Ask most entrepreneurs what their one wish would be, and they’d probably say, “to know what my customers are thinking”. After all, if you could predict what customers want next, you’d always be one step ahead. Imagine being able to send your customers a reminder to reorder their vitamins exactly before they’re about to run out, or knowing that 7 out of 10 people who buy mascara from your makeup store also add an eyebrow pencil to their cart?and then using that insight to suggest the eyebrow pencil as an add-on, increasing each order’s value. This isn’t guesswork; it’s the power of data in action.
Data enables you to make smarter decisions when you leverage it well. Take email or SMS marketing, for instance. Most eCommerce brands start with the basics, focusing on metrics like open rates, click-throughs, and subscriber counts. And while these metrics are useful for understanding surface-level engagement, they don’t offer the depth you need to know why customers act the way they do. This is especially true as your business scales to the 7- or 8-figure level, where understanding each customer’s behavior becomes crucial to creating personalized experiences and fostering loyalty.
That’s where Klaviyo’s Advanced Analytics comes in. Unlike standard tools that only show basic metrics, Klaviyo offers powerful features like Custom Metrics, Funnel Analysis, RFM Analysis, Audience Performance, and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) tracking. These features give you insight into who your top customers are, what products consistently drive repeat purchases, and even which customer segments have the highest potential for growth. You can customize reports, making it easy to visualize these insights, identify trends, and act on them with confidence.
In other words, Klaviyo’s Advanced Analytics gives you the power to be proactive rather than reactive understanding, analyzing, and anticipating what your customers need and when. So while other brands are left responding to changes, you’re leading the way with data-driven, predictive insights that help you grow smarter and connect deeper with every customer interaction.
Let’s take a look at how you can use data to make smarter decisions with Klaviyo’s Advanced Analytics.
1. Use Custom Metrics to see track what matters the most to you
As your business grows, tracking performance becomes more complex. Let’s say you’ve added a subscription option so customers can automatically reorder their favorite products. This type of program can be a big boost to your bottom line, but just looking at a “Placed Order” metric doesn’t show the full picture. To really understand the impact, you need reporting that goes beyond the basics.
That’s where custom metrics come in. Think of them as customized ways to look at your data in Klaviyo. These metrics are adjusted versions of standard ones, giving you insights that fit your unique business needs.
A preview of how Klaviyo’s custom metrics work. [Source: Klaviyo Learning Center]
The more data you connect to Klaviyo, the more you’ll be able to play around with their custom metrics to see how different areas of your business are performing. Here’s a few metrics you can track using custom metrics:
Separate Revenue Streams: Track subscription-based revenue separately from one-time purchases to see how well each drives retention and growth.
Channel Performance: For businesses with both online and in-store sales, create distinct metrics for each channel to understand where your revenue is strongest.
Discount Impact: See how discount-driven sales perform by filtering orders with applied discounts, giving you insights into promotion effectiveness.
2. RFM Analysis: Get a 360? view of your most valuable customers
RFM Analysis gives you a big-picture view of your customers, helping you rank them by how engaged and valuable they are. It’s like a report card for your audience, showing who’s buying often, spending more, and staying loyal, and who might need a little reminder to come back.
Here’s how Klaviyo breaks down your customers into five easy groups:
Champions: Your all-stars they buy often, spend the most, and come back regularly.
Loyal: Solid buyers who shop often, even if they don’t spend quite as much.
At Risk: People who used to buy regularly but have gone quiet recently.
New: Customers who’ve just made their first purchase.
Needs Attention: Occasional buyers who might become loyal with the right nudge.
While Klaviyo’s categories are set, you have the power to decide what counts as “recent”, ?frequent”, or “high-value”. Here’s how to adjust those benchmarks:
Recency: For something people buy often, like beauty or food products, “recent” might mean 30 days. For high-ticket items, like furniture, it could be 90 or even 180 days.
