1. How do I integrate Klaviyo and WordPress?

Our Plugin has made integration so simple, that it now only takes three steps:

1. Install the ‘Verve Klaviyo’ plugin; email [email protected] for details and we will be happy to help.
2. Log into your Klaviyo and go to settings, account, API keys. 
3. Go into the setting of your WordPress site and find Verve Klaviyo. Click on it, then on the page that loads, enter both your API keys. If you use contact form 7, tick the relevant box.

You will now have a working integration that enables you to add pop-ups and crucially, connect contact forms plus see which pages of the site people viewed. If you have any issues whilst setting this up, get in touch with [email protected]

2. How Do I Migrate To Klaviyo?

Klaviyo have done a lot of hard work when it comes to migrating data from an old system. They have built out integrations with big competitors like Mailchimp, to that ensure you don’t lose insights on open rates, old templates (HTML) or even tags. This link here gives you guides to migrations from all of their major competitors: https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/sections/14544736587931 

If you did not have a previous system but you do have a GDPR compliant list of companies or subscribers to import into Klaviyo then this can be done manually. We recommend having one main list (newsletter) for subscribed profiles and importing users into this specific list. Unlike Mailchimp, on Klaviyo you only pay for a profile, so technically one user profile can be in multiple lists and you will only pay once. That said, keeping marketing consent tidy is important and having a list of subscribed profiles is a great way to manage this and stay on the safe side.

In addition to this, Klaviyo’s segmenting functionality is incredibly powerful so you really do not need multiple static lists in most cases. We’ll go into this more further on or you can skip to it here.

Before you import any users into a list, make sure you go into this list, then settings and consent and turn it to single-opt in. Above you have a consent setting; for 99% of our clients we set this feature to unsubscribe from all future emails as if somebody is unsubscribing from one list they normally do not want to hear from you at all. This can also be done on an account level if you go to unsubscribe settings. 

To import, go into your list and press ‘import contacts’ this providers you with links to formatting guides and acceptable field formats. It’s all very user-friendly.

3. Templates & Email Design

Klaviyo comes out of the box with a fantastic drag and drop email builder. We recommend building a variety of email templates, so that when you come to create an automation or a campaign, your design is already well on the way and consistent. A degree of consistency is vital so that subscribers trust the email. There are a multitude of Klaviyo templates you can take, we recommend choosing one that is loosely similar to the design or style you want. This gives a starting point that can then be adapted. 

Klaviyo For WordPress: How Do I Use Header Bars?

This is the block you want to use for your logo. You can adjust the size very quickly using the mad width feature and by adding padding. Most brands go with a centralised logo, but for some who have a lot of social proof, the header bar can be great real estate to stick in a Trustpilot star rating. If this applies to you, you can position your logo towards the left of a header bar and add the social proof image as content. Make sure your desktop layout is set to ‘Logo Inline’ in this instance. By this point you’ll probably have noticed the toggle in the middle of the screen to switch between desktop and mobile. We recommend turning off wrap, using the same logo for desktop and selecting mobile layout as ‘Logo Inline’. Stacked will mean too much screen real estate is taken up by the header bar on mobile devices. 

It is also possible to use header bars to create a menu. To do this, drag in another header bar and change the layout to links and buttons only. You can add the links you want and play around with font sizes and formatting until it looks right. Once again, it is vital you do not stack this on mobile as it will move the important things below the fold. Menus like this often raise click rates, but you are offering the user a path away from the email before they have actually consumed the message you sent the email to communicate. It’s important to strategise before adding features like this.

Klaviyo For WordPress, Image And Video Best Practice:

With Klaviyo you can upload images and videos or even make use of integrations like the Canva one to speed things up further. We recommend putting clear titles on files so you can find them in the future with ease when building other emails. JPG’s are a better file size than PNG’s so try to stick to these if possible to reduce the overall size of the email. This is good for avoiding clipping, staying out of spam, user experiences and also environmental sustainability as the email is a smaller size. Gifs are an option on Klaviyo, as long as they are under 5mb. We find that animations (gifs) in templates can be very effective as they catch attention, but they should be used sparingly. Tools like TinyPNG are great for reducing file sizes.

Videos will not play in the email, but the new(ish) video block is still a nice feature to link people through to your Youtube or Vimeo.  

