DKNY powers smarter digital relationships with 1.2M+ active subscribers using Klaviyo

DKNY is designer Donna Karan’s love letter to New York street style—or “the energy, the colors, the collision of personalities and styles from all over the world that give New York its heart and soul,” as she puts it.

Founded in 1989 with a denim focus, the brand has grown into a household name in fashion. Today, DKNY sells an eclectic, always-changing array of apparel, accessories, and shoes online and in brick-and-mortar stores.

Learn how automations and Klaviyo AI have helped DKNY boost email efficiency

Challenge

When Griffin Hawkinson started as director of CRM and loyalty at AM Retail Group—managing lifecycle marketing for DKNY and 4 other fashion brands—he saw an opportunity to improve DKNY’s email efficiency.

The brand’s massive subscriber list wasn’t reflected in their engagement or Klaviyo-attributed value, or their revenue driven by Klaviyo. DKNY had been sending general, frequent campaigns, and “it felt like we oversaturated our list with messaging,” Hawkinson says.

Solution

AM Retail Group wanted to improve DKNY’s core metrics by cutting down on volume and taking a more personalized approach.

“The goal with less sending is that when we have a sale 3 months from now, that message stands out in somebody’s inbox,” he explains.

The goal with less sending is that when we have a sale 3 months from now, that message stands out in someone’s inbox.

The team ramped up segmentation and invested in Klaviyo flows—launching new ones, like a price drop flow, and adding new messages and branches to existing ones.

The new strategy helped DKNY boost email efficiency, just as hoped. In the last 3 months, email volume has dropped 24% YoY, and click rate is up 8%.

That’s helped AM Retail Group stick to their plan’s sending thresholds, too—which is easily monitored with Klaviyo portfolio’s multi-account analytics. “The all-in-one dashboard saves time,” Hawkinson says.

Strategy

The Klaviyo platform has powered many facets of DKNY’s increasingly personalized approach to email. For example, it’s allowed the team to easily:

• Target based on average order value (AOV): This lets DKNY send an email about bags on sale for under $100, for example, to a deal-hunters AOV bracket that never spends much more than that.
• Tailor welcome messaging by retail channel: When someone signs up for email at check-out in a brick-and-mortar store, the contact gets added to Klaviyo via API, and their first welcome flow email includes an in-store-only discount barcode—incentivizing them to buy again from the same retail channel. If someone signs up online, on the other hand, they go down a different branch of the flow—and get an ecomm discount code in their first email.
• Personalize product recommendations: DKNY uses dynamic product feeds in their emails, powered by Klaviyo AI. These highlight the product each customer’s most likely to buy next, based on what they’ve ordered in the past and how they’re similar to other customers.

DKNY is just getting started, especially when it comes to Klaviyo AI and automations. For instance, AM Retail Group has seen success with a predicted next order flow with other brands—and they would love to test that with DKNY.

“Klaviyo flows are efficient conversion tools that ensure emails really align with people’s interests and their actions on the website,” Hawkinson says. “Our goal now is to see if there’s more we can do with them, whether it’s leveraging predictive analytics or more profile attributes.”

Klaviyo flows are efficient conversion tools that ensure emails really align with people’s interests and their actions on the website. Our goal now is to see if there’s more we can do with them, whether it’s leveraging predictive analytics or more profile attributes.