Frequency: If you’re selling smaller items, your top customers might buy from you 10+ times, while big-ticket purchases might mean 3 sales make someone a “frequent” buyer.
Monetary Value: Define high-value by setting a dollar threshold, like $500 spent in total, or by comparing customer spending to the rest of your audience.
Now that you’ve set these benchmarks, here’s how to use RFM to target each group:
- Create Segments for Each RFM Group: Set up lists for Champions, Loyal customers, At Risk, and so on, so you can send them messages that make sense for where they’re at.
- Automate for Group Changes: Create flows that react when customers move between groups. For example, if a Loyal customer slips into At Risk, they could get an offer to come back.
- Send Targeted Campaigns to At Risk and Needs Attention: These customers might need a little boost, so consider sending them a special discount or “we miss you” message.
- Retarget Inactive Customers with Ads: Use social media ads to reach out to inactive customers. Show them popular items or new arrivals to spark their interest again.
3. Funnel Analysis: Visualizing the path to purchase
In today’s multi-touchpoint world, understanding the full journey your customers take before making a purchase is invaluable. Klaviyo’s Funnel Analysis report helps you do just that by visualizing how customers and prospects are moving through different conversion paths, or “funnels”. This tool lets you get a clear picture of the experience your users have along their way to purchase, helping you pinpoint where they’re moving smoothly and where they might be dropping off.
Each funnel in Klaviyo is completely customizable. You can map out key steps in the customer journey, such as visiting your site, signing up for your newsletter, opening an email, and then making a purchase. This flexibility allows you to create funnels that reflect the specific steps that matter to your brand and give you insight into exactly how customers interact with your business at each stage.
The image above illustrates how the funnel breaks down the customer journey from customers who clicked on a Facebook lead ad and ended up making a purchase. You can clearly see how many customers were lost at each step in the process, giving a detailed view of where potential buyers dropped off from the initial ad click to the final purchase. (Source: Klaviyo)
One powerful feature in Klaviyo’s funnel tool is the ability to segment your audience by groups like the RFM segments we discussed earlier. This means you can see how your most loyal customers move through the funnel compared to newer buyers or those “At Risk”. For instance, your Champions might convert quickly, while your “Needs Attention” segment may drop off early. By analyzing these differences, you can craft targeted campaigns to improve performance where it’s needed most.
Popular Funnels to Start With
While you can create a funnel for any metric or channel connected to Klaviyo, it’s helpful to start with the basics. Here are three key funnels to consider first:
Email to Purchase: This funnel tracks customers from the moment they receive your email, open it, click through to your site, and complete a purchase. It helps you gauge how effective your emails are at driving sales.
Lead to Purchase: For brands using lead ads on platforms like Meta, this funnel shows how well these ads convert, tracking the journey from the initial lead form submission to purchase. It’s especially useful for measuring the ROI of your lead ad campaigns.
Organic Site Visit to Purchase: This funnel shows how customers who come to your site organically move toward conversion. Tracking their path can help you optimize the site experience for visitors coming directly from search engines or social media.
4. Audience Performance: Comparing your key customer segments at a glance
Wouldn’t it be great to know exactly how each type of customer responds to your emails and SMS messages? Klaviyo’s Audience Performance Report gives you a side-by-side view of different customer segments like VIPs, new buyers, or those you haven’t heard from in a while. You can quickly see who’s engaging the most, who needs a little extra attention, and where each group is in their journey.
This insight is incredibly useful for fine-tuning your approach. For instance, if some of your highest spenders aren’t yet in your loyalty program, you can send a targeted campaign to invite them in, while skipping those already enrolled. For low-engagement segments, you can test reactivation offers like comparing a discount to free shipping to find out what drives them to click.
Klaviyo?s Audience Performance Report takes the guesswork out of segmenting, helping you send messages that truly resonate with each customer group.
The image above illustrates how different starred segments stack up against each other based on the revenue generated from SMS and email campaigns in the last 90 days.