Klaviyo For WordPress, Copywriting Tips:

How you should write an email will vary massively depending on your brand, but there are a few rules we always try to follow. Attention spans are short, frighteningly so with younger demographics who are used to consuming 10 second videos on Instagram or Tiktok. You are in a fight for a users attention, so keep your messaging succinct, especially the opening bit. We like the personalisation of dynamic first names, a couple of sentences and a clear CTA. Adding a bit of personality will help you stand out from all of the spam, and a more engaging CTA than ‘read more’ will inevitably get you more clicks. Ideally, you want to aim to get your CTA and button above the fold on mobile, but if this is not possible, the higher the better. 

Klaviyo For WordPress, How To Make Buttons That Drive Clicks:

Buttons are key to an email. Beyond communicating a message, you want to drive an action, often getting traffic to your website where they will inevitably spend longer thinking about your brand and consuming your content. Button designs need be designed with the rest of your branding in mind but you can experiment a little. We would usually recommend ensuring corner curving, fonts and colours match your website. You also have the option to make buttons full width or smaller; once again this is a personal choice but test both. Testing is hugely useful feature in Klaviyo; their A/B testing functionality is amazing. Whether it’s a flow or a campaign, you can set a live test up and in real time, set two templates against each other. This would be our final point on buttons – do not get attached during the initial template design as its likely you’ll find a variation that works better in time anyway.

Klaviyo For WordPress: How do I Use Columns And Splits?

This is fairly self-explanatory, as its your option to add more than one column to an email design. If you want to do a ‘text and image’ block, then use a split. You can choose the percentages of the split and which side you wish for the text to go on. The other benefit of this is that under ‘styles’ you can choose the order of the split on mobile. This is a gamechanger for those of us who were simply fed-up of beautifully designed desktop emails looking totally inconsistent and asymmetrical on a mobile device. By choosing right-to-left and vica-versa you can make the content flow nicely on all devices. The last warning is to be careful with splits and columns; they are great but keep an eye on the size of your email by clicking ‘preview occasionally’. If it nears 80kb or over you’ll risk clipping and due to the formatting distinctions between mobile and desktop with these columns or splits, they are quite heavy features in an emails size.

Klaviyo For WordPress, Social Proof:

Linking to socials is pretty basic stuff, but its worth having a play with the social links block. The icons are clean and you can change the colour and sizing of them. Once you have your standard mix, I would heavily recommend hovering over the block and clicking the star. This makes it a universal block that you can pull into any email – handy, right? Beyond this, an email is a great way to build up that brand perception in the background. If you have badges or accreditations, build them in. If you have some lovely reviews, build them in too. Whether you choose to use text, text and an image or just pull in images with the reviews on them, these blocks are very easy social proof and therefore, become a powerful part of your template.

Klaviyo For WordPress: How Do I View My Email In Dark Mode?

Dark mode is becoming increasingly popular, an unpopular change for those of us who work in email marketing. This is because of colour inversion; that beautiful template you designed will change in a dark-mode inbox, and its hard to even predict how because it depends on the device and app/inbox provider. If you want the best practices for minimising the damage of dark mode, look no further than Klaviyo’s own guide: https://help.klaviyo.com/hc/en-us/articles/360049181631 . If you have a larger budget and want to see what your email will actually look like in different inboxes with dark mode, then a paid integration like Litmus can do this for you.

4. Profiles – Data, Segments and Cleansing

Klaviyo works on a profile basis, which is way more important than it sounds. Firstly, it means one profile can be in multiple lists and you do not get punished for this. But mainly, its the tracking capabilities that profiles give you in Klaviyo. If you go into profiles, you can click on any user you have and open their profile.  Under the details tab on the left, you can see their subscription status and their properties. 

In Klaviyo you can store an unlimited number of custom properties; some of our accounts have profiles with over 250 custom fields. On the right hand side you have the events; on an eCommerce site this is littered with product views, add to carts and orders but this is WordPress, so what about you? The standard Klaviyo integration will simply give you subscriptions, received, opened and clicked emails. Our Verve Klaviyo plugin gives you page views. This means you can see which pages on your site users visited, and then build segments or automations based on this. If you want to make your emails more relevant and timely, this is gold-dust.

Klaviyo For WordPress: What Segmentation Should I Do?

