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Never in a million years, when I first started Add To Cart, did I imagine that I'd be sitting down opposite the co-founders of the leading ecommerce platforms that we use every day. But at K:SYD this year, I got the chance to do exactly that. But I didn't get fanboy freakout. I tried to use this opportunity to ask the questions that you'd want to ask.
Ed Hallen co-founded Klaviyo in 2012 with Andrew Bialecki and is now Chief Strategy Officer - the person thinking hardest about where the platform goes next. We went straight to the pricing change that rattled the industry last year, what the SaaSpocalypse means for their growth, and the one feature most brands still haven't fully tapped. He's been building this company for 13 years and still says publicly they're 1% done. I wanted to know what the other 99% looks like.
Cheers
Bushy
EPISODE CHEAT SHEET
Klaviyo Is 1% Done: What Their Co-Founder Says the Other 99% Looks Like| #630
⏭️ SKIP TO THE GOOD BITS
From three hours a week to 200,000 brands: the origin story (05:00)
The one-to-one vision and why individual send times matter (08:30)
What Klaviyo's actual moat is (hint: it's not just the data) (11:00)
MCP, open platforms, and why Ed isn't worried about Claude (13:30)
Can you really vibe-code your own Klaviyo overnight? (16:00)
K:Social: turning your Instagram followers into owned subscribers (18:42)
The honest story behind the pricing change (22:39)
Why your disengaged list is your most valuable segment (30:30)
💬 QUOTE OF THE DAY
"No brand has actually left Klaviyo because they built their own Klaviyo."
🧠 THE BIG LESSON
Before you clean your list, assess the customer flow
The Klaviyo pricing change that hit brands last year, shifting billing from contacts emailed to all active profiles, triggered one very predictable response: brands started looking for profiles to suppress. Ed's read on that instinct is that it is sometimes right and sometimes very wrong.
Rule 1: Find the right profiles to suppress, not just the inactive ones
The pricing change created pressure to cut anyone who looks quiet. Ed's guidance is more precise: the profiles worth suppressing are those where the relationship is genuinely over, not those who've just gone quiet. A customer who hasn't opened in 90 days and hasn't unsubscribed is a different category. They deserve a different answer, not a deletion.
You should not be paying us for these customers. This is a customer that no longer wants a relationship with you. That is in the past.
Rule 2: Build those customers a completely different journey
The standard win-back is a discount. Ed's read is that this gets the diagnosis wrong. A customer who's gone quiet hasn't decided the relationship is over. They've just stopped responding to the same messages as everyone else. What moves them is reconnection: show them what's changed, what they've missed, why the brand is worth their attention again. The flow needs to look nothing like your standard nurture sequence.
The disengaged flow is quite different. But we need to make that really easy. And AI should be very good at helping build out those sorts of flows.
Rule 3: Measure whether it's worth keeping them
A reactivation flow that brings someone back at full margin is worth more than a campaign to your engaged list that converts on a 20% off code. Klaviyo's Attributed Value metric attempts to answer this honestly: if the platform can tell you what it's generating for a given segment, you can decide which profiles are worth paying for and which genuinely aren't.
The more trust we can build and clearly attribute real value, the better off we are. Even if that means the number currently goes down.
Before you slash your database to manage platform costs, find out whether you've built the right flow for the quiet ones. If you haven't, you're not managing a cost. You're leaving revenue behind.
✏️ ECOMMERCE ACTION TIPS
Build a separate reactivation flow for customers who look disengaged before you remove them from your active database. The journey for a quiet customer looks nothing like the one for your most engaged buyers. (~30:30)
Connect your stack through integrations before you chase new tools. Brands connecting Klaviyo to external AI platforms via MCP are generating higher Klaviyo Attributed Value, not lower — the integration is the value. (~13:30)
Turn on individual send times so each message lands when that specific customer is most likely to open and act, not just when your campaign is scheduled. (~08:30)
Audit your flows before your next campaign: for the average brand, the biggest untapped revenue sits in building more personalised flows, not sending more campaigns. Composer can help you build them faster. (~41:00)
Start converting your social followers into owned subscribers now, via Instagram DMs or other direct channels, before platform rules change again. K:Social is Klaviyo's tool for this, but the principle of owning your audience applies regardless of platform. (~18:42)
🎧 OTHER EPS YOU MIGHT LIKE
Magic Moments and Mushrooms: How Nutra Organics Creates Lifetime Value | EP539
Ed said flows are the most underused feature on the platform. Jennifer Gilbert goes deep on exactly that, including how Nutra Organics use zero-party data collected at sign-up to personalise the welcome flow before it even starts, and why most brands are trying to say too much too early.
The 25% Rule: David Chinn on How Lexer Helps Retailers Find Their Best Customers | EP567
The conversation about Klaviyo's data moat gets more concrete here. David Chinn's 25% rule is about identifying the slice of your customer base that actually drives sustainable revenue, and how enriched segmentation data can sit alongside Klaviyo rather than compete with it.
The CX Survival Guide: How Emily Elvey Turns Chaos into Loyalty | EP571
Ed made the point that service and marketing are now running through the same relationship, and that brands treating them separately are leaving revenue on the table. Emily Elvey has built a career out of exactly that intersection and gets very practical about where the handoff should happen.
💬 CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Ed said something early in this episode that stuck: people at K:SYD this year weren't looking for playbooks. They were looking for ideas. The pricing change, the disengaged list debate, and the question of whether anyone has actually vibe-coded their way off the platform are all live conversations worth having. Come tell us what your experience has been with the Klaviyo pricing shift, whether you've built a dedicated reactivation flow, and what you'd want the co-founder to hear if you had five minutes with him.
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