5. Predictive Analytics: Forecasting your customer’s next move
“History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes” – Mark Twain. In e-commerce, understanding customer behavior is like spotting those “rhymes” in data?patterns that reveal what’s likely to happen next. With Klaviyo’s predictive analytics, you can tap into these insights to anticipate your customers future actions. This powerful tool calculates key metrics like Historic CLV (Customer Lifetime Value), Predicted CLV, Churn Risk, Average Time Between Orders, and even Expected Date of Next Order to help you stay a step ahead.
By default, every Klaviyo account comes equipped with predictive analytics, and once you meet a few requirements like having 500 customers with orders and 180 days of order history the model kicks in automatically. Enabling you to calculate essential metrics like Historic CLV (Customer Lifetime Value), Predicted CLV, Churn Risk, and Average time between orders. But with Klaviyo’s Advanced Analytics, you can take things up a notch by setting custom prediction windows, whether you want insights over the next six months or as far out as two years. This flexibility allows you to tailor forecasts to your unique business cycles and goals, giving you even more control over customer insights.
Using Predictive Analytics to Drive Proactive Marketing
With Klaviyo’s predictive analytics, you can build customer segments based on expected behaviors, allowing you to proactively engage the right people at the right time. Here are three impactful segments to try:
Likely to Buy Again: Target customers expected to make another purchase soon with emails featuring trending or complementary products.
High-Value Potential: Identify those with a high Predicted CLV and send personalized recommendations to maximize their spending.
Low Cart Value: Encourage smaller spenders to add more by offering bundle deals or free shipping.
Once segmented, you can set up automated flows based on each customer’s behavior. For instance you can create an Expected Date of Next Order flow, prompting custom reminders for users based on their profile’s expected date of next order. You can set parameters of how well in advance you?d like to send the first email based on your order processing and shipping timelines, and send them a reminder to restock or repurchase right when they need to. This way, you’re proactively prompting customers to restock or make a purchase when they are primed to buy.
6. Boosting repeat purchases with klaviyo?s product analysis dashboard
Repeat buyers are essential, often making up 20%-40% of your customer base. They’re easier to retain and drive consistent revenue with each return purchase. So how can you encourage more of these loyal purchases? Instead of relying on generic follow-ups, Klaviyo’s Product Analysis Dashboard lets you tap into actual buying behaviors for smarter marketing.
With this tool, you can see:
When Customers Reorder: Find the typical time between purchases to time your follow-ups just right.
What They Buy Together: Spot common product pairings and create bundles that fit their habits.
Likely Next Purchase: Get a sense of what they might buy next, making your recommendations feel on point.
Using these insights, you can make your emails more relevant with personalized product blocks, build bundles that align with real buying patterns, and send restock reminders just when customers need them. Klaviyo’s dashboard helps you keep loyal customers coming back in a way that feels natural and tailored.
Bonus Tip: Use Klaviyo’s Benchmarking Tool
Want to see how your store stacks up against others in your industry? Klaviyo’s Benchmarking Tool lets you compare key metrics like open rates, click-through rates, and revenue per recipient with similar brands. It’s a great way to identify where you’re excelling and where you have room to improve. You can use this benchmarking data to set new goals and KPIs for your email marketing strategy, making sure you’re on track with industry standards.
Wrapping Up?
So, what’s next for you? With Klaviyo’s Advanced Analytics, you’re equipped to make data work for you whether it’s understanding your top customers, predicting their next moves, or creating high-impact campaigns that resonate. These tools go beyond the basics, allowing you to connect with your customers in meaningful ways that drive loyalty and growth.
If you’d like some expert help along the way, we’re offering a free audit for stores generating $100k+ monthly. In this audit, our founder Daniel will conduct a comprehensive scan of your overall e-commerce strategy, including Google ads, Meta ads, email, and SMS marketing, and provide you with actionable insights to boost your store revenue. Ready to take the next step? Click here to book your call!
