← The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou
The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast With Steve Chou
582: Hyper-Targeting Customers For Your Online Store Just Got Shockingly Easy
00:42:56
In this episode, Toni and I discuss how hyper-targeting customers for your online store just got a lot easier with Klaviyo's new release! - We dive into the latest features and strategies that can help you reach your ideal audience like never before.
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- [00:00]
Steve Chou
Welcome back to the podcast, the show where I cover all of the latest strategies and current events related to E commerce and online business. In this episode, Tony and I are going to break down the latest features that our favorite email marketing tool just announced that look to be a game changer for e commerce. Here's the latest and greatest in the world of online selling. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets are now on sale for Seller Summit 2025 over@sellers summit.com and the prices are now going to go up every two weeks until the event starts. The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. Unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high level advice, mine is a curriculum based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their e commerce business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantities of physical goods and not some high level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000ft. I personally hate large events, so the Seller's Summit is always small and intimate. Every year we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast and we've sold out every single year for the past eight years. If you are an e commerce entrepreneur making more than $250,000 or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 6th to May 8th. Right now this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be, so head on over to sellersummit.com and grab your ticket. Now onto the show. Welcome back to the My Wife Quitter Job podcast. Last week Tony and I, we had the privilege of attending Klaviyo's launch event for their new features. And normally we don't create podcasts about this stuff, but I was blown away by all the new functionality that Klaviyo had to introduce, so I felt compelled that we had to do an episode about this.
- [02:06]
Tony
Yeah, it's. It's pretty exciting. I have to say. I was. I actually watched it twice so because there was so much to digest just watching it one go round.
- [02:17]
Steve Chou
Yeah, I watched it this morning also and I had ChatGPT take the transcript and summarize it so I wouldn't forget anything. So what are these new features and why is it such a big deal? Klaviyo just introduced their CRM. I think it's called Klaviyo Data Platform and it's basically going to be like the one tool that you absolutely need to practically do everything with your online store. Yeah, that's the best way to put it.
- [02:47]
Tony
Yeah. And I think, I think this is a big, like, this is a big deal. Right. Because one of the things that they hammered pretty hard during all the presentations. But one thing that I was like is a struggle for me in E Commerce is that you have all this information coming from all these different places and it's very hard to get all the information to match up. And they told a story about one of their customers who hired somebody and paid them a lot of money to build like some sort of custom dashboard so that they could like, aggregate the data. And after they got it built, it just didn't do the job well. Right. It wasn't. It didn't work. Right. And I thought. And this is something we deal with, you know, with some of my E Commerce clients every single day. Right. Is all the data is in different places and it's hard to get. And you know, we have. We're paying people to do this. Right. To compile it and get it in one place. And so this is really exciting, I think, for business owners, especially if you are running a small team and you don't have lots of people to pass these tasks off to.
- [03:55]
Steve Chou
Yeah. For example, like in my store, I have these little dashboards for a bunch of different things that Jen wants to see. And the data is there, but it'd be nice to just have everything in one place. And we're going to be talking about, like, how they're. How they allow you to interact with that data. So first and foremost, unlimited data storage. Klaviyo will have all the data for your store, access to your Shopify database, all your customers and everything.
- [04:22]
Tony
Yeah. And I mean, I think the other thing to think about is that already Klaviyo integrates with so many tools. Right. So they already have a lot of these integrations built in, which is nice, because I think. I don't think I've ever come across something where I couldn't integrate it with Klaviyo, like a tool that I wanted to use in Shopify. So the fact that they have all that integration already and then sort of building this out is pretty exciting.
- [04:47]
Steve Chou
So they have data for all of your customers, which pages that they've browsed, what they've purchased, the frequency that they've purchased. And because all that data is there, that's where it gets really exciting. I don't know where you Want to start with this? I mean, there's a lot of new features that they announced. I think the one that I'm most excited about is the AI forecast. So remember, they have data for everything, right. So they know what the customer is most likely to buy next, they know the lifetime value, they know how to commun, how they like to communicate with you, whether it be through email, SMS or push. And so now with these new AI features that Klaviyo has introduced, they can automatically suggest the best action for a specific customer based on their historical data and automatically create segments for you to send emails or SMS to them.
