Klaviyo: 77.5% Shopify Secret Partnership Playbook

Klaviyo is preparing to go public with $581M revenue growing 56% YoY. But if we look deeper 🔎 “77.5% of our total ARR…came from customers who also use the Shopify platform”. The company's success is a testament to the efficient growth on the back of a large SaaS ecosystem.

Klaviyo is a SaaS for e-commerce businesses to run segmented, data-driven marketing campaigns across multiple channels, like email, SMS, etc.

Started in 2012, it's now 1,500+ FTE

Revenue $581M, reached profitability in the last 6 mo

NDR 119% - amazing retention nowadays

🤝 Klaviyo’s Partnership DNA: The 3 Key Insights

Hyper-focused on One Ecosystem

$450m+ of Klaviyo’s revenue (more than 3/4) is attached to the Shopify ecosystem. But interestingly they drive this revenue via agency partners and inbound.

"The vast majority of those customers came to us through inbound channels or through other means such as our marketing agency partners."

🙌 Agency Partnerships Among Top 3 GTM Channels

Klaviyo generates new ARR via self-serve and sales-enabled channels, which include “inbound channels, outbound channels, and our agency partnerships.

“all of these channels were of relatively equal importance to fuel our efficient go-to-market engine”

In 2022, 5,000+ unique marketing agency and consulting partners referred leads to Klaviyo.

“Marketing agencies partner with us because our platform is able to help their clients more effectively target consumers, and in the process, the agencies are able to grow their own business”

Klaviyo also partners with SI to reach enterprise customers: “Systems integrators support many of our mid-market and enterprise customers and work with businesses to help them get started on our platform.”

🏬 ~$50M of new ARR via Shopify marketplace

Very noticeable revenue is coming from customers who install Klaviyo via the marketplace.

“10.6% of our new ARR was attributable to customers that chose to install Klaviyo through Shopify’s App Store.”

Interestingly, this 10% of revenue from cloud marketplace mirrors trends we see with other companies leveraging marketplaces of Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure , and Google Cloud.

🛠 Integration as Product and Retention Strategies

Klaviyo has built a suite of 300+ integrations to improve product, connect & enrich customer data and plug into their existing systems.

Integrations also simplify sales and boosts retention.

"The more complementary software tools a customer integrates into Klaviyo, the more challenging the choice to remove Klaviyo becomes."

💡 Klaviyo is a case study in how to successfully build a $5B+ company on the back of a larger ecosystem.

They keep balance between inbound, sales, strategic and channel partnerships and growing via cloud marketplace.

Great GTM playbook for SaaS partnerships teams, don't you think?

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