Effective email marketing for an Ecommerce brand can grow your revenue by an additional 20-30% for online stores on average. If you’re constantly expanding your email list, you will need an ESP (Email Service Provider) that will let you automate your email flows and nurture your audience.
Klaviyo and Privy are two highly popular software tools with advanced email marketing and lead generation functionality. But which is best? In this guide we take a detailed look at Klaviyo vs Privy to determine which one Shopify stores or other Ecommerce brands should choose.
Without a doubt, in this comparison of the two, Klaviyo is the more popular one – as of now, there are 270,127 eCommerce stores installed on the platform.
But there are some things Privy customers appreciate and a lot of good pieces of functionality built in to the platform. Here’s what we’ll cover this guide:
Klaviyo vs Privy: Basics
Klaviyo is one of the top marketing platforms for online stores giving the ability to run effective campaigns across email, SMS, and pop-up campaigns to grow your lists.
With Klaviyo, storing and analyzing transactional or behavioural data becomes easily accessible. This ESP is suitable for a company of any size from startups to billion-dollar brands.
Privy helps you increase your conversion rate with pop ups and email sequences.
Even though those two marketing platforms are very similar, there are a few major differences worth pointing out.
Features in Privy and Klaviyo
Before considering these two tools, let’s talk about their features. The main features you should consider are:
- Email customization
- List segmentation
- Popup customization
- Data integration
- Analytics and data reports
- A/B Testing
Email sequences are incredibly valuable when it comes to automating your email marketing. An ESP should offer an email builder that suits any eCommerce business.
Luckily, Klaviyo and Privy offer pre-made email templates that you can use immediately. And here are some more of their features
Klaviyo Key Features
Klaviyo has easy-to-use themed templates that you can customize using the built-in drag & drop editor. It was originally built as an Ecommerce email platform. Other than that, they also offer:
- Real-time segmentation: the tool does a wonderful job in segmenting your list by average order value, on-site visitor’s behaviour, cart behaviour, cart value products purchased and more
- Custom integrations: use their API to set up a custom integration.
- Pre-built automation flows: you can use their default settings & pre-made templates for automation flows such as Abandoned Cart, Welcome Series etc.
- Email and SMS Marketing: send targeted email messages and SMS to your customers simultaneously.
Privy Key Features
We recommend what Privy offers over Klaviyo when it comes to stand alone on-site conversion and lead-capture tools for your landing pages, such as:
- Spin-to-wins: a lucky wheel that your visitors can spin to win a reward, such as a discount coupon
- Fly-outs: a subtle option for driving maximum list growth or promoting a specific campaign without killing your conversion rates
- Welcome Discount Play: a feature to let you grow sales from new users and later analyze data reports for successful email marketing and SMS marketing.
- Exit-intent campaigns: this gives you a second chance to collect subscribers with your visitor’s email before they leave the site.
- Cross-sell displays: offer another product from your store to an existing customer or visitor.
Privy was originally launched as a lead capture and popup tool, so their product suite in this area is more advanced. Klaviyo was launched originally as an email marketing platform, so they have a much more advanced offering on the email side, with slightly less lead capture functionality.
Privy vs Klaviyo: Popups
Popups and lead capture are the primary reason brands use Privy.
Klaviyo added their popups feature after operating solely as an email marketing platform for the first few years.
Successful email marketing for Ecommerce requires using popups for driving maximum list growth or promoting a specific deal/campaign.
We usually see popups appearing on the website after browsing for a certain period. They can be either a small window popping out in the right corner of our screen or a full-sized window not letting us browse through it until we close it or input our email.
Popups are not user friendly; so it’s useful to know what is the ideal time to interrupt the visitor with our special deal (e.g. showing the pop-up 10 seconds after opening the website or scrolling down to the bottom)
You can modify the time when the pop-up should appear on both platforms. Klaviyo has the option to analyze what is the ideal timing and set up the pop-up accordingly to your data.
Popups are also a great tool to reduce the number of people who leave your website without starting the sales process. You can use them before your visitor leaves and get a second chance to get their email and craft targeted email messages.
At the same time, you can also collect sign ups with their phone number for further SMS marketing.
Privy popups
Privy excels with pre-made popups that you can start using straight away. Although, they’re pretty basic and lack a certain level of design out of the box.
The good thing is that their popup editor is quite simple to use. You can edit the text, add images, buttons/links, rectangles, social sharing buttons and even change the custom HTML code.
Popups can come up based on whether someone has been on the site for a certain period, has scrolled some percentage of the page or is leaving the page.
Klaviyo popups
Klaviyo is more data-based than Privy, meaning it’s hyper-focused on successful email and SMS marketing.
Inside Klaviyo, you’ll find the option to create a popup, a fly-out and embed popups.
Fly-outs appear on the side of your page, while embedded popups can be integrated with your landing pages by code.
You can create campaigns quickly via the easy-to-use drag & drop popup editor or with custom HTML. The software can display the popup either instantly or after a specific period.
Klaviyo and Privy’s Abandoned Cart Functionality
Abandoned cart messages give you a second chance to get your customer back to their cart by sending automated emails about the products they were interested in and motivating them to make the purchase. Optimizing these automated campaigns is a big focus for here at the Ecommerce Intelligence Shopify email agency.
It’s an essential tool – when a customer adds a product to their cart, it means they’ve already got a desire to buy it. Now, the visitor’s journey might end here for various reasons: a current technical issue, indecisiveness, or simply an urgency coming up at that moment.
