Klaviyo agency: the 4C method applied to your account

Deliver is a Klaviyo agency specialised in ecommerce email and lifecycle marketing. We audit, build and run your flows, campaigns, segments and deliverability rules with a named method: the 4C, for catch, connect, close and continue. Klaviyo remains the tool. The order of work comes first.

Most accounts we open are not missing features. The automations date back to the initial setup, campaigns go out to an audience that is far too broad, and native reporting does not tell you which decision to make on Monday morning.

This page describes the method we apply, in the order we apply it, and who runs it. You can read it, copy it and execute it in house. If you would rather hand it to a team that operates it every week, the 30-minute audit is the entry point.

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Who applies this method

Maxence Vanderswalmen was CMO of an ecommerce brand from 2012 to 2020, a period during which it went from 2 to over 60 million euros in annual revenue. He founded the agency in 2021, has run Black Friday for ecommerce brands since 2013 and teaches marketing performance measurement in a business school. The 4C method below is the one he presents publicly, on stage and on video, under the title of the email framework for ecommerce brands above 10 million euros a year.

Charlotte Rodrigues leads CRM strategy and the day-to-day Klaviyo engagements. Alexia Delépine, senior strategist, coordinates execution, send quality and the calendar, after a data and acquisition background in France and abroad. You work with these people, not with an account handed back at the end of an engagement by someone you have never met.

Deliver is the email, SMS, push and lifecycle CRM brand of Make Sense For Digital, the company that publishes this site. Make Sense For Digital is a Klaviyo partner and a Brevo partner. The partnership is held by that company: we claim no named programme tier, and no certification obtained under the Deliver name.

The 4C method

The four C stand for the four stages of the customer life journey: catch, connect, close, continue. They are worked in that order, because none of them makes up for the previous one. An excellent welcome flow does not compensate for broken collection. A repeat-purchase sequence does not rescue a purchased list.

The framework covers every customer contact channel: email, SMS, WhatsApp, push, print. Klaviyo is where it runs for most of the ecommerce brands we support. Our full guide to the 4C email framework breaks down each stage outside any agency context.

1. Catch: build contact capital, not a volume of addresses

Before any contacting strategy, you have to collect. Legally, and voluntarily: the person gives you explicit permission to receive commercial messages. That pool is what later lets you reach an audience without going back through an advertising platform that charges you again for every impression.

What we put in place in Klaviyo at this stage:

• several collection points instead of one: an easily accessible form, a popup fired on exit intent on desktop and on upward scroll on mobile, a discreet capture block on the product page whose first purpose remains conversion;
• A/B tests on the forms, in particular with an offer and without an offer;
• a cannibalisation check whenever a discount code is used, because the person has often already decided to buy and is simply coming for the discount;
• valuable content as an alternative to the promo code when the product allows it: buying guide, checklist, diagnostic;
• tracking of form conversion rate, visible in Klaviyo, treated as a metric to challenge continuously.

We advise against buying contact lists. The legal exposure exists, but the more certain cost sits elsewhere: deliverability degrades, sends land in spam, and the brand pays for an address that never asked to hear from you. Our guide to popups and signup forms covers those trade-offs.

2. Connect: bring the person into the brand's world

A newsletter treats someone who just discovered you exactly like someone who has followed you for three years. A new subscriber does not yet know what makes you different, why the brand exists, or what customers who bought before them have to say.

The welcome sequence exists for that: reducing the cognitive effort asked of the person. Show the differences, show the proof, explain the reason the brand exists, before talking about conversion at all. At this stage they are not customers yet.

We build this stage with the same raw material as copywriting: product arguments, reviews and recurring objections, sorted by how useful each one is to the reader. Our guide to the Klaviyo welcome flow gives the base structure.

3. Close: address the real reasons for not buying

The native Shopify cart reminder is informative. It reminds you that a cart exists. It does not answer the questions that actually block the purchase: will this size fit my room, does this microphone have the specification I need, do other buyers reassure me.

