Burning brightly: JewelCandle uses Klaviyo to ignite sales across Europe

JewelCandle is a German brand whose scented candles offer a unique customer experience. Inside each one is a carefully packaged piece of sterling silver jewellery that can be removed after the candle has burned for a few hours. The jewel might be a ring, bracelet, necklace or earrings, and although the hand poured candles typically retail for around €30, the jewellery could be worth up to €250. Each piece comes with a code that customers can enter online to discover its value. This quirky, fun element makes the candles popular gifts.

Learn how marketing automation helps the brand to keep converting sales during peak gifting season

Challenge

JewelCandle is a highly seasonal business generating around half of its revenue in November and December. During this period the website receives an exceptionally high volume of traffic with subscriber sign-ups and orders pouring in from all over Europe. In 2020 the company embarked on a major IT upgrade to build a more flexible, scalable ecommerce system and fully automate the customer journey. JewelCandle recognised that having a comprehensive CRM strategy was essential for converting sales and retaining customers, and that automation was the key.

Solution

As part of the project, JewelCandle moved its store to Shopify and switched from Mailchimp to Klaviyo, as Mailchimp does not integrate with Shopify. Using Klaviyo’s pre-built flows, the brand has automated multiple customer touch points so every geographical market has a welcome email series, abandoned cart, back-in-stock, post-purchase, and win-back flow.

Choosing Klaviyo was the obvious choice because of the platform’s easy integration with Shopify, the way it handles data, and all the automation possibilities.

Adopting Klaviyo has also allowed JewelCandle to connect with other powerful marketing tools. The platform’s integration with Meta allows JewelCandle to create lookalike audiences to target. What’s more, Klaviyo’s connection with Parcel Perform enhances customers’ post-purchase delivery and tracking experience.

Strategy

By sending the right message at the right time, JewelCandle is using Klaviyo to drive almost a third of its revenue. The brand’s abandoned cart flow generates more than all the other flows combined – from the first email alone, 6.3% of recipients place an order without any incentive being offered. The welcome email is a strong performer too. Signing up triggers an email that achieves a 77% open rate, with 25% of subscribers taking advantage of the welcome discount.  

Once the goods have been delivered, JewelCandle sends an email to encourage customers to share their purchase on the brand’s Facebook page, where a weekly prize draw incentivises content creation. It follows up further by giving customers creative ideas for reusing the candle jar and tips on how to keep silver jewellery shiny.

Keeping in touch with customers after they’ve bought a candle allows us to communicate our brand values, which enhances the value of the product and increases repurchase rates. This is one of the most important ways Klaviyo supports our business.

To help manage high demand over the festive season the brand runs campaigns to incentivise early ordering. In Klaviyo it identifies loyal purchasers based on their buying behaviour. Customers in this ‘VIP’ segment are encouraged to start their festive shopping at the start of November with exclusive offers and advance notice of special Black Friday deals. With loyal shoppers grabbing gifts early, the brand can focus on converting new subscribers over Cyber Weekend and in the run-up to Christmas. 

With Klaviyo we can easily enlarge our audiences to build up for our Christmas campaigns and create segments for different types of holiday gift shoppers.