When you are considering options for email marketing and marketing automation, there’s no shortage of choices. Which you choose can make a big difference in the success of your business. In this article, we’ll take a look at the two biggest names in email marketing: HubSpot and Klaviyo. There are key differences that you will want to consider to make an informed choice.While both platforms have a high level of success stories, which platform is best for your email marketing will depend on your business goals. Let’s start by defining these two platforms and how the experts and reviewers rate them in a head-to-head comparison.
What is HubSpot?
HubSpot is an all-in-one software platform for inbound marketing. Tools include customer relationship management (CRM) and content management system (CMS) platforms, as well as email marketing and marketing automation.HubSpot offers a series of products that integrate. They call these hubs and they include:
- Marketing: Create content, capture leads, and conduct inbound marketing campaigns
- Sales: Track prospects, customer touchpoints, and deals
- Service: Manage service teams with playbooks, customer portals, surveys, and service analytics
- CMS: Build and manage small business websites
- Operations: Process automation to sync and scale operations
The HubSpot marketing hub has a 38% market share of the marketing automation category and a rating of 4.4 out of 5 stars on G2.
What is Klaviyo?
Klaviyo is a customer data platform (CDP) that unifies your eCommerce customer data in a marketing hub, email marketing platform, and SMS marketing tool.Klaviyo's core products include:
- Email Marketing: eCommerce email marketing, including pre-built automations, email templates, and customizable campaign templates
- Text Marketing: SMS campaigns for eCommerce platforms with built-in analytics and A/B testing
Klaviyo’s marketing automation platform lets you send conduct bulk email campaigns and SMS messaging campaigns and personalize them at scale. This lets you build multi-channel customer experiences from a single platform. Precise targeting, measurement, and optimization automate workflows powered by predictive analytics.Along with automated workflows, features also include deep audience segmentation, benchmarking, and automatic text-writing tools.While Klaviyo has a much smaller market share, its user base is growing rapidly, especially for email marketers and SMS marketers in the eCommerce business space.Klaviyo has a 4.6 out of 5 star rating on G2.
Klaviyo vs HubSpot: Head-to-Head Comparison
In a head-to-head comparison, Capterra ranked Klaviyo as a top performer for:
- SMS marketing
- Campaign management
- Marketing automation
- Email management
- Brand management
HubSpot was ranked as a top performer by Capterra for social media marketing, blog software, and lead capture and as an emerging favorite for lead generation and social media analytics tools.When comparing the two platforms, you will also want to make sure you know how they stack up when it comes to pricing, campaign management, email automation, and conversions. So let’s break those down and help you better understand how to determine which is the right choice for your business.
For Pricing
Both HubSpot and Klaviyo offer free options, including a free version and free trials although the number of contacts and inbound marketing efforts are limited.While HubSpot CRM is free, there are fees for each add-on service. Prices vary depending on whether you are a small or medium-sized business (Professional) or an enterprise-level business. HubSpot offers a starter package for its suite of products, starting at $50 a month per product with scaled pricing depending on usage levels.
- HubSpot Marketing Hub starts at $800 per month for Professional and $3,600 a month for Enterprise businesses.
- HubSpot Sales Hub starts at $450 per month for Professional and $1,200 per month for Enterprise businesses.
- HubSpot Customer Service Hub starts at $450 per month for Professional and $1,200 per month for Enterprise businesses.
- HubSpot CMS Hub starts at $360 per month for Professional and $1,200 per month for Enterprise businesses.
- HubSpot Operations Hub starts at $720 per month for Professional and $2,000 per month for Enterprise businesses.
To determine the pricing for your level, you can use the HubSpot create a bundle option to get an idea of costs depending on the level of support you need.By comparison, Klaviyo's pricing is fairly straightforward. Klaviyo's email marketing tool and SMS campaign platform are free for up to 500 email and 150 SMS messages per month.
- Klaviyo Email Marketing is $45 per month for up to 1,500 contacts and 15,000 monthly emails. You also get 150 free monthly SMS credits.
- Klaviyo Email and SMS solution is $60 per month for up to 1,500 contacts, 15,000 monthly emails and 1,250 monthly SMS credits. You can also scale SMS credits at various levels up to 450,000 per month at an additional fee.
If you need larger buckets of contacts or more email messages for active campaigns each month, prices increase depending on the level of customer support you need. You can check out the Klaviyo pricing calculator to get more specific pricing.
