Email Marketing - Setup Guide

How to set up Klaviyo

Otto's honest, no-fluff walkthrough. Every step here is what we'd actually do if we were sitting at your keyboard. Real gotchas first, real steps second, and a link to the personalized version at the bottom.

Read these before you start

• Pricing and customer support are Klaviyo's two most-cited complaints across a 300-review analysis spanning G2, Trustpilot, and Capterra — "brutal" pricing at scale and "unexpected price hikes" are direct quotes from reviewers (Source: Omnisend Klaviyo pricing 2026, https://www.omnisend.com/blog/klaviyo-pricing/)
• SMS credits expire monthly with no rollover, and the per-credit rate is less competitive than SMS-focused competitors like Omnisend — a store planning to lean into SMS should model the real cost before committing, not just assume "add SMS for $15 more"
• The base email subscription tells only part of the total cost story — add-ons, AI feature usage, and the SMS credit system together mean the sticker price under-quotes what an active e-commerce brand actually pays month to month
• Contact-count pricing steps up in brackets, so list growth from a successful campaign or a viral moment can bump the account into a materially higher tier overnight
• Support quality complaints appear consistently enough across independent review platforms that it's worth setting expectations with a client up front, especially at lower-tier pricing

The 7-step setup

1. 1

   Create your Klaviyo account

   Sign up at the link below. Free tier available - no card required. Use your business email so you can invite teammates later.

   Open Klaviyo signup
2. 2

   Complete the initial onboarding

   Skip the marketing questionnaires when you can. Fill only the fields that actually configure the product - name, timezone, your first workspace or project. If Klaviyo pushes you into a setup wizard, take it - it usually accelerates the first productive session.

3. 3

   Connect your existing tools

   Wire Klaviyo into the rest of your stack. The integrations that most people set up first: Shopify (deepest, native), BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, Zapier, most review-collection and loyalty apps in the Shopify app ecosystem.. Do these before importing data - clean integration first, data second.

4. 4

   Import your existing data (only what you'll actually use)

   Do NOT bulk-import everything. Import the last 30 days of the ONE workflow you're moving over first. Prove it works. Then import more. Big-bang migrations are how Klaviyo deployments die in month 3.

5. 5

   Set up your first real workflow

   Pick the single most-frequent task you'll do in Klaviyo - the daily-driver workflow. Configure it end-to-end. Use it live for a week. Do not touch any other feature yet. Adoption failure comes from teams trying to use everything on day one instead of the one thing that actually pays.

6. 6

   Add your team (if applicable) and set access

   Once your solo workflow works, invite one teammate at a time. Watch them use it. The friction points you missed are the ones they hit. Fix those before scaling to more users. Never invite 20 people at once - you'll get 20 confused people and 0 useful feedback.

7. 7

   Compound with the right pairings

   Recommend Klaviyo when: the business is an e-commerce store (Shopify especially) with real purchase/browse data and wants behavior-triggered flows with revenue attribution, not a generic newsletter. Do NOT recommend for non-e-commerce businesses — the price is not justified without behavioral commerce data to trigger flows off of. Do NOT recommend to a pre-revenue store; suggest Mailchimp or a free tier until there's real purchase volume. Always flag the SMS credit expiration and contact-count s...