To write those messages we start from two sources few brands exploit: your own negative reviews, which list your real weak points, and your competitors' negative reviews, which show what you do better and where to say it. That work serves the CRM, and it serves well beyond the CRM.

Timing matters as much as content. On a high-consideration product, mattress, furniture, equipment, the buying journey can run one to two weeks, even though cart abandonment statistics degrade sharply after three days. A single-email sequence covers that window poorly. We document the triggers, exclusions and exits of every scenario in our guide to Klaviyo abandonment flows.

4. Continue: repeat purchase, where the margin is not paid for twice

A customer who orders ten times a year instead of once brings you nine orders whose acquisition you never bought again on any advertising platform. The cash and margin gap plays out there, and it plays out with messages triggered by the customer's life, not with a newsletter everyone receives.

Calibration is done by vertical. On a consumable, the useful rule is not the refill duration: it is the refill duration minus the decision time minus the delivery time. On a durable product, the next occasion still exists (the guest room, the child growing up, the second home) and is worked as cross-sell rather than as an identical repeat purchase.

The higher the natural purchase frequency, the more this block has to be a priority. The lower it is, the more it comes after the first three C, without ever disappearing: you still need contact points that keep the brand present. Our guides to the post-purchase flow and the winback flow detail the mechanics.

Not ready to discuss a full engagement yet? Start with the Klaviyo audit: 30 minutes with an expert, free, no strings attached, to place which C holds your account back.

What our Klaviyo agency covers

Scope depends on your maturity, not on a catalogue that is identical for every brand.

Klaviyo audit

The audit examines account architecture, integrations, flows, campaigns, segments, consent, tracking, attribution and deliverability. We check the triggers, filters, exclusions and exits of every scenario, then place them back into the 4C to identify which stage is the real bottleneck.

The deliverable ranks what to keep, fix, build or retire. If you want to start on your own, the 50-point lifecycle scorecard reuses part of those controls.

Setup and migration

We configure Klaviyo for brands that are starting out or picking up an incomplete setup. In a migration, we prepare the data, consent, properties, segments and scenarios before the switch.

A migration is not importing a list and copying templates over. It has to preserve the useful history, secure unsubscribes, test the integrations and stage the ramp-up of sending volume. Our guides detail the control points depending on the platform you are leaving: Brevo, Mailchimp and HubSpot.

Lifecycle flows

We build the automations the four C call for, in the order your account needs them. Each flow has an objective, an audience, exclusions, content and a measurement rule. We document the branches so your team can understand the account without opening every message. The setup controls we expect before an account goes live are listed in our Klaviyo Shopify setup guide.

Email and SMS campaigns

Flows do not replace campaigns. We organise the calendar, the angles, the copy, the build, the segments and the sends. SMS comes in when its immediacy serves the message, without automatically duplicating every email. Orchestration accounts for the total pressure a profile receives, and for the split between flows and campaigns.

Segmentation and customer data

Klaviyo lets you create a lot of segments. That does not mean all of them are useful. We favour audiences that trigger a decision: engagement, buyer status, recency, frequency, value, category or journey stage.

Plenty of accounts stop at openers and clickers over 30, 60 or 90 days. That is behaviour outside of purchase, so a partial view. Crossed with an RFM reading, it produces far more usable cells: a very good customer who rarely engages with email is not treated like a highly engaged profile who has never ordered.

Deliverability

We monitor bounces, complaints, unsubscribes, inactive profiles and reputation signals, and we verify domain authentication. Higher volume is not a win if placement degrades.

We cross two measurements: seed list tools, which test placement at the main mailbox providers, and our own internal test system, which checks at proof stage whether a message trips spam filters. For the technical foundations, read our SPF, DKIM and DMARC guide.

Peak season: preparation starts in October

Black Friday is not run like a seasonal sale. In a sale, everyone starts at the same time. On Black Friday it is first come, first served: once someone has bought their desk from one retailer, they do not buy a second one elsewhere because the offer is better there.

