Imagine what a seamless data connection between two of the most important cogs in your business machine could do for your marketing. The data powerhouse of Distil’s customer data platform (CDP) seamlessly connected with the marketing mastery of Klaviyo. Well, we’ve made it a reality.
You would think sending the right message to the right people at the right time; the very core of great marketing; would be easy, right? Wrong!
It sounds so simple, but the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.
It requires an in-depth understanding of your customers, which is no mean feat in itself, combined with a joined-up technology stack and the ability to execute useful, timely communications. Achieving those three things alone could be the work of an entire data and marketing team.
Thankfully, the data wizards at Distil have created a custom integration with marketing automation platform, Klaviyo, to make this simple yet incredibly complex idea a reality. This new integration brings two incredibly powerful tools together to give you the edge.
It starts with solving the challenge of better understanding your customers. That’s where segmentation comes in.
What is customer segmentation?
- Segmentation is a term for dividing up a whole into separate parts.
An example of a segment is a cake slice, it’s a segment of the whole cake. In a marketing context it usually refers to a customer list that is divided up by an attribute that’s common to all customers, such as geographic location, average spend or time lapse since last purchase. These are called customer segments.
- Customer segments help identify different customer attributes.
Dividing customers into segments means marketers can niche down on specific elements of customer behaviour that might help indicate future potential. For instance, customers who buy body wash and body moisturiser together regularly every month would be the perfect audience for a new subscription service offer.
- Customer segments are rarely static, nor should they be.
Customer behaviour and interactions with your business change every second of every day and your customer segmentation strategy should reflect this. It’s often called dynamic customer segmentation and it’s exactly what Distil and Klaviyo can help you achieve at a fraction of the cost of building a segmentation solution yourself.
Gone are the days where you should be downloading customer lists from one system and uploading them to another. Not only is that a grey area for GDPR and other data privacy laws, it’s also incredibly time consuming and prone to human error.
How does the Distil x Klaviyo integration work?
Distil is a customer data platform (CDP), so our expertise is in combining and enriching customer data in a way that makes it useful for businesses and marketers to do something with.
Distil can combine customer data from almost any customer data source, such as your ecommerce store, customer relationship management (CRM) platform, marketing tools or other customer data sources, with tracking data from customers visiting your website. This means you get one single customer view using all your own data. Gone are the days of data stuck in different spreadsheets in different departments using different tools. You can now make the most of the entire businesses’ collective knowledge about your customers. That alone is customer data nirvana!
But so what? You now know everything there is to know about your customers, but what next? Presumably at some point, you will want to communicate with some or all of your customers by sending them something that’s relevant, personalised and timely.
And that’s where Klaviyo comes in. Klaviyo offers you the choice of email, SMS and mobile push communications that you can customise and automate based on your customer segments in Distil.
Distil and Klaviyo have a two-way integration, which means the customer data will flow back and forth between the Distil segment and the Klaviyo list. It’s also automatic, so when a customer appears in a segment in Distil, they will also in Klaviyo. And vice versa, if a customer drops out of a segment, they will be removed. There’s a more detailed step-by-step guide in the Distil Helpdesk if you want to get further into the connection setup.
And that’s it – you have achieved dynamic customer segmentation! Not only can you kiss goodbye to manually moving your customer data around, you can now take marketing actions that will be relevant to the customers you want to talk to. Good for customers, good for business!
5 data-driven marketing actions you can take in Klaviyo using Distil segments
So, you’re ready to make use of your new capability to send relevant, timely and personalised messages to customers – what are you going to say?
Here’s 5 data-driven marketing actions you can take using dynamic customer segmentation.
- Send an offer to every customer who has purchased in the past, but hasn’t done so in the last 90-days.
Use a Distil segment to identify these customers then send this segment to a list in Klaviyo. You can create an email that encourages repurchase and perhaps includes a flash sale or discount code. You’ll not only see a boost in sales, but also which customers returned and which didn’t. Those that didn’t may need something else to re-engage them, but now you know who they are. For example, if you sell skincare products, customers are probably nearing the end of their last purchases or have used them up completely, so why not encourage them to repurchase?
- Send customers who regularly visit in-store and/or purchase online a loyalty invitation.
Use a Distil segment to find all your regular customers and push this segment into a Klaviyo list.
For example, you have several restaurants and diners who have eaten at any of your restaurants more than 3 times would be primed to become loyalty club members. Send these customers a welcome message for your loyalty programme, encouraging them to opt in for rewards. You can even create an automation in Klaviyo that will send this email invite to any new customers that appear in the segment as time goes on.
- Ask your customers for their feedback on your latest product release.
Identify the customers that purchased any items from your latest release and send the Distil segment to Klaviyo. Create a personalised email that dynamically populates with one or more of the products they purchased, and ask them for a review. Perhaps you can reward them with a discount off a future purchase. Of course, you can automate this email for future product releases so you don’t have to remember to ask customers for reviews.
- Remind your subscription customers their recurring payment is due.
Build a Distil segment of all your customers on a subscription plan. Push them into Klaviyo and set up SMS or email notifications that their recurring payment is now due. The dynamic nature of the Distil segment means your Klaviyo list will always be up to date and as subscribers drop off, so too will they drop out of the automated reminders. This is a great strategy for any subscription products.
- Identify which customers are likely to have purchased gifts or taster products from your store to promote the main range.
Customers who purchase taster products or gift items might be new to your business, so use a Distil segment to identify them, send them to a list in Klaviyo and promote the wider range or full size versions of the products to this audience.
And that’s just the start. There’s so many more things you can do now these two powerhouse tools are fully integrated. When you’re ready to get really clever, you can use Distil’s enrichments like Chronotype, which will give you the optimum time to communicate with a customer based on their engagement habits.
So, when you bring the potent spirit of Distil and the effervescent mixer of Klaviyo together, you’ve got one hell of a cocktail!
