141. Klaviyo Updates Coming Soon: What You Need to Know

Over the last few weeks, you may have heard some rumblings, some hints, and some mysterious messaging about new things coming to Klaviyo. 

The good news is, this time they remembered to let their partners know about these changes and they explained these changes ahead of time so that we could update and educate our audience. So that’s what today’s episode is all about. 

First, we’ll cover the two big public announcements Klaviyo made on June 23rd, that are definitely confusing people. And a couple of others they made to its partners earlier in the month that are going to be more relevant to you as a small business owner. 

Prefer to listen to this episode? Click here

Klaviyo One – Enterprise Version of the Klaviyo Email Platform

There are a few main features included with the enterprise version of the platform that are generally needed by larger organizations.

SAML and SSO sign-in.

I’m not going to go through all the details of this because while I do understand what it does at a high level I can’t articulate it and honestly, for 99% of you – it’s not needed whatsoever. The easiest way to explain it is like when you use your Google or Facebook account to signup for a platform vs. using your email with a separate password. 

A Better Onboarding Experience

The other feature that’s coming for Klaviyo One is a better onboarding experience. Larger companies with big email lists do already get better onboarding support and a customer success manager, but Klaviyo One is taking it a step further with better migration support from your old tool and more strategic support. 

Increased Customer Support + Shorter Response Times

Additionally, Klaviyo One will come with 24/7 support and priority response time. 

At the time of this recording they haven’t released the pricing of Klaviyo One yet, though it is coming in the next week or so of when this episode is published. 

What Klaivyo One Isn’t

Let’s talk about what Klaviyo One is not. It’s not a gate to a bunch of features that anyone using the standard version of Klaviyo won’t have access too. The main difference is the onboarding, support, and addition of SSO and more detailed user roles for those with really large teams. 

Do You need Klaviyo One?

For 99.9% this is not going to be necessary and I don’t want you to get FOMO when you start hearing this information thrown around. Think of this as a re-positioning in the marketplace for Klaviyo. They have not traditionally been thought of as an enterprise solution, so this is their way of adding on a few things that enterprise-size companies need so they can become a solid competitor in the space. 

Klaviyo CDP – Customer Data Platform

The second big customer-facing announcement was about their CDP, customer data platform. This is also a bit confusing so let’s talk about it. A customer data platform is essentially one source of truth about your customers where you ingest and store data about them so you can make data-driven decisions. 

Your customer profiles, the place where you can have unlimited custom profile properties about your users, where you can connect your eCommerce platform, your rewards platform, your customer service platform and store that data on their profile, where you can create segments in milliseconds based on this data, where you can target different content to different users based on the data that you have about them… that is all being done with Klaviyo’s customer data platform. It’s the basis for Klaviyo. If you are using Klaviyo for your email marketing, you already have this. 

What Klaviyo is doing now, is they are releasing their customer data platform as a standalone product. So even if you don’t use them for email marketing, you can still use their technology to better understand your customers, and you don’t need a developer to identify segments of your customers. 

In the past, most customer data platforms require SQL, a programming language to create segments of customers based on all the data you have – whereas, with Klaviyo, you just use their dropdown menu and parameters to create your segments. 

This is of course a very simplified overview – but again I don’t want you to have FOMO about a CDP when you start hearing that more and more – you already have access to it as a Klaviyo email customer. Again, this is more about repositioning themselves in the market. 

Klaviyo Platform Updates for Everyone

Okay, now let’s talk about some other updates they gave their partners, that they’ll be rolling out over the next few months. 

Klaviyo Segments to Google Ad Audiences

If you run Facebook Ads and use Klaviyo, you may already know that you can use Klaviyo segments to build Facebook Ad Audience. Well, good news because in August they’ll be rolling out audience support for Google Ads as well. This way you can target ads to specific audiences, exclude specific people, and even create lookalike audiences. 

Klaviyo Integration with Wix

Another integration that’s coming soon is Wix. Now, you know I’m all about Shopify for eCommerce stores, but if you’re using Wix and have had FOMO about Klaviyo, watch for that integration coming sometime in Q3 

Klaviyo SMS Integration with Zendesk

They’ll also be adding an integration with Zendesk for SMS conversations which is pretty cool. That one might already be out. 

Virtual Contact Cards for Klaviyo SMS

If you’re a Klaviyo SMS user, they’ll be releasing virtual contact cards. These will prompt users to save your contact info so they can more easily recognize messages from you. 

Klaviyo Updated Email Builder: Full Rollout

And then last but certainly not least, is sometime by the end of the year they’ll be releasing full rollouts and updates of the new email builder, including addressing a lot of the bugs that have come up with the new builder. 

The updated email builder has been out for a while, but it’s not at all integrated with the legacy version, so all of your existing templates, content, saved blocks, etc. would have to have been recreated in the new builder. When they first released this, I do remember saying they would be making it possible to migrate your existing templates to the new builder and I hope that’s still going to be a thing. But I have used the new builder a lot with some of my most recent email set up clients and it really is buggy AF, so I’m excited for this update most of all to be honest because I really want to be able to implement it more. 

The new builder includes sections, which makes it way easier to take advantage of dynamic content, and they have universal blocks, so if you want to change your header or footer, you can update that in one place and it will automatically update across all of your emails. Based on what they said, I’m thinking Q1 of 2023 is when I’ll be telling you guys to make the migration and I’ll probably put together a VIP day service if you want to hire it out, so stay tuned for that. 

Subject Line Assistant

Oh, and before we go – there is one other feature that was released recently, but kinda went under the radar – and I haven’t really played with it much, but they added a subject line assistant that you can use when you’re creating campaigns. I’ll stick a link in the show notes to their documentation on this feature if you want to learn more about that. 

Klaviyo Course

And then before we go, just a friendly reminder that if you struggle to use the Klaviyo platform or feel like you’re not using it to its full potential I have a course, Klaviyo Badassery that teaches you how to use the platform, including advanced features like dynamic content.

Listen to the Episode

Links Mentioned

Klaviyo Badassery Tech Tour