Selling a product once isn’t all that difficult, but making sure that the same customer chooses you over and over again is an achievement. Most likely, your product is not a unique, one-of-a-kind item that no one else sells, so you do have competition. The competition may even have better features or pricing, but if your customer loyalty system is strong, you may be able to keep those customers either way.
Setting up loyalty programmes usually requires a platform of software, and today we’ll compare two of the most popular email marketing platforms: Omnisend and Klaviyo. We’ll see how you can set up loyalty flows, re-engagement campaigns, and more, to ensure that your clients feel cared for, and they want to return to you in the future.
Segmentation for loyal customers
Grouping your subscribers and customers based on their behavior is a great way to send tailored messages to each segment. You can send a special discount to the ones who haven’t bought in a while, you can send product recommendations to the ones who recently bought Product A that would benefit from Product B, and more.
Omnisend provides a powerful segment builder that completely covers the demands of most modern ecommerce stores. You can quickly divide your audience based on their previous purchase history, the specific pages they browse, their demographic background, and more.
If you don’t want to configure the segments manually, you can select from a library of pre-made segment templates, or use Omnisend’s AI-driven segment builder that allows you to create audience segments in seconds by writing a prompt. For example, you could ask to generate two segments:
Active customers who haven’t made a purchase in the last 6 months.
Customers who recently bought [insert product name here].
Once you enter these prompts, the AI will create those audiences in a few seconds, and you’ll be able to use them in your campaigns or automations. For more complex segments, however, it’s better to use manual configuration.
Image via Omnisend
Talking about the needs of most businesses, Klaviyo provides nearly identical capabilities for segmentation. It also has a library of templates for audience segments, a similar AI segment builder, and the interface for manually creating your own segments from scratch.
If we were to go deeper, Klaviyo does have far stronger segmentation capabilities, but they’re mostly reserved for businesses with exceptionally niche needs that benefit from granular control of every filter. For this reason, we’ll only compare the two platforms in terms of what ~95% of modern online businesses need to avoid giving Klaviyo the edge for excessively overkill features.
Image via Klaviyo
This image doesn’t necessarily represent the true capability of Klaviyo’s advanced segmentation, but it shows that you can go very deep with the filters and get a highly specific list of contacts that matches several conditions. It’s also important to note that this only becomes useful at the tens of thousands of subscribers, which is the line where the pricing difference also becomes dramatically higher than Omnisend’s.
In short, Omnisend is best for most businesses out there and provides significant power without being clunky or overly technical, and Klaviyo is best for huge enterprises with massive contact lists that have both the budget and the need for its advanced capabilities.
Personalized automation flows
Automated emails keep your brand visible and encourage customers to return to your store for future purchases. Sending welcoming emails to new subscribers, abandoned cart reminders to those who leave mid-purchase, and post-purchase follow-ups helps build lasting loyalty. Designing these customer journeys allows your business to communicate in a personalized manner automatically while you focus on other tasks.
Omnisend offers a huge library of pre-built automation workflows. You can use these ready-made templates to launch your campaigns quickly without needing to build every single step manually. Also, Omnisend allows you to combine email, SMS, and web push notifications into a single seamless workflow.
You can reward your most loyal shoppers with customized messages, and prompt at-risk subscribers to come back with a special offer. Omnisend provides all the essential tools you need to maximize your sales across the entire customer journey.
Klaviyo provides a strong flow builder that supports complex conditional branching for highly detailed automations. You can design detailed customer journeys that change directions based on specific rules and behavioral triggers, if that’s what you need.
Klaviyo excels at providing granular control over every single touchpoint a customer experiences, but setting up these advanced automations requires a huge investment of time, money, and technical knowledge. You will need a thorough understanding of the platform to fully use its complex automation features, which can slow down your overall progress.
If you don’t need these complex features, and standard-advanced capabilities of Omnisend are more than enough for you, then Omnisend still wins because its pricing model remains predictable and user-friendly, whereas Klaviyo’s prices become significantly more expensive as your list keeps growing.
Re-engagement campaigns
Bringing inactive customers back to your online store is an essential part of building lasting brand loyalty. You need special configuration of audience segments and distinct communication to identify and compel them to come back to you again. Targeted product recommendations can sometimes renew their interest.
Both tools allow you to create the needed segments easily and send campaigns with tailored messaging. Some brands prefer to send automatic feeds of products (for example best-sellers) in hopes of making the customer come back, but it’s not the best approach to take.
True personalization takes effort, but the good news is that the effort can be one-and-done. Instead of creating one win-back segment and sending the same offer to everyone, you can create several win-back segments based on the products they bought. Then, you create several automation flows and add different products that are closest to what the inactive customer may like.
This will require adding products manually, so we’ll skip the dynamic function altogether (although both platforms offer those).
With Omnisend, adding live products to your email is as straightforward as it gets. You select the Product Picker block, drag it to your email builder, and use the sidebar that pops up to search and add any product that your store has. Once you’ve done that, Omnisend will automatically add the product details to your email, including name, image, description, price, and purchase link. You can edit those, if needed, but they’re often good to go.
Image via Omnisend
Klaviyo makes the process a bit more complex, as you need to create a product feed first. You’ll need to name the feed, select the catalog, define priorities, fallback logic, categories, and more. It’s not difficult to do, but provides unnecessary friction and confusion, especially for new users.
Image via Klaviyo
All in all, Omnisend has a more convenient product picker feature that allows you to get to the same results in half the time.
Omnisend vs. Klaviyo: Verdict
Selecting the right email marketing tool depends heavily on your specific business goals and your available technical resources. Both platforms offer excellent functionality that helps modern businesses grow and thrive in a competitive market.
Omnisend provides an outstanding balance of usability and high performance for the vast majority of ecommerce stores. The platform gives you full access to its powerful features across all plans, including 24/7 live chat and email support. Omnisend also offers a completely free migration (Kickstarter service) that handles the entire transition process for you. If you select a plan costing $250 or more per month, a dedicated in-house expert will move your contacts, automations, segments, and templates within three to five business days. This level of complete support ensures you never lose customer data during the switch between platforms.
Klaviyo is best when you have dedicated data scientists who need to build incredibly complex segments and analyze detailed behavioral patterns. The platform demands a significantly higher financial cost and requires a lot of time to master its advanced features. Beyond complex capabilities, their price doesn’t warrant the benefit, as Ominsend provides the same power at more affordable prices. Klaviyo also limits its customer support to email communication only for the first 60 days when you use the free plan.
Omnisend focuses on delivering great value while providing multi-channel tools that get your campaigns running quickly. The platform effortlessly supports scaling businesses as they expand their reach and engage their local or international audience. For these reasons Omnisend is good for any business regardless of its size.