Segmentation is the key to sending smarter campaigns which provide a better user experience. A segment is a dynamic list, and it enables you to filter profiles based on rules that you set. The options are user-friendly to a point. For instance, you can set the criteria as ‘opened the last email’ and ‘email hasn’t bounced in the last 4 weeks’. Thanks to our plugin, you could create a segment of people who have been active on your website, or even on certain pages of your site, and send to just these people. This power to segment users enables you to better understand your customers, send more relevant emails and provide a better user experience. If you want some of your segments to be saved forever, just click the star button next to them. We would recommend having segments for the non-engaged who have not opened an email or been on your website for a long time. This enables you to target the list more closely, or to exclude it. If you integrate with a CRM as well as your website, you’ll also be able to segment based on things like VIP customers, as you will know value. 

Klaviyo For WordPress, List Hygiene:

In Klaviyo you pay for profiles, so we are here to tell you that unsubscribes are not necessarily a bad thing. Always provide subscribers with a very clear link to opt out of future emails and don’t be afraid if they do. In addition to this, you should be suppressing profiles who are bouncing too regularly or have not opened an email in forever. We usually build an automation that gives them a last chance first, but this is a great way of keeping the cost of using Klaviyo down, without actually losing anything. If you want to see our list cleaning automation, click here.

5. Automations

Data enables segmentation, and segmentation empowers you to make emails relevant. This is powerful, as more relevant emails will be opened more, clicked more and the message is more likely to convert into a purchase. Segmented campaigns can therefore return outstanding results. Automations though, are king.

Klaviyo calls automations flows, because essentially you are building a flowchart which runs on logic. There are different options for triggers, decision points, time delays, email or SMS sending, data updating and more. The capabilities are almost endless, but here is what you need to know.

Klaviyo For WordPress: What Are Triggers?

Quite simply, actions that can trigger a profile to enter the flow. For a welcome flow this would be someone subscribing to a newsletter list. Other trigger types include somebody entering a segment, any event in your metrics (opened email, clicked on email or even viewed page if you have our Klaviyo for WordPress plugin) and date-based properties. The latter enables you to build flows based on expected payment dates, birthdays and more. You can also add filters to flows; an obvious example of this would be adding a filter for signup source on an added to list trigger and selecting a specific pop-up. One of the really useful triggers is to control how often users can re-enter a flow; this will really help you to improve user experience and keep automations useful for visitors.

Klaviyo For WordPress, Sending Automated Emails and SMS: 

This block is pretty obvious, you just drag one of these in when you want to send an email or SMS message. Points of use are the ability to clone emails and make small tweaks, or even to select a template to start off from. You can see very clear data on open and click rates on your flow screen itself, and the live A-B testing feature is very powerful as you can test different variations in real time to continually optimise your automations. One common mistake is making tweaks to email sending addresses, subject lines and preview text on the right hand side but not pressing save. Press save, then go into the email and edit it, this is a habit you will thank yourself for! Also, giving emails clear titles will really help you to remember what each specific point in a flow was for and make it easier to analyse data going forwards. If the automated email is something vital or transactional, like a response to a contact form, then make sure you uncheck smart sending.

Klaviyo For WordPress, Internal Alerts:

This is a really useful internal tool. At set points within a flow you can make Klaviyo email a set address within your business a notification. An example of this is a flow built on receiving an enquiry, which after a week notifies your internal team to check they have responded. You can pull in dynamic information from the profile that his this step too, like contact details to help your team get in touch with them.

Klaviyo For WordPress, Time Delays:

You can set a delay of hours, days or weeks, and pick specific times or days of the week for somebody to pass to the next stage on. You cannot make a block to wait for a specific date, however if your automation was set on a date-based trigger, you’ll have a special block within your flow for this. This enables you to start a flow 3 weeks before a birthday for instance, but then to still send an email on the actual birthday. 

Klaviyo For WordPress, Conditional Splits:

These blocks are really powerful. A conditional split within a flow allows you to set rules which send some profiles within the flow one way, and another the other way. This creates two pathways out of one – a yes and a no. Similarly to segments, these splits can be based on something somebody has done, a property they have, their location, what lists they are in, consent, predictive analytics (very cool) or a random sample. You can have multiple conditional splits within one automation; some of mine have over 25 splits in them. This means that you can deliver a customer an email which is as specific as you want it to be. 

Klaviyo For WordPress, Automating Data:

List updates and profile property updates enable you to either change what list somebody is in, or update some of their custom properties. I often use this for list cleaning; if a profile has entered my sunset segment because they do not open any emails for a long time, my automation delivers them a couple of last chances. If they do not open these, the flow tags them as suppress: yes. This automates list cleansing so I can go into my segment of property suppress is set to yes and suppress this.

Klaviyo For WordPress: What Automations Should I Build?

