The event took place in The Brewery, in the historic City of London for a day of inspiring talks from leading marketing minds. 

Rory Sutherland: Fearless Experimentation

After a welcome from Justin Khaksar, Klaviyo SVP, the day’s talks kicked off with a bang thanks to Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland, their veteran Vice Chairman of 35 years. With over three decades in marketing, Rory has become well known as a speaker and writer for his expertise in helping brands stand out from the crowd. 

Rory spoke of his respect for the marketing profession, and how marketers push the economy forward with innovative ideas. Emphasising the importance of experimentation, Rory encouraged us all to think differently, and to be unafraid to execute on the “weirdest ideas”, as they’re often the ones that prove to be most effective. 

Pulling on established psychological principles, Rory noted that it is often the logical ideas that miss the biggest opportunities. The safest, most cautious, even the most rational ideas, are often implemented for fear of failure, embarrassment, or simply because “nobody else” is working on the more daring ones.  

Bizarrely for a headline speaker at a Klaviyo conference, Rory told us to discount the importance of data in marketing, and instead to follow your gut feeling. 

As Rory put it, “there’s always someone to kill an idea with excuses like ‘it’s too expensive, it’s too different’, but what we need to understand as marketers is that, often, the best idea isn’t the most logical one.”

While we believe a balance between creativity and data-backed strategies is a sure fire formula for success, Rory certainly left us feeling inspired to think differently. 

He emphasised how innovative ideas are often simple. Like giving customers “extra free” instead of a discount, or allowing them to play a game in return for a free meal (as Dishoom does). Rory told us of how he found these tricks, or even gimmicks, have often the greatest impact. 

He also left with a gift for us all - a free copy of his book ‘Alchemy', a fantastic read and one recommended for all marketers seeking to embrace the power of lateral thinking.

CEO Andrew Bialecki: Introducing Klaviyo Reviews

Next up, we heard from the CEO and co-founder of Klaviyo, Andrew Bialecki who introduced the biggest announcement of the day - Klaviyo Reviews. An all-new offering, Klaviyo Reviews is designed to bring online reviews into what Andrew described as the next generation of software: intelligence. 

Klaviyo Reviews uniquely tie deeply into the rest of the Klaviyo platform, allowing marketers to intelligently generate segments based on the context of reviews to then target even more relevant communications to specific members of a brand’s audience. 

We stay ahead of the curve here at Kubix, and while we knew a lot of the details about Klaviyo Reviews already, it was great to get a live demo of the new service from Andrew’s team. 

In the example demonstrated, a skincare brand would be capable of generating a segment out of reviewers who noted they had oily skin, giving the brand in question the opportunity to target emails towards those customers with products intended to combat oily skin. This is likely to be one of the headline features of the new platform. 

But that’s not all. Klaviyo Reviews will utilise your email list data to intelligently target review requests at precisely the right time after purchase. It can also generate custom questions for customers to feedback about their experience, feeding bespoke data into automated segments and flows. Merchants can also save time instead of trawling through reams of customer reviews by seamlessly embedding real reviews and quotes from happy customers straight into email campaigns, giving other customers confidence.  

Klaviyo Reviews is available now to everyone on Shopify and Shopify Plus and is sure to become a powerful new feature of the wider platform.

Angharad Exley: Personalised Marketing at Pasta Evangelists

After the keynote from Andrew, we broke up into groups to attend the various sessions on offer. One of the most enlightening sessions was delivered by Angharad Exley, Senior Marketing Manager at Pasta Evangelists - one of the UK’s most successful startup food brands. 

Pasta Evangelists has made the most of Klaviyo, seeing exponential growth in their email engagement and conversions. Angharad showcased some of their automated flows, with the innovative ideas they implemented to generate more impact.  

Their welcome emails feature a choice of offers specifically tailored to their different service offerings, including both takeaway and recipe kits. They also showcased their own spin on Spotify Unwrapped: Pasta Unpacked. These emails are full of personalised stats about customers’ pasta consumption over the course of the previous year, specifically designed to share with their friends, driving both loyalty and organic social content. 

Pasta Evangelists has seen incredible results with Klaviyo, and they certainly inspired us with their insights. 

Mary Portas: The Queen of Shops 

Attendees were then invited back into the main auditorium to join a chat with Mary Portas, the legendary 'Queen of Shops’. Mary is renowned for her no-nonsense approach to turning around struggling retailers, something which became the subject of countless documentaries and TV series. 

Mary has since refocused her attention towards sustainability in retail, and at K:LDN she turned her focus upon online retail more specifically. She emphasised how having the latest and flashiest products is now a less significant motivator for consumers, with more and more people now environmentally conscious. Fast fashion is firmly out of fashion, with consumers now desperate to show off their sustainability credentials through the products they purchase. 

Mary Portas is one of the big proponents behind the B Corp Movement - the accreditation awarded to the world’s most sustainable businesses. Through implementing sustainable practices across the board, businesses can be recognised with this unique accreditation, helping consumers feel confident they’re purchasing from a responsible brand. Examples include Patagonia, The Body Shop, Ben and Jerry’s and Innocent Drinks - brands all renowned for their green credentials. 

Mary emphasised how a period of investment in sustainability in the short term, can lead to big rewards in the long term for online retailers both big and small. But when asked how brands could make Black Friday more sustainable, she retorted “don’t do it”. Cue nervous laughter from an audience of marketing professionals…

‍SWAG - “Stuff We All Get” 

If there was ever an award for most generous conference hosts, Klaivyo would win every time. As we approached their pop-up shop, one of our team said “do we need to pay?” - with branded Chilly’s bottles, tote bags, notepads, keychains, books and even a LEGO set, we couldn’t quite believe we got to take it all home for free. 

And when everyone thought our tote bags were fully loaded, we were gifted a free bucket hat and Hawaiian shirt to get us all set for the K:FEST afterparty. At this point we were frankly worried about how we’d load it all on the train home. Thanks Klaviyo!

A Marketing Festival For The Ages 

The day was topped off with K:FEST - a festival-themed afterparty complete with a live band and plenty of networking opportunities. Donning our Klaviyo bucket hats and Hawaiian shirts, we reflected on a day that left us feeling inspired, motivated and passionate about making the most of Klaviyo’s innovative tools and excited for what the future holds. More than anything else, it was clear that K:LDN was all about community building - Klaviyo’s generosity and friendliness on the day definitely left us feeling closer to their brand.

With our bags of incredible swag in tow, we set off back to Birmingham ready to share our insights with the rest of the team and our clients. K:LDN 2023 was a blast, and we can’t wait to come back next year.