For Campaigns
HubSpot works well for B2B companies that need to track leads and prospects. By integrating its CRM and hubs, HubSpot can provide a comprehensive solution for nearly every aspect of your online marketing and sales. Its biggest strength is for companies that need an all-in-one solution for CRM, marketing, sales, service, and customer relationship management.However, all-in-one solutions often do not provide the deep feature set that more targeted platforms can provide and this is the case when comparing marketing campaign management with Klaviyo. Klaviyo is a powerful email and SMS marketing tool designed specifically for eCommerce, including more in-depth solutions and customization options for eCommerce markets. For D2C companies, Klaviyo is a more robust platform.You can also do more robust campaign tracking in Klaviyo, such as predictive analytics and lifecycle purchase behavior along with analysis to determine which products drive the most first-time sales. While some of the same information is available in HubSpot, it requires manual analysis for anything that is product, inventory, or lifecycle specific.
For Email Automations
HubSpot and Klaviyo both offer an email builder, email automation, and campaign monitor functionality. While Klaviyo’s businesses focus on email and SMS marketing, email automation is one of the hubs that HubSpot offers. To fully leverage the power of HubSpot, you also need to integrate data from its other hubs. With Klaviyo, you’re already tied into the data.Klaviyo provides a robust toolset for email automation, including:
- Pre-built email sequences
- Abandoned cart automations
- Micro-segmentation based on store activity
- Email attribution reporting
For eCommerce brands looking to grow quickly, Klaviyo offers deep tool sets and robust email marketing automation to personalize campaigns at scale. While HubSpot offers some of these features, they need integration with the HubSpot CRM platform to be effective and automate email based on customer behavior.
For Conversion Tracking
Both platforms do a good job of conversion tracking.Conversion tracking in HubSpot works in one of two ways. First, you will need to install the HubSpot tracking code on your page to track conversions for ads. For email, HubSpot inserts a one-pixel tracking image in HTML emails. If you are using the Sales Hub, you can track when recipients click on a link in the email to track the buyer’s journey.While Klaviyo also uses these tiny (invisible) pixels to track email open rates, it does not rely on pixels for tracking channel attribution and conversion as they aren’t always reliable. For example, let’s say someone opens an email on the phone, but later purchases using a laptop or desktop computer. Conversion tracking relying on pixels would miss the conversion. Instead, Klaviyo tracks conversion by analyzing data from integrations and APIs for accurate conversion tracking.
For Your Business
Depending on what type of marketing tool your business needs, HubSpot or Klaviyo may be the right choice for you.Klaviyo is generally considered a better fit for businesses with:
- An established brand
- B2C transactional sellers
- High-volume sellers
Because Klaviyo focuses on eCommerce businesses and inbound marketing, several key features are unique, including:
- Native integrations with major eCommerce platforms, such as Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, Magento, Wix, and Salesforce Commerce Cloud
- Pre-designed segmentation based on customer behavior, acquisition source, purchase size, and purchase frequency.
- Pre-built abandoned cart email campaigns and win-back campaigns
- Transactional emails and triggered autoresponders based on purchase history and sales activity
- Facebook ad personalization
Klaviyo also automatically generates product recommendations in emails to encourage cross-sell opportunities and repeat sales.HubSpot is generally considered a better fit for business with:
- A mix of B2B products
- B2C sales that require a consultation before purchase
- Brands that are not well established
Because HubSpot integrates its hubs, it shares data across its various platforms. While it does not have the deep SMS and email marketing toolset that Klaviyo has, HubSpot has other features, such as:
- Marketing lead database
- Lead scoring
- Customer and deal tracking
- Landing page creation
- Website management
- Integration with hundreds of automation, workflow, and data platforms
One other place where Klaviyo excels is when you pull products from catalog lists or want to create dynamic product recommendations based on customer data. Klaviyo can automatically generate grids, including (or excluding) certain categories. In HubSpot, this has to be handled manually.
Which Should You Choose?
All of the things we’ve discussed in this article should help give you a better idea of whether Klaviyo or HubSpot is a better fit for your business. It’s an important decision and you need to consider features, pricing, and alignment with your business needs carefully.20North Marketing can help you connect the dots in your organization to optimize your email marketing services, including both campaigns and automations. Contact 20North Marketing today and let us help you optimize your marketing funnel.