There are a lot of automations already built by Klaviyo which you can build and adapt. For WordPress, less of these will be useful as they are based mainly on eCommerce behaviours. A welcome flow is essential to introduce your brand and convey key messages, beyond this it will depend largely on your business. When you are planning automations, our key test is whether it offers genuine value to a subscriber or improves a process/saves time for your business. If it does one it is likely worth testing, if it does both, prioritise it. Once you have installed our custom plugin, you will be able to build your own ‘abandoned browser’ email flows based on people viewing pages on your website. This empowers you to send people information related to something they are clearly interested in, whilst they are still interested. We’ve seen great results.

If you are using WordPress you are likely in the business of lead generation, and Klaviyo can be a huge asset to your business. You can either use pop-ups to collect data off potential visitors, and have an automated flows that convert your leads towards desired actions with pre-made case studies and clever personal emails. Alternatively, a similar flow can be triggered by manual imports or new leads. Once you have leads flowing down your automations regularly, you will have a new business machine and data to learn and improve from. 

If you haven’t already guessed, this guide acts as a lead-generation tool for our agency. We have put hours into providing genuine value to your business, and if you want even more from the video guides, you’ll have to enter your email and thus, you’ll be in one of our lead-generation automations. 

6. Campaigns

This is the bread and butter of email marketing and its main value-proposition, because you can communicate with a massive number of relevant business contacts for unbelievable value. Klaviyo, like Mailchimp and any other provider, has campaign functionality. 

Klaviyo For WordPress: What Campaigns Should I Send?

Monthly newsletters are not the answer. They might fit in as a part of your strategy, but in a world where attention-spans are dwindling lower than ever and 10-second videos are now the norm, a long, well-written newsletter packed with information simply is not effective on its own. So many Mailchimp accounts we have seen rely on this tactic, and to be fair open rates are decent. However, you have no idea which messages are being consumed and which aren’t. Our advice is simple, do not bury important information or great offers half way down a really long email. If you do still want to send a monthly newsletter to all contacts then that’s your prerogative and for some businesses, it works. But, do us a favour and pull out some of the key stories into separate, shorter emails and send them to more targeted segments.

Klaviyo For WordPress, Sending Settings:

Klaviyo gives you the ability to choose lists and segments you want to send an email to, and to do the same with lists and segments you do not want to send them to. We’d always recommend having a segment of recent bouncers to put in the do not send to. This will keep your open rates healthy and your deliverability strong, which is important if you do not want to land in spam folders. In addition to this, you have the option to turn on smart sending. You can set the duration for this in your account settings. This neat feature means that anyone who has already received an email within the last (for example) 16 hours will not be sent this campaign. This is a great way of keeping your automations and campaigns strong by maintaining trust and respect with your subscribers.

Klaviyo For WordPress, Test, Test, Test:

Once you have finished building your campaign, you can preview it and send it as a test. This is essential, as you can send a copy to different devices and inboxes and see how the email looks. If you have a very large email list, we would recommend software like Litmus so you can test how your email will be delivered in dark mode, or into less modern inboxes that do not read html very well. We also recommend going into your settings, emails, sender preferences and setting a subject prefix of [TEST]. This will mean test emails are delivered with [TEST] in front of the subject line; a handy way of avoiding that horrible moment of fear when you mistake your test as an actual send and panic.

Klaviyo For WordPress, Sending And Scheduling:

If you have tested and are happy, you can then get onto actually sending the email. This screen gives you a last chance to check major details like your subject line. It goes without saying what the difference between send and schedule is, but once you click this option you have the ability to send over a few hours, or all at once. You can also pick a time, data and a timezone if you schedule your email. For most clients we send at once (depending on list size). If your customers are all, or largely in one country, we would suggest selecting that countries timezone. The ‘send in recipients timezone’ feature can be great, but due to technical things like VPN’s, a lot of this data can be flawed so you’ll end up sending emails at inopportune moments.

7. Deliverability

Deliverability is something Klaviyo does very well, and no matter what size your email list is, it’s always important to ensure your emails do not end up in spam folders. Under the analytics tab you will have a deliverability dashboard and this will give you some great insights into open rates, click rates, bounce rates, unsubscribe rates and spam complaint rates. This is our guide to each, what to worry about and tactics we use.

