Blog
Email marketing, written for small stores.
Pricing model trade-offs, automation playbooks, honest comparisons. By the Kovyo team. RSS.
Three signs your email list is quietly decaying — and the welcome flow fix
Open rate slipping by 1-2% per quarter, click rate flatlining, unsubscribes creeping up. List decay rarely announces itself — it accumulates. Here's how to spot it early, the math behind why a strong welcome flow is the best preventive medicine, and what to do if you're already past the warning stage.
Subject lines that survived 1,000 abandoned-cart sends (and the ones that didn't)
A pattern analysis of which abandoned-cart subject lines drive recovery and which get marked as spam. The four formats that consistently win, the three that always lose, and why personalization beats urgency in 7 out of 10 categories.
Klaviyo's pricing curve, decoded: where the cliff is and why most stores hit it surprised
From $0 to $4,350/month, the Klaviyo Email plan tier slider has three distinct slope changes — and most merchants don't see the second one coming. A breakdown of the curve, the inflection points, and the math that decides whether you should stay or switch.
The first 30 days on a new email tool: a migration playbook for Shopify merchants
Migrating from Klaviyo, Mailchimp, or Shopify Email to a new platform is the second-most-stalled project in ecommerce ops (after replatforming itself). This is the day-by-day playbook — what to do in week 1, 2, 3, and 4 — so you don't hit the 60-day mark with a half-migrated list.
Email attribution for Shopify: how to actually know what your campaigns made
Last-touch, first-touch, multi-touch — the attribution models compared, with a clear recommendation for sub-$1M Shopify stores. Plus the four UTM parameters every campaign should set, and the one Shopify report that closes the loop for free.
How to write a popup that converts at 4%+ on Shopify (with real examples)
A teardown of what separates a 0.8% popup from a 4% one — the offer, the headline, the form fields, the trigger timing. Six real examples copied from Shopify stores doing it right, plus the three mistakes that kill conversion immediately.
When to upgrade from Shopify Email to a real platform (and what 'real' actually means)
A field-tested checklist for Shopify merchants stuck between 'free is fine' and 'I'm leaving revenue on the table.' Five signals you've outgrown Shopify Email — with the dollar math behind each one.
The 3 emails every small Shopify store should send (and most don't)
If you have 15 minutes and one tool, the three highest-ROI automations to set up before anything else. Order matters — start with the one that recovers the most revenue.
Shopify Email vs marketing automation: when do you need more?
Shopify Email is free up to 10K emails/month. That's real. But it has no popups, no cart abandonment, no segmentation. Here's the honest line where it stops being enough.
Why we charge per email sent (and Klaviyo doesn't)
The pricing model debate, explained from both sides. Why per-contact billing made sense for Klaviyo's market and why it stops making sense once you're a small Shopify store.