- [05:45]
Tony
So this is very exciting because one of the things that Klaviyo already has and they've had for a while is AI within segment creation, where you say, I want a list of people who do xyz. Right. And they build that out for you. But this takes this to like an entirely other level. And the exciting part for me is I've worked in that you know their AI tools already and I feel like, especially when it comes to building out these segments and lists of people, it does a really good job. Like the, the data they give you back, the way they tell you to do things is almost always correct. There's very few times where I'm like, oh, that wasn't exactly what I wanted and if it is, it's because I put it in wrong. Right. I asked for the wrong thing. So I'm very excited to see the level that this will go basically as far as what AI is going to do. Because just the fact that like they were showing some of the flows or like how the journey, customer journey pans out and it's like the AI doesn't just stop at create me a segment of people who've done X, Y, Z. It's like after they receive the first email, then, you know, AI is going to say, you know, send an email only to people who've taken these three actions and include this information in the email based on the actions they've taken, which, I mean, it's going to put me out of a job.
- [07:08]
Steve Chou
I want to see how what level this goes because I was thinking, hey, create me a segment of everyone who's most likely to purchase a personalized apron, like in the next month.
- [07:18]
Tony
Yeah.
- [07:18]
Steve Chou
And then it'll automatically create a segment prior to that. You'd have to know exactly what you, what you're looking for, right?
- [07:25]
Tony
Yeah.
- [07:26]
Steve Chou
Bought an apron before, haven't bought in six months or whatever. But this one, based on all the data points Right, Yeah, let's say they were looking, they just happened to be browsing on your site for aprons and like two weeks ago they would automatically be added to this segment.
- [07:39]
Tony
Yeah. So I think that's really exciting and something that's going to save people a lot of time. And the other thing that I think it's going to do is give people better results with their email. So I mean we can, we can say right now, hey, let's create a segment of people that are most likely to do xyz, right. Based on information that we have. So for example, you know, one of my clients, most of her products are based out in age groups. Right. So there's like, you know, five to eight year old group because it's curriculum. Right. And then there's a 9 to 12 and a 13 to 16. Right. So but you know, if someone buys something in the middle age group, right. The 9 to 12, we don't know exactly. Like is their kid 9 or is their kid 12? Right. Like we don't know that because we don't, we don't ask. And obviously it's hard to ask information about people's kids like that people get very rightfully old.
- [08:40]
Steve Chou
Is your little boy.
- [08:40]
Tony
Yes, yes, rightfully so. People get protective of that information. But knowing that like, okay, on average, like when you look at the data as a whole, we've got millions of customers, right. Like you look at the data as a whole and you know that people who buy in this age bracket on average in 2 years buy in the next age bracket or they take this, you know, and you start being able to like have this lots and lots of data. Being able, when Klaviyo can take that and really give it to you in a very digestible way as opposed to you. I mean, I just think about like, have you ever like downloaded something on a spreadsheet and it's like 22,000 lines of information and it's just like my computer just like farts out on it. It's like, no, we're not doing this. So like the thing that's exciting to me is to be able to get all that data and have Klaviyo be the one that deals with it as opposed to me on a spreadsheet trying to like figure this all out and spending hours and hours.
- [09:40]
Steve Chou
No, exactly. Like, I personally hate creating segments by hand in Klaviyo.
- [09:45]
Tony
Yeah.
- [09:45]
Steve Chou
Just the fact that you can have AI create the segment for you based on what you want. Yeah, Huge game changer. I can't wait to see how well this works.
- [09:52]
Tony
And I think the fact that it's going to be able to deliver smarter recommendations, I mean their recommendation tool that you can just, you know, you can insert that in the bottom of emails or it doesn't have to be at the bottom, you can start anywhere. It already does a pretty good job. So to be able to get even more granular with the information, especially if you are in a, a vertical like clothing. Right. If this, if there's a shopper and they only buy pastels.
- [10:19]
Steve Chou
Yep.
- [10:20]
Tony
They're never going to see a pair of camo green leggings. Right. Or if you sell like think about our friend Tiffany, right. She sells shoes, pants, purses, whatever. One of the things that they pointed out, like people who buy this thing are way more likely to buy a purse. Right. And they know that because they have, let's just say 20,000 people who have bought pants. And of those 20,000 people, you know, 32% of them also buy a purse. So it's clearly like there's a customer type. So instead of you trying to like parse through and go, okay, I wonder what maybe this happens. You know, it's already gonna just be given to you. And not only that, all in an automated form. So like it's like Klaviyo is basically gonna say, hey, people that buy these pants also buy purses. So send them an email. Oh, click here and it'll be set up for you. Bas. Like when I was looking at their slides or their screen grabs of it, I was like, if this works like it looks like it does, this is incredible.
- [11:19]
Steve Chou
I agree. I think that was the single most important feature. But let's move on because once you know what segments that you want to email to, they actually introduce another feature that I'm really looking forward to, which is their new campaign builder.
