The incomplete Klaviyo/Attentive comparison; And advice from a Netflix veteran
Part 3 into the Klaviyo Analysis
The Klaviyo/Attentive Comparison Is Incomplete
The Information’s analysis calls Attentive Klaviyo’s “main rival”. This comparison is incomplete. It is true that both are martech platforms that have a combination of email, SMS, and push notifications to further ecommerce. However, one is solely B2B focused, and the other is focused on the enterprise, and that makes a big difference.
Proof Point: The Google Funnel
If you took ahrefs or a similar tool to look at how both companies advertise, Kaviyo is at ~300 active keywords that are going to the following URLs:
https://www.klaviyo.com/one
https://www.klaviyo.com/grow/mailchimp
https://www.klaviyo.com/ecommerce-integrations/magento
https://www.klaviyo.com/grow/email-marketing?gad=1
https://www.klaviyo.com/email-marketing
https://www.klaviyo.com/ecommerce-integrations/shopify
https://www.klaviyo.com/ecommerce-integrations/woocommerce
https://www.klaviyo.com/features/templates
https://www.klaviyo.com/features/integrations
https://www.klaviyo.com/features/ecommerce-marketing-automationIn contrast, Attentive has ~160 active keywords that are going to one URL:
https://www.attentive.com/demo-requestKlaviyo wants to curate your journey, keep track of where you came from, and send you to a signup flow that makes sense to you. Attentive wants to talk to you.
A Minority Opinion on PLG
Self-signup is not a requirement for PLG. Yes, if product-led onboarding is the requirement for product-led growth, and you’re catering to the SMB customer, you cannot do so without a mature self-signup flow.
In the SMB world, where the buyer and the user are the same person, the customer doesn’t have time to talk to a vendor. A business catering to such users cannot scale if it has to talk to everyone it onboards. The best SMB signup experiences therefore are self-service, and Klaviyo does this well.
However, self-signup is one of nine PLG techniques. It is neither sufficient nor necessary for a successful PLG strategy. So while Attentive may not have self-signup, it does not mean it’s not employing other tactics, be it a free-trial offering, dedicated human help, in-product onboarding, and robust analytics for decision-making.
Attentive’s real customer is the enterprise marketer who has two main problems: 1. Showing Return on Spend. 2. Compliance. They don’t need education on SMS or the best strategies on outreach. They want to know the effectiveness of a campaign and if their ways to obtain and maintain consent are correct. In these areas, Attentive performs exceedingly well.
Similar But Not the Same
Calling Klaviyo and Attentive each other’s competitors is like calling SalesForce and Hubspot or ChowNow and Olo competitors. Do they operate in the same space (CRM and last-mile deliveries)? Yes. Do they have some customer overlap? Probably.
The ideal Hubspot user however, doesn’t care for Salesforce and its aircraft carrier full of options and add-ons. Neither does the ideal Salesforce user want to be bogged down with the DIY-everything of Hubspot.
Similarly, the ideal ChowNow user is a small restaurant who is fatigued by Uber and DoorDash nickel-and-diming and want to offer their patrons a cost-effective alternative. The ideal Olo user is the ShakeShack-style chain that cares more about uniformity of experience and simplicity of reporting and is willing to give Olo a higher cut per transaction over DoorDash or Uber.
These pairs, like Klaviyo and Attentive, are solving different problems for different users, even if they are operating in the same space.
So while it is understandable to compare Klaviyo to Attentive, it is incomplete if not incorrect. If anything, such comparisons only show that the market can sustain multi-billion dollar valuations for two startups, nothing more.
My Best Advice — Barbie Brewer
Finally, this week’s MBA comes from Barbie Brewer and is a reminder that there is power, not shame, in course-correcting.
Thank you for reading, and have a great week!
TJ