#tech-talk
Thread
Anyone using Klaviyo for SMS and finding success, or have made the transition from Klaviyo to another service like postscript?
@Rose Mayo Klaviyo SMS is great. How do you define 'finding success'? Can elaborate more once you explain.
@Tobi Chapman
@George Kapernaros how are you defining it as "great"?
Would define success as high engagement/conversion rates, ability to minimize wasted cost/excess spend in SMS while maximizing impact. Not things I'm seeing with Klaviyo vs. others on the market; they're also clearly focusing on data & email and their SMS product is lagging vs competitors
Their billing system is indeed quite problematic
As it's easy to pay in excess of what you used
It's very important to have someone monitoring the credits spent.
This is not the case in other solutions like, e.g., Yotpo SMS.
Depends on what you're optimzing for since you're choosing between tradeoffs. If simplicity, then Klaviyo is nice since it's all in the same place, especially if you're using their CDP/AI tools.
But for performance, you can't beat Postscript. The fact they're specialized/dedicated to SMS just makes all the difference, and it's easier to maximize results. They're also better for learn best practices with their expertise.
At the same time, Klaviyo's SMS product is not bad, their multi-channel attribution is miles ahead of most of other platforms (relevant: ) and you can orchestrate journeys way more easily than by using 2 separate platforms for email & SMS.
I do not agree with Gabe's point above - Klaviyo's platform does have the functionality/features necessary to perform very well (it is for sure on parity with Attentive).
Not biased in this:
221% YoY SMS growth for one of our brands = they are using Attentive, not Klaviyo.
@George Kapernaros I'm curious about your experience there, I have not seen any brands have SMS perform better on Klaviyo vs. Postscript. Could you share some examples that do? I'd love to check them out to see what they might be doing differently to update my opinions.
You can find case studies for everything. 🙂
Thanks, but it seems that aligns with the experience I shared: Klaviyo's strength is based on having everything together in one place, not on purely better SMS performance. So it does matter what you're optimizing for, pure SMS performance or other factors.
Klaviyo pushed us onto an annual contract in order for us to see savings (we switched SMS from attentive, were already using klaviyo for email) and we get charged a flat monthly fee, only we found out about halfway into it that they WAY over-quoted the amount of SMS credits we'd need with klaviyo (by about 40% or so) and under-estimated email, and are telling us they can't convert SMS credits to email and we'll be charged overage fees at the end of the contract...in short, a huge billing mess and nightmare and ballooning my P&L for this. Also saw conversion rates fall off a cliff by more than 50% when we switched SMS to klaviyo and they've never recovered - their product is NOT the same as attentive either, which offers concierge/AI driven engagement and you really can't do a lot of that with klaviyo. opt-in is also clunky compared to other tech out there
Having everything in one place hasn't really seemed to help us much either
The main difference vs. attentive in results is attribution
Attentive simply overreports way more.
Overall I am not a Klaviyo rep so will not try to change your mind, haha. Just sharing our experience has been great with Klaviyo SMS. The billing piece is indeed terrible
and I am sorry you went thorugh, but I do believe the product is great. 💪
Not comparing platform attribution here - GA4 attribution, clear and sharp drop off as soon as we switched that never recovered
And product experience has been very "eh" - they've made it clear in roadmap they're prioritizing email and CDP/data, not SMS specifically; team support is also inconsistent
To be clear / for posterity - I do agree on support being inconsistent and on CDP/data being prioritized over SMS.