Issue 4: The One Thing Your Klaviyo Marketing Might Be Missing
To future proof your e-commerce business today, you need to commit to making first-party data one of your biggest assets, something to value and consistently leverage.
That includes your customer data; your website data and your marketing data. With the accelerated changes and volatility in the e-commerce ecosystem, it’s critical to make all the data you already own work hard for your business objectives.
With the launch of Smart ID, we’re enabling brands to use first-party data as a fundamental building block to their success. Ensuring your marketing tools leverage persistent identifiers, enables a better customer experience, whilst growing your audience and revenue.
This issue of Crow’s Nest features many ways to understand the user data problem plaguing e-commerce brands, and how to fix it.
Unlock The Future Of E-commerce Marketing: Thriving In The 'Cookieless' Era
Join Nik Sharma, Richard Harris, and Brodie Mazurek for a panel discussion on Thursday June 8th, 2023 to uncover the secrets of brands that evolved their user data strategy, and transformed Klaviyo and Meta performance as a result.
In this webinar, you'll learn:
- The hidden impact of ITP and iOS changes on your marketing performance
- The actionable steps you can take to fix the problems they cause
- Real-life examples of companies that have solved the user recognition problem and turned Klaviyo into a profitability flywheel
- Insights into how marketers have prevented breaks in user sessions from breaking their Meta strategy
The One Thing Your Klaviyo Marketing Might Be Missing
More than a hundred thousand e-commerce brands use Klaviyo because of the powerful automation it brings to their marketing tech stack. Its email flow capabilities offer powerful personalization and potential revenue. But many users don’t know the hidden problem that reduces their revenue potential by 30% to 40%: disappearing user data.
Understanding where this data is going—and why it vanishes—is key to finding a solution. This article will break down the problem surrounding this data loss, why it matters, and how to fix it. Ultimately, you’ll come away with the knowledge required to maximize the value of Klaviyo’s killer automation.
How Safari is sabotaging your marketing efforts
Apple’s Safari accounts for more than half of the mobile device browser market, and just over a third of the overall browser market. In an attempt to deliver increased consumer privacy, Apple has released a series of updates that shorten the duration of Safari browser cookies to just seven days for direct or organic traffic.
While reducing the lifespan of cookies might not seem like a big deal, seven days is actually incredibly short when it comes to many purchasing decisions. Think back to the last few larger purchases you made, you probably spent more than a week mulling over the decision. This means that, even if a prospective customer voluntarily offers an email address or phone number early in the buying process, the cookie that connects with that data won’t last until the actual purchase. In other words, you’re unable to use the data that your customers have voluntarily provided.
How expiring cookies sabotage Klaviyo’s automation
The effectiveness of Klaviyo’s email automation can be distilled down into a simple equation:
User Info + Qualifying Action = Triggered Flow
The formula seems simple enough, but there’s one major obstacle complicating the equation: commonly, a user provides their info during a different visit than the one when they complete a qualifying action. These two events often occur not just on different days, but more than a week apart. And since Safari’s cookies only last seven days, that means that the two pieces required within the Klaviyo equation above never actually register.
How missing user data impacts the customer journey
To better illustrate this problem, let’s follow along as Muhammad shops online for a new chair to go in his living room. He’s looking for the perfect spot to read by the window, and has wanted to splurge on a really nice chair to fit the bill.
Day 1
Muhammad’s friend recommends a furniture brand, so he pulls up the website on his phone. Upon arriving on the homepage, a pop-up offers a 10% coupon code in exchange for Muhammad submitting his email. He enters his email, receives the coupon, and browses around a bit to compare different models and colors. He likes what he sees, but never takes any action like adding something to his cart.
Day 10
Muhammed has been thinking a lot about one of the chairs he saw previously. He returns to site, but because it’s been more than seven days, Klaviyo is unable to recognize him. The same 10% discount offer pops up, but Muhammed taps out of it because he still has his coupon from before. He adds the chair he’s been thinking about to his cart to check the price after tax and shipping, then gets distracted by something else for the rest of the night. Klaviyo is unable to trigger the abandoned cart flow because Muhammed didn’t input an email or phone number.
Day 14
Muhammed is finally ready to purchase the chair he’s been dreaming about. He returns to the site, adds the chair to his cart, adds the coupon he received during his first visit, and completes the purchase.
Disappearing user data = disappearing customers
All's well that ends well, right? Not exactly. If Klaviyo had access to the necessary data, it could have successfully retargeted Muhammed after his second visit, potentially moving his purchase up by several days. And for every Muhammed that does eventually make a purchase, there are thousands of others who don’t because Klaviyo wasn’t provided with the user data required to trigger a remarketing flow.
While Muhammed’s experience reflects one specific automation flow, there are many other flows that are also impacted because user data is disappearing after seven days. Without these flows, Klaviyo’s primary value proposition—a personalized customer journey that can be easily resumed over time—comes up short.
Server side tracking to the rescue
All of the issues discussed so far in this article have been from the perspective of client side user tracking. This technology is extremely simple to configure, since the process usually only requires adding a small snippet of code onto your website or downloading an affiliated app. Because of this plug-and-play setup, it's the default for many growing e-commerce companies.
Unfortunately, there are some tradeoffs to the ease of use offered by client side user tracking. The first is that client side tracking makes use of third party cookies supplied by advertisers like Facebook or Google. This means that any resulting data is relayed to those third parties, which leads to obvious privacy concerns. The second trade-off is connected to the first. Because client side third parties set the first party cookies, it’s subject to Safari’s seven day expiration and the resulting retargeting issues.
The good news, however, is that client side isn’t the only game in town. Server side user tracking is an future-proof alternative because it keeps brands in control of consumer data rather than third parties. That means increased privacy, more control, and no risk of losing the data after seven days.
Up until recently, however, server side tracking was only practical for large organizations. The complexity of server side tracking, both in terms of configuration and maintenance, has required dedicated teams in order to run. This put smaller e-commerce brands at a disadvantage, since they were stuck with outdated, inflexible client side tracking. Luckily, that trade-off is no longer necessary. Solutions like Black Crow AI’s Smart ID shoulder the weight of server side data tracking, so e-commerce brands of all sizes can enjoy the benefits.
Continue reading to learn how server side tracking restores the power of Klaviyo remarketing
Get 50% More Revenue From Klaviyo & 30% Greater ROAS From Meta. All In One Click.
We’re excited to announce a better, easier way for e-commerce brands to recognize, reach, re-engage, and retain their highest quality users.
Through successive changes by Apple, your user data has become broken, costing you significant profits.
Our new feature, Smart ID, solves a series of data infrastructure problems that have broken the connection between your brand and your customers. All in one click.
Smart ID drives rapid profit improvement: 50% more revenue from Klaviyo and 30% growth in Meta ROAS.
Read more about the announcement and why we built Smart ID
What We're Reading
How Felina Intimates Boosted Triggered Email Flow Revenue By 54% With Black Crow AI