- [11:35]
Tony
Yes.
- [11:37]
Steve Chou
And you have to remember now that Klaviyo does SMS email push. And if you just happen to have an app, they do in app messaging as well.
- [11:45]
Tony
Yeah.
- [11:46]
Steve Chou
And in the past, and I don't know how many people listening actually use Klaviyo, but if you use a traditional ems, you usually get like an autoresponder. Right. Where you can send a sequence of emails. And within Klaviyo already in the past, you could send autoresponder sequence where you could take people off or put people on based on certain criteria or the actions that they've created. So for example, like if you had this flow, like, like an abandoned cart flow, for example, that was three emails. If Someone purchased after the first email, you would not send them the abandoned cart email for a second. Second. That, that's already been there. Now you can do something like that with just regular campaigns.
- [12:25]
Tony
Yes.
- [12:26]
Steve Chou
And I'm just trying to. Why don't you, why don't you talk about like some of the use cases for that?
- [12:32]
Tony
So that's what I think is really nice. And I think we've bugged our friend Joe at Klaviyo for many years. One of the things, one of the features that Klaviyo never had was the recent to unopened. Right. You had to do that all manually, which was actually a bit of a pain. And they just recently launched that within their campaigns. You know, pretty normal, standard stuff. But now with this campaign, it's basically like a flow, but it's a campaign. So you send out an email. Let's just say you're having a, I don't know, Mother's Day sale. Mother's Day is in a couple months and you're going to send it out a week before Mother's Day or two weeks before Mother's Day, whatever your timeline is. But then you want to resend to unopened. But do you really want to resend to all your unopened? Probably not, because typically if you resend to all of your unopened, some of those people just don't really open a lot of the emails anyway. So immediately that email is going to perform a little less than you know, you'd like it to. So what you can do is resend it to people who've done like specific behaviors. Right. So it's not just unopened. It could be resend to people who didn't open it, but they visited the site within 30 days, they have already purchased $500 or more from my store. Like you can put all these conditions in it in this basically automated flow. And also Klaviyo has this little thing called the Action center where it gives you the recommendation of the best practice. So based on all of their data and all the brands and everything else, they'll tell you, like I might think, well, oh, I should send it to these people. Well, Klaviyo is going to say, hey, based on all the data from your store and all the data from stores in your vertical, like all their whole data set that they have, and go, this is actually what you should do. This is who you should send it to. Which to me is a game changer because one, it takes the guesswork out of it for us as far as like, well we can test it, right? We can see what happens, blah, blah, blah. But also like just tell me what to do. If you know what works, I'll do it.
- [14:38]
Steve Chou
I was thinking for me particularly we, we typically run three day sales or three or four day sales and we email multiple times during that period. So it would be nice instead of sending like three or four separate emails out about that sale, you have it in this nice campaign builder where you can automatically exclude people.
- [14:57]
Tony
Yes, right.
- [14:57]
Steve Chou
Who've purchased or for example, if someone hasn't responded or opened an email, maybe send them a text instead.
- [15:05]
Tony
Yes. And that was nice too. Like you can set up, if you do use Klaviyo for sms, you can basically, you know, email these people based on that text these people based on that email these people. Right. So it creates this whole chain of events that, which I think the other thing that's nice about that is like consistency of messaging. Right. So being able to know that like the people that are getting the text have already received an email that says this. So like I'm going to text them and say, you know, something different or I'm going to piggyback on what they already got. And I think being able to sort of like be very cohesive with the messaging is actually really important. I actually think most brands don't focus on this enough. But just that consistency with the messaging and the things that you say, especially during a promotion or a launch or anything like that is actually really valuable. And to be able to have that all like now in a sequence is a really nice feature.
- [16:04]
Steve Chou
I mean I was just thinking for me just organizing all the campaigns, like right now I have campaigns that say first day, middle of the promotion, last day of the promotion.
- [16:14]
Tony
Yes. I like AM 2:00pm Yeah. 6:00pm last day, last. Yeah, it's. And the problem with me is, and this is do my own fault but like I try to name things consistently. So like last day of the sale, it should be like the date, whatever the sale is, last chance, AM then whatever for pm. But sometimes I change the verbiage just because I'm human and I'm not thinking at the time, right. So then it's like, you know, I change something. So then when you go in and look for something to clone or create, you know, recreate, it's like, wait, that's not last chance, it's LC because I'm out. For some reason I decided to abbreviate this week. And so the, just the consistency of it I think is going to be really Nice.
- [16:56]
Steve Chou
Yeah. I mean, I ideally just want to be able to clone my entire sales sequence.
