Balanced Rock switches from Mailchimp to Klaviyo in “quantum leap forward”

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Balanced Rock is a health and wellness non-profit organization, leading guided experiences in Yosemite National Park—from hikes and yoga retreats to Ayurvedic healing sessions.

Co-founders Heather Sullivan and Eliza Kerr started the organization in 2000 with a simple mission: to inspire health & well-being through deep connection to nature and spirit.

In the decades since then, Balanced Rock has built an engaged community of like-minded outdoor-lovers—and encourages them to plan their next adventure with Klaviyo.

Learn how Balanced Rock’s lean team gained new insight into email performance:

Challenge

Mailchimp was “really buggy and glitchy,” recalls Balanced Rock’s operations manager, Meaghan.

The email provider would often log her out mid-session, and she’d lose half an hour of work. Mailchimp’s editor was “challenging to say the least,” she laughs.

Everything was happening in a disjointed way.

The software didn’t just waste time—it created confusion around performance. Olsen couldn’t track how email sends converted into website activity, because Mailchimp didn’t connect with their WordPress site.

“None of these systems were connected,” Meaghan says. “Everything was happening in a disjointed way.”

Solution

The non-profit decided to switch to a more modern tech stack: Squarespace for their website, Stripe for payments, and Klaviyo for email.

“It was a quantum leap forward,” Meaghan says. “It’s so much easier to build emails now. Creating templates is very straightforward, and we feel our options are a lot more customizable with Klaviyo.”

Balanced Rock worked with a marketing consultant to connect Squarespace and Klaviyo, for improved insight into how well emails drove on-site engagement.

The consultant also helped them import their Mailchimp list to Klaviyo in just one day, and set up initial flows.

After that, the lean in-house team could operate Klaviyo themselves.

Strategy

Balanced Rock now has two core strategic objectives with Klaviyo: growing their subscriber list, and generating bookings for their retreats, trainings, and workshops in Yosemite.

• How Klaviyo helps grow the list: A Klaviyo welcome pop-up on Balanced Rock’s Squarespace site offers visitors a free yoga video if they sign up for marketing emails. The submit rate is 44.8% above the median for their peer group, according to Klaviyo benchmarks.
• How Klaviyo helps engage their community: Balanced Rock sends a weekly newsletter campaign with Klaviyo that blends educational content, like blog posts and recipes, with program promotions. Engagement is rising: the active-on-site rate from campaigns jumped 53.7% QoQ in Q3.

Soon, Meaghan hopes to launch more segmented promotional campaigns, and more program-specific flows—like a welcome flow triggered by yoga teacher training sign-ups.

“As a nonprofit that is all about human connection, it’s important that the systems we use don’t feel robotic or cold,” says Meaghan. “Klaviyo is helping us create a better, more personalized user experience.”

As a nonprofit that is all about human connection, it’s important that the systems we use don’t feel robotic or cold. Klaviyo is helping us create a better, more personalized user experience.