Before, during, and after your kickoff call
Do you ever feel like the smoothest conversations take the most prep? Kickoff calls are no exception. Learn how ABC Agency takes a series of big and small steps to build that trust and keep the momentum with Bola’s Baked Goods in their kickoff.
ABC Agency and Bola’s Baked Goods may be fictitious brands, but the tactics used in this video are based on the kickoff call process that Klaviyo Master Platinum Partner, Win at Ecommerce, refined for a successful and repeatable onboarding.
Keep the momentum going with quick wins
Increasing a client's return on investment (ROI) as soon as possible will help your client see and get excited about the work you’re doing.
Depending on your client’s list size and maturity, your quick wins may differ from project to project. However, our partners and internal Klaviyo onboarding team tend to rely on these trusty plays to get their clients raving about them early in the project:
Optimize your client’s preference pages
Enhance your client’s preference pages for a quick win. This allows you to gather customer insights immediately.
Early in the onboarding, your client may be unsure about what content resonates with their audience. Preference pages allow customers not only to share basic demographic data like age, gender, and birthday but also their preferred email frequency and product interests. This provides valuable insights to help you create targeted campaigns that impress your clients.
For example, Bola’s Baked Goods asks what allergies their customer may have directly within their preference pages.
Create a mood board
Every partner we spoke with for this course emphasized the importance of establishing clear expectations for copywriting and design. Here are some recommendations they had:
- Provide multiple design options
WinatEcommerce's Damon Didier suggests sharing 3 initial design options, giving the client the opportunity to choose which option aligns most with their brand. If you’re short on time, use Klaviyo’s email AI to help create some options for your customer and hone in on their brand’s voice. - Use collaboration tools
David Visser of Zyber recommends using Figma to facilitate the early sharing of design drafts. This approach enables the prompt provision of feedback and subsequent iterations. - Create a library of assets
Jen Brennan from Northern Commerce recommends creating a library of reusable design assets that conforms to the client's brand guidelines. This streamlines the design process and fosters consistency. Bonus: equip yourself with data on what’s most effective by running a form optimization test to see what resonates with your client’s customer base.
Photo source: Kirna Zabête
A/B test onsite forms
Damon Didier from WinatEcommerce will conduct a simple A/B test.
He'll compare 2 onsite popups:
- Option 1: Clear discount offer
This popup will directly display a discount (e.g., 10% off) to entice signups. - Option 2: Discount intrigue
This popup will announce that signing up will result in a discount email, keeping the specific discount amount a mystery.
Both popups will trigger a welcome email with the discount code upon signup. This experiment will capture email addresses and kick off the welcome series, while also providing valuable data on which popup is more effective at driving signups.
Note: You must have at least 400,000 profiles (note that this is total profile count) to qualify for optimization tests.
Activate high converting flows
Shortly after setup and activating an onsite pop-up, Zyber wastes no time.
They immediately launch a welcome series and abandoned cart flow, strategies known to deliver positive ROI within 2 weeks. This shows your client the impact of your collaboration directly on their Klaviyo dashboard, proving the value of your expertise.
Note: This is only recommended for clients using Klaviyo’s shared IP. If you are also in the process of warming a dedicated IP, then you should take a more conservative approach and wait to send a welcome series too soon. We’ll cover this in more detail in our lesson all about warming!
Request shortcodes for SMS
Short codes are 4- to 6-digit numbers primarily used for high-throughput SMS marketing. If you plan to set up SMS for your client, you should apply for a short code early. Depending on where your client is located, the short code application process can take anywhere between 5 and 16 weeks to complete.
Unsure if your client requires a short code?
We recommend short codes to any client who wants to:
- Be seen as a more trustworthy sender by wireless carriers.
- Have a more professional and easy to remember number.
- Send frequently or at a high-volume (e.g., 30,000 or more subscribers).
- Send to New Zealand (where short codes are required).
- Send many MMS messages to subscribers in the US.
Note: Short code requirements vary from country to country. Prepare for this conversation with your client by reading through the following guidance: Short code application reference.
Bonus tip: Don't forget to acknowledge those initial results!Whether you highlight them in your weekly calls or follow Zyber's lead by sending a congratulatory gift, celebrating these early wins keeps momentum high during the crucial onboarding phase.
