Tracey Wallace (@TraceWall) and Josh Mendelsohn (@mendelsohn_josh) put on a webinar outlining some of their (American) Thanksgiving 2022 findings from the Klaviyo platform.

It's important to get a pulse on these items as they can dramatically increase the sales potential for e-commerce websites, or applications. There is an emerging growth in SMS messaging, along with a large uptake of the SMS services for advertising and marketing.

The hardest thing to get right would be to not become annoying.

A lot of us don't want to be bugged for sales, promotions, and advertising. Conversely, when the right promotion hits us at the right time it does lead to sales.

One could assume there is an art between the timing of an SMS campaign and the content of the messages sent. For example, think about mountain bikes. They always break, gear heads like to tinker with them, and the list of accessories for them and the culture is seemingly endless.

How would SMS work for mountain bike promotions?

Perhaps it could be introductions to cultural events like film premieres with a discount, or an event bringing together the community for sport.

By giving people something tangible to do, to leave their house for, or to take part in could be hugely successful strategies in SMS marketing. It could be used as an instrument to connect customers to broader cultures with the existence of the products being both highly visible, and implied.

With that, simply reminding people that certain products, sales, promotions, or discounts exist is also a great way to start with SMS. As Tracey said, "people always love discounts" and providing a means of exclusivity or even access are time tested strategy.

As for the technical report from Klaviyo

One important thing that Tracey and Josh pointed out is that the customer uptake for this is only just beginning. A couple of notes I took from the presentation:

1. SMS has grown 34% YOY
2. 46% revenue growth using SMS
3. 125,000,000 text messages sent
4. average amount of spend is $100,$150
5. Gives people a reason to act now

Josh told me that Klaviyo is working with their business intelligence and data team to better understand timing methodologies for sales conversions, and will likely be presenting insights and strategies for revenue optimization in later webinar.

More on that to come...

As always, we tried to use our blog to provide trade terminology to make it easier to connect with others on these concepts. Sales systems along with with technical assembly of software always require a lot of measurement and coordination so here we go:

Flow (link)

Customers may be guided through a customer journey by using email workflows that are based on triggered personalization and targeted at the appropriate audience. In order to send only relevant and targeted messages, you may automate your emails, and the easiest way to do so is by using a Klaviyo email flow. Several prompting emails within a workflow are included in each process to help the subscriber get closer to converting.

• Incoming email subscribers like sending welcome emails
• Visitors to a given page of a website, or rewarding them for engaging with your brand
• People who work for a corporation in a certain industry
• Emails on birthdays or anniversaries or a milestone
• Those who live in a specific zip code, or segmentation
• You can send win-back emails, abandoned cart emails, and so on.

source

Campaign (link)

Campaigns are one-time sends to an audience, also known as broadcast messages. They’re a great way to let your customers know about new product launches, sales announcements, and for newsletters about your business. But to have high deliverability (making sure they get to those inboxes and phones) and see revenue shoot up, they need to be done right. That’s where we come in.

So the automations have two flavours

Flows happen at a particular stage of an e-commerce transaction. If a person buys a pair of shoes, for example, it could send them an email for cool laces that match. If a person abandons the online shopping cart, it could send them a reminder they haven't finished their sale. We all have busy lives after all, ha ha.

Campaigns on the other hand are the one off. They get sent to a large audience for a specific reason, like a new promotion is about to start, or your favourite rock and roll musician is about to play with the latest and greatest in the music called pop.

Both coexist to create tools for sales teams to drive revenue to their businesses.

Where does Acorn fit in

At the end of the day businesses need a hand with this stuff. Coordinating a digital asset pipeline with the timing of a campaign, with the infrastructure to support the sales and have a branded website is just a ton of work. Klaviyo is a tool that connects well with existing e-commerce providers. Acorn supports:

1. Shopify theme development
2. Woocommerce theme development
3. Custom Integrations with Klaviyo in building standalone applications

Furthermore, since there it's a lot to unpack, specifically with flows, in terms of brand, general user experience, and analytical configurations we offer:

1. User experience design services
2. Design and Branding services

(did we mention it's 0.75 cents on the dollar USD...)

Start small, build up over time.

The best thing to do with e-commerce and transactional mail related systems is to not get overwhelmed. Between third party extensions, connections between multiple applications, and complex systems administration, it is better to have a good plan in store.

1. Who is going to draft written contents?
2. Where do visual assets come from?
3. What are the business goals for configuring an e-commerce platform?
4. What is our MVP going to look like?

Breaking down these steps first can help to support deliverables like an SMS campaign, a campaign, or a flow down the line. With that, it's important to understand that Klaviyo is readily available for Shopify, as well as for Woocommerce.

Klaviyo does a great job of taking a lot of the guesswork out of transactional email for e-commerce. It does not remove the need to have a stable plan to implement it.

Wrapping up the post now it's simply important to stay abreast of these developments. With growing possibilities come new commercial opportunities and entirely new businesses dedicated to support it. It could range from digital subscription sales, to video games, to events that bring us together.

Generating feedback on what's working and what's not is an ongoing process. Saying that the volume of outbound messaging is increasing is only one metric. What's important to understand is whether or not the character of the correspondence itself is driving the desired effects.