Harney & Sons drives 114x ROI with Klaviyo B2C CRM

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Harney & Sons is a family business that sells 300+ tea varieties from around the world, ranging from classics like Earl Grey to matcha and signature flavors. Founded by John Harney in 1983, the brand has grown into a thriving international DTC and B2B business, operated by a second and third generation of Harneys. Today, Harney & Sons has an ecommerce business, distributors in 50+ countries, and 2 East Coast tea shops.

Learn how Harney & Sons improved customer experience by consolidating marketing and analytics tools in Klaviyo

Challenge

Back when Harney & Sons just used Klaviyo for email, they struggled with the rest of their CRM.

When they tried to launch an SMS channel with Attentive, for example, they couldn’t target their sign-up CTAs to the specific subscribers they wanted: mobile web visitors who hadn’t yet signed up for email.

“It felt like we were just offering another big discount to get people that were already on our email list to sign up to SMS,” recalls marketing director Emeric Harney.

Meanwhile, Harney & Sons ran loyalty and reviews through another platform, one that made it hard to show off the social proof they collected in emails and on their Shopify storefront. The platform also often sent automated emails to customers who had unsubscribed, due to limited suppression capabilities.

Taking care of customers that have been close to us for so long is why we’re still in business. We need to communicate meaningfully and reward our customers that keep coming back.

Rigorous analysis of their fragmented customer data posed a challenge, too. Harney & Sons once hired a data analytics group to dig deeper into engagement and purchasing trends, and they returned static findings that were hard to act on without custom developer work.

“Taking care of customers that have been close to us for so long is why we’re still in business,” says Harney. “We need to communicate meaningfully and reward our customers that keep coming back.”

To do that, they needed a more user-friendly, customizable retention stack.

Solution

Harney & Sons began consolidating all their retention tools into Klaviyo, and the glitches and challenges that used to plague them dissolved.

With Klaviyo SMS and the Nosto integration, they were able to target only un-cookied mobile web visitors with SMS sign-up pop-ups.

With Klaviyo Reviews, they can now easily showcase social proof in their emails and on Shopify.

They’ve centralized loyalty and subscription email automations in Klaviyo, too, using the Rise and Recharge integrations—so their Klaviyo subscriber list can be their source of truth across ecommerce apps. No more accidental sends to unsubscribed customers.

Klaviyo makes everything so much more streamlined.Reviews can go directly into emails, and RFM segmentation from Marketing Analytics plugs right into all of the channels.

Most recently, Harney & Sons added Klaviyo’s advanced Marketing Analytics to their stack. This new tool lets the team analyze their customer data on a deeper level, and generate dynamic insights they can easily act on.

Their new, consolidated retention stack saves time for the marketing team, making it easier to ramp up sophistication without glitches or developer support.

“Klaviyo makes everything so much more streamlined,” says Michelle Williams, email specialist at Harney & Sons. “Reviews can go directly into emails, and RFM segmentation from Marketing Analytics plugs right into all of the channels.”

Strategy

Now that they’re using Klaviyo more fully, Harney & Sons has seen success with RFM-based retention messaging, like:

• Targeted re-engagement efforts: Harney & Sons sent a re-engagement campaign to their “At risk” and “Needs attention” RFM segments, including a “modest offer,” Williams recalls. It drove outlier performance: the average order value from that one campaign was 21% higher than their overall AOV for ecommerce in 2024.
• An RFM-triggered sunset flow: Harney & Sons’ latest sunset flow starts when customers enter the “Inactive” RFM segment—so it sends on a timeline personalized to each customer. It’s substantially outperforming their last sunset flow, which sent a standard 180 days after last purchase. “The RFM segmentation helps us send the right message at the right time,” Williams says.

Now that Harney & Sons has Klaviyo’s Marketing Analytics and execution capabilities in a single platform, the team has been able to send more relevant, personalized messages—and pull customers back from the brink of churn.

“Klaviyo’s Marketing Analytics has allowed us to grow,” Harney says. “It recommends new flows that can close little air leaks in our retention, which has been really helpful. And even with the new flows, we still have really healthy engagement and unsubscribe rates.”

Coming up, Harney & Sons plans to consolidate even more functionality in Klaviyo, exploring the new Klaviyo Service offering.

Harney & Sons’ customer service function already uses Klaviyo as their source of truth on the emails and SMS messages a customer has received. “If we’re able to use Klaviyo as our full CRM, that’ll be even more exciting,” says Harney.

Klaviyo’s Marketing Analytics has allowed us to grow. It recommends new flows that can close little air leaks in our retention, which has been really helpful.