Klaviyo Audience Guide - Stop Overcomplicating

We’ve all been there: you’ve nailed your buyer persona, mapped their behaviour and dissected their purchasing journey. Then you head into Klaviyo and build the ‘perfect’ segment.

You want to target the person that has clicked this, hasn’t done that, lives in this city, has brown hair, owns a labrador called Rufus. You think: “Perfect - there’s no way this email doesn’t convert.” But it doesn’t perform anywhere near as well as it should.

This uber-targeted example maybe a touch exaggerated, but you get the point. It’s easy to overcomplicate segmentation in Klaviyo because a) the parameters allow you to and b) it’s easy to make assumptions that aren’t necessarily true.

The problem is this: the more you segment the more you exclude, and the more you exclude the fewer people see the email you spent time researching, designing and building.

Email is a numbers game. The higher the volume of people opening and interacting with your email, the higher the chance of purchase. Strip it back to the percentages.

Of course, there’s a time and place for detailed targeting. Nobody wants irrelevant emails landing in their inbox, but for your weekly comms, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Keep it simple and focus on engaged audiences.

The Audiences That Work

Here’s what I use across the accounts I manage:

• 14-Day Engaged – Can receive email marketing and has opened or clicked an email in the last 14 days.
• 30-Day Engaged – Can receive email marketing and has opened or clicked an email in the last 30 days.
• 60-Day Engaged – Can receive email marketing and has opened or clicked an email in the last 60 days.
• 90-Day Engaged – Can receive email marketing and has opened or clicked an email in the last 90 days.

How to Use Them

Start with the 14-Day Engaged audience. Send campaigns here until you’re consistently hitting a 50%+ open rate. Once you are, expand out to the 30-Day Engaged list. Repeat the process with 60-day and 90-day segments.

It’s a simple approach, build gradually, and keep your engagement strong.