- [17:02]
Tony
Yeah.
- [17:02]
Steve Chou
And set it and forget instead of again having to draft four or five different emails.
- [17:06]
Tony
Yeah. And I think the nice thing about that little action center that they've created is that when they give you a recommendation, you basically just click it and it sets it up for you. So it's like we think you should send a campaign to people who like pink leggings or whatever it is. Right. And you're like, I do too. Click. And it like basically builds you this template. Right. With and for people who are not like big on using the coding and things like that in Klaviyo, which they do make it pretty easy to just drop and insert things. There's still some technical degree there. It's already embedded in those emails. So all you're doing is going in and tweaking it. Right. They already have your brand logo, they've already got your templates. So basically when you say yes, do this, it's creating everything for you and there's very little work that you need to be doing after that step.
- [17:59]
Steve Chou
Yeah. So this next feature that they introduced is actually something that I was in the middle of writing for my store, which is a self service and support hub. So Klaviyo is actually now going to do customer service for you. You know that right now a lot of stores or my friends, they're using a separate app.
- [18:22]
Tony
Yes.
- [18:22]
Steve Chou
For customer support. But you know Klaviyo already knows all your orders. Right. They know who's buying and all that stuff. They have all the information. They have addresses and whatnot. So why not manage order tracking and returns management? Why not have like an AI chatbot to answer the most commonly asked questions? Why not have like a live chat? If AI can't answer the question, hand it off to a real human. They've added all of that. I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in E commerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be obtained@mywifequitterjob.com free. Just sign up right there on the front page via email and I'll send you the course right away. Once again, that's mywifequitterjob.com free. Now back to the show.
- [19:32]
Tony
So I feel like this could be an entire podcast on its own. Is that customer support should be a sales channel for your business. And most people view it as a rescue boat. Right. Like rescue the lost order, rescue the, you know, person who can't figure out how to place order on the website, whatever it is. But it, it really should be its own sales channel. And I think because once someone, obviously there's a lot of people who message support who have like literally probably the top one is where's my order? Right. Which can be pretty much answered with AI probably 95% of the time. But then there are people like, I would, I would think for your business with the personalization, like people probably have questions about that. Right. People want to know like, well, what actually can I personalize? Or how, you know, what kind of thread do you use? Or, you know, whatever the questions would be, is it going to get here in time? Things like that. But what an opportunity to give people a great customer experience there and then upsell them on other things. Right. So the next thing you know, they're not just buying the personalized handkerchief, they've also got the matching apron and pillowcase. Right. That you just have an opportunity there and to remove some of the friction as far as like, where's my order? Things like that. Where that can all be done through AI to then allow your customer service person or people to actually do bigger work, I think is going to be a game changer for companies.
- [21:01]
Steve Chou
Here's the thing about our customer service. If we can get someone communicating with our customer service rep, it's almost 90% of conversion.
- [21:09]
Tony
Yeah.
- [21:10]
Steve Chou
Like we can always sell them something.
- [21:12]
Tony
Yeah.
- [21:12]
Steve Chou
So it's in your best interest to actually have that conversation with somebody. I still think phone conversations are the best, but chat is like the second best. And this actually seeing this feature actually reminded me. I had this really elaborate Facebook messenger platform where I was actually semi automating customer service. But Facebook deprecated that a long time ago. And it was on my list to add another live chat. But I actually hadn't done it before, hence I was going to incorporate all these features into the site already. I was really looking forward to writing my own AI powered chatbot. Also, I might just use Klaviyo's now.
- [21:51]
Tony
Yeah.
- [21:52]
Steve Chou
And if it's already there and they have all the information and it looks really nice, the screenshots that they showed us.
- [21:57]
Tony
Yeah.
- [21:57]
Steve Chou
It was just really nicely integrated with the site already, it was almost like it was a part of the Shopify store, in fact.
