Helen of Troy sees 40%+ TCO reduction from switching to Klaviyo for email + SMS

Helen of Troy is a publicly-traded company, composed of 15 major brands ranging from home and outdoor giants to leaders in the beauty and wellness space. Their home and outdoor division alone—which consists of home goods retailer OXO, hiking and luggage brand Osprey, and water bottle purveyor Hydro Flask—is on track to make nearly $1B in 2024. Here’s how the division uses Klaviyo.

Learn how Klaviyo helps Helen of Troy navigate an increasingly cookieless landscape

Challenge

Helen of Troy’s email and SMS provider made a great first impression on their home and outdoor division. The team was attentive during onboarding. But after 6 months, Helen of Troy was ready to switch providers.

Though they had email and SMS in one platform, using the two channels together—say, to create a multi-channel flow—required a prohibitive amount of developer support.

“We didn’t even have basic flows set up, let alone multi-channel flows,” recalls Jennifer K., director of DTC acquisition and retention marketing for Helen of Troy’s home and outdoor division.

When I looked at how much our previous provider was costing us, I couldn’t believe it—especially given the functionality they didn’t have.

Even basic functionality involved developer support and an upcharge, at best. Some basic functionality, like tracking SMS performance, proved impossible; Helen of Troy had to check Google Analytics for revenue from SMS.

“When I looked at how much our previous provider was costing us, I couldn’t believe it—especially given the functionality they didn’t have,” recalls Anthony S., VP of DTC ecommerce for the home and outdoor division.

The home and outdoor division had ambitious growth goals for their email and SMS channels—and email’s share of total DTC revenue was below benchmark. It was time for something new.

Solution

Anthony and Jennifer had both used Klaviyo in previous roles, and they knew it offered more functionality out of the box than their current provider could give them, add-ons included.

They also trusted Klaviyo to grow with their business in the long term. “Reputation was a big part of this decision, both in terms of how well Klaviyo’s platform worked and in terms of support,” Anthony says.

Reputation was a big part of this decision, both in terms of how well Klaviyo’s platform worked and in terms of support.

Helen of Troy finalized their Klaviyo contract later than anticipated, and they only had a month to migrate 3 brands to the platform and complete warming.

The timeline seemed tight—but with help from Klaviyo support, the pre-built Klaviyo x Adobe Commerce integration, and a shared sending IP, it all went off without a hitch. Right away, their marketing team could build email and hybrid flows with ease, and track SMS performance within the Klaviyo platform.

“We were able to hit the ground running,” Jennifer says.

Strategy

Today, Helen of Troy’s home and outdoor division uses Klaviyo and its ecosystem to store first-party data and share it between marketing channels.

“Previously, we were not leveraging a lot of first-party data, and that was something that was very top of mind for leadership,” says Jennifer. “This increasingly cookieless environment is really hard to navigate.”

Now, Jennifer uses Klaviyo’s integrations with Facebook, Google, and TikTok to build lookalike audiences to target, and exclude current email and SMS subscribers from paid acquisition campaigns.

This level of full-funnel integration just wasn’t possible with their previous provider.

Recently, Helen of Troy decided to add Klaviyo CDP to their tech stack, which will make it even easier to turn their existing cache of customer transaction data into granular marketing personalization.

“Klaviyo adding CDP functionality is awesome because managing a separate CDP vendor at a huge cost—it’s just not something that we wanted to take on,” says Anthony. “This way, we have email, SMS, and our CDP all in one platform that we’re already using. Less integration, less work, and less cost.”

Klaviyo adding CDP functionality is awesome because managing a separate CDP vendor at a huge cost—it’s just not something that we wanted to take on. This way, we have email, SMS, and our CDP all in one platform that we’re already using. Less integration, less work, and less cost.

Dive deeper into Helen of Troy’s Klaviyo journey: Read our full interview with Anthony and Jennifer.