With Klaviyo, Circular boosts subscription numbers by 764% in just 6 months

Circular is disrupting traditional tech ownership by offering consumers in Singapore and Australia a new option: renting popular devices like the iPhone 16 and the latest Apple Macbook Pro.

This unique subscription service uses budget-friendly monthly payments to allow consumers to rent rather than own devices from the best brands. When a shoppers’ subscription ends, Circular recycles or refurbishes their devices—reducing waste and protecting the planet, too.

How Circular rapidly increased subscription revenue with Klaviyo

Challenge

Circular’s subscription business model is much more complex than a typical ecommerce brand’s.

Operating in the lending space means Circular needs to follow strict compliance requirements. Before a device ships and a subscription begins, customers must complete due diligence questionnaires and meet lending approval requirements, such as credit checks.

In the early days, Circular handled SMS and email marketing on separate platforms. This fragmented tech stack and basic platform functionality limited the team to only transactional messages, such as notifying subscribers when orders shipped.

Circular saw the value in transitioning to a consolidated marketing automation platform and building out a retention-focused marketing strategy that nurtured customers from sign-up to re-subscription—and beyond.

Solution

Circular turned to Klaviyo to streamline the customer journey and make it easier for subscribers to rent a device.

As a lean startup, Circular engaged retention marketing agency Titan Marketing to maximise Klaviyo’s capabilities within a short timeframe.

With Klaviyo, Circular gained precise segmentation capabilities and designed custom flows that automated messages aligned with key subscriber actions—from submitting a compliance form to ordering a new device.

“By partnering with Circular and consolidating their fragmented tech stack into Klaviyo, we’ve been able to put an ecosystem of automated flows and campaigns in place to boost deliverability, increase subscriber engagement, and ultimately drive revenue growth,” explains Billy Chivers, co-founder and CEO at Titan Marketing.

From H1 to H2 2023, Circular went from 0 to 22 automated flows running across both email and SMS, driving an impressive 764% growth in new subscriptions. By H1 2024, email and SMS flows accounted for over 99% of Circular total attributed conversions.

Since maximising the value of Klaviyo with Titan, Circular has seen over $2 million in Klaviyo-attributed subscription value in just 12 months.

“At Circular, we don’t see Titan Marketing as an agency,” says David Harling, chief marketing officer at Circular. “We see them as a partner and a complete extension of our team.”

By partnering with Circular and consolidating their fragmented tech stack into Klaviyo, we’ve been able to put an ecosystem of automated flows and campaigns in place to boost deliverability, increase subscriber engagement, and ultimately drive revenue growth.

Strategy

To drive revenue growth and boost subscription uptake, Titan harnessed Klaviyo’s powerful platform capabilities to design a bespoke email and SMS strategy aligned with Circular’s unique customer journey, including:

• Creating custom triggers and flow filters to gain real-time visibility into customer activity by leveraging unique API events from Circular, such as order approval and device plan subscription steps. This allows the team to harness customer and event data to power personalised journeys on Klaviyo.
• Using precise segmentation tools to boost re-subscription rates and encourage shoppers to sign up for another device, serving time-sensitive automation to engage customers. For example, promoting the latest iPhone release to customers when their current subscription period is about to end.
• Designing automated flows to address common drop-off points in the customer journey. Launching abandonment flows triggered by custom events like sign-up form abandonment, for example, has helped increase the number of website visitors turning into new subscribers—boosting list size by 125% over the past 18 months.

“Since partnering with the Titan Marketing team to run our automated flows and campaigns in Klaviyo, we’ve seen an uptick in conversion rates to subscriptions and an increase in the number of orders placed,” Harling says. “We’ve also seen a decrease in drop-off and abandonment rates, meaning we’re seeing a higher subscription volume to drive revenue for the business.”

Since partnering with the Titan Marketing team to run our automated flows and campaigns in Klaviyo, we’ve seen an uptick in conversion rates to subscriptions and an increase in the number of orders placed.