- [22:04]
Tony
Yes. Well, no, But I think the other thing that people probably don't think about is that it looks really nice. It looks, and it looks like a seamless experience for the customer. But also like they go in, they ask, you know, where's my order? Or I use the. I actually had this to me yesterday. I used the wrong credit card for something. I used an old credit card that actually had been canceled and I knew the order was going to get declined at some point. It was a grocery order. So I was like, I need to get in here and fix it. So I got on with an AI chatbot. I got the answer that I needed. Basically. It wasn't the answer I wanted, but basically like, we can't do anything. You have to cancel your order and reorder. And I'm like, fine, but got through the whole process. But I think about the fact that like, if it is all integrated in Klaviyo and they have all of the customer information and with their AI features, they're telling you stuff about the customer inside that as you know, as if you, when you escalate it to the human. Right. Then you have all this information about the customer. If you're in another customer service platform that is not connected, you can still get that information about the customer. But you've got to log into Shopify or Klaviyo. You've got to pull the information you can see. Like when you log into, if you pull up someone's customer profile in Klaviyo, you know, what emails they've received, what emails they've clicked on, what they've purchased. And now that's all going what it looks like it's all going to be within that customer service platform. Like what an advantage to when someone actually gets to a human to have all that data and you're like, oh, this person always buys like embroidered pillowcases. We should probably show them this new line as we're talking to them. You know what I mean? Like, it's all just given to the people that are working, which I think is going to be a great sales channel for companies.
- [23:49]
Steve Chou
Yeah. I mean, right now the way we do it is we have another tool that handles all that.
- [23:53]
Tony
Right, Right.
- [23:54]
Steve Chou
But why not just have it in one place.
- [23:57]
Tony
Yeah.
- [23:57]
Steve Chou
And not have to open some other tool in order to get the same information.
- [24:02]
Tony
And then expect your customer service person, which typically in most stores is like a lower paid employee. It's not a Salesperson for sure. But then you're just handing that person all this data that they can use. They're not having to go find it or dig it out or understand like it's all appears to be like in the platform already when they're talking to them.
- [24:24]
Steve Chou
I mean, this is how I see it being used also like when we get a phone call, she can just pull up this information in Klaviyo.
- [24:32]
Tony
Yeah.
- [24:33]
Steve Chou
And maybe Klaviyo can say, hey, this person is very likely to order another handkerchief.
- [24:37]
Tony
Yes.
- [24:38]
Steve Chou
And then she could just make that suggestion on the fly because Klaviyo has all the data once again.
- [24:42]
Tony
And as you, you don't like humans, humans having to think about things. So this is like a huge.
- [24:48]
Steve Chou
Oh yeah, definitely benefit to you.
- [24:50]
Tony
The other cool feature that I saw when they were showing the screenshots was it appeared like after you went through customer support, they had like a little survey at the end where it was like, and this was they were doing a clothing store as their example and it was like which of these is your favorite color for leggings? Right. And then they showed the example and the person put like pink or whatever and then it was like they asked another question based on the favorite color. There were like three real simple like multiple choice questions. But then based on their responses, it created profile properties for that person in Klaviyo and then suggested the emails that they get that like, you know, so one person, you're sending the same email to 500 people, but one person's getting the pink leggings and one person's getting the black leggings based on the profile. And it's basically all automated.
- [25:43]
Steve Chou
Yeah, yeah. You know, one, the other day a student asked me how to get Google Analytics set up and get all the granular data. And what I told her was like, I can show you how to set all that up, but to be honest with you, I rarely look at Google Analytics at all anymore, ever since they made the shift because it's, it's like not intuitive and it's not easy to use.
- [26:06]
Tony
No, I can't find anything in there. I hate it.
- [26:08]
Steve Chou
But now with all these new Klaviyo features and they showed a screenshot of this, but now you can get like a comprehensive customer timeline. One of Google's restrictions is they couldn't use real names due to privacy reasons. But on Klaviyo, like let's say I want to pull you up, I can see every email open, every sms, click, every purchase, every website visit, every return, every Shipment, where the shipment is in transit. It's just a much nicer way to track things than like a Google Analytics.
- [26:40]
Tony
Well, and I think that's. That's what they called it. What, the unified customer view.
- [26:45]
Steve Chou
Yeah.
- [26:45]
Tony
And basically. And I would assume that you would have to be using Klaviyo SMS for. To get this fully.
- [26:51]
Steve Chou
Of course.
- [26:52]
Tony
Yeah.
- [26:52]
Steve Chou
Well, unless it integrates. I mean, like I said, Klaviyo integrates with pretty much every other tool since it's pretty much become the standard.
- [27:00]
Tony
Yeah.
- [27:01]
Steve Chou
So you could probably get click data if you're on like postscript for example.
- [27:04]
Tony
But I think being able to see and they showed a graph of like a customer timeline and basically, you know, I forget what they call them. Like, the champions were like the top customers. And, you know, then they had like, names for each level of customer. But being able to see all that information and like, are they more likely to open a text, an email? Like, what are they doing? What are they interacting the best with? And then once again making those, like, take action recommendations based on what people are doing. I think that's probably my favorite feature is that Klaviyo basically tells you what to do. So instead of you sort of overanalyzing and testing, and I think you should still be testing, obviously, but you're not just like throwing stuff at a wall and seeing what sticks. Klaviyo is actually taking the data and giving you really good ideas.
