minnow invests in personalization and grows Klaviyo flow revenue 37%

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minnow is family lifestyle brand that embraces clean lines, simple details and sun-kissed color palettes. Timeless yet modern, playful and polished, minnow’s mission is to create premium products that will inspire family experiences.

minnow is a reflection of the life and style of its founder, Morgan Smith, a mother and entrepreneur with a background in premium product marketing. After working in New York and Los Angeles, she returned to her hometown of Laguna Beach, California to found minnow. She now lives on the other coast in Charleston, SC with her husband and three children, and the beach continues to inspire her work.

Learn how minnow used Klaviyo email automations to stabilize volatile revenue from “drops”

Challenge

minnow was ready for the next level of sophistication in their email marketing.

They had switched to Klaviyo from Mailchimp years before, drawn by the slicker templates and formatting options. “I wanted our emails to feel very elevated,” says founder and CEO Morgan Smith. “The Mailchimp experience felt archaic and clunky.”

I wanted our emails to feel very elevated. The Mailchimp experience felt archaic and clunky.

In Klaviyo, minnow originally focused on broad, time-sensitive campaigns, announcing “drops” of new limited-edition swim collections.

“We see a huge spike in revenue within an hour of a drop,” says Smith. “It’s this sell-out scarcity moment that our community is driven by. But the question was: how do we stabilize?”

Smith and her team wanted to boost momentum on non-drop days, and increase overall engagement and efficiency.

Solution

minnow hired COO Jim Wilson to lead this project. He had a clear vision for stabilizing lifecycle revenue: more automations and more segmentation.

“When you get very detailed and personalized from a customer lifecycle perspective, you see click rates and conversion rates go way up,” Wilson explains. ”We’re effectively raising the waterline of what average daily volume looks like.”

minnow still drives a majority of their revenue with campaigns, but today, those campaigns go to a more curated set of segments—which has helped drive a 126% YoY growth in campaign click rate.

The ability to understand customer-level purchase and activity behavior in Klaviyo without having to use a third party is super beneficial.

The team has also refreshed their flow messaging and triggers. They now have 22 total live flows, and their revenue from flows has grown 37% YoY so far.

Wilson plans to build even more flows, too, like designated post-purchase flows for first-time shoppers who buy popular SKUs, recommending their likely second purchase.

“Klaviyo makes the work that we’re trying to do so much easier than other marketing automation platforms that I’ve used,” Wilson says. “The ability to understand customer-level purchase and activity behavior in Klaviyo without having to use a third party is super beneficial.”

Strategy

minnow’s Klaviyo strategy this year has been simple, really: personalizing the subscriber experience to complement their drops. They’ve done that by:

• Adding a branch to their abandoned cart flow: The updated flow sends different messages to prospects and returning customers. Returning customers just get reminders to buy. But for prospects, the abandoned cart flow resurfaces a discount they initially received in the separate welcome flow.
• Prioritizing flows so they send one by one: Now that minnow has more email automations, they prioritize them so customers don’t receive too many simultaneous emails. Time-sensitive ones get top billing—so if a customer enters the welcome flow and abandoned cart flow at the same time, the welcome flow pauses while abandoned cart runs.
• Sending campaigns to tighter segments: minnow now has different segments for one-time purchasers and long-time purchasers, so they can receive distinct messaging—and minnow only sends to their full list sparingly, aiming to re-engage lapsed subscribers with a newsletter.

“Klaviyo makes flows and segmentation really seamless,” says Wilson. “It is very easy to make mistakes with the other email platforms on the market. We’ve all gotten those emails—‘Oops, I didn’t mean to send you that’—and we never want to send one of those. Klaviyo makes those kinds of mistakes more avoidable.”

It is very easy to make mistakes with the other email platforms on the market. We’ve all gotten those emails—‘Oops, I didn’t mean to send you that’—and we never want to send one of those. Klaviyo makes those kinds of mistakes more avoidable.