and organize your files in a central location for quick access.
Moreover, it supports a built-in photo editor that enables you to enhance and optimize your images. This feature lets you create a cohesive and consistent brand experience, regardless of your marketing channel.
Predictive demographics
The predictive demographics feature gives you insights into your customer behavior by predicting specific information for contacts in your list, even if they haven’t engaged with your campaign in the past. This helps you understand your customers better.
With predictive insights, you can develop tailored plans and strategies to create content relevant to specific users. Also, identifying segments most likely to convert can help you streamline your marketing efforts to prioritize and nurture profitable contacts.
Landing pages and sign-up forms
Mailchimp lets you collect customer data from multiple sources by offering easy-to-use landing pages and sign-up form builders. The sign-up or pop-up form provides specific fields to collect contact information like name, phone number, email address, etc.
The form can either appear as a pop-up or be embedded on a website or landing page. Mailchimp provides several customizable templates to help you design attractive landing pages and forms that increase conversions.
Dynamic content
Since your customers have varying preferences and needs, one way to capture their interest is by delivering relevant messages that appeal to them. Mailchimp makes this possible by helping you create multiple versions of emails tailored to different contacts.
This process streamlines your email personalization, allowing you to deliver more optimized content without extra work. The Dynamic Content feature uses customer data to understand user behavior so you can tailor the right content to targeted audience segments.
Marketing CRM
Mailchimp provides a basic customer relationship management solution that gathers customer data in one central location and gives you a holistic view of your customer journey across multiple touchpoints.
With the CRM tool, you can organize, manage, and analyze customer data to improve your marketing strategy and discover sales opportunities. The CRM reports and analytics dashboard can help you identify patterns and trends in customer behavior. With these insights, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing strategy over time while finding areas for improvement.
Pricing Plans
Unlike Klaviyo, Mailchimp has a more flexible pricing structure that is well-suited for businesses of varying sizes and needs. In addition to the free plan, a one-month free trial is available for the Standard and Essentials plans. The major pricing plans include (for 1,500 contacts):
- Essentials: $13.25/month
- Standard: $22.50/month
- Premium: $175/month
Mailchimp also offers a unique pricing model, the Pay As You Go (PAYG) plan, for businesses without specific monthly sends or inconsistent audience size. This way, businesses can only pay for emails they send without worrying about paying a monthly recurring fee for features they may likely not use.
Mailchimp offers verified charities and nonprofit organizations a 15% discount on certain features. This enables them to build solid relationships with donors and members on a low marketing budget.
Read more here: Mailchimp Pricing and Comparison with Competitors
Mailchimp Pros and Cons
Pros
- It has a flexible pricing model
- It supports advanced email marketing functionalities
- It is intuitive and easy to use
- It supports seamless integrations with popular third-party apps
Cons
- The website builder is very basic
- The free plan doesn’t support email scheduling
- Phone support is only available on the Premium plan
User Reviews
Capterra rating: 4.5 (16,885 reviews)
See what real users are saying about Mailchimp:
Klaviyo vs Mailchimp: A Side-by-Side Comparison
Klaviyo and Mailchimp are two essential marketing tools for business owners across several industries. While they generally offer similar functionalities, other distinct features make them well-suited for specific marketing operations. Here is a detailed comparison of both systems:
Key Features
| Features | Klaviyo | Mailchimp |
| eCommerce | Advanced eCommerce automation with 300+ built-in eCommerce integrations | Basic eCommerce features. It supports integrations with some eCommerce platforms |
| Audience management | CDP – supports customer data management and seamless data sync to gather data from your tech stack in one central location | CRM – organize, store, and analyze user data to create personalized experiences and build solid relationships |
| Content creation | Offers basic email creation tools | Offers advanced features like content optimizer, content studio, creative assistant, dynamic content, and subject line helper |
| Major marketing channels | Email, SMS, and mobile push notifications | Emails only |
| Analytics and Reporting | Benchmarks, multi-channel data visualization, report templates, conversion tracking | Predictive demographics, send time optimization, multivariate and A/B testing, and benchmarks. |
| AI marketing | Predictive insights, smart send time, subject line AI | Generative AI, smart recommendations, creative assistant |
| Ease of use | With its advanced features, beginners may find it difficult to navigate | It is intuitive and easy to use |
Pricing
| Klaviyo | Mailchimp | |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | N/A | One-month free trial |
| Nonprofits | No discount | 15% discount |
| Pricing plans
(for 1,500 contacts) |
|
|
| PAYG plan | N/A | Yes |
| Target audience | Large eCommerce brands with high volumes of customer data | Small or large brands that need a platform for engaging customers and running targeted marketing campaigns. |
Support
| Klaviyo | Mailchimp |
| 1. Email support
2. Live chat 3. Community forum 4. Academy |
1. Email support
2. Chat support 3. Phone support 4. Knowledge base 5. Mailchimp Assistant 6. Community forum |
Read also: 5 eCommerce Email Marketing Software to Help You Sell More
Which Email Marketing Platform is More Suitable for Your Business: Klaviyo or Mailchimp?
Klaviyo and Mailchimp are two powerful marketing solutions with distinct offerings and operations. While Mailchimp offers robust features to help marketing teams run targeted campaigns, Klaviyo is more tailored to large eCommerce brands, helping online merchants manage customer data and boosting revenue through increased sales.
Both platforms support well-built features for different business processes. So, you can only compare their capabilities relative to your business type, size, and mode of operation.
Your choice depends largely on several factors, such as your industry, business goals, marketing budget, team size, audience type, company structure, and mode of operation.
Understanding these criteria can help you choose the right tool for your business framework. This way, you can maximize their capabilities in retail, manufacturing, agriculture, or technology.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the main differences between Klaviyo and Mailchimp?
Klaviyo is a marketing platform offering email, SMS, and mobile push functionalities. It is specifically designed for eCommerce brands. In contrast, Mailchimp offers a more general and advanced email marketing solution across several industries.
Which platform is more cost-effective for small businesses?
Mailchimp is more cost-effective for small businesses. Starting at $13, you can access basic features for building simple automated workflows and running optimized marketing campaigns.
How easy is it to migrate from Mailchimp to Klaviyo?
Check out this guide on migrating from Mailchimp to Klaviyo.
Can I integrate either platform with my existing CRM?
Yes, Klaviyo and Mailchimp support seamless integrations with popular CRM systems like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Neon CRM, Insightly, etc.
Which email marketing service is better for eCommerce businesses?
Klaviyo has more advanced and robust features for eCommerce brands.