- [27:53]
Steve Chou
Have you ever gone to the dentist and they go up to you and they say, hey, Steve, how was your vacation three months ago? And you're like, what? What? How did you know I went on a vacation? How'd you remember? Because I obviously told them that.
- [28:04]
Tony
Oh, yeah, because they put it in your little notes when they're cleaning your teeth. Yeah.
- [28:07]
Steve Chou
Yes. Can you imagine now that if you're on live chat with somebody and you know you already have the customer up. Right.
- [28:13]
Tony
Right.
- [28:14]
Steve Chou
Because I would imagine that as soon as someone does a live chat, it automatically brings up.
- [28:17]
Tony
Yeah.
- [28:18]
Steve Chou
You know, whatever their profile is and you have notes on that person. Like our best customers, we have notes like we know what they're doing. And you can automatically say stuff like, oh, how's your kid? You know, how's high school? They just started high school.
- [28:29]
Tony
Yes.
- [28:29]
Steve Chou
That makes a huge difference.
- [28:31]
Tony
Yeah. I think the, the level of customer loyalty that you get from that. Like, I. It's funny that you brought up the dentist because my favorite hygienist stopped working to be home with her kids. What a jerk. But like, one of the Reasons why I liked going is that like she. We could like pick up where we left off in our conversations. It was kind of like, oh, well, how was this? And I know it's all in their little dashboard, right? Of notes like, oh, she, like, I think it was when Instacart came out. And so we had this whole conversation about Instacart one time and the next time she's like, I'm using Instacart, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, how do you remember that we had a conversation about Instacart anyway, Made me super loyal to the dentist because it just, it felt good, right? It feels good to have people remember you.
- [29:19]
Steve Chou
How are you able to have conversations with your hygienist? Like, she's got the stuff in your mouth, right? It's always a one sided conversation.
- [29:25]
Tony
Nothing can stop me from talking that.
- [29:31]
Steve Chou
The other thing that's nice is I've actually wanted to offload email marketing to someone outside of Jen and I. I'm very curious about all the AI features in terms of, you know, what subject lines, what type of emails to create and whatnot. I don't know. You, you mentioned earlier that it might put you out of a job. Yeah, that's my best case scenario not to put you out of a job.
- [29:59]
Tony
Because then you'll have to hire me. That's not your best case scenario. So, you know, as I was watching this and thinking through everything, part of me was like, you know what? I feel like this is where I don't hate AI because we've had a lot of conversations about AI and people just creating entire websites and YouTube channels and just all AI generated and even some of the dangers, right? Where they're like basically doing the deep fake stuff, right? Where it's like you can't even tell. So I think AI can, it can be awful, right? It can be, it can be used for pretty negative things. And you and I just did a Google search like two weeks ago and Google gave us the wrong AI, gave us the wrong information about Google. Do you remember that? So.
- [30:43]
Steve Chou
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [30:44]
Tony
So it's like there's a lot of negative about AI, but I feel like when I watched this I was like, okay, this is how AI really should be used, right? This is where I think it's helpful and pushing forward and using technology to make things better for everybody. Because here's the thing, like it doesn't just make things better for the company owner or the marketing person. It makes things better for the customer, right? Like how much like, we all get a million emails every day. You know, if you're on a bunch of SMS lists, you get tons of texts marketing text, things like that. But how awesome is it to get an email that actually makes sense to you, right? And it's actually something you care about. I use this example. At Seller Summit last year when I was doing the email talk, I bought a bunch of paint at Lowe's, and then Lowe's sent me an ad for paint, an email about paint. And I was like, you should have sent me an ad for paint brushes. Right? You should have sent me an ad. You know what I bought? I don't need to buy more paint. I need to buy painter's tape and, you know, all the things that go along with it. It was like a huge missed opportunity. So I think the better AI gets of sending the customers things that they really like. Like, don't send me an email with a dress that I'll never buy. But if you know that I've looked at something and you're sending me an email telling me that the price dropped or that it's back in stock or that they have this color that I actually buy everything else in this color, my journey has gotten so much better when it comes to, you know, the whole buying experience.
- [32:14]
Steve Chou
I think the most egregious error that I had a company make was when I bought a pair of shoes and they sent me emails about women's clothing. I mean, maybe they know something that I don't, but I.
- [32:28]
Tony
Well, I think the. My personal pet peeve is when you buy something and the next day you get an email from that company with that exact product and it's now 25% off.