What we prepare from October onwards on a Klaviyo account:

• Deliverability. A problem found in November cannot be fixed in time, since returning to normal takes several weeks. Testing starts in early October.
• Segments. VIP, good customers, actives, prospects, dormant profiles. Send frequency rises sharply over the period and you cannot manufacture a VIP segment in a hurry on Thursday evening.
• Backup offers. A mechanic inherited from retail: a base promotion, plus an extra discount prepared in advance and released only if targets are being missed. It avoids improvising a promo code under pressure, with margin never recalculated.
• Offer stacking. Your welcome popup promises a discount. Can it be combined with the seasonal offer? The answer changes the message, and if the answer is yes, it has to be said loudly.
• Reminder delays. In a period of heavy solicitation, the delays between emails in an abandonment sequence tighten.
• Decision latency. A fast decision channel and a clear mandate on thresholds. An opportunity missed on a Saturday morning is not recovered: there are 365 days in a year and one Black Friday.

The orders of magnitude we present in our Black Friday preparation webinar, for the French market: around 808 million euros in online sales during Black Friday week last year, an average basket around 66 euros and close to 24 million unique visitors on the day itself across French ecommerce sites. These are market reference points, not a promise of results.

Our Black Friday email checklist covers the operational detail, and our Black Friday preparation guide covers the wider commercial plan.

Klaviyo is not your CRM strategy

Klaviyo brings customer data, segmentation, campaigns and automation together in one platform. That depth makes it a good fit for many ecommerce brands. It also creates a trap: mistaking the available features for a roadmap.

Adding a flow because it appears on a checklist does not answer these questions:

• which behaviour should trigger the message;
• which audience has to be excluded;
• which content genuinely helps the reader move forward;
• how to avoid overlapping with a campaign;
• when the flow should stop;
• which metric will decide the next iteration.

You often hear that email should account for 30% of an ecommerce brand's revenue. That statistic is vague: it depends on the attribution model, the vertical, the acquisition mix and the maturity of the list. Email marketing remains an effective way to generate revenue, but a target percentage does not replace a diagnosis. Our analysis of ecommerce email benchmarks and the page Is Klaviyo a CRM? cover both points. If the platform choice is still open, the six criteria that separate the platforms give a comparison grid independent of any tool.

Three ways to work with Deliver

Strategic audit

You keep execution in house but need a structured read on the account. We analyse the setup, present the priorities and explain the recommended order. The audit can also come before a migration or an ongoing engagement.

Klaviyo setup or migration

You are starting from zero, changing platform or picking up an incomplete installation. We frame the data, the integration, the scenarios, the content and the tests required for launch.

Monthly retainer

Deliver becomes your outsourced CRM team on the agreed scope. We run the campaigns, maintain the flows, monitor deliverability and prepare the next decisions. Your team brings product information, the calendar and brand approvals.

Our broader email marketing agency offer covers both Klaviyo and Brevo. For a scope centred on data and journeys, see our lifecycle CRM agency page.

Which brands we work with

Deliver mainly supports ecommerce brands that already have a customer base and send regularly. The need usually appears when campaigns and flows rest on one person, when growth has made the segments more complex, or when the account has never been restructured.

We can also work with B2B SaaS or service companies when the subject is lifecycle: nurture, onboarding, activation, adoption and retention.

We do not do paid media, SEO or video production, and we do not configure a general-purpose sales CRM. Deliver stays focused on owned channels: email, SMS, push and customer data.

Brands supported by the group

The brands below are supported by Make Sense For Digital, the company that publishes this site. These are group-level references, across all its disciplines: they are not tied here to any specific Klaviyo engagement or to any performance number.

What the group's clients say

The reviews below were left by clients supported by Make Sense For Digital, the company Deliver operates under as its email, SMS, push and CRM brand. They cover the group's work across all its disciplines: one explicitly names a social ads and search ads engagement, the others speak about the relationship, the expertise and how the account is run. None of them covers a Klaviyo programme. They tell you how the team works, not what an email programme produced.