You can send cart abandonment emails as a one-off email or set up an automated sequence, and both tools have this feature – just be careful with the number of emails you’re going to include in the flow to not look too spammy.
Klaviyo abandoned carts
Klaviyo came up with data reports stating that 70% of shopping carts are abandoned on average, and not making use of abandoned carts significantly lowers your online sales.
On this software, you can do things such as:
- Define flow trigger and filters
- Set time delays
- Set abandoned cart messages limit
- Use SMS marketing in abandoned cart flows.
Privy abandoned carts
According to Privy, 20% of shopping carts can be recovered by sending timely abandoned cart emails. If you’re planning to set an abandoned cart sequence for the first time, they’ve got some basic pre-made templates onboard.
The Privy email automations such as abandoned cart sequences are much more basic in functionality than Klaviyo’s.
Klaviyo vs Privy: Segmentation
List segmentation is another fantastic tool for optimizing your online sales and letting you analyze data reports. It’s one of Klaviyo’s key strengths. With list segmentation, you can define your audience based on:
- Number of purchases
- Location
- Products viewed
- Email/SMS engagement
- Discount-lovers
- Cart behaviour
- Cart Value
- Target upsell
- Any data you want
Klaviyo segmentation
Klaviyo can do a wonderful job when it comes to list segmentation.
It has a code-free segment builder with pre-defined options that offer advanced targeting for your audience based on a specific purchase, discount usage, or predicted customer lifetime value. All your segments are constantly updated in real-time. You can learn more about the power of segmentation in our Klaviyo course.
Privy segmentation
Segmentation is optional on Privy, as all flows present on the platform can be sent to the right target audience without segmenting your list.
Klaviyo vs Privy: Pricing
Privy and Klaviyo pricing is very similar and they both charge per contact, although none of the tools currently offer unlimited email sends. If you’re looking for an all-in-one lead capture, email marketing, and SMS platform then Klaviyo offers a lot more for your money in terms of functionality. It is a far more complete product if you want to do everything in one tool.
Privy pricing
- Starter plan for up to 100 mailable contacts
- $15/month for up to 250 mailable contacts
- Growth plan $45/month for up to 3000 email contacts and 500 textable contacts
See the full list of Privy’s pricing plans here.
Klaviyo pricing
- Starter plan for up to 500 monthly email sends
- $45/month for up to 1,001-1,500 contacts and 15,000 monthly email sends
- $60 for up to 1,500 contacts, 15,000 monthly email sends and 1,250 SMS/MMS monthly credits
See the complete list of Klaviyo’s pricing plans in our guide here.
Klaviyo vs Privy: Integration
Both tools are part of Zapier’s integration – you can connect both of them easily to Zapier which opens up access to almost any software tool available that works with Shopify or other Ecommerce platforms.
Privy integrations
Privy can be integrated with a Shopify store, Wix, BigCommerce & more. Click here to see the full list.
Klaviyo integrations
Klaviyo has 220+ pre-built integrations, including Shopify, WooCommerce, Prestashop and others. Click here for the full list.
Klaviyo vs Privy: Ease of use
Both tools have a learning curve, and you’ll need to watch a tutorial video to be able to use the platform to its full potential.
Privy ease of use
Privy’s interface seems easy to use thanks to the tools like the email builder that lets you create campaigns by simply dragging & dropping certain elements – but you might experience difficulties while accessing more features and options in the dashboard of this tool.
Klaviyo ease of use
Klaviyo has various customization options for the user’s interface, tracking metrics, or emails/SMS. It might take a while to figure out how to navigate the platform properly.
Klaviyo pros and cons
To sum this up, here are the main Klaviyo pros and cons:
Pros:
- It’s easy to craft targeted email messages without design/coding skills.
- The most advanced list segmentation for eCommerce stores
- Excellent customer support team with quick response time
- Reliable and highly customizable
Cons:
- The API functions are limited, and the server bandwidth is weak.
- Not all plans are the same, and there might be hidden fees for add-ons.
- Complicated interface
Overall we’re huge fans of Klaviyo. We decided to build our Ecommerce email marketing agency solely around helping brands with Klaviyo. We really do think it’s that good.
Privy pros and cons
Now, let’s move on to Privy:
Pros:
- Customers recommend Privy for the simple setup and integration with Shopify
- Easy migration from other ESPs
- Decent pre-made popups
- Great features for capturing on-site leads
Cons:
- The basic features are minimal
- Their pricing plans often change
- Sometimes it overlaps with how your main ESP will run if you’re using it for Abandoned Cart popups.
- Much less functionality than Klaviyo if you want email, SMS and lead capture in one platform.
Is Privy or Klaviyo better?
Privy excels in businesses looking to turn new visitors into buyers and increase their AOV (Average Order Value) with the help of banners, welcome discount plays, spin-to-wins, fly-outs and exit-intent campaigns. It’s main strengths are its email capture and lead generation tools. We’ve used it in the past with success here at our agency.
Klaviyo is a more advanced tool heavily focused on analyzing customer data and personalization for maximizing your sales. It’s a full email marketing suite – one of the best on the market – and also a full SMS marketing platform, with the added functionality of lead capture and popups to grow your lists.
Does Privy work with Klaviyo?
Yes, absolutely. Nothing is stopping you from using both of them simultaneously – thousands of companies are doing that successfully to this day. If you do however want everything in one platform, Klaviyo is the clear choice.
If you want help getting the most out of Klaviyo to grow your Ecommerce sales, contact us today and learn about our full suite of Klaviyo agency services. We offer everything from strategy and consulting calls to fully done for you agency services.