- [32:39]
Steve Chou
Oh, yeah, right.
- [32:40]
Tony
And so I feel like with all of this AI integration that can be avoided really easily. Right. You can exclude people who purchase and I mean, you can already do this, but I feel like this is going to make it even more intuitive and it's going to be even easier excluding people who've already bought, excluding people who bought that exact product in the last, you know, 48 hours. Kind of, you know, don't send a sale email to the, you know, all those things where as a human that can be, you can forget or it can slip or you can forget to add them, and there's like lots of opportunity for error. And I think this actually makes things so much better for everybody, right? The customer, the store, the marketing person. And I think also, like, don't people want emails in their inbox that are relevant? I do. I Don't want a bunch of garbage. So I think it, it provides a much better experience for the, for the shopper.
- [33:35]
Steve Chou
Yeah. And one thing that I think Klaviyo is really trying to do is prevent people from just blasting their entire list.
- [33:42]
Tony
Yes.
- [33:43]
Steve Chou
And so there's one seller summit talk, I want to say a couple years ago where they talked about how, you know, you have different segments of customers that are in different stages of the purchasing journey. So like you have people who will buy from you no matter what. They buy in bulk and they buy a lot. Then you have customers that buy often but they don't spend that much money. Then of course you have people who bought like buy occasionally and then there's people who haven't purchased at all.
- [34:11]
Tony
Yeah.
- [34:11]
Steve Chou
And it's important to understand who those people are because you're going to want to send messages differently to those people. Like for example, for your best customers, I know it's ironic that you're punishing your best customers, but we don't send out coupons to our best customers because we know they're going to buy anyway. We reward them in other ways, like with loyalty points or something like that. Because a coupon's not going to, I mean, they're going to buy no matter what.
- [34:37]
Tony
Yeah.
- [34:38]
Steve Chou
Whereas someone who hasn't bought at all, maybe you just want to give them a bigger coupon to get them to buy for the very first time.
- [34:44]
Tony
Yeah. And I mean, I think that, I mean, I've seen that that works. Right. If you are talking differently to different types of customers, it, it really does make a huge difference in your return on investment, basically. I think another thing that was important that they talked about, unfortunately it doesn't apply to you or me, but I know it applies to a lot of companies is they also have done a lot with people who operate on a subscription basis. Right. So basically that subscribe and save model, which I think that to me we talk about this with like the course and stuff of like subscription versus one time and you know, how does that work? But I think when you have a subscription based business or even a component of your business that's subscription based, understanding when people fall off is like a game changer for your business because you have to figure out like, okay, when do people stop using it, stop subscribing and how do we keep them longer? Right. What do we need to do? How do we need to talk to them? What types of people drop off? At what point is it based on the type of product they're ordering? You know, there's all these different factors. Right. And from what I saw in the presentation, it feels like there's a lot of AI tools that Klaviyo is using to help subscription based companies understand their customers better and keep them longer. And I want to say they had an example on the screen and I wanted to say, like it was like a 54%, you know, boost in, you know, retention for implementing some of these AI strategies of how you talk to people, which could be, that could be game changing for a business. Right. To be able to keep people for that much longer. So I think if you do have a subscription based business, which neither you or I do, this is actually a very valuable, you know, product now for you.
- [36:44]
Steve Chou
I mean, I wish I had a subscription basis.
- [36:46]
Tony
I know, Me too.
- [36:47]
Steve Chou
Hank you the month club? Yeah, I don't think it's gonna work.
- [36:51]
Tony
No, probably not.
- [36:53]
Steve Chou
Yeah. And then also, like, if you happen to have an app, like we have a mutual friend who has an app, you can actually incorporate all this stuff into an app now as well, whereas you could not do that before. And then probably my favorite part, I.
- [37:10]
Tony
Know what this is going to be.
- [37:12]
Steve Chou
Oh, you do? Okay. They have an API where you can connect Klaviyo to any website. I'm not on Shopify.
- [37:23]
Tony
Right.
- [37:23]
Steve Chou
So anytime I need to integrate something, I pretty much need an API to do it. And this probably doesn't apply to a lot of people listening to this, but let's say you want to integrate. Let's say you didn't choose Shopify, for example.
- [37:37]
Tony
Right.
- [37:37]
Steve Chou
And you're on like godaddy for some crazy reason because. Because they got you on their site and you have a store on there.
- [37:43]
Tony
Yeah.
- [37:44]
Steve Chou
You could enter, you could integrate Klaviyo GoDaddy with code, whereas you wouldn't be able to do that before.
- [37:49]
Tony
Yeah.