Klaviyo For WordPress, Open Rates:

This metric is best viewed as an indicator and not in isolation. You could get a really high open rate if your subject line was misleading, but the email would not perform well. However, it is important to try and keep open rates above at least 25%. This varies by industry and subscriber base. Trends are crucial here, if it’s getting drastically worse, you might need to look at campaign frequency or refresh some of your automations, reworking subject lines and triggers. If open rates get too poor, try building segments of people who open emails and sending some campaigns to these engaged profiles. It will not help you to re-engage the rest of the list, but it will protect your sender score/reputation.

Klaviyo For WordPress, Click Rates:

Click rates have varying importance depending on the purpose of your email. If you were an ecommerce store, this would be fundamental as your emails should be driving an action, hopefully on your website. However, with WordPress websites, you are likely a service or something less cut and dry than ecommerce. If the purpose of the email is to drive actions, use A/B tests to trial different button formats, CTA’s and more. Even things like button and banner placement are key. If the email is not designed to drive an action but to convey information, then click rate is obviously not of much importance. 

Klaviyo For WordPress, Bounce Rates:

This is a crucial metric, as it gives insight into the hygiene of your email lists. If bounce rates are getting high, you need to take a look at your segmentation. For instance, you can build a segment of subscribers who have received at least one email in the least 30 days, opened none and bounced at least once. This will immediately raise your score. However, there is no point paying for those who bounce for reasons such as ‘invalid address’. On the left hand side you can switch to the bounce details screen. Klaviyo then enables you to build segments of people who bounced for this specific reason, and to suppress them, saving you money and enhancing your deliverability; a win-win.

Klaviyo For WordPress, Unsubscribe Rates:

We are here to tell you that unsubscribes are not a bad thing. Yes, you read that right. Of course, if the rate is going too high, you need top audit your sending frequency, the purpose behind your sends and your signup funnels as you might be getting the wrong type of subscriber. However, if somebody is no longer interested in receiving your emails, you actually want that unsubscribe. It gets them off your list, keeping your profile numbers down and your Klaviyo plan sensible. Email marketing used to be all about building the biggest list you could. With today’s data, you want the most engaged list you can get. Quality over quantity, but ideally both.

8. Data Analysis

By now you already know that Klaviyo is a powerhouse of data; this is the USP it often markets itself on. Having access to data is one thing, but do you know how to use it? Which data should drive your strategy? Below are tips on getting the most out of your Klaviyo account:

Klaviyo For WordPress, Dashboards:

These pre-built overviews are reasonably handy, especially if you are looking for more macro-type data like trends. You can also customise this by changing the conversion metric to your WordPress form completion and even adding new cards on the right hand side within each report.  

Klaviyo For WordPress, Metrics:

Klaviyo has existing metrics, like opening an email, but a lot of these are quite clearly created for eCommerce (add to basket). It is possible to create custom metrics with bespoke triggers; for instance our WordPress module will do this with page views on your website, or contact form submissions. These metrics can be used as triggers for automations. If there are events you want to track changes to, or create automations off of, talk to our team and our talented developers can help to set this up.

Klaviyo For WordPress, Benchmarks:

In my opinion, industry averages are by and large, worth ignoring. These are so dependent on your email list, both how it was collected and the size of it, that they offer very little value as a point of reference. 

Klaviyo For WordPress, Custom Reports:

We use custom reports when we want detail. For instance, if an open rate has spiralled one month and we want to know why, we can use custom reports to identify a flow that caused this, which email it was and then assess it day-by-day. We did this recently for a client of ours and found a bot had hit the welcome flow; finding this allowed us to find and suppress the bots, and exclude the data. In the custom reports dashboard, your best tools are the ability to group or filter and switch between totals, values, profiles, sums and averages. 

Campaign reports and flow reports give you a great, instant insight into recent performance. These reports can be exported manually or you can schedule a regular email to get an updated one at regular intervals. For our clients, we take the data and use custom google sheets to monitor trends and performance, but these reports and the ability to export them make this much easier and empower us to spend more time analysing data and less time collecting it.

9. Beyond The Guide

Ai has not yet taken over everything, and this guide was written by a genuine human (me, Callum). I am the marketing manager at Verve and have worked with a number of businesses to embed Klaviyo within their organisation and fuel business growth with clever automations and data-driven campaigns. Our friendly marketing team do everything we can to be flexible for your business, so whether you want a one-off project or a retainer, we can work in a way that best suits you. If you read this guide and decided you definitely want Klaviyo, but you don’t want your teams calendars full for the foreseeable, then we are here to help. Contact us [email protected] and we’ll set a meeting up!