Made In consolidates email, SMS, + reviews in Klaviyo and grows average order value 26.1%

Made In has made restaurant-quality cookware for home chefs and Michelin-starred restaurants alike since 2017.

It all started with two very different co-founders: lifelong friends Jake Kalick and Chip Malt. Kalick’s family had owned a kitchen supply store for 4 generations. Malt came from a marketing and ecommerce background. They pooled their expertise to create a legacy-quality, digitally-native cookware brand that has earned 100K+ 5-star reviews and 750k+ customers.

Learn how Made In used Klaviyo to turn 3 siloed channels into 1 retention program

Challenge

Made In had a strong email marketing program, powered by Klaviyo. They had an SMS marketing program, running on a separate platform.

They also collected reviews with a third platform, but “it was a pain for us to check,” says Don Smolik, director of lifecycle marketing at Made In. “It ran in a silo. It did its thing.”

But splitting lifecycle efforts across 3 platforms that didn’t talk to each other—and that the lean team didn’t always have time to monitor and improve—posed problems.

Each platform had its own functionality and attribution models, which made it hard to create a cohesive digital experience for customers—or measure how well the channels worked together.

“We were doing one thing over here, one thing over there,” Smolik says. “But how do we make sure it’s all working together?”

Solution

Smolik and his team decided to consolidate their retention channels in Klaviyo, starting with SMS.

“We had trusted Klaviyo for years on the email side, and we knew that they could bring in SMS and have such a good, robust program,” Smolik says.

It worked out so well, they onboarded with Klaviyo Reviews shortly after launch, too.

“Now with Klaviyo Reviews, SMS, and email all living together, we’re able to have that omnichannel marketing,” says Smolik. “It’s helped us understand what our data’s telling us, and drive a better customer experience.”

Now with Klaviyo Reviews, SMS, and email all living together, we’re able to have that omnichannel marketing. It’s helped us understand what our data’s telling us, and drive a better customer experience.

Strategy

Consolidating all 3 channels in Klaviyo has unlocked new, multi-channel strategic opportunities for Made In to:

• Send texts to less-engaged email subscribers: In Klaviyo, Made In can focus SMS sends on who people engage with SMS more than email, and dormant email recipients who might re-engage on a new channel. “We’re actually sending a lot less SMS than we had before,” Smolik says, “but we’re doing it more efficiently.”
• Create branching, interest-based customer journeys: If new subscribers interact with a specific product collection in the welcome flow—say, non-stick products—they join an interest-based segment and receive additional messaging about non-stick products. This maximizes relevance and helps minimize unsubscribes.
• Collect zero-party segmentation data through Klaviyo Reviews: The tool isn’t just for review capture. Smolik uses it to ask customers additional, custom questions—like what type of food they cook, how often they cook, and what type of content they want—and creates segments for personalization, based on their responses.

In Klaviyo, Made In’s channels add up to something more than the sum of their parts—a “surround-sound” retention program, where customers encounter cohesive, channel-appropriate messaging across every touchpoint.

“We’re not just the email and SMS team,” Smolik says. “We are the retention team. There are so many things that go into retention. Being able to build and design a strategy around the platform at hand, and then go in and easily execute, is such a win. Klaviyo’s impact has been huge for us.”

There are so many things that go into retention. Being able to build a strategy around the platform at hand, and then go in and easily execute, is such a win. Klaviyo’s impact has been huge for us.