- [37:49]
Steve Chou
Of course, if you're on GoDaddy, you're in trouble anyway.
- [37:52]
Tony
Right. There's bigger problems on that.
- [37:54]
Steve Chou
You got bigger problems. But the point is, is that you can integrate with any platform even if there isn't native support for it.
- [38:00]
Tony
Well, it. Doesn't that also mean, and I am not a developer, that people can build apps for Klaviyo too. Like it works both ways. So it.
- [38:11]
Steve Chou
Yeah, that's interesting actually there. Because there's no Klaviyo app store.
- [38:15]
Tony
Right.
- [38:16]
Steve Chou
As far as I know. But yes, it opens up.
- [38:19]
Tony
So I think, I mean, I always like it when tools open up their API because I feel like it, it opens the marketplace for things. But I also don't understand it enough to know like the dangers and the pros and the cons of anything. So I just know that it makes you happy. So I'm happy.
- [38:38]
Steve Chou
Well, here, here's one thing that they talked about that we didn't actually mention here is that you can put together sequences to gather information about a customer. So for example, let's say you sell body wash in sms. You can ask them, hey, you know, what's your favorite scent? What type of skin do you have? And then each time they answer in a sequence.
- [39:01]
Tony
Yeah.
- [39:02]
Steve Chou
You can gather data about that person and store it in their customer profile.
- [39:06]
Tony
Yeah. And I don't, I, I can't stress enough how much knowing things about your customer makes them happy, makes the customer happier. So let's just say, let's talk about shampoo. You sell shampoo, right? And you sell shampoo for like oily hair and thin hair and curly hair. Because most shampoo manufacturers have like a bottle for every type hair type, right? Well, if you have limp, straight hair, right. That always looks greasy. You don't want to a product that's like for thick, luscious hair. Right. Because not only are you not going to buy it, you're now ticked off because you don't have thick, luscious hair. So if you only get like the content that is related to you or if you know, I remember one time like probably 10 years ago, I got an email for like plus size fashion, like size 22, like 22x and up, right. Which is like, if you, if you're not familiar with like sizing like 22x is like you're getting two seats on an airplane, right? So like, I was like offended. I was like, yeah, I've gained like five pounds, but calm down, you know, so it, but immediately like I had a negative reaction to the brand, right. Because I like, my feelings got hurt. So I think if you like being able to like take people through that survey process and get more information about them and then, you know, if they feel like they got a big butt and they don't like it, you're not going to send them stuff that makes them look like they have a bigger butt. Right. Like whatever it is, you're not playing on people's insecurities, you're playing on the things that they like and so they just feel much more accepted and they have much more positive view of your brand.
- [40:47]
Steve Chou
Yeah. I mean, all I can say here is I'm really excited about these features because you know how I don't like to pay for SaaS apps.
- [40:55]
Tony
Yes.
- [40:55]
Steve Chou
So right now I have different ones that do a whole bunch of different things. Right. And it's piecemeal. I gotta log into each one.
- [41:02]
Tony
Yes.
- [41:02]
Steve Chou
It'd be nice to just only have to log into one tool.
- [41:05]
Tony
Yeah.
- [41:06]
Steve Chou
For practically everything. And that's essentially what Klaviyo has done with these new set of features. They've created a salesforce.com for e commerce. Is that maybe that's the best analogy? I've only used Salesforce like a couple of times.
- [41:20]
Tony
Like I haven't used it. That's what it feels. That's what it feels.
- [41:23]
Steve Chou
Feels like because I used it one back, back in the day when I used to work too. But basically it's just, you know, you have all the data about every customer and you basically make your decisions off of all that.
- [41:34]
Tony
Yeah. I feel like it's like Klaviyo using AI for good as opposed for evil.
- [41:39]
Steve Chou
Yeah. As opposed to spamming.
- [41:41]
Tony
Yeah. Like making. I feel like at the, at the end of the day, it's making the experience better for every single person. It's making the experience better for your company by giving you more opportunities to generate revenue. It's making the experience better for your marketing team, giving them the information to make better marketing decisions. And most of all, it's giving your customers a significantly better experience by tailoring every piece of communication in a personalized way to your customer.
- [42:13]
Steve Chou
Hope you enjoyed this episode. These new features make it super easy to send targeted emails and texts to your customers and I'm super excited. For more information and resources, go to my wife quitherjob.com Episode 582 Once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2025 are now on sale over at sellers summit.com if you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event. Go to sellersummit.com and if you're interested in starting your own e commerce store, head on over to my wife, quitherjob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and I'll send the course right away via email.