They are published in French, exactly as they were written. The English translation in italics is ours.

« Des conseils toujours des plus intéressants et constructifs ! »
(Always the most interesting and constructive advice.)
Jérôme Fisman, CT En Folie

« Merci à l’équipe MS4D pour leur accompagnement SMA et SEA. Des échanges positifs; une collaboration au top ! »
(Thank you to the MS4D team for their social ads and search ads support. Positive conversations, an excellent collaboration.)
Cédric Martin, Propriétés Privées

« Continuez comme ça, changez rien. »
(Keep going exactly like this, change nothing.)
Alexandre Berthe, Outillage Carrelage

« Merci pour le super taf, vous avez clairement votre part dans tout ça :) »
(Thanks for the great work, you clearly played your part in all of this.)
Quentin Ory, Les Mini Mondes

« Performance, disponibilité et réactivité. »
(Performance, availability and responsiveness.)
Joffrey Dumont, Motoblouz

« Très bonne expertise et bonne qualité de la gestion du compte. »
(Very good expertise and good quality of account management.)
Jean Lalau, Tiptoe

How to compare Klaviyo agencies

Published comparison lists sort agencies on three columns: Klaviyo partner tier, client references and one headline number. That is a useful filter, but it says nothing about how the work will be done on your account. Here are the criteria we suggest you put to every agency you talk to, with our own answer in plain terms.

The answers should be understandable before you sign. A method that is vague at the sales stage rarely gets clearer during execution. Our guide to choosing a Klaviyo agency goes deeper into these criteria, and the 50-point lifecycle scorecard lets you score an account before the first meeting.

Agency, freelancer or in-house team?

A Klaviyo freelancer can suit a one-off project or a team that already owns the strategy, the coordination and the complementary skills. An in-house team keeps the knowledge closest to the brand, but it has to absorb the calendar, the copywriting, the configuration, the data, the testing and deliverability.

An agency becomes relevant when those needs have to move forward in parallel. The difference is not the number of accounts managed: look at who will work on your account, how the flows are documented, how results are read and what happens after the setup.

Our offices and coverage

Deliver has three offices:

• Lille, for the Lille metropolitan area, the Hauts-de-France region and cross-border French and Belgian projects;
• Tournai, our anchor point in Belgium for Hainaut and Wallonia;
• Montreal, for Quebec, Canada and bilingual North American programmes.

In-person workshops are arranged by appointment when the project justifies it. Daily delivery stays compatible with distributed teams.

Our Klaviyo agency in Belgium page explains how we structure multilingual markets, consent and lifecycle operations. We also support teams in Paris and across the rest of France, Belgium, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Canada. Those cities are coverage areas and are not presented as Deliver offices.

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FAQ: Klaviyo agency

What is the 4C method?

It is the framework we apply to customer contact programmes: catch (collect quality consent), connect (bring the person into the brand's world), close (address the real reasons for not buying), continue (organise repeat purchase and loyalty). The four stages are worked in that order, because none of them makes up for the previous one.

Is Deliver a certified Klaviyo agency?

The Klaviyo partnership is held by Make Sense For Digital, the company that publishes this site and under which Deliver operates. We claim no named programme tier, and no certification obtained under the Deliver name.

Do you only work with Klaviyo?

No. Klaviyo and Brevo are our main platforms. We recommend a change only when the current tool genuinely limits the journeys, the data or the execution. Read our Brevo vs Klaviyo comparison before deciding.

Can you take over an existing Klaviyo account?

Yes. We start by auditing the integrations, flows, campaigns, segments, attribution and deliverability. We keep what works and prioritise the rest along the 4C.

Do you guarantee a specific result?

No. The result also depends on the product, the offer, the quality of the list, traffic and seasonality. We commit to a scope, deliverables, a documented method and regular reviews.

30 minutes to know where to start

We look at your account, your organisation and the main constraint today, then tell you which C it sits at. You leave with an opinion on the right entry point: audit, setup, migration or monthly retainer.

Discuss your Klaviyo setup with Charlotte