Prepare for kickoff with key topics and outcomes
Review the dropdowns below for recommendations on what topics to cover and what questions to ask during your next kickoff call.
Begin with welcome, agenda, and introductions
Welcome and introductions: Greet the client and introduce your team, showcasing their expertise.
Share a clear agenda: Walk through each agenda item, explaining the focus of each section.
Ask: Ask the client for any additional topics. This fosters buy-in and allows them to raise important points.
Set clear goals and objectives
This is your opportunity to ensure you’ve collected the client’s onboarding goals with Klaviyo from either their intake survey or your conversation with the account manager.
Start with: “(Account executive name) and I synced before this call and based on your conversations, I outlined goals here to drive towards.” Read each goal, a brief description of it, and context on why you chose it.
Share: Which goals can be achieved or worked on during onboarding versus what will continue to be worked on after onboarding.
Ask: “Do these goals seem in line with your goals in Klaviyo? Is there anything you’d like to add, remove, or update?”
Run through your client survey (if applicable)
Here is where you can optionally walk through your client’s intake form if you have that set up post-sales. The purpose of the intake form is to really understand your client’s brand voice and design aspirations, so your team can start to meet their copywriting expectations. Check out our onboarding guide for a set of questions you can ask in the intake form.
If they did not fill it out, this is the perfect time to walk through the list with them.
Learn more about your client’s marketing strategy
Here is where you get a little more granular. Here is where you ask questions around:
Account status:
- Confirm their Klayiyo account details.
- Do you want a test account as well?
List growth:
- How do you currently acquire your subscribers?
- How many active subscribers do you have?
- Do you have 1 main subscriber list, and if so what is its size and age?
- What forms do you have on your site to capture marketing consent and information?
- What incentive, if any, do you offer for users to sign up to receive marketing emails?
- Do you have any goals/targets around list growth?
- Do you clean your list and if so, how often and what's the criteria to remove someone?
Profiles and their preferences
- What is your definition of an active or engaged profile?
- What countries or languages do you need to send emails to?
- How do you collect sending or personal preferences from customers?
- What type of content do they typically want to receive (sales, new products)?
Integrations and data hygiene:
- Are you migrating from another email or SMS service provider? If so, which one?
- What other tools do you use to power different marketing initiatives?
Current sending cadence and performance:
- How many people/profiles do you send to on a typical day? Month?
- How frequently are you sending?
- What are your current open and click rate averages?
- On average, how much revenue does each campaign bring in?
- What cadence or sending frequency have you seen success with (weekly, monthly)?
Explain your onboarding timeline
Provide an overview of the different onboarding timelines by milestone that the customer will reach during onboarding. Use the onboarding guide below these dropdowns to help you with this conversation.
Each milestone has its own tab and mentions a “day range” for when the customer should expect to reach it.
Summarize upcoming deliverability and warming tasks
Discuss the basics of email deliverability and warming with the client and make sure they understand why warming is important.
Ask: Are you familiar with warming and deliverability?
Share: Explain the following in order to set clear expectations going forward:
- Warming your sending infrastructure trains inbox providers (e.g., Google or Yahoo) to view you as a good sender, which is key to long-term sending success.
- Warming typically takes about 30-45 days to get your campaigns and flows up and running, depending on your sender reputation and list size.
- Explain the difference of a “blast & decay” approach vs. a “nurture & grow” approach and how it relates to warming
The goal here is to get your client's buy-in and agree to the recommended warm-up approach before you dive in over the next few weeks.
Conclude with action items and next steps
Here is where you reiterate your excitement to work with your client. Get a new meeting on the calendar with their team before the call ends to continue the onboarding process. If you or your client have any tasks to complete ahead of your next call, recap those jobs-to-be-done to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Follow a templatized kickoff call deck and agenda
This course follows our comprehensive Onboard a Client to Klaviyo project plan, your one-stop shop for a smooth onboarding experience. In this project plan, you will find:
- A kickoff call deck you can use.
- An example kickoff call agenda with key outcomes.
Now that we’ve covered how to start your client relationship, our next few sections will walk through the steps you need to take in Klaviyo to ensure your client is properly set up